Some observations from my Cybils reading:

What’s In
Clockwork/mechanical animals, birds, monsters, objects, steam-punk: The Dead Gentleman by Matthew Cody, The Peculiar by Stefan Bachmann, Above World by Jenn Reese, The Brightworking by Paul B. Thompson, Goblin Secrets by William Alexander.

Ghosts: Tilly’s Moonlight Garden by Julia Green, The Whispering House by Rebecca Wade, A Greyhound of a Girl by Roddy Doyle, 13 Hangmen by Art Corriveau, The Mapmaker and the Ghost by Sarvenaz Tash, On the Day I Died by Candace Fleming, The Ghost of Graylock by Dan Poblocki.

Time travel: Caught by Margaret Peterson Haddix, Horten’s Miraculous Mechanisms: Magic, Mystery and a Very Strange Adventure by Lissa Evans, A Mutiny in Time by James Dashner, 13 Hangmen by Art Corriveau, Time Snatchers by Richard Ungar, The Freedom Maze by Delia Sherman, The Dead Gentleman by Matthew Cody, Mira’s Diary: Lost in Paris by Marissa Moss, Beswitched by Kate Saunders, The Time-Traveling Fashionista at the Palace of Marie Antionette by Bianca Turetsky.

Portals to other worlds: My Very Unfairy Tale Life by Anna Staniszewski, The Dead Gentleman by Matthew Cody, The Peculiar by Stefan Bachmann, Storybound by Marissa Burt, Iron-Hearted Violet by Kelly Barnhill, Horten’s Incredible Illusions by Lissa Evans, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente, Winterling by Sarah Prineas, Summer and Bird by Katherine Catmull.

Fairy tale re-tellings: Snow in Summer by Jane Yolen, Whatever After: The Fairest of Them All by Sarah Mylnowski, Twice Upon a Time: Beauty and the Beast by Wendy Mass, In a Glass Grimmly by Adam Gidwitz, Iron-Hearted Violet by Kelly Barnhill, The Cup and the Crown by Diane Stanley, My Very Unfairy Tale Life by Anna Staniszewski, Twice Upon a Time by James Riley, The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy by Nikki Loftin, Seeing Cinderella by Jenny Lundquist, The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom by Christopher Healy, The Hop by Sharelle Moranville, The Book of Wonders by Jasmine Richards.

Orphans and street urchins: Orphans are always in season. The Dead Gentleman by Matthew Cody, Time Snatchers by Richard Ungar, Splendors and Glooms by Laura Amy Schlitz, Goblin Secrets by William Alexander, The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen, Storybound by Marissa Burt, Winterling by Sarah Prineas, The Spy Princess by Sherwood Smith, The Book of Wonders by Jasmine Richards, Earwig and the Witch by Diana Wynne Jones, The Rock of Ivanore by Laurissa White Reyes, Sword Mountain by Nancy Yi Fan, Deadweather and Sunrise by Geoff Rodkey,, The Voyage of Lucy P. Simmons by Babara Mariconda, The Fire Chronicle by John Stephens, Circus Galacticus by Deva Fagan.

Talking animals and talking animal worlds: Neversink by Barry Wolverton (Arctic birds), The Secret of the Ginger Mice by Frances Watts (mice), The Hop by Sharelle Moranville (toads), Wings of Fire: The Dragonet Prophecy by Tui Sutherland (dragons), The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde (dragon), The Prince Who Fell from the Sky by John Claude Bemis (bears, wolves, and others), Sword Mountain by Nancy Yi Fan (birds of prey), Mr. and Mrs. Bunny: Detectives Extraordinaire! by Mrs. Bunny and Polly Horvath (rabbits and others), Darkbeast by Morgan Keyes (ravens, rats, and snakes), Signed by Zelda by Kate Feiffer (pigeons), Malcolm at Midnight by W.H. Beck (rats), The High-Skies Adventures of Blue Jay the Pirate by Scott Nash (birds).

What’s Out
Space Travel: The Prince Who Fell from the Sky by John Claude Bemis sort of fits into this genre, but it’s really more about a journey with talking animals through a dystopian future world. Gary Schmidt’s What Came from the Stars is more of a high fantasy combined with an encounter between good and evil than it is about exploring outer space. Circus Galacticus by Deva Fagan is the only real space travel book of the lot that I can remember.

Zombies and vampires: Maybe the zombie/vampire fad is still going strong in YA, but in Middle Grade fantasy/science fiction, I only remember a couple of books with zombies or vampires, The Dead Gentleman by Matthew Cody and Benjamin Franklinstein Meets Thomas Deadison by Matthew McElligott and Larry Tuxbury.

I liked the second book better than I did the first, I think. Children who like puzzles and magic tricks would really find this book and its prequel, Horten’s Miraculous Mechanisms, quite compelling.

