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 Oh No! Not Again! by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Dan Santat

She’s back! And by she I mean the young girl who’s a scientist—okay, a mad scientist—in Oh No! Or How My Science Project Destroyed the World. This time she’s worrying about her history grade. There’s this one question about how the prehistoric cave art in France got there. It’s the only question she missed on her A-earning history test. And, being a perfectionist, she is determined to change that. “Luckily, there’s a simple solution.”

You know right there the solution isn't going to be simple! YMS (for Young Mad Scientist, though she’s not actually named in the book) goes home and builds a time machine. Her plan? “Change history so I am right.” (Which just may be the best phrase in the whole book.)

If you’ve read any Greek myths, epic poems, and plays, you’ll know that such an attitude is called hubris and YMS is in for it. Sure enough, after she gets to prehistoric France, she tries to get the cavemen to paint the walls, and they won’t. Nothing daunted, YMS starts painting the walls herself—with very funny results. (She brought spray paint and everything.)

But that’s nothing compared to what’s happening behind her back as the two cavemen go joy riding in her time machine. The ending of the book is not necessarily happy, but it’s definitely funny.

I think the jokes here may be a bit subtle for kids, but they should get a kick out of the basic plot and those cavemen. Their parents may appreciate the more complex implications. Once again, Mac Barnett and Dan Santat are a gleefully giddy team. I hope there’s a Book 3! Let’s also thank these two for making an elementary school girl a science whiz. People feeling dour about the state of the U.S. on the  current global scene should think about encouraging kids, especially girls, to go all out with math and science.

Teachers and parents might also want to have a discussion about what would happen if you really went back in time—the idea that even small changes you made could have far-reaching effects, as in Ray Bradbury’s famous short story, “A Sound of Thunder,” which spawned the term “the butterfly effect.” You could also talk about the drawbacks to perfectionism.

As in the first book, Dan Santat's exuberant illustrations suit an exuberant story. Santat's style gives a nod to animation while calling out plot points and oddball extra details in its own brash voice. Some of the artwork seems a little rougher around the edges than in Book 1, but I get the feeling that's a deliberate choice to match the rougher topic of prehistoric men.

By the way, be sure to check out the final spread with its looping time travel map, the endpapers with their time machine blueprints, and the poster on the other side of the book jacket. Even the bios on the back flap are funny. And check out the book trailer of Oh No! Not Again! (Or How I Built a Time Machine to Save History) (Or at Least My History Grade).

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Mac Barnett and Dan Santat, along with Adam Rex, are the new young guns of picture books, especially when it comes to fresh and funny. Keep an eye out for their books—they may just destroy the world, but you’ll be laughing all the way.

A Review of Deadly Pink by Vivian Vande Velde

In this slightly futuristic sci-fi/fantasy mix, Grace has a real superstar of an older sister. Emily is a genius, also pretty and popular. So Grace is startled to learn that Emily, who works for the Rasmussem video game company, has apparently disappeared into one of the artificial reality games and won't come out. Or can't come out—really, it's not clear exactly what went wrong. But Grace is drafted to go into the game and bring her sister back.

To her surprise, the game is not very cooperative. Neither, when she does find her, is her sister. Grace must deal with increasingly difficult scenarios and hostile characters, of which Emily is one of the most hostile. Grace begins to suspect that the game is not the problem: Emily is. But why?

On the one hand, we have Grace trying to figure out how to play a virtual reality video game in which the rules have been changed. On the other hand—well, actually, the same thing applies to her sister. Emily is not acting like herself.

The game itself starts out as a sweetsy pink world of charming Venetian-style gondoliers and pastel fairies, but it turns into a place that would just as soon burn players to a crisp using dragons. Eventually Grace and Emily must team up to escape being killed in a game that winds up being a fantasy world with its own denizens and desires. A place where they might just stay dead.

Deadly Pink has a definite theme: Don't cheat. Grace finds out that she must make up for the ways she has tried to cheat at the video game she's been trapped in, and Emily has her own troubles to deal with. I'm not crazy about "the moral of the story is" when I'd rather just read for character and plot, but the story itself has a good premise, and I liked watching how Grace deals with her sister, let alone angry sprites.

"Two more," she said. Either she'd helped design the maze or she'd navigated it quite a few times, for she seemed entirely familiar with its twistings and turnings. We came to another pot, this one holding hollyhocks. I thought I was doing a good job with hiding how impatient I was getting, but maybe not, because she said, "You can save us some time." She pointed the way we'd been walking. "Around that corner"—it was a right-hand turn—" then take the second left, and there's a vase holding a gerbera daisy. If you can get that for me while I pick these, then we can go back and drink some lemonade on the porch and discuss things.

"Okay," I said.

It only worked as far as "take the second left." There was no vase.

And when I retraced my steps to the pot of hollyhocks—which were all still there, by the way—there was no Emily, either.

The author has written two earlier books about the Rasmussem Corporation: Heir Apparent and User Unfriendly. I'm actually more fond of some of her fantasy, such as Dragon's Bait and Witch Dreams, but Deadly Pink is a fun and clever summer read. (10 and up; due out on July 10th)

Note: I requested a copy of this book from the Amazon Vine program.

There Is Such a Thing as a Tesseract

It was a dark and stormy night.

In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind. Behind the trees clouds scudded frantically across the sky. Every few moments the moon ripped through them, creating wraith-like shadows that raced along the ground.

The house shook.

Wrapped in her quilt, Meg shook.

She wasn't usually afraid of weather. —It's not just the weather, she thought. —It's the weather on top of everything else. On top of me. On top of Meg Murry doing everything wrong.

