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Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Sep17

“What will break me?

This is the question that consumes me over the next three days as we wait to be released from our prison of safety. What will break me into a million pieces so that I am beyond repair, beyond usefulness? I mention it to no one, but it devours my waking hours and weaves itself throughout my nightmares.” ~Katniss in Mockingjay, ch.11

So now I’ve read Mockingjay, the final book in the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. And I have nothing new to say about the quality of the book or of the series. I loved it. I liked the ending, even though some people didn’t much. I read it in a couple of days, reading whenever I could get some free time. I’ll read the entire series again sometime, and I’ll recommend it to others.

However, the thing I noticed in this third book, the idea that impressed itself upon me, comes from the quotation at the top of this post. President Snow and Capitol goons are out to destroy Katniss, not necessarily to kill her, although they’d do that if they could, but to destroy her usefulness, her courage, and her ability to serve any good purpose. Snow wants to destroy Katniss’s ability to love. Snow uses other people’s pain to hurt and distract and break Katniss. He uses fear and psychological manipulation and blackmail and Katniss’s own weaknesses, all to devastate her and make her useless to the rebels. Katniss’s enemies can’t kill her, so they work on her emotions and hurt other people who are close to her so that she will be neutralized and/or become mentally unhinged.

Isn’t that exactly what Satan tries to do with us? It’s kind of like the story of Job. God won’t let Satan kill us or remove us from His presence; however, we are sometimes beset on every side. I’ve been feeling particularly plagued and bedeviled lately. One person I love has left the faith, abjured Christ and declared himself apostate. Another beloved friend has lost an especially close relationship and is questioning God’s faithfulness. I look at my family, and I see problems and pain and physical illness and sadness and broken relationships. I sometimes feel like a walking advertisement for the book “Things Fall Apart.” (I haven’t actually read it, but the title is evocative enough.)

One of the characters in Mockingjay is “hijacked”, reprogrammed, brainwashed, by the enemy. It’s exactly what Satan is trying to do each and every Christian. He can’t take away our salvation, but he can steal our joy. He can attack us in all sorts of ways in this less-than-perfect world, take away the people and experiences that mean the most in our lives, and destroy our usefulness to God’s kingdom. Sometimes I feel as if I’m inside the (very serious) game that Katniss and Peeta play in the book: Real or unreal? Has my friend really, irrevocably removed himself from God’s grace? Or will God work to bring him back? Can I see past the physical and emotional pain that some friends and family members are experiencing now to see a God who is good and will one day wipe away all tears and banish all suffering? Or will I allow the vicissitudes and the real torments that afflict me and my family and friends to break me into a million pieces so that I am useless and beyond repair? Will I allow Satan to deceive me and blind me to God’s goodness and mercy in Christ? Is there really a hope and a future for me and for those I love?

I don’t know, but at least as I read Mockingjay, I thought about these issues. And I prayed, “Lord, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Give me the power to see what is Real and to be able to stand like Job and say, ‘I know that my Redeemer lives.'”

Good book. Good series. Good, hard, challenging thoughts.

Semicolon review of Hunger Games.
My Favorite Author reviews Mockingjay.
Jen Robinson’s Book Page on Mockingjay
Mockingjay review at Between the Covers with Stephany.

Hush by Eishes Chayil

Sep14

Eishes Chayil apparently means “Woman of Valor,” the ultra-Orthodox Jewish term for a woman who keeps the Law, raises a family, and sustains the Jewish community in a particularly noble and Godly manner. Eishes Chayil is also the pseudonym for the ultra-Orthodox, Chassidic Jewish Brooklynite who wrote this story of a community bound by laws and customs that ensure their survival and strengthen their commitment to one another and to God but also make them vulnerable to pressure from within that community to cover up the most damaging of secrets.

I don’t know how to write about this book without giving possible spoilers. So you are warned.

