Archive | January 2009

Newbery/Caldecott and Other Predictions

My picks:

The Newbery Award is awarded to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.
Winner: The Underneath by Kathi Appelt.
Honor Books: The Penderwicks on Gardam Street by Jeanne Birdsall.
Alvin Ho by Lenore Look.
Masterpiece by Elise Broach.

The Caldecott Award is given to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children.
Winner: Wabi Sabi by Mark Reibstein, illustrated by Ed Young.
Honor Books: I don’t know enough to predict an honor book.

Prinz Award for a book that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature.
Winner: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.
Honor Books: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart.
Sunrise Over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers.

Geisel Award for the most distinguished American book for beginning readers.
Winner: I Will Surprise My Friend by Mo WIllems.
Honor Books: Mercy Watson Thinks Like a Pig by Kate DiCamillo

The buzz:
Fuse 8: Newbery/Caldecott Predict-o-rama Ms. Fuse is picking Chains, which I haven’t read yet, for the Newbery. She says my pick, The Underneath, is “divisive”. I don’t get the divisive tag. but I guess it is. Our Cybils Middle Grade Fiction committee was “divided” on its merits. Obviously, I’m in the pro-camp.

ACPL Mock Newbery also chose Chains. I gotta get me a copy of that book.

Monica Edinger mentions several possible winners in her article about “child appeal” and the Newbery.

The folks at Heavy Medal: A Mock Newbery Blog chose The Porcupine Year by Louise Erdich. I started to read it, but didn’t even finish it because I found it boring in the extreme.

Sandy thinks maybe Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book. I guess I’ll have to try again on that one. I didn’t get past the first few pages when the assassin stabbed the toddler’s teddy bear through the heart thinking it was the child. (No spoiler that; as I said, that happens on about the first or second page of the book.)

The children’s librarian who blogs at Wizards WIreless made her predictions way back in October, 2008. And her choice is: The Underneath by Kathi Appelt, with Trouble by Gary Schmidt getting an Honor sticker.

Matt at The Book Club Shelf, one of my fellow Cybils panelists, thinks Diamond WIllow by Helen Frost will win the Newbery.

Emily at Book Kids has some Prinz picks.

If you have Newbery, Prinz, Caldecott or other predictions, leave me a comment or a link to your post. The winners of these award and other ALA sponsored awrds for children’s literature will be announced on Monday, January 26, 2009 at 8:45 AM Central TIme. You can watch the announcement via live webcast.

Ten Cents a Dance by Christine Fletcher

Jan21

“It’s taxi-dancing. The customers rent you, like a taxi. Get it?”

Ruby Jacinski is tired of working at the meat-packing plant in Back of the Yards, Chicago. When handsome Paulie Suelze tells her that she can get a job that pays fifty dollars a week —just for dancing—Ruby’s ready and willing. Unfortunately, Ruby’s Ma can’t know what she’s doing. Ruby is only fifteen, and Ma would never allow her to work at the Starlight Dance Academy with its “fifty beautiful female instructresses.” But if teaching old guys the Lindy hop and the box step for ten cents a dance will get Ruby out of the packing plant and her family out of poverty, Ruby’s determined to do it.

This book reminded me of a Young Adult version of Joyce Carol Oates’ them, a book I read last year. However I liked Ten Cents a Dance much better than I did them. Ruby was a sympathetic character, and I never felt as if the author was condescending to her or analyzing her actions like a scientist analyzing a bug specimen. I wanted Ruby to make different, better choices, but I could see how one bad decision led to the next in a downward spiral that almost ended in complete tragedy.

I’d recommend this one for older teens; there’s some language and the situation Ruby gets herself into isn’t pretty at all. However, for young adults and older adults this is a fine look at Depression era Chicago poverty just before the start of World War II, and also a good story of a girl growing up, taking responsibility for her choices and making something good out of her life in spite of it all.

Christine Fletcher’s blog.

May God Bless America

Jan20

Schuyler’s Monster by Robert Rummel-Hudson

Jan19

Schuyler’s Monster: A Father’s Journey With His Wordless Daughter.
Robert Rummel-Hudson’s blog: Fighting Monsters with Rubber Swords.

