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Almost Super by Marion Jensen

May20

“It’s not your power that makes you super. It’s what you do with that power.”

All of the Baileys receive their very own superpower on February 29th at 4:23 in the afternoon in the first leap year after their twelfth birthday. So now it’s time for Rafter Bailey, age thirteen, and his brother, Benny, age twelve to get their powers. It should be the best day of their young lives, but superpowers are unpredictable and Rafter and Benny are in for a big surprise.

This humorous look at a family of superheroes has great dialog, and is kid-friendly and funny, without descending to the stupid and crude boy-humor that some authors attempt (at least not much, just a little bit of burping and barfing). It made me laugh, and it had a good superhero moral: “Iron resolve. Ferocious courage. And a healthy dose of insanity. That’s what makes a superhero. Not some amazing power.”

Rafter and Benny act like kids, but they’re kids who are out to save the world. They mess up, but their hearts are in the right place. And as kids are apt to do, they sometimes see things more clearly than the grown-ups do. When some doubt arises as to whether the Baileys’ arch-rivals, the Johnsons, are really super-villains, Rafter and Benny decide to find out the truth once and for all.

As I wrote in my review of another middle grade superhero novel (Sidekicked by John David Anderson), superheroes, from Gilgamesh and Enkidu to Samson and Gideon to Hercules to Beowulf to Superman and The Incredible Hulk—–we weak mortals have always been fascinated with the adventures and exploits of men (sometimes women) with incredible talents, beyond human strength, and extraordinary intelligence. Superheroes are the stuff of legend and comic book—and nowadays middle grade speculative fiction. The superhero novel is in style, and as far as I’m concerned, Almost Super is one “super” entry in the genre.

Tesla’s Attic by Neal Shusterman and Eric Elfman

May17

A very promising first book in The Accelerati Trilogy, this science fiction adventure follows the escapades of Nick Slate, the new guy in town, and his friends in Colorado Springs where they find that the legacy of genius and inventor Nikola Tesla, a bunch of weird old electrical and mechanical devices and appliances found in Nick’s attic, is more than a little dangerous. What’s more The Accelerati, whoever they are, are competing with Nick and his friends to gain control of the power of Tesla’s mad inventions.

The tone and style of this adventure were pitch perfect, with a little more adolescent boy/girl stuff than I would have liked, but still the clues were dropped and then picked up and tied together neatly with room left for the sequel(s). I really enjoyed the way these two authors worked together to foreshadow the coming action and warn the reader about what would or could happen while at the same surprising me with a few twists and turns I wasn’t expecting.

Oh, the book begins with a great first line: “Nick was hit by a flying toaster.” Doesn’t that make you curious?

QOTD: Some people think Nikola Tesla was one of the most fascinating geniuses who ever lived. Who fascinates you? What person or persons in history would you like to invite to your dinner party, just to hear what they had to say?

The Time It Never Rained by Elmer Kelton

May16

If there was ever a piece of fiction that should be adopted as a manifesto and banner for the conservative/libertarian movement in American politics, it’s not any of that nonsense by Ayn Rand. (I never could get through either of her most famous tomes although I tried . . once . . each.) Elmer Kelton’s The Time It Never Rained is a Western classic, a conservative classic, and a cracking good story. It should be recommended reading for all little conservatives-in-training.

So, in the 1950’s, about the time I was born, West Texas ranchers and farmers endured a seven year drouth. Seven years with little or no rain. Seven years. Charlie Flagg has lived through drought before, and he’s sure he can make through this one. But seven years is a long time, and no one, of course, knows that the drought will last so long or when or even if it will ever be over. Charlie, cantankerous and set in his ways even before the drought begins, only becomes more so as he faces the loss of his cattle, his sheep, his family and friends, and finally most of his land. Still, Charlie never gives up, never gives in to what he believes is wrong.

And one thing Charlie believes is wrong, at least for himself, is accepting government aid and price supports. As it turns out, the government aid offered to the ranchers to help them feed their animals and survive the drought comes with strings attached, and artificial prices confuse the free market so much that the ranchers can’t make a living even when the rains return. Charlie must change, accepting the idea of raising goats in addition to the sheep that have been his mainstay, but he never compromises his principles.

