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Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce

Jun4

OK, this one is easily the best children’s fiction title I’ve read this year. It has all the following strengths:

1. It’s funny. Cf. the first chapter, entitled “I Am Not Exactly in the Lake District.” What makes that funny is that Liam, the thirteen year old protagonist and narrator of this adventure story, is actually “on this rocket . . . about two hundred thousand miles above the surface of the Earth.” Cosmic is about how Liam got into space and what happened when he did. Short version: he lied about his age.

2. It’s British. Not too British. Not so thick with slang that one has to have a dictionary, but still the Britishisms are there and delightfully so. Liam and his dad carry a “mobile,” not a cell. Things are either “rubbish” or “cosmic.” Liam eats crisps. You get the idea.

3. It’s got a good solid, unbelievable, but satisfying premise: child pretends to be adult, and hijinks ensue. Freaky Friday material. But there’s no magic involved. Liam just looks old. He has facial hair at thirteen. He’s very tall. He keeps getting mistaken for an adult, so he does what most thirteen year old boys would like to do: he goes along with the mistaken identity. Liam’s lack of a driver’s license only slows him down, but doesn’t stop his adventures.

4. It’s well-written and well-paced. Stuff happens. Liam gets into trouble, out of trouble, back into trouble, out, then into MAJOR trouble. Being stuck in space with four other kids who don’t know much more than Liam about how to fix an off-course rocket is Trouble.

5. Liam’s voice is splendid. Examples:
“That night Dad wanted us all to play Monopoly in the new kitchen. Has anyone ever played Monopoly to the end? Don’t most people just sort of slip into a sort of boredom coma after a few goes and wake up six months later with a handful of warm hotels?”

“Being doomed is Not Good. But being weightless is Outstanding. Every time I lean forward I do a perfect somersault. When I stretch my arms in the air I levitate. Back on Earth my only skills are being above average in math and height. Up here I’ve got so many skills I’m practically a Power Ranger.”

“In World of Warcraft you can have weapon skills, gathering skills, or trade skills. You can have mining skills, too, but they’re a bit rubbish and you have to buy a pickax.”

“I didn’t really want to think about things going wrong so I just concentrated on the drinks menu. I couldn’t believe when the others all asked for coffees and teas. There were so many drinks to choose from. I spotted something called the Cosmic Quencher, which I had to order because ‘cosmic’ is my favorite word.”

See what I mean. Liam is Cosmic!

Weaknesses of the book:
1. Totally unbelievable. How many thirteen year old boys can masquerade as the dad of one of their classmates?
2. Sometimes silly. Liam is not the brightest bulb in the ummmm, light fixture.
3. Disrespectful to adults. The adults in the story are also not too bright.
4. Encouraging irresponsible behavior. Don’t try this at home, kids!

I can’t think of any more weaknesses, and I actually think the weaknesses are strengths, too. Cosmic is a cosmic book for cosmic kids. Check it out.

More love for Cosmic:
Kelly at Big A little a.
Nayu’s Reading Corner.
Noel de Vries at Never Jam Today.

And it’s going to be made into a movie!

Fiction from the African Game Reserve

May31

Akimbo and the Elephants by Alexander McCall Smith.
Akimbo and the Lions.
Akimbo and the Snakes.
Akimbo and the Baboons.
Akimbo and the Crocodile Man.

Yes, this series of easy-to-read chapter books was written by the same Alexander McCall Smith who penned the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series for adults. I have enjoyed almost all of McCall Smith’s adult fiction titles, and I must say that Akimbo captured my heart, too. I read Akimbo and the Elephants in which Akimbo, who lives “in the heart of Africa” and “on the edge of a large game reserve,” bravely foils the plans of a gang of elephant poachers.

The prose was easy to read and still engaging. The print is nice and bold, and the entire story is only sixty-eight pages long. This one would appeal to seven to ten year olds and be simple without becoming boringly babyish. The hero of the story, Akimbo, is about eight or nine years old, and if his adventure is a bit unbelievable, it’s the kind of escapade an eight or nine year old boy would like to perform. The illustrations are by LeUyen Pham, the same artist who did the Alvin Ho books, and if I ever write a book, I want her to illustrate it. Look at Akimbo on the cover. Isn’t he the epitome of boyish mischief and bravery?

The White Giraffe by Lauren St. John.
Dolphin Song.
The Last Leopard.
The Elephant’s Tale.

