Sunday Salon: More Fascinations (Quite Random)

First of all, Happy Halloween to all the saints, both those on earth and those who have preceded us into heaven. I believe that Christians can celebrate Halloween in good conscience and while giving glory to God in all we do. Here are some resources to read about this perspective on the celebration of Halloween:
Debunking Halloween Myths at The Flying Inn.
On Halloween by James Jordan.

I’m fascinated by young people who do hard things, like this 23 year old who has started an orphanage in Nepal.

Shakespeare really sounded like . . . a Scotsman?

Donate old cellphones to Hopeline to help women in crisis.

John Grisham’s latest thriller (yes, I admit to taking a guilty pleasure in reading the novels of Grisham) features a Lutheran pastor. I usually eschew popular, best-selling literature, unless I can say I discovered it before it became popular, in a sort of reverse, inside-out snobbery. But I make an exception for Grisham. I am tired of Grisham’s anti-death penalty agenda getting in the way of his story-telling, and from what I can tell by reading the review this latest book harps on that topic. I’ll probably read it anyway.

Jamie Langston Turner, who writes generally wonderful but quiet little stories, has another book or two that I haven’t read: No Dark Valley (reviewed at Hope Is the Word) and maybe a couple of older books: Suncatchers and By the Light of a Thousand Stars. I have read her latest book, Sometimes a Light Surprises, and I reviewed it here, although it wasn’t my favorite of her books.

Finally, the books I’ve read this month (October) have been mostly Cybils nominees and INSPY nominees, with a few exceptions thrown in for variety:

CYBILS MIddle Grade Fiction nominees:
Shooting Kabul by N.H. Senzai. Semicolon review here.
The Red Umbrella by Christina Diaz Gonzalez. Semicolon review here.
The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger. Semicolon review here.
The Fences Between Us by Kirby Larson. Semicolon review here.
I, Emma Freke by Elizabeth Atkinson. Semicolon review here.
Tortilla Sun by Jennifer Cervantes. Semicolon review here.
The Private Thoughts of Amelia E. Rye by Bonnie Shimko. Semicolon review here.
Wishing for Tomorrow by Hilary McKay. Semicolon review here.
A Million Shades of Gray by Cynthia Kadohata. Semicolon review here.
This Means War! by Ellen Wittlinger. Semicolon review here.
The Death-Defying Pepper Roux by Geraldine McCaughrean. Semicolon review here.
The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet by Erin Dionne. Semicolon review here.
My Life as a Book by Janet Tashjian. Semicolon review here.
Grease Town by Ann Towell. Semicolon review here.
Max Cassidy: Escape from Shadow Island by Paul Adam. Semicolon review here.
Rocky Road by Rose Kent.
Crunch by Leslie Connor.
Leaving Gee’s Bend by Irene Latham.
Betti on the High Wire by Lisa Railsback.
Mamba Point by Kurtis Scaletta.

INSPYs Young Adult Fiction nominees:
This Gorgeous Game by Donna Freitas.
Once Was Lost by Sara Zarr.
(I’m not allowed to post a review of these until the judging is over in December.)

Others:
The Cardturner by Louis Sachar. Semicolon review here.
No and Me by Delphine de Vigan. Semicolon review here.
Keep Sweet by Michele Dominguez Greene.
Carney’s House Party by Maud Hart Lovelace. Semicolon thoughts (and music) here.
My Hands Came Away Red by Lisa McKay. Semicolon review here.
8th Grade Superzero by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich. Semicolon review here.

Briefly Noted: Cybils Nominees

Oct27

Max Cassidy: Escape from Shadow Island by Paul Adam. Set in England and in the fictional Central American nation of Santo Domingo, this thriller/detective story features fourteen year old escapologist Max Cassidy. Max is a typical fourteen year old, except that he performs Houdini-like feats of escape and magic and he’s determined to effect his mother’s release from prison where she is being held for the murder of his father. Is Max’s father really dead? Can Max prove that his mother is innocent? Will ma be able to escape from notorious Shadow Island? This one skews older; maybe 12-15 year olds will enjoy it. The book starts off with a murder, and although it’s not very scary, it would make a good introduction to the crime fiction genre. Unfortunately, this book is one of those beginning-of-a-series books, and I can’t tell when the second book will be published.
The Max Cassidy Fact File.