Charlie Flagg isn’t perfect, and the author shows us his faults as well as his strengths. Charlie and his wife have grown apart, mostly because Charlie is the strong, silent type, not much of a communicator (Charlie’s attitude: He told her he loved her when he married her, and he’d be sure to let her know if anything changed.) Charlie is an old-style patron to his Mexican American workers, and he sometimes patronizes them and treats them with the kind of “separate but equal” attitude that was the trademark of the fifties relationship between Anglos and Latin Americans, as we used to call them. Charlie doesn’t hire illegals, but he respects them for their work ethic and their willingness to cross the border to find work. He wishes the government would just leave everybody alone, including the Mexicans who come to work in the United States, and especially including the ranchers who are just trying to make a living raising cattle and sheep and goats.

That’s the typical attitude of the typical West Texan that I knew growing up. I grew up in San Angelo, Mr. Kelton’s hometown. And most people there, at least thirty years ago, would have told you they just wanted the government, state and federal, to leave them alone. Some older men and women I knew were “yellow dog Democrats” and others were newly-coined Republicans, but all of them shared the desire to be left alone to raise their families and do their work without interference or help from the government.

QOTD: How do you respond to adversity or failure? How do you want to see yourself respond to hard times?

The Riverman by Aaron Starmer

May14

The Riverman, by master storyteller Aaron Starmer, will leave you questioning the responsibilities of friendship, the boundaries of imagination, and the true origin –and ownership– of the stories we tell. ~inside front cover blurb for The Riverman

The book did leave me questioning, but my questions are not so philosophical. My first question is: what in blue blazes is this story about? Alistair Cleary keeps secrets. When his not-so-typical neighbor, Fiona Loomis, tells him her secrets about a land called Aquavania where everything she imagines becomes real, Alistair keeps her secret, too. But he’s not sure whether Fiona is telling the literal truth about Aquavania and about The Riverman who is stealing the souls of the children there, or whether Fiona’s stories are a way for her to tell him about what’s going on in the Real World. Are children being kidnapped or abused or even murdered? Or is Fiona just crazy? Or is Aquavania real?

I never got answers to any of Alistair’s and my questions. Here are some review quotes lifted from Amazon:

“This blend of magical realism and mystery blurs the line between reality and fantasy, setting up a creepy unease that both disturbs and propels the reader forward.” ~BCCB

“In this dark, twisting tale, readers are never sure if Fiona’s story is true or not, and they won’t want to stop reading until they find out.” ~Booklist

“The novel’s strength is in the pervasive aura of unknowing that Starmer creates and sustains.” ~Publisher’s Weekly

The problem I have is that I’m not sure that the ambiguity and creepiness and darkness are strengths. The lack of even semi-definitive answers frustrated me, and the final twist of revelation about who The Riverman really was made no sense at all to me. The violence at the end of the story was also unexpected and unwelcome and rather mystifying. In fact, the ending was not so much ambiguous as it was baffling.

It’s not that I am completely opposed to ambiguous endings. Sometimes I have enjoyed making up my own ending to a novel or deciding for myself how the story continues. But The Riverman is too incomprehensible. I don’t even have a working theory about what was going on with Fiona and Alistair and especially Alistair’s friends, Charlie and Kyle.

Yet another odd book. At least I think I understood Nightingale’s Nest by Nikki Loftin and some of the other oddities I’ve read lately. This one has me stumped. Maybe I skimmed something I should have read more carefully. Maybe the book itself is at fault. If you’ve read this particular book, would you please, please enlighten me?

QOTD: Do you like stories with ambiguous endings? Can you name a novel or story that you have read that ends ambiguously? Did you make up a happy ending or a sad one in your mind?

I Know What Your Mother Really Wants for Mother’s Day

May9

'' photo (c) 2008, Kimberly N. - license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/Well, I should qualify that statement: If your mother is a Christian, if she really, truly loves Jesus, and if she’s one of those “religious” moms who goes to church every Sunday and prays for you every day and embarrasses you by listening to old-timey hymns and posting Bible verses on her Facebook feed. If she’s one of those moms who took you to church and helped you memorize Bible verses and and taught you the plan of salvation and told you that God loves you and has a plan for your life. If your mother is an old-fashioned, Bible-believing, hope-filled, Jesus-loving Christian.