Of this series, called Legend of the Animal Healer, I read the first and second books. The series is set on a game reserve in South Africa, and the protagonist this time is a girl, Martine, who has a special gift for understanding and healing animals. In The White Giraffe Martine becomes friends with a one-of-a-kind white giraffe named Jeremiah (Jemmy for short), and together the two again foil the plans of a gang of poachers. There’s a mystical element to the story since Martine is the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy and carries a special gift related to animals that she must learn to use wisely, and the underlying message of the story keeps edging from ecological responsibility over into nature worshipp-y silliness. But in the first two books at least, that second message is subtle enough to be ignored if you want.

The bad guys in Dolphin Song are not exactly poachers, and the action in this one moves to the ocean and the islands off the west coast of South Africa near Mozambique. Martine is still saving endangered animals, dolphins this time, and the story is again exciting and suspenseful and a bit mysterious and magical. However, Martine comes across as a real girl with her own problems getting along with her family and making friends with her classmates. These stories are for a little older age group than the Akimbo books, nine to twelve years old, I’d guess.

I recommend Akimbo and the Animal Healer books to any children who are interested in books set in Africa or fascinated by African animals and their preservation. I’ve been reading quite a few books set in Africa lately, and these are some of the best children’s books I’ve found so far.

The Sixty-Eight Rooms by Marianne Malone

May15

Doesn’t everyone like miniatures? Miniature furniture? Dollhouses? I had no idea that The Art Institute of Chicago had a collection called The Thorne Miniature Rooms:

The 68 Thorne Miniature Rooms enable one to glimpse elements of European interiors from the late 13th century to the 1930s and American furnishings from the 17th century to the 1930s. Painstakingly constructed on a scale of one inch to one foot, these fascinating models were conceived by Mrs. James Ward Thorne of Chicago and constructed between 1932 and 1940 by master craftsmen according to her specifications.

Now I want to go see the miniature rooms. Have any of you been there?

The SIxty-Eight Rooms is a fantasy story for middle grade children (a la Narnia or N.D. WIlson’s 100 Cupboards) about entering into different times and worlds through the rooms in the Thorne Collection. I thought it was great, and it reminded me of so many favorites:

Like the Narnia books, The Sixty-Eight Rooms is about children who find a way into another world, or at least another time in our world.

Instead of 100 cupboards, there are sixty-eight miniature rooms and the worlds they open into, waiting to be explored.

As in the magical books by Edward Eager and E. Nesbit, the magic in The Sixty-Eight Rooms has certain rules that children must figure out as they go along. The magic in these books is something that must be discovered and its rules obeyed if the children want to continue in their adventure. Any Which Wall by Laurel Snyder is another book in this genre.

As in Masterpiece by Elise Broach and Chasing Vermeer and the other art museum fiction books by Blue Balliet, the central setting for the adventure in The SIxty-Eight Rooms is an art museum. Kids can learn a lot about art and artists from all of these books while enjoying a cracking good story at the same time.

Like Claudia and Jamie in the classic From the MIxed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Jack and Ruthie in The Sixty-Eight Rooms must figure out how to spend the night in the museum without being caught, and they explore some wonderfully luxurious museum rooms, too.

What I’m saying with all of these comparisons is, if you liked any of the above books, authors, or series, you’ll probably enjoy The Sixty-Eight Rooms, too. And it looks as if, judging from the ending of this first book, there will be more books to come about the magic of the Thorne Rooms. The ending, by the way, was satisfactory, but definitely left room for a sequel.

To Come and Go Like Magic by Katie Pickard Fawcett

May11

To Come and Go Like Magic is a middle grade fiction title about wanderlust, about wanting to leave home and see the world and yet wanting to know that there will always be a home to return to.

The story is written in short, vignette-style chapters, each one giving a glimpse into the life of twelve year old Chileda Sue Mahoney of Mercy Hill, Kentucky. Chili Sue is growing up in the heart of Appalachia in the 1970’s, the same decade that I experienced adolescence. My small town childhood in West Texas may have been a bit more filled with opportunity and vision than Chili’s, but I understand the general theme and feeling of the book: how Chili Sue wants to travel, go somewhere, see foreign places, and how she fears that her dreams will never come true.

Lots of good, growing-up, wisdom in this book:

On losing friends:
“One day at the Piggly-Wiggly, Melody Reece was wearing Ginny’s sandals. Last year we traded. . . . I stopped in the aisle that day holding a head of iceberg lettuce and a dozen eggs with my eyes hooked on Melody’s feet. Her toenails were painted neon purple and this completely ruined the natural effect of those sandals. Suddenly I realized–this is how it happens. One day you occupy a spot in a pea pod where you trade shoes and T-shirts and secrets, and the next day your spot goes to somebody else.”

