Archive by Author | Sherry

Book-spotting #30

Oct16

Edwardian reading: novels set in Edwardian England, a list by Danielle Torres.

Down the Pub With Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: A Review of The Company They Keep, C.S. Lewis and JRR Tolkien as writers in community by Diana Pavlac Glyer.

A Reading List for Jo, Carmon’s sixteen year old daughter.

Lena Mae’s Books by great-grandaughter Lanier: “Her family said of her that she believed there was never a boy or a book that was beyond help. Having lost her only son at the age of nine she was known all her life for her fierce tenderness towards the male race, pampering the boy grandchildren with a delightful shamelessness. But she was equally shameless in her defense of books. In her mind it was a mortal sin to throw away a book, right up there with dancing and playing cards on Sundays. Books that had fallen on hard times were no more to be censured than a genuine lady or gentleman of reduced means. If the message housed between the covers was still legible—and worthy to begin with—then it found safe refuge with her.”

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

Oct16

Four exceptional children:
Sticky Washington, the boy with a glue-like memory.
Kate the Great Weatherall, or The Great Kate Weather Machine as she would prefer to be called.
Reynie Muldoon, the leader with a knack for figuring out puzzles.
Cranky Constance whose salient talent is that of finding the negative in everything and telling everybody about it, loudly and sometimes in verse.

Their Mission: To save the world, of course.

Their Enemy: Ledroptha Curtain, arch-villain whose goal is control of the world and whose methods are almost impossible to resist.

Their Friends: Mr. Benedict, Mysterious Milligan, Rhonda Kazembe, and Pencil Woman Number Two.

Can four children infiltrate the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened (L.I.V.E.), find out what Mr. Curtain is doing, how he is doing it, and how to stop him before he takes over the world?

I loved this book. It reminded me first of last year’s Kiki Strike —without the feminist agenda. In The Mysterious Benedict Society, just in Kiki Strike, four children form a team to fight evil, each has his own special abilities, and the adventure never quits. But in Benedict the children are two boys and two girls, and there’s never any hint of boys against girls or that obnoxious phrase “girl power.”

I think, for Harry Potter fans, there are some HP echoes, too, although I can’t be sure since I’m the only reader in North America who hasn’t read Harry Potter. (Constance and I share a stubborn streak.) Anyway, the idea of an elite group of children with special abilities who are tasked with learning to use their talents and finding a way to save the world seems to me to be straight out of the HP world.

Other themes in the books include: facing fear, finding and cherishing family, and teamwork. Each of these motifs is played out in the course of an adventure that keeps the reader turning the pages to see what will happen next. The Mysterious Benedict Society is Mr. Stewart’s first novel for children, and it’s a corker. I can hardly wait to read more books by this author.

Oh, and Computer Guru Son, who is a Decemberists (musical group) fan, immediately recognized the cover art as the work of Carson Ellis who also does the album cover art for the Decembrists. Here’s an interview with Ms. Ellis, if you’re interested.

Two more things you’ll understand only if you’ve already read the book: I really liked the revelation about Connie at the end of the book, and I didn’t guess it at all. And did anyone else have the brains and the time to figure out the riddle at the end of the book concerning Mr. Benedict’s first name? I must be dense because I still have no idea.

Oh, I also liked the fact that the book actually ends. The author may have left some room for a sequel, but in our mania for sequels and series we’ve gone way overboard, IMHO. I’m sort of tired of the book that never ends but only promises to do so possibly at some time in the future, and this one was a satisfying change. Nice ending, and I’m game for a possible sequel with some of the same characters or for something completely different from Mr. Stewart next time around.

The Curiosity Chronicle: An Interview With Trenton Lee Stewart.

Other reviews:

Renee’s Book of the Day: “I did enjoy the book a lot and definitely believe that ten- or eleven- year olds would drink this book right up. It’s full of puzzles, intrigue, evil plots, bullies, sinister institutions, action, humor, and warmth.”

Jen Robinson’s Book Page: “I would have adored this book when I was 10 or 11. The Mysterious Benedict Society is a sure winner for middle grade readers, boy and girls, especially if they like puzzles, or reading about mystery and adventure.”

