A Review of The Curse of the Ancient Mask and Other Case Files by Simon Cheshire

This book makes no bones about following in the footsteps of Encyclopedia Brown. Saxby Smart, Private Detective even has a shed out in the backyard where he solves cases and awaits clients. Since Encyclopedia Brown is arguably dated, I can see a need for a new approach. The question is, how well does Saxby Smart fill the great boy’s shoes?

British Saxby informs us that all of his middle names come from famous fictional detectives; his entire moniker is Saxby Doyle Christie Chandler Ellin Allan Smart. “The Allan is from Edgar Allan Poe,” he explains. Saxby addresses his readers, inviting them to help him solve the cases: “Unlike some detectives, I don’t have a sidekick, so that part I’m leaving up to you—pay attention, I’ll ask questions.” Personally, I like being invited to be the sidekick!

The format for involving readers is different than in the Encyclopedia Brown series. Instead of providing end-of-chapter solutions, Saxby just stops the story midstream and, as he has warned us he will do, asks a question. I was pleased to see that Saxby sometimes goes down the wrong path and has to backtrack, which he readily points out to his sidekick reader. He also acknowleges when he acquires a piece of useful information by sheer good luck. (Teachers will find that this book promotes critical thinking!)

As our story begins, Saxby alludes to his earlier work on cases such as “The Adventure of the Misplaced Action Figure” and “The Case of the Eaten Cookies.” But now he’s moving on to the big time, three cases worthy of a real sleuth. The first, “The Curse of an Ancient Mask,” is about the theft of ideas from a high-tech company where Saxby’s friend Jasmine’s father works. Ever since Jasmine’s father brought back an ornate mask from Japan, his best inventions have been stolen by a rival company. Having been warned when he bought the mask that it was cursed, Jasmine’s father believes the curse is coming true. But when Saxby is brought in as a consultant, he looks for a more scientific explanation.

The other two cases in the book are “The Mark of the Purple Homework” and “The Clasp of Doom.” All three cases are recounted in a friendly, contemporary way, with new characters who are well defined and sometimes colorful—especially the villains. Watch out for a smirking Harry Lovecraft in Case Two and the unpleasant Mrs. Eileen Pither in Case Three. The clues and mysteries are just the right speed for second or third graders, and the addition of pages from Saxby’s notebook add to the fun. A couple of plot points were less credible than others, though. For example, would Jasmine’s father really believe in a curse? Given his work, he’d probably solve the mystery much the same way Saxby does. But this example simply highlights an aspect of the series that is also taken from the tradition of Encyclopedia Brown: the kids are smarter than the grown-ups.

The illustrations are just right, by the way. R.W. Alley’s cheery line drawings perfectly support the text and give us a very appealing Saxby.

Apparently The Curse of the Ancient Mask is the first Saxby Smart book, and a second book came out in February of this year: The Eye of the Serpent and Other Case Files. No one can ever completely take the place of Encyclopedia Brown, but Saxby Smart is shaping up to be a worthy successor to the boy who sits in a battered chair in his backyard office, solving other kids’ mysteries.

A Review of The Niña, the Pinta, and the Vanishing Treasure by Jill Santopolo

Meet Alec Flint, Super Sleuth, another contender for the young detective throne. Self-proclaimed sleuth Alec takes his work seriously, and like Encyclopedia Brown, his father is a police detective. Unlike Encyclopedia, Alec spends an entire book solving just one case.

I would love to tell you this is a promising series start, but unfortunately, it’s kind of a shaky debut. Alec seems like a nice kid, and the basic premise of two converging subplots—a missing Christopher Columbus museum exhibit and the disappearance of an art teacher from Alec’s school—is a winner. I also really liked the inclusion of a secret code introduced by Alec’s new friend and partner, Gina. And I got a kick out of the way the author describes Alec’s bouncy neighbor, Emily.

