Archives

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

Jul5

Nominated for 2011 Cybil Awards, Young Adult Fiction category. Nominated by Lisa Schroeder.

Who was the greater monster: Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin? This website says that Hitler was responsible for the death of about 12 million civilians while Stalin killed more than 20 million with his purges, executions, and repressive and ruinous policies. Who knows exactly? But one of the worst places to be would be caught between the two men and their armies and their insane, competitive desire for power. Lithuania in 1941, the setting for this novel, was in exactly that place: caught between the Nazis and the Stalinist Russians and crushed, co-opted, and destroyed by first one evil regime and then the other.

Fifteen year old Lina is preparing to go to art school when the NKVD comes to arrest her, her younger brother, Jonas, and her mother. Lina’s father has already disappeared, assumed to be arrested, and sent to some unknown prison. Or perhaps he’s dead, executed for the same unknown “crime” that causes the deportation of the rest of the family. What follows this beginning is a story as harrowing and cruel as any Jewish Holocaust story that you’ve read. Lina and her family starve, freeze, suffer, are mistreated, experience callous injustice, and barely survive their experience.

Author Ruta Sepetys is the American born daughter of a Lithuanian refugee. She wrote this story to “give a voice to the hundred of thousands of people who lost their lives during Stalin’s cleansing of the Baltic region.” Of course, this story, even though it is written to be representative of what happened to many Lithuanians during World War II, doesn’t tell the whole story. Some Lithuanians collaborated with the Nazis in opposition to the Russians. Some fought against the Soviet occupation. Some Lithuanians with ties to Germany fled to Germany during the first or second Soviet occupation of Lithuania. Some Lithuanians betrayed their neighbors to the NKVD or to the Nazis. Some Lithuanians saved their Jewish neighbors form the Nazis. It was a complicated and horrific time, and the book Between Shades of Gray reflects those complications. It is an excellent look into one family’s experience. Lina’s journey is based on interviews that Ms. Sepetys had with many Lithuanian survivors and their families.

Lithuania gained its independence from the Soviet Union on March 11, 1990.

YA Historical Fiction–12th and 13th Centuries

Jul1

I read two YA historical fiction novels set in medieval times this week–very different places, however.

The Queen’s Daughter by Susan Coventry. Joan of England, the youngest child of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, is transplanted from Poitiers to Sicily to the Holy Land back to Poitiers and finally to Toulouse. The fictionalized biography of Joan takes as its theme her struggle to choose between her parents’, especially her mother’s, advice to trust no one, certainly no man, and Joan’s own inclination to love and be loved. I enjoyed the story of this princess caught in the middle of the marital and political skirmishes of her parents and her pugnacious older brothers, and although the novel is mostly imagined since very little verifiable information about Joan’s life exists, it was believable, if perhaps a bit romantic. There’s also some odd speculation about Joan’s (married) love life, but it’s OK for older teens. Anyway, don’t we all want to believe that the princess lives happily ever after with the love of her life, after maybe some suffering and difficulty? That’s what happens in this version of Joan’s story, and it makes a for a satisfying read. Joan lived from 1165-1199 in medieval Europe.

Daughter of Xanadu by Dori Jones Yang. There are probably several novels that take the adventures of Marco Polo as a starting point, but this one is different because it’s told from the vantage point of the fictional sixteen year old granddaughter of the Great Kublai Khan, the Mongol ruler of China in the 13th century. Emmajin scorns the idea of becoming a dutiful wife and wants only to use her skill with a bow and her horsemanship to serve the Great Khan, her grandfather, in battle. However, when she is assigned to prove her loyalty by spying on the Westerners, Marco Polo,his father and his uncle, Emmajin becomes more and more confused about who she is and what she really wants out of life.