The book is most obviously comparable to Laurie Halse Anderson’s classic, Speak. Both books are about the difficulty of speaking out about rape and child abuse. But Hush goes one step further to immerse the reader in a Hassidic Jewish community in which no one even acknowledges the possibility of sexual abuse, a community which speaks a language in which there isn’t even a word for “rape” or “molestation.” The twenty-first century ultra-Orthodox community of the novel is set in the center of New York CIty, and yet the families there live in a different world, a world of no TV, no computer, separate schools, separate stores, and segregated lives. The goyim, Gentiles, are scary people who not chosen by God and not associated with by devout Chassidish (Hassidic Jews). Even other groups of Orthodox Jews are suspect and not assured of acceptance by God and by the Chassidish. To report a case of rape or molestation, a child would first have to find the words and the understanding to know and verbalize what was happening. Then, he would have to have the courage to step outside the community that had nurtured and formed him and to accept the accusations of betrayal and deception that would immediately follow.

Hush tells the story of two friends, Gittel and Devory, growing up in the Chassidic community in New York City. Gittel is a beloved daughter of a devout and Torah-loving family, and so is Devory. The two girls experience all sorts of adventures together: dressing up for Purim, befriending a goyim neighbor, watching the movie Cinderella at the home of a more modern Jewish friend. But when the two girls are ten years old, tragedy strikes, and Gittel is told repeatedly to forget, to pretend that nothing ever happened, to move on with her life, to hush.

There are couple of problems with the novel. The action moves back and forth from 2003, when Gittle and Devora are ten years old, to 2009-10 when a grown-up Gittel must decide whether to forget or to speak out. As a result, the timeline becomes a bit confusing at times. And a few scenes seemed unnecessary to me, as if they were stories that the author wanted to tell about the ultra-Orthodox community, but stories that didn’t really fit into the arc and purpose of the novel. All of the novel reads like a memoir at times, and the author herself says, “It is a story I wrote about life in the ultra-Orthodox Chassidic world–about our joy, about our warmth, and about our deep-seated denial of anything that did not follow tradition, law, or our deeply ingrained delusions.” The anonymous author is obviously writing from experience. And she gets a little preachy toward the end of the book.

To speak of minor problems, however, is to quibble. The book held me spellbound, and I finished it in a day. I love entering a foreign culture and learning to see my own cultural assumptions from a different perspective. I wondered how different this community and fierce self-protectiveness was from the ultra-conservative homeschool community, except that the homeschool community doesn’t have a tradition and a heritage that goes back hundreds of years. I can picture there being a homeschool community in which the pressure to keep silent about accusations of abuse was paralyzing. After all, we want to protect the innocent from false accusations. And we want to preserve the innocence of our children by not even speaking to them of the possibility of abuse. And we don’t want to believe it could possibly happen in our group, in our community. It’s a difficult subject, but one that many children and adults are forced to confront.

This book is being marketed as young adult fiction. I would recommend it for mature young adults and adults. The descriptions are not sexually graphic at all, but the content is by its very nature, mature. The publication date for this novel is today, September 14, 2010.

Eishes Chayil speaks out about child abuse and reveals her real name.

The Space Between Trees by Katie Williams

Sep9

Sixteen year old Evie is a loner; she has no real friends. She delivers newspapers on Sunday mornings in the Hokepe Woods subdivision, and she tries to get Jonah Luks, college-aged animal control agent, to notice her. Then, Jonah discovers a dead body in the woods behind the subdivision, and Evie becomes involved in a drama that’s quickly spinning out of control.

I liked this book, but I wouldn’t recommend it to just anyone. First of all, it’s scary and creepy. The main plot element is the murder of a young girl in the woods by an unknown assailant. That kind of story is going to give some kids nightmares. I kind of expected to have bad dreams myself last night, but I slept like a rock. The violence in the story is not terribly graphic, but the atmosphere of the entire novel is intense and edgy. I felt as if the events in the novel were on the edge of an explosion at any given moment. The blurb on the back of the book calls it “a haunting tale.”

And haunting it is. I am haunted after reading The Space Between the Trees by the thought of girls who have empty lives, some of them like Evie never taking risks and others like Evie’s friend Hadley taking so many risks, and al of them empty and hopeless. Evie is awkward and defensive because she has no reason to value herself or her own life. Hadley is abandoned and self-destructive because she has no reason to value herself or her own life. Both girls are obviously headed for trouble, and so when they make one bad decision after another, it’s stressful and nerve-wracking to continue reading, knowing that they’re headed for a big fall.