Two things didn’t work for me, though. One is the way the main characters don’t always sound like real kids thinking or talking, more like the way grown-ups imagine kids thinking or talking. It doesn’t help that in spots the dialogue just seems wooden. And in more than one instance, we’re given just a few bland lines, followed by more action or description. As a friend in one of my writing groups was pointing out, dialogue should move the story forward. It should also enrich your understanding of the characters.

Here’s a sample of Alec talking in the book, explaining his plans to Gina:

“Well,” said Alec Flint. “I think I already have an important mystery to solve. It’s about a missing Christopher Columbus exhibit at the museum. I’m helping my dad. But he’s not a super sleuth—he’s a police officer, which is sort of like a super sleuth but a little bit different.”

On a related note, the child characters often seem younger than they are supposed to be. One example that distracted me from the story was when Alec and Gina couldn’t reach the top of a copy machine without standing on a stool. Supposedly these kids are fourth graders, but when I saw that I went back and checked—were they actually second graders? Then I realized that they were talking like second graders part of the time, too. Even C.B. Canga’s illustrations make the young characters seem different ages, as they appear to be thirteen or so in several of the drawings.

The other key concern I have is the mystery, which turns out to lack credibility. Suffice it to say that the way the villain sets up the theft is absolutely outside the realm of possibility at an actual museum. (Ironically, the art heist in Elise Broach’s Masterpiece is more realistic, despite the beetles who act like little people!)

The Niña, the Pinta, and the Vanishing Treasure is a pleasant book, even amusing in spots, but it made me uncomfortable because it condescends to kids, though I’m sure without meaning to. I hope that the author gets into the swing of things with her next offering, since Alec Flint has potential. But the boy needs to sound like a real fourth grader and address mysteries which are a bit more convincing.

A Review of Nana Cracks the Case by Kathleen Lane

It seems a guy named Cabell Harris (great name!) came up with this concept and Kathleen Lane ended up writing it, with Sarah Horne doing the illustrations. I’m not sure who made these arrangements, but Lane takes the ball and runs with it.

Did I say runs with it? Actually, Lane takes the ball, paints it purple, dribbles it down the aisles of the grocery store while the paint’s still wet, and then lobs it through a neighbor’s window. Next she chortles.

Every once in a while a children’s book author presents a little old lady (or, less often, a little old man) as a sort of pseudo-kid or pseudo-adult—both, really. Considering how small, brilliant, and mischievous my own grandmother was clear into her nineties, this makes perfect sense to me. Here’s how the back cover puts it:

Nanas, you see, are not supposed to become backhoe operators or marine biologists or circus performers (actually Nana did not join the circus, she only substituted while the trapeze artist recovered from a broken leg), and they must never—because they are so very fragile, you see—become detectives.

More important, you should know that Nana has a book on her kitchen table called The Joy of Napping. The book jacket is a fake: it’s there to fool her highly anxious daughter, the mother of her grandchildren. Beneath the false cover is Nana’s real reading material, say, a book about tightrope walking. A lovely touch from our publishers is that if you turn the cover of Nana Cracks the Case over, you will see The Joy of Napping jacket, complete with yawner quotes like this one from Dusty McThud: “I can’t believe I wasted so much time striving for excellence when I could have been napping instead.”

Nana’s grandchildren, Bog and Eufala, know her secret. Like Nana, the two kids devote a certain amount of energy to keeping their worrywart mother from worrying. And like Nana, they are highly talented troublemakers. For example, one of their mother’s numerous rules is never to open the front door. So we read:

And that is why Eufala and Bog did not open the front door. Never in a million years would they have so much as touched the doorknob of the front door.

Anyhow, why open the front door when the kitchen window worked just as well—and, they had found, was much less likely to draw the attention of the neighbors?

Nana’s new goal of becoming a police detective soon intersects with her grandchildren’s latest activities, and shenanigans happily scramble across the pages for the rest of the book. One of the funniest things about Nana is that she continues to be a little old lady. She keeps forgetting things, never taking the direct route anywhere, a trend highlighted by the discrepancy between the author’s words and the illustrations. And watch for how Nana handles the reporters at the crime scene.