Reading this book was like entering another world, like the mind-bending worlds that fantasy and futuristic authors create, only this one was a real historical place and time. I knew very little about Mongol culture and customs when I started the book, and I felt as if by the time I finished I at least had an introduction to the world of Kublai Khan and his court. Emmajin is an admirable and strong character, and her romance-from-afar with Marco Polo is handled deftly and tastefully. Emajin also changes over the course of the book from an immature tomboyish adventurer to a young woman with strength and purpose. There are so many bookish, refined females in historical fiction; it was refreshing to read about an intelligent girl heroine who loves to fight and ride horses and compete for prizes. And she learns to channel that strength and competitiveness into pursuits that will make a real improvement in her world.

Daughter of Xanadu was nominated for 2011 Cybil Awards, Young Adult Fiction category.

More YA historicals set during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries:
The Brother Cadfael mysteries by Ellis Peters are not Young Adult, but older teens and young people would enjoy them immensely. They are murder mysteries set between about 1135 and about 1145, during the contest for the crown of England between King Stephen and Empress Maud.
Spider’s Voice by Gloria Skurzynski. Heloise and Abelard, the famous French lovers, as seen from the viewpoint of a trusted servant, Spider. 12th century.
De Granville trilogy (Blood Red Horse, Green Jasper, and Blade of Silver) by K.M. Grant. Two young men fight in the armies of Saladin and of Richard the Lion-hearted during and after the Third Crusade. 12th Century.
The Youngest Templar series (Keeper of the Grail, Trail of Fate, Orphan of Destiny) by Michael Spradlin. Cliffhanger warning: be sure to read these together because the first book, at least, ends at a rather inopportune and unsatisfying moment. An orphan boy goes to the Third Crusade, makes friends, discovers his heritage, and returns to England along with his companions, the archer Robard Hode and maid Maryam. (Get it? R.H and Maid M.?)
Knight Crusader by Ronald Welch. Third crusade again. 12th century.
The Single Shard by Linda Sue Park. Newbery Award winning story of a Korean orphan boy who wants to become a potter. Tree-Ear, named for a wild mushroom that grows without seed, lives under a bridge with his friend and mentor, Crane-man, but he has a dream of becoming an artisan. Late 12th century.
Hawksmaid: The Untold Story of Robin Hood and Maid Marian by Kathryn Lasky. Early 13th century during the reign of King John.
Perfect Fire trilogy (Blue Flame, White Heat, and Paradise Red) by K.M. Grant. The Catholic crusade against the Cathars in southern France (Occitania). Raimon and Yolanda fall in love during a time of religious conflict and danger for their country. 13th century.
The Kite Rider by Geraldine McCaughrean. Twelve year old Haoyou must protect his family after the death of his father in 13th century China.
I Rode a Horse of Milk White Jade by Diane L. WIlson. Oyuna wants to become a great horsewoman, but when Kublai Khan’s soldiers raid her village and take all the horses, she disguises herself as a boy to remain with the herd.
Sisters of the Sword by Maya Snow. Two sisters, Kimi and Hana, run away from a tragedy in their aristocratic home and take refuge, disguised as boys, in the dojo of Master Goku who runs the finest samurai training school in Japan. Semicolon review here. 13th century.
The Ramsay Scallop by Frances Temple. Elenor and Thomas go on pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James before their arranged marriage can take place. End of the 13th century (1299).

YA Dystopian Fiction Trilogies

Jun29

First, some definitions.

dystopia: an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or an environmentally degraded society. The opposite of utopia.

trilogy: a group of three related novels, plays, films, operas, or albums.

Young adult fiction is abounding in dystopian fiction trilogies these days. Why dystopias? Maybe it has something to with the question I ask myself when I’m worried about the success of a huge project I’ve undertaken, “What’s the worst thing that could happen if I fail?” Usually, the answer is comforting. Things could be worse than they are now, and even if the whole project fails, life will go on. Dystopian fiction is like that: you think our society/government/legal system/moral climate is going to hell in a handbasket? Just read about X in this great new book. Things could be much worse, and still there’s hope, usually, in the young adult dystopian novels at least.