Then the books ends, not with a bang but with a whimper. As I read reviews after finishing the book, some people liked the ending, and others didn’t. It’s not a conventional suspense novel ending, but it is realistic. Sometimes people get away with lies and really bad deeds. Or at least as far as the legal authorities are concerned, they escape the consequences of their actions. I believe in divine justice and in forgiveness and grace. So, after the close of the book, either Hadley and Evie will receive justice as they continue down their self-destructive paths, or else grace will find them.

I loved the writing in this book. I’ll give you a few examples to close, but I’m not sure the quotations I’ve chosen will pack as much punch in isolation as they did in context. If you like the quotations and if you can manage the emotional intensity of murder and spiritual emptiness, you may want to give the book a try.

Evie introducing her mother to the reader:
“Mom grew up beautiful. Now some beautiful people let their beauty just lie there on them, like a coat of sweat on their face, but Mom, she manages hers. She orders her beauty into shape like a squad of soldiers or a page of math problems. So when she finally decides to look up at me, her face is all set, her beauty ready to salute.”

Evie hearing mysterious footsteps in the woods at night (Yes, of course, they do that.):
“I can feel the hollow places in my body, the arteries that flutter with the coming of my blood, the chambers of my heart that flood and void. The footsteps and my heart become one plodding rhythm. And it takes me a moment to realize that the footsteps have stopped, because I’m still hearing my own pulse in my ears.”

Title quote and key to Evie’s self-image:
“At school that Monday after, there were rumors that Hadley had tried to burn down the woods, rumors that she had killed a man, killed herself, killed Zabet. But somehow my name was never whispered, as if I were a ghost, an escapee, the space between the trees, the page on which a story is written.”

I should also mention that the cover is a bit gimmicky, but I really liked it. The space between the branches on the cover is actually die-cut to reveal the cover page underneath.

Blood on the River by Elisa Carbone

Sep7

This is a great book about a small boy who will face sickness, starvation, indians, and many other adventures. On his way to help found the colony of Jamestown, young Samuel Collier is apprenticed to Captain John Smith after a fight with another boy in the orphanage. Though at first Samuel sees it as a bad thing, this apprenticeship will turn out to be the very thing that keeps him alive. When Indians are attacking, when the colonists are being abandoned, through starvation and pain, Captain John Smith will help him. Samuel will learn what it is like to be dependent on others, something he never learned in England. He will make friends, lose friends, and even live with his enemies. During his life in the new world he will come face to face will death and sickness, as well as happiness and feasting.

I loved this book because it had so much adventure and excitement, easily balanced by sadness and even death. It’s a great read for anyone with a great imagination and an urge for learning as well. Many of the occurrences in this book actually happened, save some of the details. I read this book by my choice, and I am very glad I did. This is the kind of book you will want to read again and again. Between the action, the great story, and the thrills of the colonists lives, you will be stuck on this book.

KarateKid

Two Novels of Twelfth Night

Sep7

As I have said in another post, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is not my favorite of his comedies, although it has its moments. The sword fight between Sir Andre Aguecheek and an inexperienced Viola disguised as a boy is quite hilarious. However, I always feel sorry for Malvolio, a character who is not really malevolent as much as he is misguided and inadequate. SInce I often feel misguided and inadequate myself, and since I don’t like practical jokes that take advantage of my or others’ weaknesses, Twelfth Night generally leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I’m laughing at Malvolio, and even poor Sir Andrew, in spite of my better instincts.

Nevertheless, this month and last seem to be the appointed time for me to gain a better appreciation of Shakespeare’s play. First I saw a production of Twelfth Night at Winedale in August. Then, I came home to find a copy of The Fool’s Girl by Celia Rees waiting on my TBR shelf. Of course, I had to read it as a follow-up to the play. And in fact, Ms. Rees’s novel is a sort of sequel to Twelfth Night. The main character, Violetta, is the daughter of Count Orsino and the Lady Viola, and as our story opens, Violetta is a refugee from her native country, Illyria. Her city has been conquered and sacked by the Venetians, and Feste, the jester, is Violetta’s only friend and protector as she wanders the streets of Elizabethan London. Violetta and Feste happen to meet Master Shakespeare and ask for his help in reclaiming Violetta’s rightful inheritance and righting old wrongs, and the story continues from there.