I read a lot when I was a kid, and I mean a lot. But I still remember the feeling I got from reading A Wrinkle in Time. I was an odd duck, like Meg, and late elementary/junior high school was a difficult time for me. I just didn't fit. So reading the book was reassuring—here was someone like me, and she said the wrong things, and she got emotional like me, and yet, she was a hero. Not in a smooth and shiny way, but in a prickly, klutzy way, which I knew very well was the only way I would ever be any kind of hero.

That wasn't the only reason I loved the book, though. I was enchanted by the rest of the cast, too, particularly Charles Wallace and the three not-exactly-witches with the way-clever names. I loved the strangeness of the story, as well, the way it led me across the fold of a skirt to planets where beautiful beings lived, and terrifying ones.

Of course, IT was such a brazenly B-movie villain (even if I didn't know the term "B-movie" quite yet); I'm still asking myself just how it is that Madeleine L'Engle makes him/it work? She leads us up to that moment with those robotic kids playing in front of their poison cookie-cutter houses, that's how. And the mind-capture of Charles Wallace—shudder! L'Engle has a wonderful touch with details. I've never forgotten the disquieting softness of a father's beard and hair that have grown out as he stood trapped inside his futuristic cell.

Well. It's been 50 years since the book first come out. I can't remember where I first read the story, but Madeleine L'Engle had a very difficult time getting the book published. She sent it off to a couple of dozen publishers and they all turned it down, so she stuck it in a drawer and basically gave up. Then a friend of hers told her she knew John Farrar of Farrar Straus and Giroux. Please note that FSG did not have a children's division at the time. The friend passed the manuscript to Farrar and he loved it, so FSG basically started a children's division for L'Engle's book. The next year, when she won the Newbery, Madeleine went to a celebratory dinner and was approached by various editors saying, "Why didn't you send it to me?" Her answer, of course, was, "I did." They were astonished, but she had the rejection slips to prove it. (Part of this account appears in the commemorative edition's afterword.)

One interesting note: I've found that people (especially librarians) can debate endlessly over whether this book is science fiction or fantasy. It fits easily in both categories, though I suppose I lean a little towards science fiction, myself. At any rate, A Wrinkle in Time opened the door to a new kind of creativity in the children's SFF genre. (The art to the above left depicting Mrs. Which, Mrs. Whatsit, and Mrs. Who is by Eugene Eian Lee.)

As a participant in A Wrinkle in Time's 50th anniversary blog tour, I agreed to write a poem or two in honor of the occasion. (And yes, I will give a brazen shout-out to my forthcoming poetry book, Water Sings Blue, while I'm at it.) It was easy to decide to write a poem about Meg, but then I said half-jokingly on Twitter that I might write a poem about the boy with the ball, and the response was pretty positive. So I've written both. The second poem also attempts to answer the question my sister asked me last week when I told her about the post: "What happened to the rest of the people on Camazotz?" And by the way, in case you were wondering, the planet was named after a Mayan bat god associated with death, night, and sacrifice.


Tesseract

Sometimes I look down
at my feet as I walk
through dirt and gravel
and dead grass, stepping
and stepping, not getting
very far really.

The numbers line up
in my head like the students
in my class.

At lunch, who
will sit with me?

After school, which
one should I punch first?

Every morning, why
do I brush my hair
and go back?

There is no one who
will tell me what
to do or why
to do it.

All I am
is Meg walking down a street
to meet something terrible.

All I am
is Meg holding hands
with a small
wise-eyed brother.

All I am
is Meg.



The Boy with the Ball

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts
and then—
it stops. I drop the ball
(the thing that started it all).
But it is mine.
I pick it up again, put it
in my pocket.

Nothing.
Where before there were walls
without windows or doors.
I walk down a gray hall.

Up ahead, I see someone running
the other way.
No one comes.
No one yells at me.

I wander
till I find a vast space.
A brain pulses on a dais.
I feel unseen claws grasping.
This is the thing
that hurt me. I stand still.

Boy, you are one of mine,
the brain tells me. But its words
cannot hold me.
My heart skips. I stumble
and fall like a dropped ball.

I scramble up.
"No," I say. "I am broken."
That's what they told me.
(But I got up just now.)
I take the ball from my pocket
and throw it as hard as I can.
It makes a dull thunk.

I run out of the building,
past confused people
in dark suits. I run
to the street where my house is.
Children stand staring down
at red rubber balls
and jump ropes lying there
like dead snakes.

"Come on," I say,
and they follow me
up the hill, where I show them
how to climb a tree.


Meg and Charles Wallace, Calvin and Mrs. Whatsit—like Harriet the Spy and Charlie of chocolate factory fame, they will live on across many wrinkles of time, iconic, flawed, and lovable. Because Meg loves her little brother, and so, in spite of Meg's feeling of being all wrong, everything really is all right.


Here's the link to the Wrinkle in Time Facebook page and the list of 50 participating blogs (wow!).

The 50th Anniversary Commemorative edition has some extra features. It's the orange book shown at the top of this post on the right; the book at the top left is the paperback commemorative edition.

o Frontispiece photo*+
o Photo scrapbook with approximately 10 photos*+
o Manuscript pages*+
o Letter from 1963 Caldecott winner, Ezra Jack Keats*+
o New introduction by Katherine Paterson, US National Ambassador for Young People's Literature +
o New afterword by Madeleine L'Engle's granddaughter Charlotte Voiklis including six never-before-seen photos +
o Murry-O'Keefe family tree with new artwork +
o Madeleine L'Engle's Newbery acceptance speech

I will confess that this list came with no explanation for the various asterisks, so feel free to make up your own meaning for them. But you get the idea!

This post is linked to Poetry Friday (2/10), hosted by poet Laura Purdie Salas.

Also: I have the book with the yellow cover, 2nd up on the right. What about you? Which version matches your memory of A Wrinkle in Time? Or did you have that turquoise one?