Why trilogies? Well, I’m tempted to say that the publishers want to sell three books instead of just one, that the story in these books could often be edited down to one chunky novel. However, that’s not always the case. There’s something about the three-book series that lends itself to the introduction, climax, ending resolution arc of a grand story. The one thing I know about this trend is that it frustrates readers who often get involved in the first volume of a projected trilogy or series only to find out that the next book hasn’t even been written yet and won’t be published until next year.

Oh, well. If you’re a fan of these dystopian fiction trilogies, here’s an annotated list of the ones I’ve read or heard about and can recommend:

The Giver, Gathering Blue, and Messenger by Lois Lowry. The Giver won a Newbery Medal. My review is here. The three books set in this futuristic seeming utopia are related, but not a proper trilogy that continues from one book to the next.

The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins. The first one is great, quite absorbing (Semicolon review of The Hunger Games here). The second book in the trilogy is an OK follow-up, and the third book is riveting and quite violent. Here’s my review of Mockingjay with notes on spiritual lessons I found while reading.

The Declaration, The Resistance, and The Legacy by Gemma Malley. If the chance to live forever came with a price, would you opt in or out? Semicolon review of The Declaration.

Uglies, Pretties, and Specials by Scott Westerfield. “Uglies is set in a world in which everyone has an operation when they turn sixteen, making them supermodel beautiful. Big eyes, full lips, no one fat or skinny.” I haven’t read this series, but I’ve heard good things about it.

The Maze Runner, The Scorch Trials, and The Death Cure by James Dashner. My rant about The Maze Runner and unfinished series books that leave me twisting in the wind. I haven’t read the second and third books in this trilogy.

The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1), The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2), and Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3) by Patrick Ness. In Prentisstown everyone can hear the thoughts of all the men in town, a situation that makes for a lot of Noise and not much privacy. These books should be read together, if at all. They’re all one story, and they should have a violence warning attached.

Unfinished series:
The Roar by Emma Clayton. Semicolon review here. I’m not sure this one is meant to be a trilogy, but it does have a sequel called The Whisper, to be published sometime later this year, 2011? Wait for the sequel because this story of mutant twins living in a totalitarian state behind The Wall is absorbing and thought-provoking, but unfinished. The ending is not an ending at all, but rather a set-up for the second half (or third).

Delirium by Lauren Oliver. Lena lives in a managed society where everyone gets an operation when they turn eighteen that cures them of “delirium,” the passion and pain of falling in love. Sequels will be Pandemonium (2012) and Requiem (2013).

Matched by Ally Condie. There’s not so much action and adventure in this book, but more romance and thoughtful commentary on the pros and cons of a “safe” society bought with the price of complete obedience to an authoritarian government. Second book, Crossed, will be out November 1, 2011.

Divergent by Veronica Roth. This one is satisfying as a stand-alone, but the second book in the series, Resurgent, will be out next year, 2012.

Famous and Not-so Famous: Two YA Takes on Fame

Jun14

Famous by Todd Strasser.

My Life, the Theater, and Other Tragedies by Allen Zadoff.

In the author blurb, Todd Strasser says he “decided to write Famous after realizing that teens and kids are obsessed with fame.” The book is about sixteen year old paparazzo, Jamie Gordon, and her best friend, Avy Tennent, who wants to be a famous actor. The story is told in chapters from several points of view, and there’s constant switching between Jamie’s first person story and Avy’s first person story and the letters of some weird guy named Richard who’s stalking teen star Willow Twine, and several second person intervals in which the author pretends that the reader is Jamie while she’s unravelling the secret of what happened to Avy when he ran away to LA. It’s confusing. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t like stories or any part thereof told in second person. I’ll enter the story on my own terms; don’t try to pop me in there where I don’t belong.

However, that aside, the novel did make me think about the obsessive desire to become famous, to be known, that I’ve seen in many people I’ve known. I don’t think I have this hunger for fame that afflicts some people. I do enjoy people reading my blog, but riches and celebrity and people focusing on me, watching me, adoring me—no, that’s not appealing at all.