Grease Town by Ann Towell. O Canada! This entry from our neighbors to the north confused me at first. Because of the photo on the cover, I thought the narrator, Titus Sullivan and his brother Lemuel, were black. But it turns out that Titus and Lemuel are white Canadians living at the time of the U.S. Civil War, and when they go to Oil Springs, Ontario to work in the oil fields, Titus meets a black boy named Moses. The two become friends, but not everyone in Oil Springs is pleased about living and working side by side with black people, most of whom are former slaves from the United States. Titus is a talkative young man and a brave one, but when tragedy strikes, it takes Titus’s voice away and threatens to take his courage and his reason, too. This one would pair well with Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis, also about escaped slaves living in Canada. (Semicolon review here)

My Life as a Book by Janet Tashjan. Kind of a Wimpy Kid wannabe. Derek is looking forward to a summer with no school and lots of fun, but his teacher is forcing him to do summer reading! I give the book points for not having Derek predictably and magically turn into a book lover as he struggles to complete his summer reading assignment, and the mystery subplot is interesting, even if the solution is somewhat unsurprising. Reluctant readers who have read all of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series might find this one an acceptable follow-up.

The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet by Erin Dionne. Hamlet Kennedy’s family loves Shakespeare. Her parents teach Shakespeare at the local college, dress up like Elizabethans, live Shakespeare, breathe Shakespeare. Hamlet, despite her name, is not so passionate about Shakespeare. Then, when her little sister Desdemona the seven year old genius, joins Hamlet in middle school, Hamlet realizes that her life is about to become a total tragedy.
I would have expected to love this one since I’m something of a Shakespeare geek myself, but I just liked it. Hamlet’s woes fall fall short of tragedy, but her reaction to the embarrassment of having a family that’s far from average seems typically middle school-ish. Maybe that’s what left me a little cold; I’d prefer a character who’s not afraid to be different.

The Death-Defying Pepper Roux by Geraldine McCaughrean

Oct27

One of the oddest children’s books I’ve ever read. The story isn’t a fantasy, but it is fantastical. Pepper Roux, age fourteen, isn’t exactly a hero or an anti-hero, but some Gilbert and Sullivan-esque admixture of Don Quixote, The Great Imposter, and Tom Jones.

On the morning of his fourteenth birthday, Pepper had been awake for fully two minutes before realizing it was the day he must die. His heart cannoned like a billiard ball off some soft green wall of his innards This had to be the day everyone had been waiting for–and he was terrified he would disappoint them, make a poor showing, let people down.
************
It was all Aunt Mireille’s fault. Unmarried Aunt Mireille lodged with her married sister. So when Madame Roux gave birth to a lovely little boy, Aunt Mireille was first to be introduced. Leaning over the cot, she sucked on her big yellow teeth and said, with a tremor in her voice, “To think he’ll be dead by fourteen, le pauvre. . . Saint Constance told me so in a dream last night.”

When Pepper runs away and evades his predicted demise, he never questions Auntie Mireille’s prophecy, just assumes that he’s managed to outrun and trick Death for a while. Pepper “dies” many times and resurrects himself in a a series of new identities, everything from meat cutter to telegraph boy to horse tamer (not to mention ship’s captain and newspaper reporter). And still Aunt Mireille and Saint Constance hover over his lives like Nemesis, and Pepper involves himself in more and more misadventures until his time finally runs out in the belfry of the Constance Tower.

The Death-Defying Pepper Roux is a picaresque novel of an over-protected, innocent, yet fear-filled boy who somehow manages to navigate the world and defy death and despair. It’s strange enough, even bizarre, that I don’t what children will make of it. Will they be delighted by Pepper’s outlandish death-defying adventures or just confused? Ms. McCaughrean does bring all the threads of the story together at the end in a masterful way, tying up the loose threads, and making some sense of the seemingly unconnected plot lines in a satisfying way.

