A Review of Small as an Elephant by Jennifer Richard Jacobson

Did you ever have a passionate interest as a child? My friend's son knows everything there is to know about the Civil War. I have a niece who is horse crazy and a couple of my students know all about cars—one of them specializing in muscle cars and the other in street racing.

For Jack, it's elephants. And maybe it's the very steadiness of these large beasts that appeals to him, for heaven knows his life is anything but stable and predictable. Jack himself doesn't know the term, but readers will quickly guess that his mother is bipolar. Jack also doesn't seem to realize that he shouldn't be dragged here, there, and everywhere; being a kid, he's just along for the ride.

But his usual shrug-oriented attitude doesn't do him a bit of good when his beyond-flighty mother abandons him at a campground on an island in Maine. From here on out, it's a hide-and-survive story as Jack searches for his mother and then heads for his home in Boston while trying to avoid the police.

Of course, Jack can't stay in one place for very long because people start asking questions. Like the guy at the ice cream parlor, where he wishes he could ask for samples all day, but only gets two before he bolts. Or the family at the next campsite, who look after him for a little while before they start asking to see his mother for themselves.

To make matters worse, Jack hurts his finger, and he can't afford to try to see a doctor about it. Good thing the man in the bar wraps it for him. But the man seems awfully curious.

The trouble is, Jack's mother has quarreled with her mother and painted her as a bad person, so Jack is fearful of trying to contact his grandmother. And he knows that social workers would take him away from everything he knows, so he doesn't want that, either. No one can know that his mother is gone.

Jack steals a little elephant from a shop to give himself courage, though he feels kind of bad about it. He also looks at his YouPage on a library computer, hoping his mother has left a message. She hasn't, and his cell phone isn't any help, either. So after a few days looking around near the campsite, Jack decides to go back to Boston.

One of the most interesting things about this book is how it shows in such detail what a person Jack's age might do in this situation, step by step. Jack's thought processes are painful, yet revealing. His problem solving is also impressive. After he hurts his finger, he goes to the grocery store:

First stop in the supermarket was the bottle-and-can machine, where he made one dollar and ninety cents. Next stop: freezer section. Jack had to get some relief for his hand. Behind a glass door, he found the frozen peas, his mother's ice pack of choice, and plunged his hand deep inside mounds of crunchy bags. Fortunately, it was still fairly early, and most of the shoppers were more interested in coffee than frozen vegetables. He left his hand in as long as he could stand the cold and then pulled it out.

It helped, but he'd hardly made it to the frozen pizza before his pinky started throbbing again, so he slid it into another freezer case. This was how Jack moved up and down the aisles: clinging to frozen orange juice, wrapping his fingers around pints of ice cream. Even yogurt cups, which were not frozen but cool to the touch, provided relief.

He considered spending his money on a bag of ice, or even on some Advil, but knew that the ocean was close by and that he'd be able to give his finger a long soak if the pain didn't go away soon. Instead, he chose trail mix and a bottle of water.

Also poignant are the chapter headers, which are quotes and facts about elephants. The elephants' family dedication and reliability are offered in clear contrast to Jack's own situation.

Jacobson's methodical, almost muted tone heightens the power of this book, which in its gentle way is just as much a survival story as something like Gary Paulsen's Hatchet. The tension ratchets up when Jack starts seeing his face on the news. And he meets all kinds of people, some of them more willing to help him than others. For example, there's a girl named Sylvie who says bluntly:

"Convince me that I'm wrong. And everybody who's out looking for you, everybody in the state of Maine and your grandma and the police—convince me that we're all wrong, and that you're better off on your own."

Jack replies that he'll be taken away from his mother, which is clearly the most terrible thing he can imagine.

But then, he was also hoping to see an actual elephant on this trip, and somehow, he winds up heading toward the elephant instead of his old home.

As the lovely, understated cover art suggests, Small as an Elephant is a quieter book than some. It is nevertheless an adventure. Then again, thoughtful readers will appreciate, not only Jack's physical survival and his success in not being caught, but his inner quest to make sense out of having been abandoned by his mother.

I'll end with the Chapter One elephant quote from Peter Corneille: "If anyone wants to know what elephants are like, they are like people, only more so." And people are like elephants, fortunately for Jack. Little by little, readers will discover that Jack is loved and helped by a herd he hadn't even imagined.

Note for Worried Parents: There's some mild peril here, but mostly just a mature theme of child abandonment.