And even though the magazines say They’re Just Like Us! they’re not really. They’re prettier, smarter, richer and, to be brutally honest, just better.
Oops! I said it, didn’t I! That they’re better than you. And better than me.
Sucks, doesn’t it? That deep down you believe they must be better, different, special. They have to be better.
Because they’re famous.
And you’re not.
But maybe that’s not the whole truth either.
Maybe the truth is, they’re no better than you or me or anyone else.
Then why do we think they are?
Perhaps because we want to. We need to.

Well, I don’t believe that celebrities are enviable or better than me. In fact, I could much more readily identify with the protagonist in the second book in this double review post, My Life, the Theater, and Other Tragedies. Sophomore Adam Ziegler is a techie, NOT an actor. And in his school, Montclair High, the division between the two groups, techs and actors, is deep and unbridgeable. Techies don’t associate with or respect actors, and vice versa. Actors are the ones who always want to be seen and admired, but techies are the ones who make it happen behind the scenes. Adam is particularly fascinated by lights. He’s the guy “on a catwalk, high above the theater floor, surrounded by lighting instruments and cable, watching the actors get a tour of the set down below.” And Adam likes being invisible, behind the lights rather than in front.

I like the idea that there are two kinds of people, call them introverts and extroverts, behind the camera and out in front, famous or wannabe famous and the rest of us. Of course, I identify with the techies, not because I’m particularly handy with electricity or a hammer, but because I’m an something of an introvert myself. But these two books demonstrate that there are strengths and dangers in both personality types and both ways of coping with the world. Extroverts can turn into narcissists, constantly seeking fame and affirmation, and if they don’t get it easily they can go to extreme lengths to feed the beast. Introverts, however, can be just as self-centered and can shut themselves off from the world, preferring their own company to the joy of engaging in relationship.

I’d say these are both cautionary tales, but not in a preachy, didactic way. Famous demonstrates what happens to those who put themselves and their own fame above every other consideration: they end up destroying themselves. And My Life . . . shows how one introvert, hiding in the shadows, is able to come out into the light and assert himself. Balance is the key.

Both books contain some bad language, and some teen age immature (crude) behavior. Famous also deals with drug use, abusive cosmetic surgery, and generally nasty and obsessive behavior.

Sunday Salon: It Takes Darkness and Light to Make a Good Book

Jun11

First, Meg Fox Gurdon wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal about a mom who was having trouble finding an appropriately bright or upbeat book as a gift for her thirteen year old daughter. The piece was called Darkness Too Visible.

Others responded.

So how does all this discussion about the “darkness”, or lack thereof, the language, the explicit sexual perversion, or lack of it, and above all the critical questioning going on in both young adult literature and in so-called “Christian” fiction come together in my mind? Glad you asked.

I don’t think it’s as simple as the anti-book-banning crowd or the hyper-cleanliness squad or anyone else has tried to make it.

The lady in the WSJ article just wanted a book for her thirteen year old daughter. And she wanted a book that wouldn’t feature vampirism or rape or incest or (probably) profanity or other nasty stuff that she judged either her daughter wouldn’t want to read about or that the mom wouldn’t want her to be spending her reading time on. This request is not unreasonable, and a book, YA or adult, does not have to feature dark and corrupt themes and characters in order to be a good piece of literature or to be worth reading. If some people want to write about those things and if other people want to read their books, that’s their choice. But if someone, particularly a mom, comes along and says he or she wants something different, lighter, more hopeful, they are not censoring, banning or infringing upon anyone else’s freedom. They are simply saying that they prefer to have choices, too, and it seems to some of us that the darkness is overwhelming the light in Young Adult literature.