On leaving home:
“I always figured Lenny would leave and not look back, but he says even when your number-one goal in life is to leave a place, you might still want to remember it.”

On respect:
“Pop says this is just like a VISTA. They like to show the dirt roads and the shacks and the barefoot kids on television and leave out everything that’s good and pretty. We’re not down her to promote tourism, they say, when anybody complains. But in these hills even kids with shoes go barefoot. We like to go barefoot. We get stung by honeybees till our feet swell up and turn red and itch like the dickens, but barefoot is who we are.”

On sweetness:
“Well,” she says, “you could be a real sweet girl if you didn’t sass.”
I look at the floor. Sweet. That’s the last thing on earth I want to be. You can find sweet all over the place. Mercy Hill’s cup is running over with sweetness.
“I don’t want to be sweet,” I say. “I want to go places . . . I want to really go places, like travel to the other side of the world.”

To Come and Go Like Magic is a good, gentle, dare I say sweet, story about growing up in the hills of Kentucky and trying to figure out life while living it and listening to all the voices around you giving you all kinds of different advice. Chileda Sue finally charts her own course, concluding, “I can leave Mercy Hill, but Mercy Hill won’t ever leave me.”

Willow by Julia Hoban

Apr24

Willow is a book about self-injury, cutting, but it’s also about how something like cutting doesn’t really define a person. Willow, the heroine of the book, is much more than just a cutter. She’s a beautiful girl, who blushes easily. She’s an imaginative girl who loves Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. She’s capable of sacrificially someone else, even though she’s in such pain herself that it is all she can do to survive each day, sometimes hour by hour, even minute by minute.

On a rainy March night, Willow’s parent asked her to drive them home after they had a little too much wine at dinner. Willow tried, but she lost control of the car in the driving rain, and her parents, both of them, died in the ensuing accident. Willow survived, but her pain was too much to bear. So she began cutting to relieve the pain. The principle is that physical pain cancels out emotional pain, and Willow doesn’t know how to stop.

Enter Guy (yes, his name is Guy). Guy accidentally finds out Willow’s secret, and he considers himself responsible for Willow after she convinces him that telling her older brother/guardian about the cutting would destroy him. Slowly, Willow and Guy begin to trust one another, and then fall in love in spite of the barrier stands between them—Willow’s inability to allow herself to feel and her love-hate relationship with self-injury.

The book mostly eschews easy answers (just quit! why hurt yourself like that?) and goes for the power of love and patience to heal all wounds, even deep trauma like Willow’s. I was quite impressed with the author’s ability to get inside the head of deeply hurting seventeen year old like Willow and find not only the emotional pain hidden there, but also the personality and strength that it takes to overcome that pain and live through it. This book would be an excellent read for teens dealing with this issue in their own life or in that of a friend or relative.

Unfortunately, the author felt it necessary to have the teen couple in the book engage in premarital sex, an act that brings healing in the book, but that I think would be more confusing and unsettling to a teen who’s already dealing with serious emotional problems. I’m also not sure that telling teens that all it takes to overcome a serious addiction like cutting is the persistent love of a good man is quite the right message. Even though the patience part is emphasized, it still comes across as redemption by true love within 300 pages.

Some other resources for reading about and coping with self-injury and depression:

To Write Love on Her Arms is a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide. TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery.

Blade Silver: Color Me Scarred by Melody Carlson.

Little Blog on the Prairie by Cathleen Davitt Bell

Apr24

I read an ARC of this YA/middle grade title, and I thought it was just OK. Gen’s family goes to a “frontier camp” for vacation, and they are expected to live like people in the 1890’s (ala PBS’s Frontier House, which the author acknowledges as inspiration at the end of the book). Unfortunately, Gen’s broken the rules by bringing along her new cell phone, and her friend back home has set up a blog to record all of Gen’s impressions of the place and the people in the “frontier” community.

Several of the characters were unbelievable. Gen’s dad goes on a three month vacation, not only not having read the brochure about the camp, but also not having listened to anything Gen’s mom told the family about the camp. He’s completely blindsided by the idea that the family has agreed to live like the pioneers, and he doesn’t know what to do about the entire experience. But he stays anyway and spends his days cutting down trees to scare away the bears. Really? Would anyone set off on a three month vacation without knowing anything about where he’s going or what he’ll be doing?