But it’s still an eccentric, weird, oddball, wacky, offbeat story. If you’re up for the peculiar and the picaresque, you may enjoy the ride. (Yes, I must credit my trusty thesaurus for the adjectives in that penultimate sentence. Thank goodness for thesauruses.)

The Death-Defying Pepper Roux has been nominated for the 2010 Cybils Awards in the Middle Grade Fiction category.

This Means War! by Ellen Wittlinger

Oct26

It’s 1962 again, just as in Deborah Wiles’ Countdown (Semicolon review here), and while JFK and Khrushchev play chicken in the Cuban Missle Crisis, Juliet Klostermeyer and her friends are competing with the boys in a series of “challenges” to see who’s best, the boys or the girls. Starting with a simple foot race, the challenges escalate until it’s obvious that somebody’s bound to get hurt. Juliet just wants the wars to be over, both of them, but her friend Patsy is determined that the girls will win, no matter what it takes.

As in Countdown, This Means War! was a book filled with duck and cover drills, bomb shelters, and people living in fear. And again, I thought the fear factor was overdone. Maybe we were just too dumb to be afraid in West Texas where I grew up. I remember worrying about tornados, about fires, about drug-crazed hippies like Charles Manson, but not about atomic bombs.

What I liked about This Means War! was the mirror effect of having the children involved in their own escalating war while the Communists and the U.S. were busy daring one another be the first to back down in a nuclear confrontation. The children’s war does get out of hand, and it’s obvious that the lesson that they learn about how easily a game can turn dangerous is the same lesson that countries need to learn about their own disputes. However, the lesson is never stated outright, and the author trusts her readers to get it by themselves. A wise decision.

I liked this book just as much as I did Countdown, and if I were to teach this era in history in a middle grade classroom, I’d be tempted to use both books. Let half the class read one and half the class read the other, and then have a discussion of the two books and what the students learned from each one. The Red Umbrella would be another good book to include in a unit on this time period. Even though it takes place a bit before 1962, and even though it’s more appropriate for a little bit older audience, The Red Umbrella does look at Castro’s Cuba from a Cuban (American) point of view.

So, what other books, fiction or nonfiction, would you include in a unit on the 1960’s for middle grade children?

A Million Shades of Gray by Cynthia Kadohata

Oct25

It’s 1975, and Y’Tin Eban, a thirteen year old Rhade boy living in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam, is the youngest elephant keeper ever in his village. He plans someday to open the first elephant-training school in Vietnam. He has promised his elephant, Lady, that he will care for her all her life and mash up bananas for her when she’s old and has lost her teeth. Y’Tin has lots of ideas, lots of plans.

But when the North Vietnamese soldiers come to Y’Tin’s village, everything changes. The villagers run to the jungle. Some don’t make it. The North Vietnamese soldiers capture Y’Tin and some others; they burn the long houses in the village. Lady and the other two elephants that belong to Y’Tin’s village go off into the jungle, too. Everything is chaotic, and perhaps as the village shaman said, the story of the Rhade people is coming to an end. At least it’s obvious that the Americans who left in 1973 will not be coming back to keep their promises to protect their allies, the Rhade.

The story of Y’Tin reminded me of Mitali Perkins’s Bamboo People, also published in 2010. Bamboo People takes place in Burma, not Vietnam, and its protagonist, Tu Reh, is member of the Karen tribe who is living in a Thai refugee camp because of the government vendetta against his people. However, both books take place in Southeast Asia, and in both stories boys must confront the realities of war and death and enemy soldiers who are determined to destroy their families and friends. Both Tu Reh and Y’Tin must decide whether to harbor bitterness and hatred or to try to forgive. Each boy must also determine what his place will be in this war that is his world, unchosen but also unavoidable.