Tried and Found Wanting

Oct15

I’m becoming more and more willing to give up on books that are not doing anything for me after the first fifty or hundred pages. One reason blog reviews are so useful: they indicate for me whether or not I should persevere in hopes of finding something worthwhile.

Full Dark House–Fowler. Recommended by author Anne Perry.

Homestead–Lippi Recommended by Carrie at Mommy Brain.

Housekeeping—Robinson. I loved Gilead, but I couldn’t get into this one, her first novel.

Inheritance of Loss–Desai. Strange people, and not because it’s set in India.

Night Inspector—Busch. A Civil War sniper, post-war, obsesses over his war experience. Maybe something else happens later?

Raising Demons–Jackson Recommended by At a Hen’s Pace —in a comment here. I found the first half of the book amusing, but I just lost interest along the way.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: A Novel –Susanna Clarkson. I found that I couldn’t face a thousand plus pages of bringing magic back to Britain. Is there something else there that I missed by not finishing?

Confederacy of Dunces–Toole Recommended in a comment here. The main character was a dunce, and I don’t suffer fools gladly. Well, maybe what’s-his-face had something to teach or say, but it didn’t reveal itself in the first one hundred pages.

The Man With the Red Bag by Eve Bunting. In my quest to read children’s fiction published in 2007, I picked up this book at the library. It was predictable, and I didn’t finish. I didn’t really care what the man had in his red bag, and I knew from about page three that it wasn’t a bomb.

Children’s Fiction of 2007: No Talking! by Andrew Clements

Oct14

From Karate Kid:

No Talking is the title of a very good book that I just read. It is about a boy named Dave, who, while studying about India, read about a man called Ghandi. Ghandi once said, “I sometimes stop talking for awhile, just to clear my mind.”

Dave was amazed by this and decided to try it, though later that day he was to give the report on India! When it was time to present his half and for a girl named Lynsey to present hers, he just started to cough, and cough, and cough, AND COUGH! Later Lynsey asked him why he was like that earlier. He had never really liked Lynsey, and that feeling most definitely went both ways. He didn’t answer Lynsey, and then they went to lunch.

He was usually a BIG talker at lunch, but today… it was different. He listened to Lynsey talking at the other table. She was talking about this sweater that this one person that she didn’t like had gotten and tried to give it to her. Of course she turned it down and the girl walked off. “I bet if you stopped talking for five minutes your head would EXPLODE!” He didn’t really mean to say that but he was sorta glad he did. For he and Lynsey later made a sort of war. No talking for two whole days unless a teacher asked you something and even then you could only answer with a three word sentence! I liked this book, and it is nominated for the Cybil Award! So buy it and read it soon!

From Sherry:

I’ll just add that the story has an interesting premise, and the results of the no-talking war or experiment or whatever are quite educational for all involved—kids, teachers, parents, even the school principal. I’ve often thought a moratorium on talking for a day or a vow of silence on my part might produce some growth in me and some useful reactions in others. Maybe we’ll try it out one day soon.

I’ve never read Frindle or any others of Mr. Clements’ books, although I have heard of him. I think I’ll recommend some of his other fiction to Karate Kid since he enjoyed this one so much. Does anybody have any other favorite books by Andrew Clements to suggest?

Children’s Fiction of 2007: Louisiana’s Song by Kerry Madden

Oct14

If a sequel makes you want to go back and read the first book in the series, I’d say that’s a fairly good recommendation. I read Louisiana’s Song because it’s one of the titles nominated for the Cybil Award for Middle Grade Fiction. It was so good and I had so many questions about the family in the story, I had to make a special trip to the library to find a copy of Gentle’s Holler, the first book about the Weems family who live in a “holler” (had to explain that word to twelve year old Brown Bear daughter) in the hills of North Carolina.

From Kerry Madden’s website: ” . . . you know one editor told me to cut them all but Gentle and Livy Two. I didn’t take that advice. But it took me a good long while to get their voices from all swarming and swooping up in a pack…The first thing I did was make Becksie bossy and Jitters a copycat.”