Yes, resolutions in novels can be “too neat” and unearned. But just because a novel resolves at the end, ends with a wedding rather than a death scene, doesn’t mean that the novel is unworthy or superficial. Comedies are just as literary as tragedies. And the unearned resolution happens in both stories written by Christians and stories by non-Christians. In the non-Christian variety, characters make all sorts of sinful and destructive choices, often described in gruesome detail, but they are rewarded with life, health, and happiness because underneath they’re really good people who mean well.

One-dimensional characters and sentimentality are both examples of poor storytelling techniques that are again found in all sorts of books from all sorts of publishers for every age group.

As for cleanliness, I believe that it is possible, and even advisable, to tell stories without an over-abundance of profanity and sensuality, but never without critical questioning. If YA authors or authors in the Christian publishing realm are putting gratuitous violence, sex, and language into their novels simply to titillate and thrill readers and sell books, then those writers are bad writers, no matter how many books they sell or how many accolades they receive. And if YA authors or Christian fiction writers take the sin and questioning and controversy out of their novels in favor of a sanitized version of reality, they are also poor writers who may have an audience but who have lost their message and their integrity.

Tolstoy, Victor Hugo, Tolkien–all of these men wrote novels without the kinds of gratuitous depiction of intimate sexuality and sin that is thought to be necessary for good literature these days. (Although Hugo did descend into the sewers for a good while in Les Miserables.:)) Yes, the books of all three of those authors contain all sorts of darkness: prostitution, violence, adultery, lies, and deception. But there is also goodness and joy and, dare I say it, a grace-filled resolution. Part of the problem is that when a book does not come with a “Christian” label or doesn’t have an explicitly evangelical Christian conversion scene, we cease to describe it as a Christian novel (or movie). So then the really good “Christian” movies or books never get factored into the discussions about bad Christian art. There are good movies and books out there, made by Christians and others with grace-filled themes and characters and ideas, but they may not fit the template of a Christian movie or book marketed to Christians. And there are good Young Adult fiction books, tastefully and honestly dealing with the messiness of life in the twenty-first century, either from a Christian or a non-religious point of view. But there aren’t enough of either, and sometimes you have to look really hard to find the good books, the ones that satisfy our need for a candid portrayal of truth without pandering to our sinful and fallen nature.

1900: Books and Literature

Jun7

Fiction Bestsellers:
1. Mary Johnston, To Have and To Hold. Available in reprint edition from Vision Forum.
2. Mary Cholmondeley, Red Pottage Virago reprint available.
3. Robert Grant, Unleavened Bread. Semicolon review and thoughts here.
4. James Lane Allen, The Reign of Law, a Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields.
5. Irving Bacheller, Eben Holden, a Tale of the North Country.
6. Paul Leicester Ford, Janice Meredith, a Story of the American Revolution. Semicolon review here.
7. Charles Frederic Goss, The Redemption of David Corson. Available online.
8. Winston Churchill, Richard Carvel
9. Charles Major, When Knighthood Was in Flower, the love story of Charles Brandon and Mary Tudor, the king’s sister, and happening in the reign of … Henry VIII..
10. Maurice Thompson, Alice of Old Vincennes.
All ten of these books are available to download and read as ebooks at Project Gutenberg.

Critically Acclaimed and Historically Significant:
Josiah Royce, The World and the Individual
Clarence Stedman, An American Anthology
Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie Semicolon review here.
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams
L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published by the George M. Hill Co. in Chicago on May 17, 1900. Download the ebook at Project Gutenberg. An unabridged dramatic audio performance of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz directed and narrated by Karen M. Chan with the Wired for Books Players and featuring Nicoletta Mazzocca as Dorothy.
Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim
John Dewey, The School and Society

It’s interesting that all of the bestsellers, as far as I can tell, were historical fiction. Genres go in and out of style, don’t they? Nowadays the fiction bestseller list would be mostly thrillers and mysteries, I would guess.