I actually liked Bamboo People better; it seemed that the thoughts and decisions of Tu Reh and his friend/enemy Chiko were a little less foreign to me. Y’Tin’s elephant-love is way beyond my experience, and his worries about whether the spirits have cursed his village or not are strange and hard to identify with. Still, both books give insight into the difficult decisions associated with the ongoing conflicts in Southeast Asia, and both books vividly portray what it can be like for a boy to grow up and become a man in a war zone.

I would place A Million Shades of Gray in the Young Adult fiction section because of the stark and unnerving violence (massacre) that is a necessary part of the story, but the book has been nominated for a 2010 Cybils Award in the Middle Grade Fiction category.

Wishing for Tomorrow by Hilary McKay

Oct24

Ah, Ms. McKay! How many ways do I love thee and thy books?

I love the Cassons: Cadmium, Saffron, Indigo, and Permanent Rose and their strange but lovable parents Bill and Eve. And now you’ve given me a new/old set of characters to love: the young ladies left behind at Miss Minchin’s Select Seminary for Young Ladies. Left behind? Yes, back when Frances Hodgson Burnett first wrote Sara Crew, or The Little Princess, at the end of the book Sara took her friend Becky, the scullery maid with her when she went on to fame and fortune, but she left several other young ladies, her friends, under Miss Minchin’s dubious care. Hilary Mckay in Wishing for Tomorrow gives readers the story of plain, plodding Ermengarde, mischief-making Lottie, scholarly Lavinia, sister Amelia, and poor Miss Minchin herself.

Poor Miss Minchin? Yes, Hilary McKay is such a capable author that she manages to make us even feel some sympathy for Miss Minchin, the erstwhile villain of the piece. You see, Miss Minchin was a misunderstood Victorian girl who really wanted to learn and go to university as her brothers did, but her ambitions were thwarted by Victorian standards for female behavior and education. So she became the Miss Maria Minchin who made Sara Crewe into a maid and practically starved her when Miss Minchin realized that Sara had no money.

Well, I almost felt sorry for Miss Minchin. After all, Maria Minchin loves Shakespeare! How could she be all bad? And Miss Amelai Minchin just wants to marry the curate. And Ermengarde St. John just wants Sara to come back and be her best friend. And Lavinia just wants to learn, well, everything. And lovely Jessie just wants to do girl stuff like shopping for dresses and curling her hair and making eyes at the boy next door. And Lottie just wants to have fun and have someone else do her sums for her.

Oh, my, I learn from her website that Ms. McKay has other series of books that I’ve never even seen! Has anyone read any books by Hilary McKay besides the Casson family series? Are her other books as good as these? Ooooh, there’s also a new (and final) Casson family book due out next year called Caddy’s World. Thank you, thank you, Hilary McKay. (What’s this? It may not be published in the U.S.? Not good.)

Wishing for Tomorrow lives up to the McKay/Burnett brand name. If you’re a fan of Sara Crewe reading this sequel is a must. If you’ve never read A Little Princess, you should do so immediately so that you can enjoy Wishing for Tomorrow to the fullest.

Wishing for Tomorrow has been nominated for the 2010 Cybils Awards in the Middle Grade Fiction category.

The Private Thoughts of Ameila E. Rye by Bonnie Shimko

Oct21

If I don’t much like spending time with the characters in a novel, especially the narrator, it’s hard to summon up enough interest in the plot and the writing to finish the book. Ms. Amelia warns her readers at the beginning of her “personal memoir” that the book is private and that she’s not a goody two-shoes, but rather a liar and a user of bad language. So enter at your own risk.

Actually, the lying and the cursing were mild and not nearly as off-putting as the title of the first chapter: “My mother tried to kill me before I was born. Even then I disappointed her.” The author proceeds to spend the first nine tenths of the book making us hate Amelia’s mother who is racist, hypocritical, cruel, neglectful, and cold-hearted. Then at the very end we’re supposed to have a change of heart, along with Amelia, and understand that Mrs. Rye “really did love [Amelia]. She just didn’t know how to show it.”