Yes, this book is about a little girl named Schuyler (pronounced Skylar) with a brain malformation called bilateral perisylvian polymicrogyria. This condition, probably congenital in Schuyler’s case, can cause several problems, but Schuyler’s main, most obvious problem is an inability to speak. The author, Schuyler’s dad, tries to focus on both Schuyler’s communication issues and her underlying vibrant personality. She comes across as a friendly, strong-willed, and somewhat mysterious little girl with a profound speech disablity.

However, the book is as much about the author himself as it is about Schuyler. Robert Rummel-Hudson is a self-described smart-ass and an agnostic. He’s funny and snarky, but his agnosticism is the theme that ties this autobiographical tale of a father together. He’s agnostic in regard to God and also in relation to a good prognosis and future for Schuyler. He doesn’t “have much use for Christianity” before Schuyler is born or diagnosed, but after he learns what her disability is called and what difficulties and suffering it involves, Mr. Rummel-Hudson becomes enraged with a God that he doesn’t really believe exists in the first place. If there were a God, he would be “God, my enemy, the bully who’d reached down and damaged my angel’s mind.” Schuyler’s dad can’t be an atheist because he sees that atheism requires as much faith as deism. However, since he has no faith, which he equates with certainty, he can’t believe in God or not believe. Nor does he believe that there is any purpose or meaning to Schuyler’s suffering. He is left with a vague Hope, a hope that, despite evidence to the contrary, he and his wife will be able to find someone or something that will help Schuyler to live a happy life, a fulfilling life. (Happiness and independence and fulfillment are the highest goods in Mr. Rummel-Hudson’s pantheon.)

YesI haven’t lived through anything nearly as tragic and difficult as Mr. Rummel-Hudson’s life with his daughter, Schuyler, so I can’t criticize his anger and hostility toward God, nor his later resignation to the idea that some kind of impotent God may exist and be unable to do anything to help Schuyler. I might very well feel the same way were I in his shoes. However, it’s interesting that I was also reading the first few chapters of Joni Eareckson’s book Heaven: Your Real Home today. In the book, Joni talks about her disability (paralysis) as both a curse and a blessing. She longs for heaven where she is assured of having a new body that will enable her to do all the things she can’t do here on earth. In that sense, she longs to escape her broken body that has brought her so much pain and suffering and denial of pleasure for so many years. However, she also says that her disability is, in a strange way, a blessing: “Somewhere in my broken, paralyzed body is the seed of what I shall become. The paralysis makes what I am to become all the more grand when you contrast atrophied, useless legs against splendorous resurrected legs. . . Whatever my little acorn shape becomes, in all its power and honor, I’m ready for it.”

Now, I’m not Joni either, and I’m not paralyzed or seriously disabled in any way. But I can see that we’re all broken in lots of ways, mentally, physically, and most of all spiritually, and that before we can “get fixed” we have to believe that there’s a Fixer and that He cares enough and is powerful enough to fix us, if not in this life, then someday in Heaven. And if Joni’s disability and suffering help her to know and trust the Fixer, then she’d say it’s worth it. That attitude isn’t much help to the agnostics of this world who, despite their need, are unwilling (not consciously needy enough?) to jump into the arms of the Only One who can meet that need. But Schuyler herself may grow up to see God and her need for Him in a way that her father can only hope to understand.

I pray that she does. And that her father, Mr. Rummel-Hudson, somehow comes to rely on God instead of a rubber sword.

Edgar Award Nominees

Jan18

For kids and young adults. I’ve read some of these. Of those that made the nomination lists and that I’ve read, The Big Splash by Jack Ferraiolo was really, really cute –if you have a high tolerance for some adolescent-type humor. Here’s my short review of the book. The Postcard (Reading Zone review) and Eleven (Semicolon review) were both OK, but not my favorites. I’m reading Paper Towns now.

Adult title nominees. I haven’t read any of the titles nominated. Have you?

Best Novel Nominees
Missing by Karin Alvtegen (Felony & Mayhem Press)
Blue Heaven by C.J. Box (St. Martinâ€™s Minotaur)
Sins of the Assassin by Robert Ferrigno (Simon & Schuster – Scribner)
The Price of Blood by Declan Hughes (HarperCollins â€“ William Morrow)
The Night Following by Morag Joss (Random House â€“ Delacorte Press)
Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz (Simon & Schuster) Jocelyn reviewed this one at Teen Book Review.