Also: If you like this book, try Walter Macken's classic, Flight of the Doves. It's an old favorite of mine. The character interactions as Finn and Derval flee their stepfather and travel from England to Ireland remind me of Jack's journey. For that matter, try Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt, in which four children abandoned by their mentally ill mother in a parking lot travel cross-country in search of the grandmother they've never met.

A Review of Enclave by Ann Aguirre

I'm pretty sure I'm not the first nor will be the last to compare this book to The Hunger Games: tough teenage girl who's a warrior, dark dystopian setting, a race for survival. But believe it or not, Deuce's world is worse than Katniss's. I compare them simply to give you some idea about the book's general tone and level of violence. Really, Aguirre has built her own world here, and it makes the one with those 12 (or 13) districts and televised death matches look downright cheery.

Here the death matches are every day. Deuce is part of a mostly primitive tribe inhabiting the subway tunnels in a post-apocalyptic New York City. She and her bunch are pretty brutal, exiling or killing off anyone who breaks the rules, but they are menaced by worse terrors—the cannibalistic mutants they call Freaks. (These have a whiff of zombie about them, if you're trying to picture it.)

Deuce has survived to the age of 15, so she is marked with fire and given a name instead of a number. She is proud of her training as a Huntress (vs. a Builder or Breeder), but she is dismayed to be assigned to a partner who came to the tribe as an outsider and has managed to survive in their culture. Fade isn't necessarily one for obeying the rules, which means he could get Deuce killed by the tribal leaders. Sent on a suicide mission, the two manage to survive, but when they return with a warning about the Freaks, their leaders won't listen.

Deuce and Fade end up in exile, where they are nearly killed by the Freaks. Then Fade leads Deuce to the surface of the city, a place she has never dreamed of going. They run into trouble with a local gang and with the Freaks who live on the surface. Barely escaping death yet again, they acquire a hardhearted companion and flee the city altogether, unsure where they will wind up, assuming they continue to stay alive.

Yes, there's a sort of love triangle. Deuce and Fade grow close, but their closeness is threatened by the thuggish Stalker. As tough as she is, Deuce is somewhat drawn to Stalker, who is more like her. But she likes Fade partly because he is more compassionate and civilized than she is (though nevertheless a fighter). This plot thread is left hanging at the end of the book.

Deuce's world is an ugly one, but it's heartening to watch her survive and grow and even (sort of) escape to a place that is a bit less vicious—though the Freaks continue to threaten those who are more human even as the book ends. We are definitely heading toward a sequel here!

I've read some of Aguirre's adult sci-fi, and she just keeps getting better. This book is well crafted, from its world building to its character building. Aguirre moves easily between action and emotion, giving Enclave a better balance than some books of this sort. Here's Deuce heading out on her first real hunt:

Beyond the light of the enclave, it was dark, darker than I'd ever seen. It took my eyes long moments to adjust. Fade waited while I made the shift.

"We hunt like this?" Nobody ever told me. Primitive fear scuttled up my spine.

"Light attracts Freaks. We don't want them to see us first."

Reflexively, I checked my weapons as if mentioning the monsters could bring them slavering out of the murk. My club slid free cleanly. I put it back. Likewise, my knives found my palms in a smooth motion.

As we moved, my other senses compensated. I had done visual deprivation as part of my training, but I hadn't understood just how much I would need that skill out here. Now I was glad I could hear him moving ahead of me because I could make out only vague shadows. No wonder Hunters died.

So yes, if you liked The Hunger Games, or Incarceron or The Forest of Hands and Teeth, for that matter, add this to your list of creepy-cool dystopian books!

Note for Worried Parents: Enclave is an intense book for teens and includes graphic violence, horror, and the threat of rape, plus mature themes simply in the way Deuce's grim little society functions.

Also: Click here to watch the book trailer. (Not sure I care much for the casting of Fade. I'm thinking the boy should look a lot less like a friendly spaniel. Oh well!)

Please note that this book was provided to me as an ARC by the publisher.

A Review of The Night Fairy by Laura Amy Schlitz

The Night Fairy is one of those books that have been reviewed by other bloggers already, including the well-known Betsy Bird, so I wasn't planning to review it myself. Then I read the book. And felt compelled to talk about it.