In an afterword, Celia Rees says that Twelfth Night is her favorite Shakespearean comedy. “While I was watching, I began to wonder: What happens next? What happens after the end of the play? The play walks a knife’s edge between tragedy and comedy. It is perfectly balanced, but one false move and it could all go horribly wrong.” In Rees’s sequel, it does all go horribly wrong. People go insane and betray one another. Sir Toby and Maria become flawed but sympathetic characters, while the wronged Malvolio becomes perfectly evil and completely unsympathetic. The world of Illyria is turned upside down, and it’s up to Violetta, Feste, and Master Shakespeare to set things right.

I enjoyed Ms. Rees’s sequel even though it did partake of the darkness and the equivocal nature of Shakepeare’s play. Ms. Rees writes, “The Fool’s Girl wasn’t always called that. For a long time it was called Illyria.” The idea of a mystical (and rather dark) place named Illyria captured the imagination of more than one Young Adult novelist this year. In Elizabeth Hand’s brief novel, Illyria, cousins Rogan and Madeline inhabit a mystical world of the mind with a physical location in the attic of Rogan’s home. They also participate in a high school production of Twelfth Night, Madeline starring as Viola and Rogan as the wise fool Feste. Rogan and Madeline are fascinating characters, but the book as a whole was not as successful in making me feel things or think thoughts as either Shakespeare’s play or Celia Rees’s historical fiction. Mostly, Illyria made me uncomfortable, not because Rogan and Madeline are “incestuous” first cousins, but rather because they have a strange and unfathomable relationship that seems based on physical attraction but also attempts to transcend the physical without ever quite being able to do so. It was weird and creepy, and the fact that the two cousins are engaging in an illicit sexual relationship only makes the story more awkward and fraught with tension. Rogan is talented but self-destructive, and Madeline ends up a thwarted and unloved second tier actress. The characters and their actions are realistic, but I failed to understand what their lives meant or what I felt about their choices, except that as I said before, I felt uncomfortable. That feeling may have been the author’s main intent.

Bottom line: I would recommend Rees’s The Fool’s Girl to anyone interested in Twelfth Night and Shakespearean fiction and ideas. The book is somewhat dark and dances along the edges of dismal and black magic, but the ending is bittersweet with an emphasis on the sweet and comedic. Illyria by Elizabeth Hand is a bit more problematic, and I didn’t enjoy it very much although I did try. Maybe Colleen’s thoughts on Illyria at Chasing Ray would be more helpful if you are trying to decide whether to read this one or not. She loved it; I’d give it a pass if I were choosing again.

Diamond Ruby by Joseph Wallace

Sep6

I am not sure what made me pick up this book from the library. I can’t find a review in the Saturday Reviews, and I don’t have the book on my TBR list. I am not a baseball fan. I had never heard of author Joseph Wallace, although he’s published several nonfiction books mostly on baseball history. Diamond Ruby is his first novel.

However, even though I’m not a baseball fan, I do like reading well-written books about baseball, especially fiction (see Fascination #23). So, I either read about this book somewhere and thought it sounded interesting, or I saw it on the New Fiction shelf at the library and thought it was worth a try. Either way I’m glad I found and got to read about Diamond Ruby.

In 1923 seventeen year old Ruby Thomas lives in Brooklyn. She has become responsible for the care and upbringing of her two nieces, ten year old Amanda and six year old Allie, since their mother is dead and their father is AWOL. Fortunately for Ruby and the girls, Ruby does have one freakish ability that she can parlay into cash: Ruby can throw a baseball faster and better than most men. In fact she’s just about as fast and accurate as the great Walter Johnson, maybe better.