I just wanted more character development, more reasons to like or at least sympathize with the children in the two stories. Stuart is short, curious, and persistent. The triplets are annoying, and I had trouble telling them apart, even though I get the names attached in print. I couldn’t remember which one was which, so they all three felt annoying.

The puzzles are good and appropriate for ten and eleven year olds—which is not to say that I could have solved them myself. Sometimes it takes a child to solve a child’s puzzle. Anyway, for budding magicians and illusionists, Horten’s two books (so far) would be the perfect summer, or anytime, read.

For my Cybils judging responsibilities this year I read 84 of the 151 books nominated. I still have more that I would like to read in the next couple of months. Of those 84, these are my twelve favorites:

Darkbeast by Morgan Keyes.

Deadly Pink by Vivian Vande Velde.

Iron-Hearted Violet by Kelly Barnhill.

Princess Academy Palace of Stone by Shannon Hale. The only one of these favorites I didn’t get around to reviewing, but it’s Shannon Hale and it’s wonderful. I closed the book at the end with a happy and satisfied sigh.

The False Prince: Book 1 of The Ascendance Trilogy by Jennifer A. Nielsen.

The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom by Christopher Healy.

The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde.

The Prairie Thief by Melissa Wiley.

The Prince Who Fell from the Sky by John Claude Bemis.

The Seven Tales of Trinket by Shelley Moore Thomas.

The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy by Nikki Loftin.

What Came from the Stars by Gary D. Schmidt.

The shortlists of Cybils finalists for 2012 in all of the categories are posted today at the Cybils website. Take a look and add to your reading list from these well-written, high kid-appeal books for young adults and children–all published between November 2011 and October 2012.

Pirates and treasure and ugly fruit and heroes and islands and ocean adventure, oh, my! Yeah, it doesn’t quite have the rhythm and swing I’d like it to have, and neither does this book. But for a pirate story aficionado, Deadweather and Sunrise might do the trick.

Deadweather and Sunrise is billed as Book 1 of the Chronicles of Egg. In the story, the aforementioned Egg lives on Deadweather Island with his abusive father and two siblings who also mistreat him. They all live together on an ugly fruit plantation until on a trip to nearby Sunrise Island, Egg’s family disappears and Egg is left in the care of the very rich Pembroke family: mother, father, and spoiled, sheltered daughter, Millicent. Egg crushes on Millicent; someone tries to kill Egg, and the adventure begins.

There’s a possible treasure to be found, and there are pirates, either to defeat or to enlist as allies. Not everything or everyone is to be taken at face value. As Egg very wisely learns, “”[N]ot everyone who lives on a pretty street is a good person, and . . . even in the rottenest places you might find someone you can trust with your life.”

I think this book might be one of those things that shouldn’t be immediately devalued or written off. The story has potential not only to “grow on” the reader with time for reflection but also to get even better in the next book(s) in the series. Egg’s supporting cast is made up of thieves and rogues and mostly unreliable people, but Egg himself is a kind of Oliver Twist character transported to a mythical South Sea island world.

Recommend to those who like pirate stories, Dickensian fantasy worlds, or poverty-stricken boy heroes.

There are (at least) two approaches to the recasting of old tales for children–anything from fairy tales to Chaucer to Shakespeare to even the stories of the Bible. Because these stories were not necessarily written (or told) for children, they sometimes contain dark, very dark, material –blood and violence and illicit sex and senseless mayhem and other things that are just nasty or repulsive and not terribly uplifting or useful to educate or grow or even entertain young minds.

Of course, if an author wants to re-tell a story that contains disturbing elements for a young audience, it can be bowdlerized. “Thomas Bowdler was an English physician and philanthropist, best known for publishing The Family Shakspeare, an expurgated edition of William Shakespeare’s work, edited by his sister Henrietta Maria Bowdler, intended to be more appropriate for 19th century women and children than the original.” (Wikipedia, Thomas Bowdler) Bowdlerization has been denigrated, unjustifiably in my opinion, but it’s done all the time. As Mr. Gidwitz says in his introduction to In a Glass Grimmly, “Once upon a time, fairy tales were horrible. . . strange, bloody, and horrible.” And almost all of the storytellers since then have downplayed or bowdlerized the bloody, gruesome, unpalatable parts of the fairy tales they were telling—for the sake of the children and even the adults who are reading.

Some would say that the older the audience the more unjustified the omissions and changes are. However, an author or storyteller who is spinning his own story made up of elements of old tales has the right to pick and choose the elements he thinks will make for the strongest and most artistic story. Some of the darker elements, especially for an older audience, may make the story stronger and more meaningful or they may just make it it stupid or repugnant, as in the example that Mr. Gidwitz also shares of how Cinderella’s step-sisters actually sliced off parts their feet to make them fit into the glass slipper. I can’t imagine how that little detail would improve the story unless you’re doing a meditation on self-injury and cutting.