Norah, the daughter of the camp’s proprietors, is incredibly sheltered and naive and at the same time, she acts as if she knows all about human nature and modern technology. Norah isn’t a very likable girl, and she comes across as one of those stereotypical over-protected homeschoolers that I only find in books, not in real life. Only Norah’s so isolated and the friendships she’s made have been so transient that she has become bitter and disagreeable. That’s what life in the 1890’s will do to a healthy American teenager.

Caleb, Gen’s “love interest”, is so nondescript that I have trouble saying anything about him. He wears a leather necklace, and Gen thinks he’s cute.

Watch Frontier House if you want to see what radical historical reenactment will do for and to a normal American family. Read the book as a way to pass a few hours, but not for history or for character development. Publication date for this title from Bloomsbury is May 11, 2010.

What Karate Kid Read: February/March 2010

Apr7

Crazy Lady by Jane Conly.

They Put Out to Sea: The Story of the Map by Roger Duvoisin.

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. We read this play out loud together. I enjoyed it, not sure about KK.

Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes. Retold by Michael Harrison and illustrated by Victor Ambrus.

A Piece of the Mountain: The Story of Blaise Pascal by Joyce McPherson.

Escape Across the Wide Sea by Katherine McPherson.

He also read a few poems by John Donne and by John Milton.

Listened to:
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. Well, actually, he’s still listening. It’s a very long book.

Karate Kid also read various books and articles on card tricks, magic, sleight of hand and all that jazz. He’s fascinated with card tricks particularly, and he carries a deck of cards around everywhere he goes, shuffling the cards, and cutting the cards in all kinds of flourishy ways. He has, as of late, been asking me or his father to gat him magic books at the library.

Many Happy Returns: March 8th

Mar8

Kenneth Grahame, author of The Wind in the Willows, b. 1859. And isn’t it appropriate that Grahame’s birthday falls at the beginning of March? The Wind in the WIllows is definitely a spring sort of story, even though its scenes take the reader through the year from its beginning with spring-cleaning to a summer paddling boats on the river into fall and then winter in the Wild Wood.

“The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring cleaning his little home. First he swept; next he dusted. Then it was up on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash. Finally he had dust in his
throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above him, reaching even into his dark little underground house. Small wonder, then, that he suddenly threw his brush down on the floor, said “Bother!” and “Oh dash it!” and also “Hang spring-cleaning!” and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat.”

A.A. Milne on Grahame’s book:

One does not argue about The Wind in the Willows. The young man gives it to the girl with whom he is in love, and, if she does not like it, asks her to return his letters. The older man tries it on his nephew, and alters his will accordingly. The book is a test of character. We can’t criticize it, because it is criticizing us. But I must give you one word of warning. When you sit down to it, don’t be so ridiculous as to suppose that you are sitting in judgment on my taste, or on the art of Kenneth Grahame. You are merely sitting in judgment on yourself. You may be worthy: I don’t know, But it is you who are on trial.”

Willows links:

Inspiraculum: “I’ve just read ‘The Wind in the Willows’ by Kenneth Grahame for about the fourth time.”

Ahab’s Quest: The Wind in the Willows is Charming. “Willows is a sensuous experience because Grahame so deliberately takes the reader through the small, pleasant things that fill our days. Every meal is described in detail, such that one tastes the picnic along with Mole and Rat.”

Beyond the WIld Wood by Alan Jacobs: “Best of all were those winter evenings when I crawled into bed and grinned a big grin as I picked up our lovely hardcover edition of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, with illustrations by Michael Hague. Before I cracked it open I knew I would like it, but I really never expected to be transported, as, evening by evening, I was. After the first night (I read only one chapter at a stretch), I wanted the experience to last as long as I could possibly drag it out. It was with a sigh compounded of pleasure and regret and satisfaction in Toad’s successful homecoming that I closed the book. I knew I would read The Wind in the Willows many times, but I could never again read it for the first time.”

The WInd in the WIllows at 100 by Gary Kamiya (Salon magazine): “It is apples and oranges to compare Grahame and the two other masters of genre-blurring imaginative prose, Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Grahame cannot rival Tolkien’s epic grandeur, nor does he possess Lewis’ double ability to create completely different imaginary worlds and weave vivid and intricate stories. But neither of those geniuses handle English the way he does. Tolkien knows only the high style, and Lewis’ solid prose never soars. Grahame is the inheritor of the stately style of Thomas Browne and the lyrical effusions of Wordsworth, with a little Dickens and P.G. Wodehouse thrown in as ballast.”