First of all, night fairy Flory is not the sweetly pink-dressed winged sprite you tend to read about in old-fashioned books for dear little girls. She's more like the fairies in Laini Taylor's books, Blackbringer and Silksinger. Only Flory is less civilized than even those fairies. Here Newbery Award-winning author Laura Amy Schlitz creates fairies who are tiny and sentient, yet also part of the fauna of the wild. Their wings and even their magic are presented as just another adaptive survival strategy, and something the fairies grow into. For example, we're told:

Young fairies have no one to take care of them, because fairies make bad parents. Babies bore them. A fairy godmother is an excellent thing, but a fairy mother is a disaster.
Because fairies do not look after their children, young fairies have to take care of themselves. Luckily, they can walk and talk as soon as they are born. After three days, they will not drink milk and have no more use for their mothers. They drink dew and suck the nectar from flowers. On the seventh day of life, their wings unfold, and they fly away from home.
On the night of Flory's peril, she was less than three months old...

The fairies have a truce with the bats, but a bat tries to eat Flory, breaking off her wings. This traumatic event drives Flory into hiding, and she decides to become a day fairy. As she thinks things through and takes action, it will be very clear to readers that Flory is young and uninformed. But she is hard-working and determined. Little by little, she learns to fend for herself, coping with the demands of the unfamiliar day world.

At first glance, this is simply an adventure story with fairies. In fact, I would take that farther and call it a survival story, comparable to Gary Paulsen's Hatchet. But then, Flory's survival has as much to do with socialization as with the challenges of finding food and shelter. (And by the way, Schlitz has fun giving us Flory's disdainful, baffled analysis of the human "giant" in whose backyard she lives.)

Having been thoroughly shaken up by her life-threatening encounter with the bat, Flory's first impulse is to react by becoming fierce, using the spells that come to her to practice defensive and sometimes offensive magic. When she discovers a stinging spell, she is pleased: "I like that spell," said Flory. "I'm never going to forget it. I'll practice it over and over—and if I ever see a bat again, I'll sting him until he squeaks." The narrative goes on to say:

If a person—whether she is human or fairy—spends most of her time thinking of ways to sting, it is bound to show. In the weeks that followed, Flory practiced her stinging spell so often that she began to have rather a prickly look. Her nose and chin grew more pointed, as did the tips of her ears.

Flory uses the spell to tame a young squirrel named Skuggle, who hopes to eat her, to eat anything, really. Flory rides the squirrel around the garden, in return helping him get food, for example from the supposedly squirrel-proof new birdfeeder. It isn't a friendship at first; we're told that these two are using each other. But it gradually becomes something like a friendship.

Flory misses flying and decides she wants to ride a hummingbird, but the wild, nearly alien birds refuse to cooperate. Even when Flory is in a position to force the issue, the hummingbird is true to her essential nature—a brilliant piece of writing on Schlitz's part.

The absence of other fairies means Flory has to acquire social skills in a roundabout way, but gradually she learns to be a bit less self-centered and to have more respect for the unique, yet basic desires of the different animals she encounters.

I was astonished by how well Schlitz taught subtle life lessons while telling a strong, fast-paced adventure story. If someone were to ask me what the book is about, I would have to say, "Forgiveness." The author shows us in more than one situation why this isn't an easy lesson to learn. Flory not only grows from the height of one acorn to the height of two acorns during the course of the book, she becomes a better person, with a wider view of the world.

The Night Fairy is the best of everything a book should be—an adventure, a fresh take on fairies, vivid storytelling, and a tale in which the main character's experience of becoming will sweep readers along with her. To top it off, this book is physically beautiful, with a design and interior illustrations so perfectly suited to the story that it's hard to believe the illustrator isn't the author. (Instead she's Angela Barrett, illustrator of gorgeous versions of Beauty and the Beast, Snow White, and The Emperor's New Clothes.)

Is it too early to start talking Newberys? I know fantasy doesn't always win, but if I were on the committee, I'd make this an Honor book, anyway. At 117 pages, The Night Fairy is a pocket-sized treasure. Look for it.

Note: Some of the other reviews in the blogosphere are from Betsy Bird of Fuse #8, Charlotte's Library, Oops Wrong Cookie, Fantasy Book Critic, Books 4 Your Kids, A Year of Reading, and Doret of The Happy Nappy Bookseller. As the latter points out, Flory appears from the text and artwork to be black, another nice touch.

Note for Worried Parents: At least one reviewer expressed concern about Flory's fierceness, her acquisition of a thorn dagger and her willingness to use it. There are also scenes of peril involving predators, most notably a praying mantis. The Night Fairy is middle grade fiction, though, and is appropriate for most 8- to 12-year-olds and even some 7-year-olds.

Update: Visit The Night Fairy's website.