Nancy Yi Fan was eleven years old when she started writing the first novel in her Swordbird series, entitled Swordbird. I haven’t read Swordbird, nor have I read the second novel in the series, Sword Quest. And I had no idea that Ms. Yi Fan was a teen author until I finished reading Sword Mountain and read the author blurb in the back. Nancy Yi Fan’s writing matches that any adult fantasy author, and her deft handling of story, character, and theme outdo many authors with far more experience than she has.
Sword Mountain is the ancestral of the Golden Eagles, and as the story opens exiled musician Prince Fleydur is returning home to the Castle of the Sky as a hero. He and his brother, Prince Forlath, and their Eagle Army have defeated the archaeopteryxes and saved the kingdom. Unfortunately, not all of their enemies have perished, and not much has changed at the Castle of the Sky in Fleydur’s absence. The Iron Nest, the tribe’s ruling authority, still holds to tradition and a rigid social hierarchy, and Queen Sigrid is still enmeshed in her own selfish ambitions for her son Forlath. And nobody understands Fleydur’s love for music nor his compassion in rescuing an orphaned valley eaglet named Dandelion and bringing her to the Castle of the Sky to associate with the eagle nobility.
Dandelion becomes the heroine of the the story as she struggles to find her place and identity in a very rigid, rule-bound society. Fleydur is good, but a bit clueless, thinking that everybird, including the villains of the piece, means well and only needs a taste of music to make them understand the beauty of equality and freedom.
I liked the way this one was written. I liked the aphorisms at the beginning of each chapter. I liked the anthropomorphic birds who felt like characters from a human fairy tale, only with flying. I liked the strong, female protagonist who did the rescuing instead of being rescued. I liked the centrality of the two books, The Old Scripture and The Book of Heresy. I liked the themes of “hope and change”, slow, sure hope and change. I liked it all well enough that I’m hoping to go back and read the first two books in the series when Cybils season is over.
Sword Mountain is eligible to be nominated for the 2012 Cybils Awards for Middle Grade Science Fiction and Fantasy. Nominations open October 1, 2012.
What if your teenage son got involved with a group of car thieves?
What if he got himself beat up trying to defend a schizophrenic friend from those same car thief cronies?
What if he then proceeded to get himself into even more trouble—with no end but a bad end in sight?
What if you were the pastor of the local Episcopal church? What if your son got arrested for murder?
Actually, this novel isn’t told from the parent’s point of view, but for some reason, I almost always turn books upside down and look at them from a parent’s viewfinder, at least for part of the time. And the scenario in Crazy Dangerous is a parent’s nightmare.
It’s also not too much fun for our teen protagonist, Sam Hopkins, who finds himself “in between a rock and a hard place.” He’s a good guy who’s running with the bad guys, and then he decides to take up a new motto, “Do right. Fear nothing.” However, it turns out that there’s a lot of really scary stuff going on in Sam’s little town, and Sam is caught right in the middle of the action.
I liked this story of a good kid, a normal kid, who’s in way over his head (literally, in the lake, at one point) and who’s just trying to do what’s right. At least most of the time he’s trying to do right. Except at the beginning of the book when Sam does something that he admits later is incredibly stupid. Sam’s term for his decision is that it was a “Dragnet”—dumb-da-dumb-dumb (like the theme music).
I would start using the term, but I don’t think my kids would get it. I do think that Karate Kid (age 15) would like this book a lot. He already sped through Klavan’s Homelanders series, which I recommend especially for teen boys who want their books to have lots of action and excitement. Crazy Dangerous fits that description, too.
I’m not saying these are THE BEST read-alouds, just some of our favorites.