Then, more than she wants chocolate-covered strawberries or twelve dozen roses, more than a diamond ring or a dime store bracelet, more than breakfast in bed or lunch in a fancy restaurant, more than cards or phone calls or words of appreciation, more than new clothes or shoes, more than a trip to the movies or to the Bahamas, more than your gratitude and even more than your love, I know exactly what your mother wants for Mother’s Day.

She wants you to love Jesus, too. She wants you to know Jesus, obey Jesus, live for Jesus, worship Jesus and follow Jesus through this life and straight to heaven. She wants you live where Jesus leads you to live, even if that’s far away from where she is, and to do what He calls you to do, even if it’s something she would never have imagined you doing. She wants you to be filled with the Holy Spirit, connected to God’s church, and busy with the work of God’s kingdom. She wants you to be reading your Bible and praying and listening to the voice of Jesus. She wants you, her beloved child, to be His child. For Mother’s Day and every day, your Christian mom wants St. Patrick’s prayer to be incarnate in both of you:

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right,
Christ on my left, Christ in breadth, Christ in length,
Christ in height, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.

If you can’t give your mom what she wants for Mother’s Day, Jesus can. Just ask Him. Then get yourself humbled and accept His forgiveness and grace. Then follow Him. Then tell your mom.

It will be the best Mother’s Day present ever. Trust me. I really, really know.

The Disorderly Knights by Dorothy Dunnett

May9

I read the first of the Lymond Chronicles, The Game of Kings, back in early January and reviewed it, sort of, here. Mostly I told you about all of the new words I learned from reading the first in a five volume series about a sixteenth century Scots lord with a loquacious and facile tongue.

A couple of months ago I read the second book in the series, Queens’ Play, in which Francis Crawford of Lymond, moves his base of operations from Scotland to France, where he lives a dissolute and adventurous life at the court of Henri II and manages to protect the young Scots princess Mary, who is affianced to the the Dauphin, from numerous assassination attempts, all while drinking inordinate amounts of alcohol and staying drunk for most of the book. Crawford of Lymond is, simply put, amazing.

“On the day that his grannie was killed by the English, Sir William Scott the Younger of Buccleuch was at Melrose Abbey, marrying his aunt.
News of the English attack came towards the end of the ceremony, when, by good fortune, Young Scott and his aunt Grizel were by all accounts man and wife. There was no bother over priorities. As the congregation hustled out of the church, led by bridegroom and father, and spurred off on the heels of the messenger, the new-made bride and her sister watched them go.”

In this third book, The Disorderly Knights, Lymond becomes entangled with the affairs of the Order of the Knights Hospitaliers, whose headquarters and refuge on the island of Malta is threatened by the Turkish fleet bent on revenge. The Knights of Malta themselves are torn by internal dissension, and the only hero in the whole mess, besides the ever-smiling and accomplished Lymond himself, is Sir Graham Reid Mallett, nicknamed Gabriel, a Scots recruit to the order whose skills and expertise in war and diplomacy rival those of Lymond.

After a stirring and tragic (for Lymond’s inamorata, Oonagh O’Dwyer) escape from the Turkish invaders in Tripoli, Lymond and Gabriel both return to Scotland where Lymond puts together a small private army, trained in all of arts of war and intended to keep the peace along the Scottish border on behalf of, but not directly under the orders of, Queen Dowager Mary of Scotland. Gabriel joins Lymond’s merry band ostensibly to train under the great soldier, but also to claim Lymond’s allegiance and soul for God, the (Catholic) Church and the Knights Hospitaliers. Lymond, of course, has other plans for his soul.

Lymond: “What does anyone want out of life? What kind of freak do you suppose I am? I miss books and good verse and decent talk. I miss women, to speak to, not to rape; and children, and men creating things instead of destroying them. And from the time I wake until the time I find I can’t go to sleep there is the void—–the bloody void where there was no music today and none yesterday and no prospect of any tomorrow, or tomorrow, or next God-d— year.”

