Top Five, or Seven, or Three…

Top ten? Such a cliché. Here are lists of some of my favorite books in various genres. I’m not going to list big-name classics, though of course many of those books are high on my overall lists. For example, Charlotte’s Web is wonderful, but you all know that one, so I’ll give you slightly less famous fare or forgotten classics that are dear to my heart. They’re books you may have missed, but just might like very much. Because in between gardening and walking around with your umbrella in the almost-April rain, you know you're looking for a good book!

FANTASY

The Bronze King and two sequels by Suzy McKee Charnas

Crown Duel by Sherwood Smith (was Crown Duel/Court Duel)

Gom on Windy Mountain and three sequels by Grace Chetwin

The Nine Lives of Christopher Chant by Diana Wynne Jones

Grimbold’s Other World by Nicholas Stuart Gray

The Return of the Twelves by Pauline Clarke

The Search for Delicious by Natalie Babbitt

The Serial Garden by Joan Aiken

The Silver Curlew by Eleanor Farjeon

Taash and the Jesters by Ellen Kindt McKenzie

The Wicked Enchantment by Margot Benary-Isbert

SCIENCE FICTION

The Bromeliad Trilogy and the Johnny Maxwell Trilogy by Terry Pratchett

Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert A. Heinlein

The Dragonback series by Timothy Zahn (Dragon and Thief, etc., especially for preteen boys)

Fledgling and sequels by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (see also the Liaden Universe series for adults)

The Silver Crown by Robert C. O’Brien

Starswarm by Jerry Pournelle

MYSTERY & ADVENTURE

Alabama Moon by Watt Key

Down the Rabbit Hole and sequels by Peter Abrahams (see also his teen mystery/thriller, Reality Check)

The Enola Holmes series by Nancy Springer

Minerva Clark Gets a Clue and two sequels by Karen Karbo

CONTEMPORARY & HISTORICAL FICTION

Casson Family books by Hilary McKay

The Flight of the Doves by Walter Macken

The Lark and the Laurel by Barbara Willard

No More Dead Dogs by Gordon Korman

Snow Treasure by Marie McSwigan

They Loved to Laugh by Kathryn Worth (an old-fashioned coming-of-age story with Quakers)

Thursday’s Children by Rumer Godden

PICTURE BOOKS

Beware of Boys by Tony Blundell

Dogger by Shirley Hughes

Elsie Piddock Skips in Her Sleep by Eleanor Farjeon, illustrated by Charlotte Voake

Julius the Baby of the World by Kevin Henkes

Little Rabbit Foo Foo, retold by Michael Rosen, illustrated by Arthur Robins

Not This Bear! by Bernice Myers

Suddenly! by Colin McNaughton

The Talking Eggs, retold by Robert D. San Souci, illustrated by Jerry Pinckney

Thea’s Tree by Alison Jackson, illustrated by Janet Pedersen

Trashy Town by Andrea Zimmerman and David Clemesha, illustrated by Dan Yaccarino (best for 3- and 4-year-old boys)

What! Cried Granny: An Almost Bedtime Story by Kate Lum, illustrated by Adrian Johnson

FOLKTALES & FAIRY TALES

“The Boy Who Read Aloud” by Joan Aiken, from Classic Fairy Tales to Read Aloud, ed. Naomi Lewis

Duffy and the Devil by Harve and Margot Zemach

Good Griselle by Jane Yolen, illustrated by David Christiana

The Language of Birds, retold by Rafe Martin, illustrated by Susan Gaber

Larky Mavis by Brock Cole

The Magic Fish-bone by Charles Dickens, illustrated by Robert Florczak

The Magic Nesting Doll by Jacqueline K. Ogburn, illustrated by Laurel Long

Mr. Semolina-Semolus, retold by Anthony L. Manna and Christodoula Mitakidou, illustrated by Giselle Potter

Tatterhood and Other Tales, ed. Ethel Johnston Phelps

POETRY

All the Small Things and Fourteen More by Valerie Worth, illustrated by Natalie Babbitt

Here’s a Little Poem: A Very First Book of Poetry, ed. Jane Yolen and Andrew Fusek Peters, illustrated by Polly Dunbar

 

Knock at a Star: A Child’s Introduction to Poetry by X.J. Kennedy and Dorothy Kennedy