Sorry, I’m not buying. Amelia isn’t the most lovable child I’ve ever met between the pages of a book, but at least I could make excuses for her. Her father deserted her, and her mother “took a flying leap out the window” when she found out she was pregnant with Amelia. So it’s a wonder Amelia turned out as well as she did.

The chapters in this book are somewhat episodic. The first gives some family history, and the others tell stories of how Amelia’s mother mistreats her daughter or how Amelia makes a friend or how Amelia’s jailbird brother returns home. If there’s an overarching theme it comes in the form of a platitude given to Amelia by her grandfather (before he has a stroke that makes him unable to communicate): “All a person needs in life is one true friend.”

True enough. However, the nice people in this book are not very interesting, and the mean people are just too mean for me to want to spend time understanding them. If a child had good parents and read this book, it might make him thankful for what he’s got. If a child had bad or absent parents and read this book, it might make her want to burn the book for suggesting that a mother as cruel as Amelia’s had redeeming features–even if she does.

Not my cup of tea.

The Private Thoughts of Amelia E. Rye has been nominated for the 2010 Cybils Awards in the Middle Grade Fiction category.

8th Grade Super Zero by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich

Oct18

Wow! Talk about Christian faith-driven, faith-drenched young adult fiction, this book is full of God-talk and Biblical references and church and kids trying to work out their beliefs and suit their actions to those beliefs. And it’s published by Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic. Go Scholastic!

Faith and Christianity and church shouldn’t be the last taboo subjects in young adult literature. More than half of all Americans, including teenagers, are members of a religious body, mostly Christian churches of some kind, and about forty percent of all Americans say they attend religious services regularly. Why should this fact not be regularly portrayed and discussed in young adult fiction and nonfiction? 8th Grade Super Zero, with its African-American protagonist who goes to church and struggles with the application of his faith to daily life, should not be the exception to the rule, but it is. I can name the YA books from mainstream publishers that I’ve read this year that discuss or at least mention faith, and especially those that portray such faith in God sympathetically:

Saving Maddie by Varian Johnson.
Somebody to Listen To by Suzanne Supplee. Semicolon review here.
Finding My Place by Traci L. Jones. Semicolon review here.
Hush by Eishes Chayill. Semicolon review here.
Bamboo People by Mitali Perkins. Semicolon review here.
The Long Way Home by Andrew Klavan. Semicolon review here
The Last Summer of the Death Warriors by Francisco X. Stork. Semicolon review here.
This Gorgeous Game by Donna Freitas.

That’s about a third of the YA novels I’ve read this year, and as a percentage of YA novels that discuss faith respectfully it’s probably way high since I tend to seek out and review these types of novels. So, 8th Grade Super Zero is a welcome addition to the corpus of faith-driven literature for young adults published by mainstream publishers.

Reggie McKnight sees himself as a loser. His nickname is Pukey because he embarrassed himself on the first day of eighth grade by, well, puking on stage in front of the entire student body at Clarke Junior School. Clarke Junior is a “smart kids’ school that supposed to have high standards.” As the year progresses, Reggie’s youth group at church becomes involved in ministry at a homeless shelter in their neighborhood, and Reggie finds himself “accidentally” running for class president. The story is about getting past the cliches of community service and Christian living to find a way to really help the homeless people in the shelter and really lead his Reggie’s peers to make a difference in the community and in the way they treat each other at school.

In the Acknowledgements section at the back of the book, Ms. Rhuday-Perkovich names several people who helped her write this book. Among others, she thanks “my dear friend, Pauls, whose boundless love and generosity of spirit is everlasting, and Madeleine for the perfect writing advice.” That would be Paula Danziger and Madeleine L’Engle, two writers with whom Ms. Rhuday-Perkovich “studied writing as an adult.” I am green with envy, and I’m not even a (novel) writer, so what would I have studied if I had had a chance to meet Madeleine L’Engle before she died? Anyway, now I know one reason Reggie’s faith in God is treated so respectfully and is so thoroughly explored.