As the story continues, Ruby’s life and livelihood become enmeshed in the politics of NYC, the enforcement of Prohibition, and the world of professional baseball. She becomes friends with baseball star Babe Ruth and heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey. She draws the enmity and disdain of the Ku Klux Klan and of baseball’s all-powerful commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis. She finds out that baseball, like many sports, has a dark side, and she finds herself a target for opportunists, gamblers, and gangsters who see her only as “a piece of meat” ripe for exploitation.

Such a good book. Diamond Ruby is a strong, courageous young lady with a talent that to her is physical aberration. Ruby has unusually long arms. In fact, the kids around where she lives growing up call her “Monkey GIrl.” Ruby figures her freakishly long arms are in great part responsible for pitching abilities, and she doesn’t know whether to hide her deformity as much as possible or to be thankful that it enables her to feed herself and her nieces. So part of the book is about self-acceptance and gratitude, themes that resonate with anyone but especially with young adults.

This book would be a perfect crossover book for adults and young adults, and it could appeal to lots of different subgroups of readers: those who read sports stories, or historical fiction, or feminist lit, or crime and suspense. It incorporates history and historical events such as the 1918 influenza epidemic, the opening of Coney Island, the death of President Warren Harding, Prohibition, the Yankees’ win in the 1923 World Series, and a heavyweight boxing match between Jack Dempsey and Luis Firpo. But Wallace never loses sight of the story to over-emphasize either sports or history. Diamond Ruby is a rollicking good story about an engaging character who wins the reader’s sympathies until we’re rooting for her both on and off the baseball diamond.

Happy Birthday: Celebrating Joan Aiken

Sep4

Joan Aiken was born on September 4, 1924 in Sussex, England. She grew up in a country village with a mother who “decided that I’d learn more if she taught me herself than if I went away to school” and an American father, Conrad Aiken, who was a Pulitzer-prize winning poet and author himself. Joan’s parents divorced when she was a child, and her mother married another author, Martin Armstrong. Ms. Aiken wrote books for children and adults, and she received the Guardian Award for Children’s Fiction in 1969 and the Mystery Writers’ of America Poe Award in in 1972.

Joan Aiken’s website, created by her daughter Lizza Aiken, is full of treasures, including this bibliography of the over 100 books that Ms. Aiken wrote. I knew of course about The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, her most famous book. And I knew that there were sequels to Willoughby Chase (eleven of them, actually), although I’ve never read them. I also checked out the collection of stories about the Armitage family called The Serial Garden that was published last year, but I never managed to become interested in the stories although I dipped into the book two or three times.

However, I didn’t know that Ms. Aiken was a Jane-ite before Jane Austen was cool. According to the bibliography, Joan Aiken wrote the following sequels to Austen novels:
Lady Catherine’s Necklace, a sequel to Pride and Prejudice.
The Youngest Miss Ward, a sequel to Mansfield Park.
Eliza’s Daughter, a sequel to Sense and Sensibility.
Jane Fairfax, a sequel to Emma.
Emma Watson, a completion of Austen’s unfinished novel fragment, The Watsons.

I must try one of these Austen fan fiction titles by Joan Aiken, if only to see if Ms. Aiken can pull off a feat that many have tried but few have succeeded in accomplishing. I’ve thumbed through a few of the Jane Austen wannabes out there, and even read a couple. But I’ve not been impressed. However, anyone who can write a book like The Wolves of Willoughby Chase surely has a shot at imitating Austen passably well.

Getting back to the website, you can also watch a movie about Joan Aiken and her books from the Puffin Club. I think this film was made back in the time of old 16mm films because it has that scratchy, old timey look and sound, and Ms. Aiken doesn’t look that old to me. And there are games and ecards and screensavers to download and printable bookmarks. Lots of fun fan stuff.

And here’s an interview with Ms. Aiken (before her death in 2001) at Indiebound in which she says a few of her favorite authors are “George Macdonald, E.E. Nesbit, Francis Hodgson Burnett, John Masefield, T.H. White, J.RR. Tolkien, Laurence Houseman, Walter de la Mare, Rudyard Kipling, Kastner, Peter Dickinson, Philippa Pearce, Susan Cooper, Barbara Willard, E. Weatherall (she wrote The Wide Wide World). I could go on and on.” I could agree with every author on that list. I’m especially pleased to see another fan of Barbara Willard, about whom I’ll write a post someday.