1. Adams, Richard. Watership Down. Violence and mythology and rabbits. This novel of rabbit communities is long, but worth persevering through. 2. Aiken, Joan. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. Deliciously Victorian, and dangerous, and odd, this one is a sort of October-ish book. 3. Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women or Eight Cousins. I prefer Eight Cousins, but of course, Little Women is a classic. Little Women is #47 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list. 4. Alexander, Lloyd. The Book of Three and all the sequels. Taran, the Assistant Pig-Keeper, Eilonwy the annoyingly intelligent and plain-spoken princess, Gurgi, and Fflewddur Fflam, the truth-stretching harpist are favorite character in our fictional pantheon. #18 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list. 5. Balliett, Blue. The Wright 3. All of these detective adventures centred on famous works of art are favorites of my youngest two girls. They have listened to Chasing Vermeer, The Calder Game, and The Wright 3 many times in audiobook form. 6. Barrie, J.M. Peter Pan. I like James Barrie’s imaginative story very much, and think the movies Peter Pan (Walt Disney), Hook by Steven Spielberg with Robin williams as grown up Peter), and Finding Neverland (more for adults) are all good follow-up viewing for after you read the book aloud. #86 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list. 7. Benary-Isbert, Margot. The Ark. Not many people are familiar with this story set in Germany just after World War II. It’s about children surviving the aftermath of war, about animals and animal-lovers, and about family. A good read-aloud for older children. 8. Birdsall, Jeanne. The Penderwicks:A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy. My children and I love the Penderwick family. In fact, when I started reading this one aloud to some of the younger children, my then-15 year old was entrapped in the story, and picked it up to finish it on her own. #29 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list.Z-baby and I discuss The Penderwicks. 9. Bond, Michael. A Bear Called Paddington. Paddington has been a favorite around here since Eldest Daughter (age 26) was a preschooler. 10. Burnett, Frances Hodgson. The Little Princess. From riches to rags and back again, the story of the orphaned Sara Crewe is delightful and richly Victorian. #56 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list. 11. Carroll, Lewis. Alice in Wonderland. I think Alice is a love-it or ate-it proposition. I love all the word play and sly wit. #31 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list. 12. Cleary, Beverly. Ramona the Pest. We’ve had to read all of the Ramona books to my youngest, Z-baby,and she’s listened to them on CD. Several times. #24 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list. 13. DeAngeli, Marguerite. The Door in the Wall. A crippled boy learns to be a strong, courageous man during the Middle Ages. We’ll probably be reading this book this year since Betsy-Bee is studying that time period. 14. DeJong, Meindert. The Wheel on the School. A group of children work together to bring the storks back to Shora in Holland. 15. DiCamillo, Kate. The Tale of Despereaux. A mouse who loves a princess and save her from the rats. Z-baby recommends this one. #51 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list. 16. Enright, Elizabeth. The Saturdays. If you like The Penderwicks, you should enjoy Enright’s stories about the Melendy famly, or vice-versa. #75 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list. 17. Estes, Eleanor. The Hundred Dresses. Short, poignant story of a group of girls who find out too late that people who are different and perhaps misunderstood should still be treated with care and gentleness. 18. Forbes, Esther. Johnny Tremain. Good accompaniment to a study of American history. 19. Gilbreth, Frank and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey. Cheaper by the Dozen. Z-baby says this story about a family with an even dozen children is funny and good to read aloud. 20. Gipson, Fred. Old Yeller. One of those dog stories where the dog, of course, dies, but it’s still a good read aloud for frontier studies or Texas history. 21. Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows. Read aloud slowly and carefully and savour the descriptions and the setting and the antics of Mole, Rat, Badger, and especially Toad and his motorcar. Brian Sibley on the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Wind in the Willows (2008). 22. Juster, Norton. The Phantom Tollbooth. Milo is bored until he goes through the tollbooth into a world of word play and numerical delights. #21 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list. 23. Karr, Kathleen. The Great Turkey Walk. In 1860, big, brawny Simon Green, who’s just completed third grade (for the fourth time), sets out to herd a huge flock of bronze turkeys all the way from his home in eastern Missouri to the boomtown of Denver, where they’ll fetch a big price. />24. Kipling, Rudyard. Just So Stories. These stories are good to listen to because Kipling used words in a very poetic, vocabulary-enriching way, even in his prose. The book includes stories such as How the Leopard Got His Spots and How the Camel Got His Hump and others. 25. Konigsburg, E.L. From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Z-baby likes it because the children are independent, resourceful, and funny and they visit a real museum in New York City, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. #7 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list.Z-baby and I discuss the Mixed-Up Files. 