A Review of Liesl & Po by Lauren Oliver

I've heard a lot of talk about this book lately, so I was eager to read it and see for myself. The author has already written a couple of well-regarded books for teens: Before I Fall and Delirium. Sometimes authors for older readers who switch to writing for younger children have a little trouble with the transition, but Oliver plunges into the MG genre skillfully.

Of course, I am a sucker for great metaphors, and Oliver has a real talent for them. Here's how the book begins:

On the third night after the day her father died, Liesl saw the ghost.

She was lying in bed in the uniform gray darkness of her small attic room when in one corner the shadows seemed to crimp, or flex, and suddenly standing next to her wobbly desk and three-legged chair was a person about her height. It was as though the darkness was a sheet of raw cookie dough, and someone had just taken a cookie cutter and made a child-sized shape out of it.

Liesl sat up, alarmed.

"What are you?" she whispered into the darkness, even though she knew it was a ghost. Normal people do not appear out of darkness, nor seem to be made out of liquid shadow. Besides, she had read about ghosts. She read a lot in her little attic room. There was not much else to do.

The plot feels a bit like Charles Dickens meets Cinderella. And what a terrific cast of characters!

We've got Liesl, whose awful stepmother has locked her in the attic and has no plans whatsoever to let her out. (Augusta is too busy spending Liesl's inheritance.)

Then there's Will, the boy who stands down in the street watching Liesl's window in between running midnight errands for his heartless master, an alchemist.

Another character I like very much is a simple guardsman named Mo who carries a cat.

The sun never shines in Liesl's land, so the story takes place in a great deal of gloom and chill. Steam trains and factories add to the atmospheric mood of the book.

Liesl and Po has the feel of a fable. It's shaped like a folktale or perhaps a theater piece for children, a Christmas pantomime. The characters are deliberate types: the Wicked Stepmother, the Simpleton, the Oppressed Good Daughter, the Evil Alchemist, the Kindly Boy, the Greedy Duchess, the Thief. This is a good thing: the stylized feel of the book really works with the story Oliver is telling. So does the sweetly whimsical tone, shining forth in spite of the gloom and the various villains.

The book's magic, which is carried around in a box and changes hands comically (as in one of Shakespeare's plays about mistaken identity), is defined rather vaguely. It becomes a Symbol, not the tool you have seen in other fantasies.

Of course, let's not forget that this book is in part a meditation on death, loss, and the afterlife. Oliver herself says as much in the Introduction:

I wrote Liesl & Po during a concentrated two-month period at the end of 2009...

At the time, I was dealing with the sudden death of my best friend. The lasting impact of this loss reverberated through the months, and it made my world gray and murky, much like the world Liesl inhabits at the start of the story....

Only in retrospect did I realize that I was writing about myself—that Liesl's journey was my own.

The author goes on to define the book, not as an escape, but as "the opposite of an escape; it is a way back in...."

And so we return to that little ghost, Po, who becomes Liesl's best friend, despite the space (and philosophy) that separates them. Here is a moment when Liesl asks Po for a favor:

"And you must help me," Liesl finished.

Po was unprepared for this. "Me?" it said unhappily. "Why me?"

"Because you are my friend," Liesl said.

"Friend," Po repeated. The word was unfamiliar by this point. Something tugged at the edges of Po's memory, the faintest of faint recollections of a bark of laughter, and the smell of thick wool, and the sting of something wet against its cheek. Snowball fight, Po thought suddenly, without knowing where the words came from: words he had not thought of in ages and ages, in so long that millions of stars had collapsed and been born in that time.

"All right," Po said. It had never occurred to Po that it would ever have a friend again, in all of eternity. "I'll help you."

There are chases and villains and peril and a rich setting in this story. But most of all, there is a wistfulness. Having read Lauren Oliver's introduction (after reading the book, I'm happy to report!), now I know why.

Children will probably like Liesl & Po for the adventure and the appealing characters, but grown-ups might read it and get a bit teary, the way they feel after reading Antoine de Saint Exupéry's The Little Prince.

Note for Worried Parents: Oliver's portrayal of the afterlife may be of concern to religious families. A discussion of your beliefs vs. the book's take on things would be useful.