Forest Born by Shannon Hale

Feb18

Forest Born is the fourth in Shannon Hale’s Books of Bayern series, a series that began with The Goose Girl, Ms. Hale’s debut novel and the one that made a name for her, winning all kinds of awards and accolades. The Goose Girl tells the story of crown princess Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee of Kildenree, aka Isi, who has the gift of being able to hear and speak to animals and to birds.

The next book in the series is about Isi’s friend Enna who has the more perilous gift of fire-speaking, hence the title Enna Burning. And the third book called River Secrets is about Razo and Dasha, two more Bayern characters whose lives become intertwined with that of Isis and Enna and the kingdom of Bayern and its neighboring kingdoms.

Forest Born tells the story of Razo’s little sister, Rin, who harbors deep within herself a gift and a secret. It’s a coming-of-age tale with elements of adventure and even a bit of romance. Rin is an intriguing character with depth, and she’s different enough from Isi, Enna, and Dasha that she seems real and provides a new slant on the culture and mythical world of Bayern.

It’s also kind of fascinating that central to the plot of Forest Born is something called “people-speaking,” the ability to hear whether or not others are telling the truth and the ability to influence others with words. Kristin Cashore’s Fire and her previous book Graceling also play with this idea, the possibility that some people have a gift of being able to speak to other people and make them believe what they’re hearing and act upon it. In both Fire and in Forest Born this skill of being able to practically control others’ thoughts and actions through the use of words is a perilous gift, possibly helpful in defeating evil but also possibly soul-destroying to the gifted one. Perhaps each author is trying to say something about the power of words even in our world and the care with which we need to choose our words. There’s also a shared Spiderman-type message: “With great power comes great responsibility.”

Forest Born is a worthy sequel to the other Bayern books and worth your reading, especially if you’re a Goose Girl fan.

School UNFriendly

Feb9

Maybe it’s my own personal homeschool bias, but a lot of the books I read for the Cybils (Middle Grade Fiction), didn’t feel very school-friendly.

I’ve already discussed the confusing mixed messages from and about school in Barbara Dee’s Solving Zoe, and how the protagonist, Zoe, learns and thrives much better outside of school than she does in classes.

In The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, Calpurnia has this conversation with her grandfather:

“What are you studying in school? You do go to school, don’t you?
“Of course I do. We’re studying Reading, Spelling, Arithmetic, and Penmanship. Oh, and Deportment. I got an “acceptable” for Posture but an “unsatisfactory” for Use of Hankie and Thimble. Mother was kind of unhappy about that.”
“Good G–,” he said. “It’s worse than I thought.”
This was an intriguing statement, though I didn’t understand it.
“And is there no science? No physics?” he said.
“We did have botany one day. What’s physics?”
“Have you never heard of Sir Isaac Newton? Sir Francis Bacon?”
“No.” . . .
“And I suppose they teach you that the world is flat and that there are dragons gobbling up the ships that fall over the edge.” He peered at me. “There are many things to talk about. I hope it’s not too late. Let us find a place to sit.”

Not exactly a plug for schools, even if the schools that are being criticized are turn of the century, c.1899.

In several of the books, the protagonist is flunking out of school even though he/she is capable of doing the work:
In Bull Rider by Suzanne Morgan Williams, Cam O’Mara is learning a lot more at home dealing with his injured brother, working on the family’s ranch, and practicing his skateboarding and bull riding skills than he does at school.
Author Andrew Clements is known for his “school stories”, and Extra Credit is not an exception to the genre. However, Abby learns more from her extra credit assignment of writing to a pen pal in Afghanistan, completed outside of school time, than she does from her work at school, even though she spends a great deal of time trying to “catch up” so that she can be promoted and go on to seventh grade with her classmates.
In Peace, Locomotion by Jacqueline Woodson, Lonnie loses his motivation to study anything at all when an insensitive teacher tells him he’s too young to be a real poet. He gets his math instruction from his older foster brother at home.

The Homeschool Liberation League by Lucy Frank was actually more school-friendly than many of the other books that were not about homeschooling. The message I got from Frank’s book was that many different kinds of schooling situations work for different children and young adults at different times.

Which is what I believe. Different strokes for different folks, and let’s live and let live. I have a child in a nontraditional public high school, four young adults who have graduated from my homeschool and who have never been to a public or private school, a young daughter who is trying out an online virtual academy (public school) this semester, and two children who are still homeschooling. There are advantages and disadvantages to each situation. It takes time and energy to find the best educational setting for each child each year. And some times you just hope it’s not too late.

Let us find a place to sit.