Best Paperback Original
The Prince of Bagram Prison by Alex Carr (Random House Trade)
Money Shot by Christa Faust (Hard Case Crime)
Enemy Combatant by Ed Gaffney (Random House – Dell)
China Lake by Meg Gardiner (New American Library â€“ Obsidian Mysteries)
The Cold Spot by Tom Piccirilli (Random House – Bantam)

Best Young Adult
Bog Child by Siobhan Dowd (Random House Childrenâ€™s Books â€“ David Fickling Books) Becky didn’t like it much.
The Big Splash by Jack D. Ferraiolo (Harry N. Abrams Books â€“ Amulet Books)
Paper Towns by John Green (Penguin Young Readers Group â€“ Dutton Childrenâ€™s Books)
Getting the Girl by Susan Juby (HarperCollins Childrenâ€™s Books – HarperTeen) Becky’s ambivalent.
Torn to Pieces by Margot McDonnell (Random House Childrenâ€™s Books â€“ Delacorte Books for Young Readers)

Best Juvenile
The Postcard by Tony Abbott (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
Enigma: A Magical Mystery by Graeme Base (Abrams Books for Young Readers)
Eleven by Patricia Reilly Giff (Random House Childrenâ€™s Books â€“ Wendy Lamb Books)
The Witches of Dredmoore Hollow by Riford McKenzie (Marshall Cavendish Childrenâ€™s Books)
Cemetery Street by Brenda Seabrooke (Holiday House)

I think the Newbery Award ought have a short list of nominees. Don’t you think it would encourage reading and add to the fun?

The 63rd Annual EdgarÂ® Awards Banquet will be held on Thursday April 30, 2009 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City.

Sunday Salon: Gleaned from the Saturday Review

Jan18

As I looked through the entries for this week’s Saturday Review, these are the books that caught my eye and were added to my TBR list.

We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. Recommended by Jackie at Farm Lane Books. I’ve seen this one reviewed and recommended elsewhere, and I thought about giving it a try, even though the subject matter is harrowing: a difficult child who grows up to be a violent criminal. I thnk it might give me something to think about, but if it traumatizes and frightens me, I’ll warn the rest of you off.

Q & A by Vikas Swarup, Recommended by Jackie at Farm Lane Books. This book is the source for the new movie Slumdog Millionaire. It sounds like fun.

The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister. Recommended by Megan at Leafing Through Life. This review is from an ARC; the book will be out on the 22nd. It sounds sensuous in the best sense of the word.

Justinianâ€™s Flea: The First Great Plague And The End Of The Roman Empire by WIlliam Rosen. Recommended at Blacklin’s Reading Room. I’m always looking for good, quality, and most of all interesting, nonfiction, especially biography and history. I love history, but only if it’s not dry and not weighed down by a bunch of statistics and unimportant minutia. Justinian’s Flea sounds like something I could enjoy learning from.

Endurance: An Epic of Polar Adventure by F.A. Worsley. Recommended by bekahcubed. We watched Kenneth Branagh’s movie about Ernest Shackleton a couple of years ago, so I’m familiar with the basic outlines of the story. However, this memoir by a member of Shackleton’s expedition would be a good read for a winter’s night.

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson will be released in hardcover on March 19, 2009. Presenting Lenore reviews this new book by the author of Chains and Speak here. It’s about an anorexic teen named Lia, and I’m already intrigued by the review and by the premise of the novel.

My Father’s Paradise by Ariel Sabar. Recommended at Jew Wishes. OK, I know nothing about Kurdish Jews. I barely know where Kurdish Iraq is (north, right?). This book sounds as if it would educate me about a culture and a place that continue to be in the news, but haven’t been a part of my own mental geographical atlas.