26. L’Engle, Madeleine. A Wrinkle in Time. Meg, and Calvin, and Charles Wallace rescue Father from IT. #2 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list.More about Madeleine L’Engle and her wonderful books. 27. Lamb, Charles and Mary. Tales from Shakespeare. 28. Lang, Andrew. The Violet Fairy Book. And all the other multi-colored fairy books. 29. Lewis, C.S. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. What can I say about the Narnia books that hasn’t already been said. Get all seven of them , read them aloud, listen to them, read them again. #5 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list. 30. Lindgren, Astrid. Pippi Longstocking. I like the edition that came out a coupe of years ago with illustrations by Lauren Child for reading aloud because the pictures are delightful and because it’s large and easy to hold. #91 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list. 31. Lovelace, Maud Hart. Betsy-Tacy. Eldest Daughter was a huge fan of the books of Maud Hart Lovelace, and in fact they took her from childhood into her late teen years along with Betsy and her friends. #52 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list. 32. Macdonald, Betty. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. If only I had Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle living near-by in her upside-down house to solve all my parenting problems. 33. MacDonald, George. The Princess and the Goblin. Princess Irene and her stout friend Curdie, the miner’s son, must outwit the goblins who live inside the mountain. “I write, not for children, but for the child-like, whether they be of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.” ~George Macdonald 34. Milne, A.A. Winnie-the Pooh. Every child should read or hear read this classic story of Christopher Robin and his Bear of Very Little Brain, Pooh. #26 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list. 35. Montgomery, L.M. Anne of Green Gables. Read aloud or listen to the Focus on the Family radio dramatized version. #8 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list. 36. Nesbit, Edith. Five Children and It. Predecessor to the stories by Edward Eager and other magical tales. 37. Norton, Mary. The Borrowers. Little people live inside the walls and nooks of an English house and only come out at night to “borrow” things that the people don’t use or need anymore. The story in the book(s) is much better than the movie version. 38. O’Dell, Scott. Island of the Blue Dolphins. Karana, a native American girl, is accidentally left alone on an island off the coast of California, and she must use all her wits and ingenuity to survive. #45 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list. 39. Paterson, Katherine. Bridge to Terebithia. Jess Aarons and Leslie Burke become friends and imagine together a land called Terabithia, a magical kingdom in the woods where the two of them reign as king and queen. #10 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list. 40. Pyle, Howard. Otto of the Silver Hand. Another tale of the Middle Ages about courage and dealing with suffering and cruelty. 41. Pyle, Howard. The Adventures of Robin Hood. 42. Pyle, Howard. The Story of King Arthur and His Knights. 43. Rawls, Wilson. Where the Red Fern Grows. Another good dog story. #34 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list. 44. Salten, Felix. Bambi. Bambi. A little fawn grows into a handsome stag. You can a Kindle edition of this translated classic for free. 45. Serrailer, Ian. The Silver Sword, or Escape from Warsaw.Best World War II story for children ever. Pair it with The Ark for a study of refugees during and after the war in Europe. 46. Sewell, Anna. Black Beauty. A horse story told from the point of view of a Victorian working horse. 47. Sidney, Margaret. Five Little Peppers and How They Grew. A bit cloyingly sweet for some adult readers, but children love the story of the five little Pepper children and their cheerfulness in the midst of poverty. 48. Speare, Elizabeth. The Bronze Bow. Adventure story that takes place during the time of Jesus’s incarnation. Daniel barJamin and his friends Joel and his twin sister Malthace must choose between rebellion and hatred for the Roman conquerors and the way of following this man Jesus, who preaches love and forgiveness. 49. Streatfeild, Noel. Ballet Shoes. Three sisters—Pauline, Petrova, and Posie— are orphans who must learn to dance to support themselves when their guardian disappears. #78 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list. 50. Sutcliff, Rosemary. Black Ships before Troy. The story of the Iliad (Trojan War) retold for children with beautiful illustrations by Alan Lee. 51. Tolkien, JRR. The Hobbit. Our read aloud experiences with The Hobbit are chronicled here and here and here and here and here and here and here.#14 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list. 52. Travers, P.L. Mary Poppins. Mary Poppins, the book,isn’t the same as the movie, and you may or may not like both. I do, but in different ways. 53. Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Every boy, at east, should read or listen to Tom Sawyer. 54. White, E.B. Charlotte’s Web.#1 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list. 55. Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House in the Big Woods.#19 on Fuse #8’s Top 100 Children’s Novels list.