Not that Reggie has it all figured out. In fact, he’s not sure why God allows suffering and war and homelessness, and he’s not sure how to trust a God who does allow those things to happen. And he says he has “questions all the time.” Reggie’s youth group leader, Dave encourages him to continue to ask questions and act on the things he does understand and do what he can to help make the world better in small ways. Good advice for all of us, and it doesn’t come across in the book as preachy or patronizing. In fact, the entire book is full of faith lessons that don’t read like lessons. The story just reads like life.

And that’s a pretty good compliment to a well written story.

8th Grade Super Zero has been nominated for the 2010 Cybils Awards in the Young Adult Fiction category.

Soundtrack for Carney’s House Party by Maud Hart Lovelace

Oct18

I’ve just been reading the newly published edition of Maud Hart Lovlace’s Deep Valley, Minnesota novel, Carney’s House Party in which a group of college girlfriends, old and new, come together in the midwestern epitome of style and fashion for a house party, a month long sleepover with lots of picnics and teas and parties and dances and sight-seeing and good wholesome fun. Of course there’s romance, and lots of singing.

The house party sing and dance to this lovely tribute to the “flying machine.”

And these are two more songs that the orchestra plays at the “dance party” that the Crowd enjoys.

Sam, one of Carney’s two love interests, plays this song on his saxophone.

More information on the Music of Deep Valley can be found in this presentation put together by Barbara Carter, co-president of the Maud Hart Lovelace Society.

Besides the music, the other things I noticed while reading this book:

Carney is appalled and embarrassed that a boy that likes her dares to kiss her BEFORE they have an understanding or an engagement:

When they reached an elm tree so large and thickly leaved that its shadows defeated even Japanese lanterns, he stopped and kissed her.
Carney broke away from him. She was really angry now. It was possible to forgive what had happened the night before . . . they had both been wrought up. But this was different. It was inexcusable.

Wow! We’ve come a long way, baby, since 1912, and not in the right direction. Nowadays if the guy doesn’t make a pass at a girl, she might have a suspicion that he’s gay, or at last uninterested.

Carney’s House Party ends with Carney engaged to be married to the love of her life, but also returning to Vassar to finish her college degree before getting married. Back then, it seemed as if women definitely could “have it all.” And why not? Education, career (?), family, marriage. Just because it’s difficult to juggle everything doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying.

I am so fond of these new editions of Maud Hart Lovelace’s Deep Valley books that I’m planning to save them to give to a special daughter as Christmas presents. I may even buy some more copies so that I can give each of my lovely daughters their own set. (It’s OK. I don’t think they read the blog very thoroughly, if at all.)

Sunday Salon: Miscellaneous Fascinations

Oct17

Thanks to Travis at 100 Scope Notes I now have the first entry on my Christmas wishlist, the T-shirt with this picture on the front from Unshelved:

National Book Award Finalists in the Young People’s Literature category are:

Paolo Bacigalupi, Ship Breaker
Kathryn Erskine, Mockingbird
Laura McNeal, Dark Water
Walter Dean Myers, Lockdown
Rita Williams-Garcia, One Crazy Summer

I’ve not read any of these, but two of them, Mockingbird and One Crazy Summer, are nominated in the Middle Grade Fiction category for the Cybils, so I’ll be reading them soon. I’ll let you know what I think. All the nominees for the National Book Awards are here. I’ve read exactly one book on any of the finalist lists, So Much For That by Lionel Shriver, so I can’t say much about what I would choose as a winner in any of the categories. The winners will be announced on November 17th.

Amy needs prayer for the orphanage in Zambia that she and her husband run.

Betsy-Bee: “Pink spines and pink covers always attract me.” (They tend to repel me. I’m anti-pink.)

Drama Daughter is studying theater at the local junior college these days. I have reservations about her being able to reconcile her commitment to Christ with the demands of a career in theater, but if anyone can do it, she’s the one. Determined is that girl. Anyway, here’s an article about actress Patricia Heaton who faces the same tension.