Here at Locus Magazine is another interview in which Ms. Aiken disses C.S. Lewis and Narnia. (“My children loved them, but I always thought they were repulsive books, the ‘Narnia’ books. I can’t stand that awful lion!”) Oh, well, no one is perfect.

For today, Happy Birthday to Joan Aiken!

Cate of the Lost Colony by Lisa Klein

Sep2

I just finished reading this YA historical romance about a fictional lady in the court of Queen Elizabeth I who ends up being banished to Sir Walter Raleigh’s doomed colony on Roanoke Island, and today we read about the Roanoke Colony in our history book (Hakim’s History of the U.S, which I am finding to be quite readable and informative, by the way). I was planning a post in my mind about Cate of the Lost Colony and intending to incorporate some suggested fiction and nonfiction titles concerning the mystery of what happened to the Roanoke settlers.

And, lo and behold, Margo at The Fourth Musketeer has already written my post and done it better than I could have written it anyway. Don’t you just love/hate it when that happens? I agree with just about everything she says. It was a great book. It’s got better romance and better adventure than Twilight. (No vampires were imagined in the writing of this book, an advantage as far as I’m concerned. I think we reached the vampire saturation point in YA literature approximately October 31, 2008.)

The Native American characters and cultural aspects of the story are handled with respect, and the character Manteo, Roanoke’s native leader, is a fully realized character and an attractive man. Sir Walter Ralegh is also a character in the book, and I must say he comes across just about the way I imagine he would have in real life. I have a much better feel for the history of the time period (late 1500’s) after having read this book.

And Margo suggests lots of books I have heard of and others I have not. Did you know that the third book in Margaret Peterson Haddix’s Missing series, Sabotaged, has a major character who is a missing child from the Roanoke Colony? I’ve only read the first book in that series, and I need to get on the stick and read the rest.

I first read about the lost colony of Roanoke when I checked out Virginia Dare, Mystery Girl by Augusta Stevenson (Childhood of Famous Americans) from the library when I was about ten years old. I loved that book although (maybe “because”) it was fiction pretending to be biography. Virginia Dare was the first European baby to be born on North American soil (as far as we know), and no one knows for sure what happened to her and to the rest of the Roanoke colonists. And I think that’s fascinating.

I read an ARC of Cate of the Lost Colony. The actual book is due out on October 12, 2010.

Happy Birthday: Celebrating Elizabeth Borton de Trevino

Sep2

Elizabeth Borton de Trevino, whose historical fiction book I, Juan de Pareja, won the Newbery Medal in 1966, was born on this date in 1904 in Bakersfield, California. She died at the age of 97 on December 2, 2001.

Ms. Borton de Trevino was not Hispanic, but she married a Mexican man and moved with him to his home, Monterrey, Mexico, then to Mexico City, and finally to Cuernavaca. The couple had two sons, and one of the sons, Luis, inspired his mother to write I, Juan de Pareja by telling her the story of the slave of a seventeenth century Spanish artist.

I, Juan de Pareja tells the fictionalized story of Spanish painter Diego Velasquez and his slave and protege, Juanico. Juan posed for one of Velasquez’s most famous paintings, and Velasquez taught Juan to paint even though it was against the law for a slave to learn a profession in seventeenth century Spain. The story itself moves rather slowly and covers a great many years in the life of Velasquez and Juan de Pareja. As the relationship between the two men grows, Velasquez comes to see Juan de Pareja as a friend and an equal instead of a lowly and inferior slave.

Review clips:
Shelley at Book Clutter: “While this was an interesting and somewhat educational children’s novel, I certainly didn’t find it to be a page-turner. I had a hard time imagining a child finding it at all engaging, and thought it was peculiar that the main character is an adult for a very large portion of the book.”

One Librarian’s Book Reviews: “I thought this story was beautiful and terrible. It showed the kinds of extremes slaves felt (at least in Spain) experiencing sometimes the good and sometimes the horrible.”