Yikes, I left off some really good read aloud books, but I was limited to 55. So check out the Fuse #8 list (not technically a read-aloud list, but still a good place to look), and this list from Jim Trelease, this list of favorites at Hope Is the Word, and this list that I made a few years ago. Whatever, you do, though, read some books out loud as a family. It will change your life (as my next-door neighbor used to say about some discovery or activity about once a week.)
So, in honor of Wisdom and Wit and 55, here is collection of 55 “words of wisdom” gathered mainly from children’s literature, picture books and the like. Follow these bits of sage advice, and you’ll likely stay well.
1. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. … ~Dory, Finding Nemo.
5. “If the person you are talking to doesn’t appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.”
~A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
6. “Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” ~The King, Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.
8. “Housekeeping ain’t no joke.” ~Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.
9. “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” ~Dr. Seuss, Horton Hears a Who.
10. “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”
~Dr. Seuss, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!
11. “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
~Dr. Seuss, The Lorax
12. “No fighting, no biting!’ ~Else Holmelund Minarik.
13. “People in masks cannot be trusted.” Fezzik, The Princess Bride.
14. “Never get involved in a land war in Asia; never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line!” Vizzini, The Princess Bride.
17. “When you say what you think, be sure to think what you say.”
~Carol Kendall, The Gammage Cup.
18. “If you don’t look for Trouble, how can you know it’s there?”
~Carol Kendall, The Gammage Cup
19. “The best thing to do with a bad smell is to get rid of it.”
~Carol Kendall, The Gammage Cup
20. “In some cases we learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.”
~Lloyd Alexander, The Book of Three
21. “Sometimes standing against evil is more important than defeating it. The greatest heroes stand because it is right to do so, not because they believe they will walk away with their lives.”
~N.D. Wilson, Dandelion Fire
22. “Always sprinkle pepper in your hair!” ~Shel Silverstein.
23. “It is helpful to know the proper way to behave, so one can decide whether or not to be proper.” ~Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine.
24. “Get a pocket.” ~Katy No-Pocket by Emmy Payne.
25. “Crying is all right in its own way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do.” ~The Horse and His Boy by C S Lewis.
28. “If this island is all there is, and we are trapped here with a sleeping giant, we have little hope. But . . . what if there are things under our feet and things beyond the sea that we have never dreamed of?” ~The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic by Jennifer Trafton.
29. “Where there’s life there’s hope, and need of vittles.” ~The Fellowship of the Ring by J R R Tolkien.
30. “Books we must have though we lack bread.” ~Alice Brotherton.
31. “You can pick up more information when you are listening than when you are talking.” ~The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White.
32. “You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.” ~Winnie The Pooh by A.A. Milne.
33. “Any time you want to spend a nickel, you stop and think how much work it takes to earn a dollar.” ~Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
34. “All get what they want: they do not always like it.” ~The Magician’s Nephew by C S Lewis.
35. “Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.” ~The Magician’s Nephew by C S Lewis.
36. “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” ~The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien.
37. “Don’t be afraid to be afraid.” ~A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
38. “Read in order to live.” ~Gustave Flaubert.
39. “There is hardly any grief that an hour’s reading will not dissipate.”