Reading the OED by Ammon Shea. Recommended at The Book Lady’s Blog. I can actually picture myself doing this project. Someday when all my kids are grown, and I’m about 80, I’m going to take on some totally crazy reading project like reading the Oxford English Dictionary or reviewing all of the remaining books on the 1001 Books You Need to Read Before You DIe list or reliving the twentieth century by reading one or more bestsellers from each of the years of that century. I don’t know what my project will be, but it will have to do with books, and it will be ambitiously impossible. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy this book about another man’s ambitious and mad project.

Today, by the way, is the birthday of Winnie the Pooh creator, A.A. Milne. To add to your birthday celebration, here’s a link to some thoughts I wrote about Milne’s autobiography, entitled Too Late Now.

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

Jan18

What fun! A 2008 National Book Award FInalist and a Cybils Young Adult Fiction FInalist, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks is also just a good read. Frankie herself is an intriguing and complicated character, and I enjoyed getting to know her.

The premise is fairly simple: over the summer between her freshman and sophomore years at the exclusive prep school, Alabaster School, Frankie blossoms. As she returns to school in the fall, she attracts the attention of senior heart-throb and very rich kid, Matthew Livingston. But Matthew’s friend, Alpha, is either (1) jealous of Matthew’s attention to Frankie or (2) attracted to Frankie, too. And somewhere in the mix is a secret society called the Loyal Order of Basset Hounds that Frankie feels she must infiltrate even though it’s all-male and probably close to being defunct anyway.

This novel is a FInding Yourself story, a Coming of Age tale, a Boarding School genre entry, and an all-round good time book. Frankie is typically insecure and desirous of acceptance by her peers, and yet she finds the inner resources to break out of the mold and become someone that no one would expect her to be. The story is comedic, but it has serious undertones and themes.

Frankie is something of a feminist, without the stridency of some of that ilk, and she’s also interested in power and influence and in how those attributes are acquired and how they are wielded. She’s sharply observant, and yet vulnerable enough and young enough to be unsure for most of the novel about what she wants and what she’s willing to do to get what she wants.

Some people were annoyed by the novel’s point of view; it’s told in third person, present tense from an omniscient narrator point of view. But the real vantage point is Frankie’s. Even though the story’s narrator takes a sort of detached, long view of events, Frankie is the only one whose thoughts are related and whose motivations are explained. I liked the playfulness of the narrator’s voice explaining the changes in Frankie’s life while showing us the results of those changes in the action of the novel. Here’s a sample quotation, and you can decide how you like the way the story is told:

“Most young women when confronted with the peculiarly male nature of certain social events — usually those incorporating beer or other substances guaranteed to kill off a few brain cells, and often involving either the freezing-cold outdoors or the near suffocating heat of a filthy dorm room, but which can also, in more intellectual circles, include the watching of boring Russian films — will react in one of three ways . . . but Frankie Landau-Banks did none. Although she went home that night feeling happier than she had ever been in her short life, she did not confuse the golf course party with a good party, and she did not tell herself that she had had a pleasant time.

It had been, she felt, a dumb event preceded by excellent invitations.

What Frankie did that was unusual was to imagine herself in control. The drinks, the clothes, the invitations, the instructions, the food (there had been none), the location, everything. She asked herself: If I were in charge, how could I have done it better?”

Frankie eventually takes charge, and, you should know, she is a fan of P.G. Wodehouse. So how could she be anything but endearingly witty and entertaining?

Brown Bear Daughter loved this one, too. I thought it was the best of the YA Cybils finalists I’ve read so far.

Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner

Jan17

The book I read is a condensation and rewrite of Flexner’s four volume biographical study of the life of Washington. As he says in the preface, Flexner at first wanted to write a one volume biography, then felt he could not do justice to the man and his indispensable role in the founding of the country in less than four volumes, and then finally felt pressured to “distill what I had discovered into a single volume” that would “present in essence Washington’s character and career.”

In meeting his stated goal, Flexner was quite successful. In fifty-two chapters Flexner carries our hero, and Washington is indeed a hero in this book although not without flaws, from his youth as an obscure younger son from the backwoods of Virginia through his days as a soldier, a general, a planter, and a statesman, to his death in December of 1799. As for character, the Washington of this biography is a self-controlled man, fond of company and friends, but also temperate, quiet, a peacemaker, nevertheless at infrequent times giving way to an enormous temper.