Sandy at The Newbery Project: “Although I like historical fiction, I’m afraid I was often bored by Juan de Pareja’s narrative, and I frequently wondered just how probable the story was.”

Linda at The Newbery Project: “The writing in this book flowed flawlessly so it was pleasant to read, and it took me only a few days to get through it. That’s fast, as I’m normally a slow reader who gets through one chapter per night if I’m lucky. But I, Juan de Pareja fascinated me and at times I couldn’t put it down despite being tired.”

There you have it–a fine example of mixed reviews. This book might very well be a hard sell for the TV generation, but for that very reason, I considered it a valuable part of our curriculum last year when we were studying Renaissance history. However, I read the book aloud to my children because I knew that they would complain about the slow pace if I required them to read it to themselves. Juanico is a sympathetic character, and the story of how he became a painter and a friend and encourager to the great Velasquez is worth the time and effort, especially for those interested in art and the history of art. Of course, when reading the book it is recommended that you look online to find and view some of the paintings mentioned in the story.

Elizabeth Borton de Trevino wrote three volumes of autobiographical memoir: My Heart Lies South: The Story of my Mexican Marriage, Where the Heart Is, and The Hearthstone of My Heart. I’d like to add at least the first of these to my TBR list. It seems an especially appropriate selection for September, Hispanic Heritage Month.

Elizabeth Borton de Trevino on her family’s reading of Kristin Lavransdattir by Sigrid Undset (good book, by the way):

I got hold of the book first. I sat in a corner with that novel and could not do anything but wash and dress mechnically, eat what was put in my hand, sleep reluctantly, and read, for two weeks. Next, my sister seized the book and she was tended, as I had been, and relieved of every household task and duty until, sighing, she turned the last page. Then my mother said, “All right, girls, take over. It’s my turn.” And she never moved or spoke to a soul until she had finished it. My father did not care. He was rereading, for the tenth enchanted time, the African journals of Frederick Courteney Selous, the great English hunter, and while we were in medieval Norway, he had been far away in darkest Africa, with all the wild forest around him. That is the kind of family we were.

Thanks to Peter Sieruta at Collecting Children’s Books for the quotation.

Suite Scarlett and Scarlett Fever by Maureen Johnson

Aug31

In Suite Scarlett, Scarlett’s family not only name their children for actors and movie characters, but they also own a dilapidated hotel in NYC. However, the hotel’s about to go bust, and Scarlett’s brother, Spencer, can’t get a handle on his acting career. Fluffy, sometimes witty, slightly unbelievable.

The good stuff: snappy dialog, believable and endearing sibling relationships, living in an old hotel in NYC, brother who wants to become an actor, an off-beat production of Hamlet, eccentric Auntie Mame-type fairy godmother character.

The not-as-good stuff: uninteresting, stereotypical love interest, plot drag halfway through, obligatory minor gay references (very minor), a few unbelievable incidents and developments. What kind of hotel functions at all with essentially no staff and continues serving food with no one who can cook on the premises?

Scarlett Fever, the sequel, is more of the same. If you liked the first one, you’ll enjoy the follow-up. Scarlett’s family is still endearing. Mrs. Amberson, the eccentric Mame character, becomes Scarlett’s employer in the first book, and Mrs. A and Scarlett get into more trouble in the second. Spencer’s acting career takes off, but as the villain in a popular detective show, Spencer gets a lot of the wrong kind of attention from fans. Scarlett’s older sister Lola must decide what to do about her rich ex-boyfriend and his snooty family. And Scarlett can’t stop thinking about her summer romance even though he’s unreliable and uncommitted.

If you don’t mind a lot of romance for 15 year old Scarlett, dating and chasing boys, these two novels are good, light chicklit for teens. If your teens would rather pursue more lofty goals, or if parents would rather de-emphasize the teen romance, steer them toward something else. I’d let 15 year old Brown Bear Daughter read these if she wanted, after I warned her that Scarlett was a fictional character not a role model. I want Brown Bear Daughter to hold off on the romantic entanglements for a while, if at all possible.