I really liked the fact that the story, told in two volumes with a third to be published, is about a large family, mom and dad and ten kids. And each child does have his/her own personality. The family isn’t perfect, but they are a big, loving family. The difficulties of raising such a family in poverty with a devoted, but financially irresponsible, father and a worried and always pregnant mother are not minimized. The narrator of both books, Livy Two, so called because her older sister Livy One died as a baby, sees the problems in her family clearly, but she also sees the strengths in her parents and her brothers and sisters and usually chooses to focus on those advantages rather than on the many areas of weakness and misfortune. Livy Two is both a sharp observer and a big talker, and she uses those abilities, plus her songwriting and singing talents, to help the family and to tell their story in the book.

I also liked the depiction of the Appalachian culture, its strengths and weaknesses. The Weemses are a reflection of the mountain values and customs, even though they’re fairly new to Maggie Valley. They love their “passel of young’uns” and their bluegrass and country and their clogging and their life in the holler. They don’t put much trust in doctors, and they don’t accept hand-outs. Daddy Weems reminds me of my own grandfather, a salesman who was always going to make a big sale and come home rich. For Mr. Weems, its a banjo hit that’s just around the corner, just as soon as those folks in Nashville learn to appreciate the songs he writes and buy one of them.

Although the author uses beautiful language to describe the setting and events of the story, this isn’t just a “set piece.” Someone over at the Cybils website, in discussing “child-friendly” books, noted that books that just appeal on the basis of language or style aren’t likely to be the ones that most appeal to kids. Louisiana’s Song and Gentle’s Holler both have plenty of action: lost children, a snake attack, hornets, accidents, and family tension all combine to keep the pages turning and the reader engaged. Great storytelling.

Read Gentle’s Holler first. If you like it, and I think you will, Louisiana’s Song is the sequel. The third book, Jessie’s Mountain, is due out in 2008.

Little Willow interviews Kerry Madden.

Kelly Herold interviews Kerry Madden.

Cynthia Leitich Smith interviews Kerry Madden.

Lecticians review of Gentle’s Holler and Louisiana’s Song.

Am I the last person in the kidlitosphere to read these books?

Children’s Fiction of 2007: The Story of Jonas by Maurine Dahlberg

Oct13

I’m thinking that to start with this book needs a better title. It’s good solid historical fiction; teachers might very well enjoy reading the book aloud, especially during a unit on slavery and American history. Kids who were interested in the topic of slavery and the pre-Civil War period might pick it up. However, the title is not too catchy.

“Son, your Master William may not put shackles on your feet, but as long as he keeps you ignorant, he’s got shackles on your mind, and they’re every bit as binding.”

So, you could call the story Mind Shackles or Unshackled. As Jonas, a slave from Missouri, accompanies his master’s rotten son, Percy, to the gold fields of Colorado, the boy Jonas, who has never known anything but slavery, learns that the world is wide and that his mind is as good as anyone’s. Jonas meets Sky, the daughter of the wagon train’s doctor, who treats him like a person instead of like a piece of property. He also learns that he is a skilled cook and that the cruelty of the master/slave relationship is not an inevitable part of life.

“But now he realized that once you started thinking about setting yourself free and living your own life, you couldn’t rest. He’d heard folks at home call it ‘getting bit by the freedom bug.’ Now he was beginning to believe the freedom bug had bitten him hard, just like a big old horsefly.”

Another possible title: Freedom Bug. Jonas starts hearing about the possibilities of freedom since the wagon is in Kansas, a free state. He also recieves bad news from back home in Missouri that makes him want his freedom even more. This book has a nice change in setting from the usual historical fiction about slavery which are often set in the deep South. This book, instead, takes us to the Midwest and farther west and dramatizes the plight of slaves who travelled, along with their gold-hungry Southern masters, into the free states and territories where they saw freedom first-hand and developed a hunger for it. The date is antebellum, 1859, when the news of gold in Colorado near Pike’s Peak gave many in both the North and South gold fever. In the author’s note at the end of the book, Dahlberg quotes a contemporary newspaper report, “Southerners are on their way there (Colorado) with slaves, from every Southern state.” Dahlberg theorizes for the sake of the story that at least some of those slaves got the “freedom bug” as they served their gold-seeking masters.