~ Montesquieu
40. “Reading is one form of escape. Running for your life is another.” ~Lemony Snicket.
41. “Never explain anything.” ~Mary Poppins.
42. “Vote for Pedro and all your wildest dreams will come true.” ~Napoleon Dynamite.
45. “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” ~William Morris.
46. “When you are imagining, you might as well imagine something worthwhile.”
~L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables.
47. “Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.” ~G.K. Chesterton.
48. “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” ~G.K. Chesterton.
49. “Never hurry and never worry!” ~E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web
50. “Be obscure clearly. Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand.” ~E.B. White
50. “You need two when the road is rough.” ~One Is Good But Two Are Better by Louis Slobodkin.
51. “Put it all back where it belongs.” Bored–Nothing To Do by Peter Spier.
52. “The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.” ~Robert Louis Stevenson
53. “There is no living thing that is not afraid when it faces danger. The true courage is in facing danger when you are afraid.” The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.
54. “If you dare nothing, then when the day is over, nothing is all you will have gained.” ~Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book
55. “I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.” ~C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair
The blurb says that this epistolary middle grade fiction novel is “narrated in two voices, each voice distinctly articulated by a separate gifted author.” I’m assuming that Ms. Vaswani wrote the letters from “Meena”, an Indian immigrant girl who lives in New York City, and Mr. House wrote the letters from “River Justice”, a boy who lives in the mountains of Kentucky. The two children are pen pals who prefer writing and sending letters the old-fashioned way—by snail mail.
The book takes place in 2008, and the election of that year, in which Obama became president, is a central event in the book. Neither Meena nor River knows why anyone wouldn’t be excited about Barack Obama becoming president. They write to each other about issues such as mountain top removal (a destructive way of coal-mining), prejudice, rent control in NYC, pollution, immigration policy, and about how all of these political issues affect them in their daily lives. They also write about family and school and difficult times and the ups and downs of becoming a teenager.
Even though the politics in the books didn’t match mine, and I could have wished that the two children would have explored the differences between the political cultures in Kentucky and New York with a little more balance and nuance, I did enjoy the story. Mostly I liked the honesty that Meena and River shared in their letters. They sounded like real children/young adults, and their friendship grew in an organic, believable way that kept me reading in spite of my frustration with the political agenda that peeked out at me in the subtext.
I think the politics will go over the heads of most elementary school aged children, and they’ll just enjoy the story.
When you are 51 years of age or older, subtract your age from 100, and the resulting number (which, of course, gets smaller every year) is the number of pages you should read before you can guiltlessly give up on a book. As the saying goes, “Age has its privileges.â€
But I still have trouble not finishing a book that I’ve started. Even if it’s a bad book, and I can tell it’s a bad book, I want to know what happens. I want to finish. It’s not a matter of guilt—it’s more curiosity. I can’t bear to not know. Did the book get better? Does it end the way I think (fear) it will? Do the characters become more or less likable? Is this book really as much of a train wreck as I think it is?
So, I finished the following YA novels, but you don’t have to read them. They really are not worth the time, unless there’s nothing else in the house to read or you’ve already started on one of these and have the same compulsion I have to finish.
Someone Else’s Life by Katie Dale. Such a soap opera, with a fictional soap opera actress thrown in as a minor character. Rosie’s mother dies of Huntington’s Disease, but Rosie finds out that her mom wasn’t her mom at all. Rosie and another baby were switched at birth! And that’s not a spoiler because that surprise revelation drops on page 46. But oh my goodness, there are many more confessions, and admissions, and drama-filled disclosures still to come—one about every forty or fifty pages in this 445 page tear-jerker. But I wasn’t crying because the roller coaster ride of emotional reunions and spectacular crises left me feeling . . . nothing much. It was all too, too much, and I just had enough curiosity to read to the end to see who would find out what next, and how many fireworks could be stuffed into one overly long book.