Picture Books Set Around 1900, the turn of the century I’ve read a few of these picture books:
The Edwardian wordless books by John Goodall are fun to explore.
Glorious Flight: Across the Channel with Louis Bleriot by Alice and Martin Provenson won a Caldecott Award. It’s the story of one of the pioneers of flight, Frenchman Louis Bleriot who flew his plane across the English Channel in 1909.
My Great-Aunt Arizona by Gloria Houston is a lovely depiction of a school teacher in the late 1800’s/early 1900’s in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Children’s and YA Fiction Set in 1900:
Brooklyn Rose by Ann Rinaldi.
Galveston’s Summer of the Storm by Julie Lake.
The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly. (1899) Semicolon review here.

In this post, Edwardian, Turn of the Century and the Great War I comment on a few books and TV series that depict the late nineteenth century/early twentieth century ambiance and culture, especially in England.

The Story of Beautiful Girl by Rachel Simon

May28

The story begins in 1968. A beautiful girl and her friend, a deaf black man, show up on the doorstep of a widow and retired schoolteacher, Martha. The beautiful girl is Lynnie, a developmentally disabled girl who has just given birth to a baby. The man is Homan, not intellectually challenged but limited in his ability to communicate because of his deafness and his lack of a proper education. The couple have run away from the School for the Feeble-Minded in which they have been, for all practical purposes, incarcerated, and now, having seen Martha’s lighthouse mailbox, they are hoping for a safe haven.

Rachel Simon also wrote the nonfiction memoir, Riding the Bus With my Sister, about her relationship with her developmentally disabled sister, a book that I appreciated and that later was adapted as a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie. So Ms. SImon has some experience and expertise in thinking from the point of view of a mentally handicapped person. The book is written in shifting points of view, from Lynnie to Martha to Homan, and sometimes that shift and the limited knowledge of the characters made the book confusing. Still, I hung in there, willing to work at seeing through the eyes of a hearing-impaired black man who usually didn’t even know the real names of the people who were his most intimate friends and caretakers. Or I saw how confusing life could be from the point of view of a young woman who has a history and a personality but doesn’t understand time and the passage of time in the same that most us do.

I liked this book very much, and I especially liked the way Ms. Simon incorporated religion and religious experience into her story, naturally and with an absence of agenda or proselytizing. Lynnie’s family is Jewish, but Lynnie herself doesn’t understand “God” and doesn’t know if she believes in Him or not. Homan is befriended by a couple of maybe sincere, but probably money-hungry faith healers, and later by a couple who run a Buddhist retreat center. One of Lynnie’s most important mentors and friends is Kate, a Christian who works through her need to forgive and to repent of her own sins of omission and fearfulness.

The main themes of the book, though are not religion, per se. What Ms. Simon seems to be interested in relating is the infinite worth of every human being, the need of all people to be treated with dignity and respect, and the importance and the difficulties of clear and timely communication. It’s a good story within which is contained a capsule history of the changes in the treatment and public perception of both mentally handicapped and hearing impaired individuals.

Worth reading. What books can you recommend that have given you insight into the lives and needs of mentally disabled persons in particular?

The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien, chapter 1, An Unexpected Party

May19

We’re reading The Hobbit in May, aloud to Z-baby, and Betsy-Bee is reading it to herself. I thought I’d blog about our journey from the Shire to the Lonely Mountain and home again along with Bilbo and the twelve dwarves and Gandalf the Wizard.

I found a few old favorite quotations as we read the first chapter:

Of course, there the opening line, which my annotated edition of The Hobbit tells me is now so famous that it’s included in Bartlett’s: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”

I’ve always enjoyed this exchange between Bilbo and Gandalf:
“Good morning!” said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat.
“What do you mean?” he said. “Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?”
“All of them at once,” said Bilbo. “And a very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco out of doors, into the bargain.”

Then there’s this lovely exclamation from Bilbo: “Confusticate and bebother these dwarves! Why don’t they come and lend a hand?” Such a useful but fairly gentle imprecation!