George Washington, in this biography, truly is the indispensable man. It isn’t too much to say that without him the revolution would not have been successful, and that if it had been successful, the nation formed as a result of that revolution would have soon come apart and resolved itself into thirteen (or more) individual competing countries. Washington first holds the Continental Army together against all odds and at the expense of his own health and financial interests. Then after spending eight happy years in retirement at Mount Vernon, The Indispensable Man is called back into public life and given the responsibility of first moderating the Constitutional Convention, and then of presiding over a new, fledgling nation with deep sectional and philosophical rifts in opinion, culture and practice. If he couldn’t bring Jefferson and Hamilton and their followers together in the end, he at least managed to keep them from tearing the nation apart while they attacked each other and each other’s ideas and policies.

Although the book is certainly not hagiographic, Washington does fare well under scrutiny in this biographical treatment. Others of our founding fathers who figure in the story of Washington’s life do not make such a favorable impression. John Adams is a jealous and bitter wanna-be vice-president who can’t wait to take center stage as soon as Washington declines a third term as president. Jefferson is a trouble maker, untrustworthy, willing to advocate things in public and in the press to advance his own long term goals and policies, words and ideas that he repudiates in private because he knows they are impracticable or impolitic. Hamilton is a better friend to Washington, but still jealous of his own reputation and zealous for more power. Madison and Monroe are portrayed as Jefferson’s sycophants, willing to do almost anything to thwart the Federalist opposition even at the expense of the U.S. national interest.

In the portrayal in this book at least, Washington stands head-and-shoulders above all the other men of his time. Even late in his second term, when the author says several times that Washington is “losing his mental powers” and becoming weak and vacillating, he remains an admirable figure, one who is trying to do his best to serve the nation that has called upon him to give his best years to its service.

From this book I formed a better appreciation for Washington and his labors in the founding of our nation. I also began to suspect the actions and motives of others of our founding fathers. We’ll see how they fare in their own biographies as I read about the other presidents. Next up: John Adams by David McCullough.

Saturday Review

Jan16

The Saturday Review is looking iffy tonight. Mr. Linky is not cooperating. I’ll get it up with the linky by midnight if I can, and if not I’ll leave a post where you can leave a comment with links to your reviews.

The Explosionist by Jenny Davidson

Jan16

It’s one of the finalists for the Cybils Fantasy and Science Fiction Award, and I can see why. Nevertheless, I thought it was . . . odd. But maybe it’s supposed to be odd. Maybe I just have a low tolerance for odd, or at least for this particular kind of odd. I didn’t dislike the book; I just wasn’t sure I liked feeling slightly off-balance for 448 pages. And then I still had lots of unanswered questions; it’s obvious from the ending that a sequel or two is meant to follow.

So first note for potential readers: if you want all your loose ends tied together and all your questions answered, wait for the sequel and read them together. From Ms. Davidson’s blog:

My big goal for January: finish writing the sequel to The Explosionist, The Snow Queen!

I’m not quite sure how the publisher’s schedule works, but I would think that if all goes as planned, the book would be published in winter or early spring of 2010 – I’ll post more details here as things develop.

Next note: the book is based on an alternative history. In the world of this story, Napoleon defeated Wellington at Waterloo. The countries of Northern Europe, Denmark, Sweden, Scotland and others formed the Hanseatic League and eventually fought a Great War against the European Federation. England fell to the Europeans and became part of the Federation. Science and technology, art and literature all took different turns, although some of the names—Alfred Nobel, Alexander Bell, WIlliam James, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Michael Faraday, and others—remained the same. This alternate history aspect of the novel was part of what served to keep me slightly disoriented as I read.

Sophie, the main character of the novel, lives in a society that is passionately dependent on science and technology and yet also permeated by a strong belief in spiritualism and communication with the dead in the spirit world. Sophie herself is interested in science, especially chemistry, but she’s also something of an unwilling spirit medium. This joining of science and superstition seemed incongruous and disturbing, but also somewhat compelling in its peculiarity.

If any of this unbalanced oddity sounds like the kind of strange that matches yours, you may want to give The Explosionist a try. I’m still not sure what I think about it. I’ll probably read The Snow Queen and get some more answers before I render a final verdict.