Life: An Exploded Diagram by Mal Peet. I really enjoyed reading two other books by award-winning author Mal Peet, Exposure, a novel set in South America and based on Shakespeare’s Othello, and Tamar, a book about World War II spies in Holland. However, this latest YA novel by Mr. Peet was a clumsy amalgam of two stories. In 1962,two British teenagers, Clem and Frankie, from different sides of the cultural divide, muddle their way toward a sexual liaison while world leaders Krushchev, Castro, and JFK blunder their way toward World War III in what later became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. These two events, the sex and the world crisis, are supposed to have something to do with each other, but I never saw the connection. At the point of connection, there is an actual explosion, and then at the end of the book another explosion (9-11) is supposed to lend irony to the entire mish-mash. But it doesn’t really. The novel was a disappointment with way too much graphic sex.
In most books, Magic always follows rules. You can only get into Narnia under certain circumstances, with Aslan’s permission. In Half Magic by Edward Eager, you always get exactly half of what you wish for. The One Ring (Tolkien) works in a specific way to do specific things and can only be destroyed in one, very specific place. Harry Potter has to go to school to learn the rules of Magic in his world.
In Robbie Forester and the Outlaws of Sherwood St., Magic shows up, but it’s an unpredictable, capricious sort of Magic that only seems to have rules. The children involved in this magical adventure never do figure out the rules of when the “magic power” will appear, much less how to control it. It seems to have something to do with injustice: Robbie and her friends, Ashanti, Silas, and Tutu, receive magical help and powers whenever there is injustice to be righted. But, as Robbie notices, the world is full of injustice, and the magic only shows up sometimes, following its own rules that are unfathomable both to the reader and to Robbie and her merry band of outlaws.
Robbie Forrester and the Outlaws of Sherwood St. tells the tale of a group of four young teens who become friends in spite of their differing backgrounds and talents and join together to “rob the rich and give to the poor.” The villains in the piece are greedy capitalist land developer, Sheldon Gunn, his fixer/lawyer, Egil Borg, and a nasty little arsonist named Harry Henkel. The rob-the-rich and capitalists-are-evil subtext bothered me a little bit, but the story was well-paced and fun. Sheldon Gunn really is an evil capitalist who goes so far as to try to put a soup kitchen out of business (isn’t it always a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter?), and the kids are purely good, never even thinking about keeping some of the money they “steal” for themselves. There’s not a lot of nuance here, just old-fashioned good vs. evil with some temperamental magical help along the way.
There are questions raised in the book, about Ashanti’s family, about Tutu’s future, about the possible reappearance of the magical powers, that are not resolved. It looks as if we’re being set up for a sequel, or maybe this book just doesn’t follow the rules for a magical fantasy.
I read three novels in the past couple of weeks for children and young adults that were set before, during, and after World War I. I’ll have to say that each of the books was odd in its own way: odd prose style in the first, an unexpected twist that I almost didn’t see coming in the second, and anomalous angels in the third.
Eyes Like Willy’s by Juanita Havill. A French brother and sister, Guy and Sarah Masson, and their Austrian friend Willy are separated by the war. The writing style in this one is the strange part. At least, it read oddly to me. The sentences are short and choppy, Hemingway-esque, with a lack of transitions and analogies that I found disconcerting. At the same time, the sparse prose made me pay attention to each detail, so I can’t say it was ineffective—just odd. Here’s an example, chosen at random:
“Their first guests of the summer were Willy and his father. Willy had grown much taller. He was almost as tall as Guy, and thinner. He had a thin black mustache and looked older than seventeen. Seeing Wily’s mustache, Guy decided that he would grow one this summer.”
If I were writing the story, I would probably have combined some of those sentences into one more complicated sentence. But I’m not at all sure that my inclination to complication would be the better choice for this story. The book is short, 135 pages, but it tells a nuanced story of friendship over the course of several years and the effects of war on the relationships of three young people as they grow into adulthood during World War I.
Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo. Mr. Morpurgo also wrote War Horse, the book that formed the source material for the movie of the same name from last year. Both Private Peaceful and War Horse are set during World War I, and I plan to pick up the latter book from the library this afternoon. I haven’t seen the movie or read the book yet.