I liked the story. Cover art: OK. Title: boring.

Children’s Fiction of 2007: Camel Rider by Prue Mason

Oct12

Camel Rider, first published in Australia in 2004, was published in its first US edition in 2007, making it eligible to be considered for the Cybil Award for Middle Grade Fiction. And it’s been nominated.

I read the book a couple of weeks ago. It’s set in a fictional city, Abudai, that’s “typical of any one of the many oil-rich states in the Arabian Gulf.” The two main characters, Adam and Walid, are both both non-natives of Abudai. Adam is the spoiled son of an Australian pilot who has a job working for Abudai Airlines. Walid is a Bangladeshi boy, sold into virtual slavery to become a camel rider for a man called Old Goat and his partner Breath of Dog. (You’ve got to like those names, or nicknames. Walid doesn’t have a real name; according to the book, “walid” means boy.)

When war comes to Abudai, Adam and Walid are both lost in the desert. They find each other and manage to communicate despite their lack of a common language. So, Camel Rider is basically a survival story with a little bit of multicultural understanding mixed in. And coming of age, growing up. The most interesting parts of the book deal with the misunderstandings that come about when Adam and Walid try to work together to escape the desert and avoid Walid’s captors who think they own him. The differences in cultural norms, which could have been laughable had the two boys not been in such a critical situation, become a microcosm of the worldwde misunderstandings and differences that cause war between countries.

I’m a little tired of reading about spoiled rotten kids who eventually turn out to save the day or win the prize or something else great. (Code Orange by Caroline Cooney, Spelldown by Karen Luddy) Rotten kids thrown into crisis don’t always rise to the occasion. Sometimes, they crash. Nevertheless, the adventure part of Camel Rider, when Adam, who’s nearly thirteen years old, grows up and begins to act like a fairly responsible kid, is engaging, and there’s the added advantage of learning something about the customs and culture of the Arabian pennisula in a relatively painless way. Then, of course, without the plot device of Adam’s irresponsibly running away at a critical moment, there would be no story.

Camel Rider was nominated for the Cybil Award by Kristen of pixie stix kids pix (say that fast three times), and although I searched her site for a review, I couldn’t find one. If you’ve reviewed the book, please leave a comment, and I’ll link.

Poetry Friday: Apple Poems

Oct11

I became distracted and didn’t finish all my apple posts in September. So here are some excerpts from a few apple poems with a link in each instance to the entire poem. The painting is called Apple Gatherers by Frederick Morgan.
Apple Gatherers



Apple Haiku: Stolen Apples

After Apple-Picking by Robert Frost:
My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.

The Apple Orchard by Rainer Marie Rilke
Come let us watch the sun go down
and walk in twilight through the orchard’s green.
Does it not seem as if we had for long
collected, saved and harbored within us
old memories?

An Apple-Gathering by Christina Rossetti
I plucked pink blossoms from mine apple tree
And wore them all that evening in my hair:
Then in due season when I went to see
I found no apples there.
With dangling basket all along the grass
As I had come I went the selfsame track:
My neighbours mocked me while they saw me pass
So empty-handed back.

Movie News

Oct11

Ariel at BitterSweet Life tells me that they’re making a movie based on one of my favorite books, A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Van Auken. Wow, I hope they do a good job with this one. One good sign is that the screenwriter is Barbara Nicolosi, a blogger and an intelligent one to boot. (Her blog: Church of the Masses)

Mommy Life Barbara’s recommending the movie Ushpizin (available for rental).

The movie version of Khaled Housseini’s The Kite Runner comes out in early November. I have a feeling I won’t be able to watch it because there are scenes in the book that I couldn’t watch enacted on a big screen. It was, and is, a great book nevertheless.

I’m not sure about this movie either. It’s based on the book Into the Wild by John Krakauer, and it’s about adolescent rebellion and adventure gone awry. I haven’t read the book, but I might see the movie anyway.

Autumn Rain recommends the movie Wit with Emma Thompson. I think I’ll have to add this one to my movie queue.

Has anyone seen this Snow White-goes-to-college movie, and is it rated PG-13 for something that I would not want to see? It sounds cute and funny, but I’ve been fooled before.