Finally, in addition to a fiendishly clever plot and excellent characters and dialog, there are the words. Here are a few more words that I gleaned from The Disorderly Knights:

Fremescent: Becoming murmurous, roaring. “Fremescent clangor.” –Carlyle.
Opaline: of or like opal; opalescent; having a milky iridescence.
Fauve: wild, literally, tawny
Insessorial: adapted for perching, as a bird’s foot.
Coign (quoin): an external solid angle of a wall or the like; cornerstone.
Debouch: to march out from a narrow or confined place into open country, as a body of troops: The platoon debouched from the defile into the plain.
Culverin: medieval form of musket or a kind of heavy cannon used in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Cittern: an old musical instrument related to the guitar, having a flat, pear-shaped soundbox and wire strings.
Simulacrum: a slight, unreal, or superficial likeness or semblance.
Dissentient: dissenting, especially from the opinion of the majority.
Otiosity: being at leisure; idle; indolent.
Pendicle: An appendage; something dependent on another; an appurtenance; a pendant.
Bagatelle: something of little value or importance; a trifle.

Those are just a few of the new-to-me words I encountered in this volume of Francis Crawford of Lymond’s further adventures. The next book (fourth) in the series is entitled Pawn in Frankincense.

QOTD: What is your favorite word? What word(s) do you just like to use because of the sound and meaning and the way the two fit together?

The Chapel Wars by Lindsey Leavitt

May6

Setting: The Las Vegas strip, Rose of Sharon Wedding Chapel
Characters:
Grandpa Jim Nolan, owner and proprietor of Rose of Sharon Wedding Chapel, deceased.
Holly Evelyn Nolan, sixteen year old math whiz, counter of everything, inheritor of Rose of Sharon Wedding Chapel.
Sam, Holly’s best friend.
Camille, Sam’s homeschooled secret girlfriend.
Victor Cranston, Grandpa Jim’s rival and enemy, proprietor of Cupid’s Dream Wedding Chapel.
Dax Cranston, Victor’s grandson and Holly’s possible new love interest.
Plot: Romeo and Juliet, without the marriage or the suicides, transposed to Las Vegas, with the addition of a family business to save from bankruptcy.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a children’s or YA novel set in Las Vegas. In fact, maybe I’ve never read any novel set in Las Vegas. (Have you?) The Chapel Wars has a promising premise: Holly has inherited her grandfather’s Las Vegas wedding chapel, along with all of its quirky employees and money problems. For Holly Rose of Sharon is home, the only home she’s ever known. She has to do whatever it takes to keep the chapel in business, even if it means going against Grandpa Jim’s business model, dressing her friends up as Elvis or even Cupid, and trying to keep her love life and her business life separated.

Unfortunately, there were several aspects of the novel that kept this old fogey from enjoying it wholeheartedly. The comedic possibilities of the plot are obvious, and they were exploited to the full. However, the sarcasm got a little heavy at times. And the heavy, heavy disdain for any character who took romance and long term relationship (marriage) seriously (Sam, in particular, who proposes to Camille and is shot down with great scorn) was uncomfortable. This derision for marriage or a serious consideration of long term commitment for teens, even those who are old enough to get married, is a given element in a lot of YA literature these days. Teens can “suck face”, a crude and vile term used in the novel as a euphemism for the display of physical affection, or they can even have sexual relations, but heaven forbid that they should consider the even long term possibility of commitment and marriage at the age of seventeen or eighteen or nineteen. It’s the new taboo.

The novel also sported a prejudice against any serious life decision that might be made by a sixteen or seventeen year old. Holly is told, “You can’t let someone else’s dead dream keep you from finding your own.” True, as far as it goes. However, Holly believes that her own dream is to keep the chapel open, but she’s not allowed to have that dream because she’s only sixteen or seventeen. Long-term commitment, to a a person or to a goal, is reserved for old people who have nothing better to do with their time and energy. The advice for Holly: “Go hang out with your friends or make out with that boy across the street.”

The underestimation of young adults and the crude pandering to their supposed taste in terms of language and pastimes is rampant in our culture, and I felt that disrespect for teens was particularly egregious in The Chapel Wars. Romeo and Juliet were old enough at thirteen and maybe fourteen or fifteen to get married, make really poor decisions, and take responsibility for their own actions. Why aren’t sixteen, seventeen and eighteen year olds in our culture old enough to pursue a dream or a marriage commitment or even use the English language with some sophistication?