This chapter also features two classic Tolkien songs: Chip the glasses and crack the plates! and Far over the Misty Mountains cold. I think Tolkien was, if not a poet, at least a competent and enjoyable lyricist. I wish I knew a really good tune to each of these songs. I’ve heard them sung on our cassette tapes of The Hobbit, but the tune there doesn’t stick in the mind.

Z-baby said that if all those dwarves showed up at her house, uninvited, she would have told them to get lost. Z-baby is not usually at a loss for words or suffering from any lack of confidence. Perhaps her assertiveness comes from being the youngest of eight. She has no choice but to assert herself.

Did you know that Belladonna Took, Bilbo’s mother, is the only female character named in The Hobbit? I wonder what Peter Jackson, et. al., will do with that lack of female characters in the movie? I’d just as soon they left it alone and made an all-male movie, but isn’t that against the Rules of Hollywood? Even war movies have to have a romantic interlude, right?

Bilbo serves seed-cake at his “unexpected party,” a delicacy that the book tells me is “a sweetened cake flavored with caraway seeds.” I poked about a bit for a recipe and found out that seed cake is an old British bread that originally did not have any sugar in it. However, I think a poppy seed cake, even if it’s not so authentic, sounds better than one with caraway seeds, so I think we might try out this recipe.

The girls, of course, had questions as we read:
Who is the Necromancer?
Answer: Sauron

What are smoke rings?
Answer: RIngs of smoke that come out of a pipe. But I have no idea how to produce them since I don’t smoke a pipe.

What are runes?
Answer: Elvish writing that looks like calligraphy and is somewhat mysterious. I was able to connect the word “runes” to the poem we are memorizing, The Bells by Edgar Allan Poe, in which Poe says the bells are ringing in a “sort of runic rhyme.”

Z-baby wanted me to print out a copy of Thror’s map for her since she likes maps “just like the hobbits do.”
Maps of Middle Earth, including Thror’s Map.

As for me, I’m feeling rather Tookish today after reading the first chapter of this old favorite. How about you? Any adventures in your life this fine May?

The Warden’s Walk, The Hobbit Read-along, Chapter 1, An Unexpected Party.

Taking Off by Jenny Moss

May4

Nominated for 2011 Cybil Awards, Young Adult Fiction category. Nominated by Kelly Jensen at Stacked.

Houston author, Jenny Moss, has written about my hometown setting, Clear Lake City, a suburb of Houston, and Johnson Space Center, the NASA facility where Engineer Husband works. Of course, when I saw such a local interest YA novel on the shelf at the library, I had to read it. And the time for a review, with the last shuttle Endeavor flight scheduled for this month, seems appropriate.

Annie Porter lives in Clear Lake, but she’s never been interested in the space program until her best friend invites her to a dinner where she’ll be able to meet Christa McAuliffe, NASA’s first Teacher-in-Space. Inspired by Christa’s zest for life, Annie, a senior in high school, decides to go to Florida to see the launch of the space shuttle Challenger.

Knowing how the story of Christa McAuliffe ends made this novel of a Texas girl torn between staying at home and venturing forth, well, a bit dark and foreboding. When the launch finally happens in the novel, even though I knew it would happen, the explosion of the Challenger was traumatic and terribly sad. Of course, Annie, who has placed almost all of her hopes and dreams for the future in her admiration for Christa McAuliffe, is devastated.

But Annie recovers and goes on to make a decision about whether she will be a “keeper or a dreamer.” I got those two labels from this post at Rabbit Room by Sarah Clarkson. As I commented there, I think all of us have some of the dreamer and some of the keeper inside us. The key is deciding when it’s time to “take off” and when it’s time to hold fast and make a nest and a community. Taking Off by Jenny Moss offers both a good story and some wisdom about choosing between the two modes of living intentionally.