So, anyway, one direction to go is to cut out the nasty parts. The other approach is to play up the nastiness: describe in great and excruciating detail how Jack the giant killer eviscerated the giant and just how the blood and vomit mixed on the floor and how utterly revolting and disgusting the entire scene was. Use phrases such as “the steaming, putrid pool rippled” or “spilling his blood and viscera and porridge” or “a burbling swamp of (stomach) acid” (actual phrases from In a Glass Grimmly, and not the most revolting ones), and maybe because you used descriptive, mature vocabulary words in your middle grade fantasy novel, people will ooh and aah and say how well-written the novel is.

In a Glass Grimmly takes the well-written but disgusting approach, and not to good effect. I waded, or at least skimmed, through all the blood and vomit in giant-land, and I was not impressed. The descriptions are vivid, and I suppose, well-written, but the chapters are sort of disconnected, and the narrator is intrusive and annoying. I hate books that seem to say, “Oh, kids like gross, nasty, slimy stuff. Let’s take the really loathsome parts of this tale and make them the centerpiece of the narrative because that will draw the kids in.”

There was a bit of redeeming value towards the end of the book, but it wasn’t enough to make up for all the gratuitous blood, gore, guts, and puke that came before. When the narrator actually says, “Ooooh, you won’t like this part. You might want to put the book down now,” then it’s supposed to make me feel contrary enough to go ahead and read anyway? It’s kind of like saying, “I double dog dare you!” But it made me feel SO contrary that I wanted to close the book immediately because I knew the author/narrator didn’t really want me to quit reading. I think many (most?) kids are smart enough to get the same message.

About the only thing I did enjoy while reading In a Glass Grimmly was trying to figure out which fairy tale each part of the story came from, but I thought it meandered quite a bit. And it isn’t the “darkness” of the book or of its original sources that I’m complaining about. Guts and vomit aren’t really dark; they’re just foul and I think, pandering.

If this review makes you want to read the book even more than you did before, you are the intended audience. Have fun.

“In most fairy tales, princesses are beautiful, dragons are terrifying, and stories are harmless. This isn’t most fairy tales.”

What a terrible, transformative, true (in the best sense of the word) book.

Iron Hearted Violet is a story about an ugly but beloved princess who lives in a “mirrored world” where for time immemorial the thirteenth-god-who-is-never-named-aloud has been imprisoned for the protection of the multiverse from his destructive and evil tendencies. However, Violet’s world, and indeed the entire multiverse, created by the other twelve gods, is in imminent danger of being taken over by the evil Nybbas (who should never be named).

It’s a story about sin and pride and the desire for power and worship of ourselves and also about love and loyalty and true beauty. The book dares to say things that are counter-cultural and also run counter to the usual fantasy tale tropes:

“There are other ways to be brave without demonstrating it with the sword. Most battles are won by changing minds and turning hearts. Sometimes that’s all the bravery you need.”

“A real princess engages with the world in a state of grace. It is with grace that she listens and with grace that she speaks. A princess loves her people, no matter what their birth or station. Even ugly jailers.”

“Love [is] sharp and hot and dangerous. . . Love transforms our fragile, cowardly hearts into hearts of stone, hearts of blade, hearts of hardest iron. Because love makes heroes of us all.”

This book has a “Hobbit feel” to it, not in the plot or the characters (although there is a dragon), but in the flow of the story and in its moral universe and in its message. Small, unlovely things and people can have great significance. In fact, an ugly princess and her stable-boy best friend and an old, fear-filled dragon might be both the betrayers and the saviors of the world.

Two things I didn’t like about the book:
1. The pictures of Violet in the beginning of the book and on the cover, where she is supposed to be ugly, show a cute little girl with beautiful curly hair and lovely features. She is described:

“Her left eye was visibly larger than her right. . . Her nose pugged, her forehead was too tall, and even when she was just a baby, her skin was freckled and blotched, and no number of milk baths or lemon rubs could unmark her. People remarked about her lack of beauty.”

Just as it happens in the story itself when the storyteller/narrator tells Violet to make her story princesses beautiful to please the listeners, the illustrator (or someone) couldn’t resist making Violet pretty instead of showing her in all her asymmetrical, wild, and unattractive glory.

2. The impotence and limited-ness of “the gods.” There are twelve gods in this story who are said to have created the multiverse and saved it from deadly peril, but are now remote, removed and “still learning.” These gods are not omnipotent, not omniscient, and actually rather like benevolent gods of a clockwork multiverse, set in motion and left to function on its own. One of the gods, the “runty god”, does intervene but in a rather ineffective way.

Nevertheless, those two failings are outweighed by far by the lovely story-telling and surprising plot developments and outstanding characters and themes of Iron Hearted Violet. I recommend it for lovers of fantasy and princess books.