Anyway, The Chapel Wars is funny and cute, if you ignore the implications of treating young adults like overgrown children who should spend their time sucking face and sowing wild oats.

QOTD: If you were offered a free trip to Las Vegas (free plane ticket, free accommodations), would you go? Why or why not? If you did go, what would you do while you were in Las Vegas?

I Kill the Mockingbird by Paul Acampora

May5

“The very first spark for I Kill the Mockingbird began with a conversation about summer reading lists that started on blogs including Pam Coughlan’s Mother Reader, Colleen Mondor’s Chasing Ray, Leila Roy’s Bookshelves of Doom, and Elizabeth Bird’s A Fuse #8 Production among others. Barely a day goes by that I don’t learn something new and also laugh out loud because of these fantastic writers and their peers in the incredible community of kid lit bloggers.” ~Acknowledgments by Paul Acampora.

Set during the summer between eighth grade and high school, this middle grade on the cusp of YA novel was absolutely a great read, but you have to know going in that it’s very meta-book-lovers with lots of inside jokes about first lines of novels and interpretations of To Kill a Mockingbird and nominations for the Great American Novel. Mr. Acampora must love kid lit and adult literature and books in general, and his characters do, too.

Those characters are a trio of friends, Lucy, Elena, and Michael, who have attended school together at St. Brigid’s Catholic School since kindergarten. Lucy’s mom has just miraculously recovered from a bout with a “rare, aggressive, and generally fatal” cancer (“sometimes it just happens”). Her dad is the principal at St. Brigid’s. Michael is a neighbor, a friend, and Lucy’s newly discovered crush. Elena is “certain that high school is going to swallow us up, spit, us out, and crush us like bugs.” Elena lives above a bookstore with her Uncle Mort since her parents died in car crash when she was a baby. I Kill the Mockingbird tells the story of how these three created a conspiracy to make Harper Lee’s famous novel into the hottest property on the shelves of all of the libraries, bookstores, and other book distributors in the state of Connecticut, maybe the whole U.S.

“Even in kindergarten, Michael, Elena, and I obsessed about books. Not only that, the three of us believed that characters like Winnie the Pooh and Ramona Quimby and Despereaux Tilling actually existed. We fully expected to meet all our favorite characters in person one day. Books carried us away.”

As I said, it’s a very bookish book, a fact which made the story twice as endearing to me because I, too, am carried away by books. In fact, I had a couple of good friends in junior high who planned a date and a time to go through the wardrobe to Narnia. They were serious, and although I was skeptical, I did call them that night to make sure they were still in Middle Earth, rather, on our Earth.

The book is, by the way, also very Catholic, in a cultural sort of way. The teens who are the main characters pray to saints and to Jesus, discuss books and religion, and generally behave themselves like good Catholic kids. They aren’t perfect, and they aren’t overly pious, but they are definitely Catholic. THey also discuss theology and the after-life with parents who are also very Catholic, but who hold their Christian beliefs rather loosely. The general attitude in the book is that religious devotion can’t hurt and Christianity may even be true.

The three friends in I Kill the Mockingbird get themselves into some trouble when their conspiracy/project grows beyond their ability to control it due to the power of the worldwide web. But everything ends well, and the summer ends well, the trio head into high school with the courage that a huge summer adventure can give to three friends who are willing to try Something Big. There are worse ways to spend a summer than obsessing over books and bonding through shared adventures.

I read an ARC of this novel, obtained from NetGalley for the purposes of review. The release date for I Kill the Mockingbird is May 20, 2014.

Q(uestion)O(f)T(he)D(ay): Have you read To Kill a Mockingbird? Have you seen the movie version with Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch? (Atticus Finch is my Hero. I want a T-shirt that says that.)

When Did You See Her Last? by Lemony Snicket

Apr30

When did you see her last? Did you get the message? What’s for breakfast? Who has the formula? Where could she have gone? Where is Cleo Knight? When did she go missing? What was she wearing when she left? How about some tea? Do you know the one about the big fight over an apple and a pretty woman? The one that ends with a hollow statue and a ghost who likes to bury things?