Private Peaceful focuses on the plight of British soldiers who were summarily tried, condemned and executed on the battlefield for cowardice or desertion during World War 1. Mr. Morpurgo gives some information in his afterword that I did not know about this practice:
“That a shameful injustice had been done to these unfortunate men seemed to me beyond doubt. Their judges called them ‘worthless.’ Their trials, or court martials, were brief, under twenty minutes in some cases. Twenty minutes for a man’s life. Often they had no one to speak for them and no witnesses were called in their defense. . . . The youngest soldier to be executed was just seventeen.
Successive British governments have since refused to acknowledge the injustice suffered by these men, and have refused to grant posthumous pardons—which would of course be a great consolation to surviving relatives. The New Zealand government have pardoned their executed soldiers; it can be done. The Australians and the Americans, to their credit, never allowed their soldiers to be executed in the first place.”
I thought the novel itself, the story of Charlie and Tommo Peaceful, brothers who went to war together, was well-written and absorbing. Mr. Morpurgo kept me guessing until the end, and one of the minor characters, Big Joe, was so well-drawn that I wanted him to have his own book. (Big Joe is the Peaceful brothers’ older sibling who is mentally challenged.)
I recommend Private Peaceful if you liked War Horse or if you just want to read a well-told tale of the difficulties of being a soldier on the front lines during World War I.
A Time of Angels by Karen Hesse. In 1918 Boston, Hannah Gold must face her own wartime suffering as the influenza epidemic sweeps through her family and town. While the war forms a backdrop for this novel, it’s really the story of a Jewish family and the influenza epidemic of 1918. Fourteen year old Hannah is rather improbably sent out into the streets of Boston by her erstwhile guardian to keep her from catching the flu from her family members, and she ends up, again improbably, in Vermont. Hannah also sees angels.
It’s a good introduction to the time period and the prejudices of that era and the hardships of the Spanish flu epidemic. And the reviews at Amazon are for the most part highly positive. I just didn’t ever believe in Hannah or her cold impersonal guardian Vashti or her plight. And I thought the author cheated on the ending by making us believe one (tragic) thing and then pulling off a “no, not really” surprise. And the angels seemed out of place and sort of extraneous.
So, my favorite World War I children’s and YA novels so far are: Winnie’s War by Jennie Moss, The Lord of the Nutcracker Men by Iain Laurence, and Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo. What about you?
I finally got a chance to read this third book in the Penderwick series, and I can tell anyone who hasn’t already read it that it’s just as good as the first two books about the Penderwick family of four girls—Rosalind, Skye, Jane and Batty—having adventures and growing up.
In this particular installment of the Penderwick saga, Jane falls in love herself when she tries to write a romance for her bold protagonist, Sabrina Starr. Skye becomes the OAP (oldest available Penderwick sister) while Rosalind takes a vacation. And Batty collects golf balls, makes a new friend, wears a large orange life jacket through most of the story, and discovers her own special giftedness. Jeffrey, the girls’ friend from the first book, is back, and many of the adventures involve Jeffrey and his musical talents and his family trials and tribulations.
I truly think the Penderwick series is going to go down in history as classic children’s lit, comparable to Beverly Cleary’s Ramona books and Elizabeth Enright’s Melendy family series. I’ve picked a couple of samples of Ms. Birdsall’s spot-on depiction of sisters who really love each other, through thick and thin.
This paragraph is Skye, trying to decide what to do about Jane who has developed an unfortunate crush on a skateboarding BOY!
“Skye managed to get off the porch and outside without punching Jane in the nose and making it swollen all over again, and she was quite proud of that, at least. But now she was really concerned. How could she protect Jane from this idiocy? Wondering what Caesar or Napoleon would do in this situation was worthless. Skye needed a tree to kick now, immediately. Poor patient birch trees—this wasn’t the treatment they deserved. But kicking them calmed Skye down a little, enough to help her realize that she did after all have someone she could talk to about boys, crushes, and dancing with Popsicle sticks. Aunt Claire, of course. Skye apologized to the birch trees and began to plot how to broach these painful subjects without giving away Jane’s secrets.”