Sing a Song of Popcorn: Every Child’s Book of Poems, ed. Beatrice Schenk de Regniers et al., illustrated by nine Caldecott Medal artists

A Spider Bought a Bicycle and Other Poems for Young Children, ed. Michael Rosen, illustrated by Inga Moore

Swing around the Sun and Words with Wrinkled Knees by Barbara Juster Esbensen

Tail Feathers from Mother Goose: The Opie Rhyme Book (Little, Brown), many different illustrators

Talking Like the Rain: A Read-to-Me Book of Poems, ed. X.J. Kennedy and Dorothy Kennedy, illustrated by Jane Dyer

Under the Moon and Over the Sea: A Collection of Caribbean Poems, ed. John Agard and Grace Nichols

PLUS A FEW YA FAVORITES

Changeover and Tricksters by Margaret Mahy

Dairy Queen and two sequels by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

Dragon's Bait and Magic Can Be Murder by Vivian Vande Velde

Hold Me Closer, Necromancer and sequel by Lish McBride

The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner (Book 3 in a series that must be read in order, starting with The Thief)

Northlander and The King Commands by Meg Burden

Rules of the Road by Joan Bauer

Soul Enchilada by David McInnis Gill

Thief's Covenant and False Covenant by Ari Marmell

Withering Tights by Louise Rennison

So Happy Spring! (And don't say you can't find anything to read.)

A Review of The Seven Tales of Trinket by Shelley Moore Thomas

I already liked Shelley Moore Thomas’s books, the Good Knight series, which are picture books and easy readers about the interplay between a very patient, kindly knight and three difficult yet sweet little orphaned dragons. So of course I was excited to read her middle grade fantasy, The Seven Tales of Trinket.

This book is deliberately episodic and self-reflective, which is a little tricky to pull off. Fortunately, Thomas pulls it off. We follow a girl named Trinket and her friend Thomas the Pig Boy as they travel to find out what happened to Trinket’s father, a handsome bard who has been missing for years. Along the way, Trinket also collects stories, turning each one into a song. The stories are Trinket’s and Thomas’s adventures, but they later become tales that Trinket tells in other villages.

To give you an idea about their adventures, I’ll just list the chapter titles, which are numbered tales: “The Gypsy and the Seer,” “The Harp of Bone and Hair,” “The Wee Banshee of Crossmaglin,” “The Faerie Queen and the Gold Coin,” “A Pig Boy, a Ghost, and a Pooka,” “The Old Burned Man and the Hound,” and “The Storyteller and the Truth.” As an author’s note explains, Thomas’s tales are based primarily on Celtic folklore. But the author adds her own twists in the telling, created dimensional characters as she goes.

The language is clean and clear, with occasional touches of poetry to burnish the narrative. For example, Thomas the Pig Boy is always hungry. He explains, “Never was a lad born with as fierce a beast in his belly as myself.” And here's my favorite paragraph:

There were bones on the shore. Bones of large sea beast called whales. Whiter than the clouds, they rose from the rocks like the ghosts of old tree branches. I could hear Thomas gasp at the sight of them.

The tales are touched with humor, magic and intrigue. “As if she read my mind, the dark-eyed girl spoke. ‘You wonder about me, as well you should.’ I paused, my bread midway to my bowl of broth. ‘I am a liar,’ she said.”

Fragments of some of the stories show up in later stories as certain characters reappear for different reasons. The overall arc is Trinket’s search for her father, but as she moves onward, she becomes something in her own right, a singer and storyteller. In fact, a young bard. She also handles herself pretty well and learns along the way, though the book is far from didactic. Thomas the Pig Boy makes a sturdy, if hungry, companion. He and Trinket take turns saving each other when things go wrong. (These are pre-teens, however, and there isn’t the slightest hint of romance between them, just loyalty and friendship.)

The author did something a little different with the ending, and I’m not sure quite how well it flows. However, readers will regain their footing by the last page and will be very glad they’ve read Trinket’s seven tales. Shelley Moore Thomas’s Good Knight books are charming, and so is The Seven Tales of Trinket—a well-paced, magical middle grade read.

Note: You can watch the book trailer for The Seven Tales of Trinket here.