Also: I requested a copy of this book from Amazon Vine. Liesl & Po will be available in bookstores on October 4.

A Review of Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin

If you watched The Today Show yesterday (Friday, December 4), then you got to see Grace Lin talking about her new book, which was featured on Al Roker's book club for children. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is a different kind of fantasy: a bearer of fairy tales, a tender-hearted fable, and a unique adventure set in ancient China.

A young girl named Minli lives in a small village on Fruitless Mountain, a place where rice will scarcely grow for lack of water. The reason lies in legend—the Jade River lost her dragon children when she resentfully withheld water from the people of the earth and her children decided to make up for her pettiness by ending the famine themselves. "The Story of Fruitless Mountain" is only the first of many tales that are recounted in Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. I've seen the "story within a story" device work poorly in the past, but Lin's stories seamlessly work to support the larger plot, even as they entertain listeners both inside and outside the pages of her book.

Still more impressive, Lin has done this by slightly reworking traditional tales. I've read collections of Chinese fairy tales, and I saw glimpses of those stories in the ones recounted by Lin's storytellers. Paintings coming to life, ghost stories, talking fish, and stories with Confucian lessons cautioning against greed are just a few familiar themes from Chinese folklore that Lin draws on to build Minli's own tale.

Minli's story begins when she spends one of her two copper coins to buy a goldfish. Her mother, who worries constantly about the family's poverty, is angry over the waste, not only of the coin, but of the food that will be needed to feed the fish. Minli bought the fish because the goldfish man told her it would bring her family good luck, but she reluctantly takes the fish to the river that night and lets it go, thinking that her mother is probably right. The goldfish then speaks to her, thanking her for its freedom and counseling her to seek the answers to her questions from the Old Man of the Moon.

Determined to change her family's fortunes, plucky Minli sets out on a quest, following the goldfish's directions to look for the magical old man.

When Minli's parents read her note, they are heartbroken. They try to find their daughter, but eventually go home to wait and hope for her return. Unlike many fantasy adventures, this story shows poignantly how the parents miss their child, worrying about her wellbeing. Minli, for her part, misses her parents and worries about them while she is gone. These moments are not overdone. Instead they are simple and touching.

Lin's language is also simple, but effective. Watch for her metaphors; for example, she says, "Every night the stars filled the sky like snowflakes falling on black stone."

Minli finds a traveling companion along the way, a dragon who cannot fly. (When she encourages him to accompany her to ask the Old Man of the Moon for help, I pictured Dorothy telling the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion to join her on her journey!) Minli must find a way to talk to the king of the City of Bright Moonlight in order to complete her quest. She has further troubles with monkeys and tigers before reaching her goal. She also meets helpful people such as an orphan who owns a buffalo and has befriended a mysterious magical girl, a pair of laughing twin children who defeat great evil by playing on a villain's anger, and, of course, the Old Man of the Moon. An episode involving the gift of a coat is especially lovely.

In keeping with the kindness that weaves through the narrative like a magical red thread, Minli must decide whether to make a great sacrifice for a friend in the book's final pages.

A further strength of Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is the way Lin has quietly tied all of the pieces of her plot together in regards, not only to present events, but to the past—the past of a king, of a green tiger, of a goddess, of a wonderfully happy family, and of Minli's dragon friend.

Clear back at the root of the story is the discontentment of Minli's mother, which quietly echoes the anger and loss of Jade River.

Many of the characters in the book are poetically kind, yet they also seem real and rounded. Lin manages to tell a moral tale without preaching. Her lessons flow as beautifully as a river down a mountain where flowers and fruit do grow, after all.

Like so many books on the shelves of your library or bookstore, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is an adventure and a fantasy, but it is something more besides. In an age when commercialism too often overcomes the simplest and best truths, Grace Lin tells a story which conveys a kind of beauty of the heart.

As if that weren't enough, the author created lovely color-plate illustrations to accompany the tale. Invest in a new treasure for your family—go out and find a copy of this book.

Note: I learned about Where the Mountain Meets the Moon because Grace is a member of the fantasy writers' blog group I belong to, The Enchanted Inkpot.