Three Victorian-setting YA Novels

May2

First I read In the Shadow of the Lamp by Susanne Dunlap. It’s set in 1854, and Molly, our protagonist, dissembles a background in nursing in order to be able to join Florence Nightingale as she assembles a coterie of nurses to go to the Crimea. I’ve heard of the Crimean War, and I associate it with Florence Nightingale and with the Charge of the Light Brigade. The vague location in my mind of “the Crimea” is somewhere near Istanbul? It turns out that I’m not so very far off. The Crimea is farther north, on shore of the Black Sea in what is now the Ukraine, but the nurses ended up at the British army hospital in Scutari, which was in a section of Istanbul. Wikipedia:

During the Crimean War (1854-1856), the barracks was allocated to the British Army, which was on the way from Britain to the Crimea. After the troops of the 33rd and 41st[3] left for the front, the barracks was converted into a temporary military hospital.
On November 4, 1854, Florence Nightingale arrived in Scutari with 38 volunteer nurses. They cared for thousands of wounded and infected soldiers, and drastically reduced the high mortality rate by improving the sanitary living conditions until she returned home in 1857 as a heroine.

The story of how Molly learned to be a real nurse and of her comrades in healing turns into a romance and even a bit of a ghost story. I was intrigued enough to look up more information about the Crimean War and about Ms. Nightingale, and I recommend the story for lovers of historical Victoriana.

Fallen Grace by Mary Hooper takes place in almost exactly the same time period, 1854-1861, as In the Shadow. In this novel our heroine is named Grace Parkes, and she, too is poor, spunky, and determined. Grace has an older sister, Lily, who is mentally handicapped, and the two sisters are orphans. The book deals with Victorian death customs, specifically the death of Queen Victoria’s beloved husband, Prince Albert, and with the many difficulties facing a young, unprotected and unattached female in Dickensian London. Grace and Lily are adrift in the city, and they face off with evil villains worthy of a Dickens novel. I thought the history was well-researched, and the story was absorbing as Grace tries to protect her sister Lily and make a way for the two of them to live an honest and free life in a harsh world.

I liked this rags to riches story very much, even though it was somewhat unbelievable. Dickens himself is rather unbelievable, if you stop to think carefully about some of his plots, but he manages to carry it off anyway. Ms. Hooper is writing in that tradition, but the style is appropriate for a modern YA audience.

The last of the three books I read was The Agency: A Spy in the House by Y.S. Lee. The other two novels were gateways to history with real historical characters, such as Dickens, Nightingale, and others, making cameo appearances and with lots of real historical events featured in each book. The Agency is more of a straight spy novel that happens to be set in Victorian London, same time period again, 1853-1858. The protagonist is again a young woman, Mary Quinn, and the lady is in just as much trouble as either Grace or Molly as the novel opens. Mary,in fact, is about to be hanged as a thief before she is rescued by a mysterious benefactress and taken to Miss Scrimshaw’s Academy for Girls to be educated. A few years later, when Mary is grown, she goes before the two ladies who run the school, Miss Treleaven and Mrs. Frame to decide with them what she is to do with her life. There Mary learns about a secretive spy/detective agency that the two ladies operate, and she is given the opportunity to begin training as an operative.

I enjoyed this book almost as much as I did the other two novels, but I did think that this one had some holes in the plot and and missed transitions. I was never sure how Mary Quinn managed to justify her detective activities to her erstwhile partner/romantic interest (who doesn’t know about the secret Agency); her story that she was looking for a runaway maid was rather thin and unbelievable since she never did anything related to the maid’s disappearance. That’s just one example. Ms. Quinn often jumps to conclusions that are not justified by the evidence, but of course, her conclusions turn out to be exactly right. And some of the characters change personalities in a bewildering manner such that it’s difficult to know whom to root for and whom to hate. There’s also an undercurrent of feminist agit-prop, but it’s easily ignored.

The Agency: A Spy in the House seems to be the beginning book in a projected series about this ladies’ spy agency, and I’m hoping that more editing will work out some of the continuity problems in the plot and characterizations. The premise is good, but the logic of the story itself could use a little work.

Three feisty heroines, three stories of romance and intrigue, three British settings. I recommend them together as a set.