These are all questions from Lemony Snicket’s second book in the new series All the Wrong Questions. Some of the above questions are nearly right, but they’re all the wrong questions. In When Did You See Her Last? from the rapidly deteriorating town of Stain’d-by-the-Sea, Lemony himself narrates his adventures as an apprentice detective to the inept S. Theodora Markson. The case is the disappearance of the wealthy young chemist, Cleo Knight. Lemony is a rather melancholy young man of mystery in this noir detective story for middle grade readers.

Fans of the wildly popular A Series of Unfortunate Events will applaud this new series by the same author, Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler). And since in this particular series Mr. Snicket gets to be both author and character, we are treated to more insight into the narrator’s life and circumstances, even though Lemony Snicket remains somewhat of an enigma. Something is going on with his sister in another town in an underground tunnel? And in the first book in the series (which I haven’t read) Mr. Snicket and his associates find and lose a statue in the shape of the Bombinating Beast? It’s all slightly esoteric, but still loads of fun, especially the wordplay, literary allusions, and droll humor.

In addition to questions, there are also answers, or at least aphorisms. Try some of these on for size:

“Anyone who gives you a cinnamon roll fresh from the oven is a friend for life.”

“Boredom is not black licorice. . . . There’s no reason to share it.”

“Do the scary thing first, and get scared later.”

“The world is a puzzle, and we cannot solve it alone.”

“They can teach you anything. That doesn’t mean you learn it. It doesn’t mean you believe it.”

“It doesn’t matter if you look ridiculous, not if you are with people you know and trust.”

You’ll have to make up your own questions. Maybe they will be the right questions. Maybe not. But if you enjoy slightly nonsensical, noirish adventures in which the main point and backstory of the series is Yet To Be Revealed, you might want to check out Lemony Snicket’s All the Wrong Questions. I’d suggest, unlike me, that you start with the first book in the series, Who Could That Be at This Hour?, proceed immediately to the second, and then to the third in the series, Shouldn’t You Be In School?

From Amazon (in case you are not familiar with the author’s rather wacky style): “Author Lemony Snicket is a broken man, wracked with misery and despair as a result of writing ‘A Series Of Unfortunate Events’. He spends his days wandering the countryside weeping and moaning and his evenings eating hastily-prepared meals. He has also written the mystery series ‘All the Wrong Questions’. Artist Seth is no stranger to a town that is fading. He is a multi-award-winning cartoonist, author, and artist, whose works include’ Palookaville’, ‘Clyde Fan’s, and ‘The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists’. He lives in Guelph, Canada.”

The Boy on the Porch by Sharon Creech

Apr29

“The young couple found the child asleep in an old cushioned chair on the front porch.”

When John and Mary find a six year old boy asleep on their front porch, they are naturally curious to know who he is and where he came from. But the boy doesn’t talk. He does hear, and he draws and paints beautiful pictures, and he plays wonderful music. But he says not one word.

The Boy on the Porch is an odd sort of book. I can see it being the kind of book that an adopted child or a foster child might latch onto and love. Newbery Medal and Carnegie award winning author Sharon Creech (she’s the first author to win both the British and the American awards for children’s literature) writes of her inspiration for the novel:

“I discovered that the boy, who does not speak, is like all characters that do not have a voice until a writer is ready to listen to them; and he is like so many children who do not have a ‘voice’ in this world; and he is like all children who come into our lives: when they arrive—at any age—we wonder who they are and what they think and fear and feel and who they will become.”

So the theme is children without voices, both literally and metaphorically, and the adults who love those children who in turn need someone to see and hear their unique beauty. John and Mary are the stand-ins for all of the many, many adults who foster and adopt and care for children who are abandoned and in need of a caring family. The style is almost hypnotic: you can read or listen to a sample here. It’s a short book, 151 pages. It’s not a verse novel, but it almost has a poetic feel to it. It’s also not fantasy, but the boy who is found on the porch, Jacob, is a fantastic magical realism kind of character. He paints and makes music with abilities way beyond his years, but he never speaks and later in the book, he simply disappears.

This book tells a story that would be just right matched with just the right reader(s). However, they’re probably going to have to find it serendipitously because it’s going to be a hard one to sell—or to peg the right child to sell it to.