Fun with Fairy Tales

The fairy tale may be struggling in the picture book realm, but it's making astonishing inroads elsewhere. The July 22 Entertainment Weekly provides a Comic-Con-themed preview of upcoming movies and TV shows, but what really caught my eye were the fairy tale offerings. As Jeff Jensen points out, "Perhaps the biggest trend (also presaged by Thor) is a shift toward mythic and fairy tale fantasy. Besides The Hobbit, 2012 will bring Clash of the Titans 2, Bryan Singer's Jack the Giant Killer, two Snow White movies, and the deliciously titled Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters."

In related news, we have two fairy tale-themed TV shows premiering this fall. Grimm appears to be Supernatural meets police procedural with imported fairy tale baddies, while Once Upon a Time has more of an earnest character focus in the ultra-fictional town of Storybrooke. ("How did Jiminy Cricket become a cricket? How did Grumpy become grumpy?" executive producer Adam Horowitz inquires pensively.)

And perhaps earlier this year you saw Red Riding Hood, the movie with Amanda Seyfried as the rather grown-up heroine facing werewolves and the uber-religious hunters who track them down.

There are actually three Snow White movies in the works: The Brothers Grim: Snow White with Julia Roberts as the Evil Queen; Snow White and the Huntsman, the first in a planned trilogy in which Snow White (Kristin Stewart) and the huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) join forces with the seven dwarves (Ian McShane, Eddie Izzard, etc.) to lead a revolution against the queen (Charlize Theron); and Snow and the Seven, which finds our girl in China in the 1800s, assisted by seven martial arts-type Shaolin monks (script by Michael Chabon; directed by Yuen Wo Ping, the fight choreographer for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Matrix).

Yeah.

So what do we notice about these movies? That they're nearly all action films, with our fairy tale heroes and heroines highly inclined to kick butt. (Then there's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Maybe he can team up with Hansel and Gretel. Unless the kids take a detour to Salem, Massachusetts, that is.)

Of course, last year's Tangled is another example of the genre, although everyone knows the girl's hair was, um, inspired by Shannon Hale and Nathan Hale's graphic novel, Rapunzel's Revenge.

All of this is a little odd, but not exactly unsatisfying. And it leads us to a new question: What's next? Here are a few of my predictions for upcoming movie projects:

Sleeping Beauty: Narcoleptic Noir Detective—She walks the dark streets in a fedora, and it's only her sidekick the magically animated rosebush that keeps her from getting her throat slit when she falls asleep in the middle of a chase or a bar fight.

Rumpelstiltskin, Serial Killer—He lures them in with fool's gold and then chokes them with spinning wheel thread or stabs them with a spindle or... Let's just say this one's ripped straight from the headlines.

Cinderella's Heist—She's gathered her old friends the birds and mice, and they have a delightfully devious plan. Featuring lots of extra-mini Mini Coopers and a bank with those evil stepsisters on the Board of Directors.

Beauty and the Beast: Vengeance—When the Beast is killed by marauding CEO's, Beauty hitches up her satin skirts and sets out on a mission of revenge. Along the way, she trains with the greatest swordsman of all time, the greatest archer of all time, and the greatest poison-maker of all time.

Frog Legs—The no-longer-enchanted prince may look thin and a little greenish, but he's a champion kick boxer. He teaches the no-longer-spoiled princess everything he knows, and together they defeat the evil regent who has taken over the kingdom.

Nothing Gold Can Stay—A tragic tale of juvenile delinquency and drug abuse, to which three bears are horrified spectators. (Okay, so no martial arts in this one.)

OR: Goldie and the Bears—Yep, it's the country band from the deep woods. But will fame spoil Goldie? Will she be lured by a greasy yet hunky agent into starting a solo act? Will Baby Bear's voice change? Will they win a Grammy before it all goes sour? Will they tenderly reunite and go back to the unspoiled safety of the woods?

Three Little Pigs: Twirling Trotters—After a series of challenges and a whole lot of bullying at a performing arts school, the Big Bad Wolf ends up in a dance-off with the talented dancing pigs. He loses.

The Gruff Brothers—They are known only as The Family, but they don't leave horses' heads in your bed; they leave trolls' heads. Beware... the Gruffness.

Little Red Bakes Bread—A lighthearted story of a gal who rediscovers herself in the face of the selfishness that surrounds her. Feminist comedy gets a remake as Red gets her wheat on.

Any more ideas? Pop them in the comments and I'll list them below!

Update, 8-25-11: Check out this interview with literature professor emeritus and fairy tale expert Jack Zipe on the subject of all those upcoming fairy tale-based movies.