And here’s a totally different passage, different in tone and content, about the Penderwicks’ friend Jeffrey and his mentor playing music for them
“From Jeffrey’s clarinet poured a haunting, stirring melody, a soaring string of notes that floated out over the ocean. All alone Jeffrey played, his eyes closed in concentration, until it seemed that the song was ending. But then Alec’s saxophone joined the clarinet, and together the man and the boy again played the heart-stopping tune, note for note. The girls clung to each other, each one feeling as though she’d never really heard music before, and although the splendor of the music was almost too much, the players began yet once more, this time in rich harmony, finally ending with a flourish, so thrilling that when the music stopped, it seemed for a moment as though the world had to stop along with it.”
Now, that’s some fine writing. And the plot and characters are just as good as the writing. Just quit reading my pedestrian attempts to describe the Penderwicks books, and go read one, preferably starting with the first book in the series and then proceeding in order through the three books Ms. Birdsall has so far gifted us with. By the time you finish those, maybe there will be a fourth. I certainly hope we don’t have long to wait for another installment. (On her website, Jeanne Birdsall says it takes her three years to write a Penderwicks book and that there will be five books in all.)
Another boy’s book in which time travel makes my head hurt. “Time is a river in which we can travel both forward into the future and back into the past.” The urchins watched Back to the Future 2 last night, and it made my head hurt, too. With The Blue Comet I just gave up on trying to understand the river of time and enjoyed the story.
Eleven year old Oscar Ogilvie lives with his dad in a little house in Cairo, Illinois. Mom is dead, but Dad and Oscar are happy with Oscar doing the cooking, Dad working as a salesman for the John Deere Tractor COmpany, and the two of them enjoying the Lionel train layout that they have in the basement. Then, the stock market crashes, and the depression hits, and Oscar’s dad loses is job and has to go to California to look for work, leaving Oscar behind to live with his crabby Aunt Carmen. All of this and a little more happens in chapters 1-4, before the time travel/magic part of the book begins. It’s a little slow, and some kids may give up before they get to the good part.
But they shouldn’t. The Blue Comet is deceptively dull at first, but the pace picks up in chapter 5 with a bank robbery, a jump into that River of Time, and some cameo appearances by famous stars and celebrities of the 1940’s such as “Dutch” Reagan, A. Hitchcock, and even a very young Jack Kennedy. It was fun to try to pick out the celebs, and it was enjoyable just to follow the story of our boy-hero, Oscar, as he worked his way from one side of the country to the other and from one era to the next and then back to the past where he came from.
The illustrations in this book by Bagram Ibatoulline deserve, indeed require, a mention. I wish I could show you an example. The pictures are full-color painting in a sort of Norman Rockwell-style. They’re just beautiful and quite evocative of the time period. I guess the cover illustration will have to do to give you an idea, but the pictures inside the book are even better.
So time travel. Electric trains. Depression-era. A boy and his dad. Oh, and Rudyard Kipling’s “If” and a disappearing math teacher. Bank robbers foiled. Surely, one or more of those will capture your interest in this well-told tale of historical adventure.
Sword Mountain is the ancestral of the Golden Eagles, and as the story opens exiled musician Prince Fleydur is returning home to the Castle of the Sky as a hero. He and his brother, Prince Forlath, and their Eagle Army have defeated the archaeopteryxes and saved the kingdom. Unfortunately, not all of their enemies have perished, and not much has changed at the Castle of the Sky in Fleydur’s absence. The Iron Nest, the tribe’s ruling authority, still holds to tradition and a rigid social hierarchy, and Queen Sigrid is still enmeshed in her own selfish ambitions for her son Forlath. And nobody understands Fleydur’s love for music nor his compassion in rescuing an orphaned valley eaglet named Dandelion and bringing her to the Castle of the Sky to associate with the eagle nobility.
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