There’s a touch of Lemony Snicket here if you listen for it. But the book’s humor stands on its own, giddily over the top.

I will tell you that Nana Cracks the Case is less invested in its mystery than the books reviewed above; the author is having far too much fun with Nana and her devious grandkids for that. But it is easily the best of the three in terms of sheer enjoyment. Edgar Awards, Schmedgar Awards—if I had to pick just one, this would be it.

A Review of Animal Aha! by Diane Swanson

Most of the nonfiction I read as a child bored me. The only nonfiction books I remember liking were the World Book Encyclopedia, which I sometimes read randomly to entertain myself, and some books called Animals Do the Strangest Things, Birds Do the Strangest Things, and Insects Do the Strangest Things. In fact, I wondered why, if animals and birds and insects were out there doing such strange things, more of the books in the library couldn’t talk about that, instead of what they did say, which seemed like a whole lot of blah-blah to me.

I’m still more hooked on fiction than nonfiction, but I am happy to report that children’s nonfiction has improved tremendously since I was young. Simply having more photos—and having them be in color—is a great start. The advent of the Eyewitness series has also upped the ante. As a teacher, I love bringing those books to my students, especially reluctant readers. Like my childhood encyclopedias, their pocket-sized pieces of text and wonderful photographs draw kids in. I know some have objected to the way they jump around, but then, science is often sold to us in schools as lists of facts, so what’s the difference?

Fortunately, there are alternatives. After you’ve gotten children involved with books like Eye Wonder and Eyewitness, you can introduce them to some books that don’t, in fact, jump around. Another thing I’ve noticed while teaching is that kids are inclined to think of science as a done deal, with all of those facts conquered and ordered and laid out in boxes beneath pins for their perusal. To show them that science is actually ongoing and constantly changing, we need books along the lines of Animal Aha! Thrilling Discoveries in Wildlife Science. Here’s how the introduction puts it:

Scientists work hard to uncover some of the amazing things that animals do. They spend thousands of hours planning experiments, making observations, spotting patterns, and analyzing results. Their efforts call for plenty of patience and loads of persistence. But that all pays off big time when they discover something new—something no one has ever seen before. As you might imagine, finding an AHA in research is a big thrill.

This book has five short chapters, one for each discovery. The discoveries are told in story form, letting young readers share in the scientists’ aha moments. Further facts and explanations and a history of the research leading up to the key observation follow. For example, the first chapter tells about the discovery of a gorilla using tools, adding that previously, among the great apes, only chimpanzees, orangutans, and humans have been seen doing that. In this case, a female gorilla crossing a swampy area in the Congo rainforest was observed breaking off a tree branch and using it, not only to support herself, but to check the depth of the water as she went.

Animal Aha! provides an appealing array of animals and discoveries: we go on to read about elephants looking at themselves in mirrors, dolphins demonstrating simple math skills, parrots speaking with meaning, pythons growing bigger hearts in order to digest their prey, and cockroaches learning better at night than in the morning—kind of like some people. Perhaps most intriguing is finding out how the scientists set up viable experiments for verifying things such as animal thought processes. I especially like the way the elephant research illustrates how a poorly designed experiment can yield inaccurate results: Earlier attempts to find out if elephants could recognize that they were being reflected in mirrors had used smaller mirrors so that elephants could only see their faces. Once scientists offered the pachyderms jumbo-size mirrors, the elephants quickly conducted their own experiments and concluded that they were seeing themselves.

Each chapter in Animal Aha! begins with a small sidebar of summary points titled Fast Facts and includes plenty of nice photos of the subject, some from the actual experiments. Each chapter then ends with a sidebar called Fun Facts. The book has an index, as well. My two favorite Fun Facts are “Like your fingerprints, a gorilla’s noseprints are unique” and “An elephant’s ear can weight as much as a slim woman, about 50 kilograms (110 pounds).”

Besides offering up active science about intriguing topics, Animal Aha! is written in a friendly, clear way at a second or third grade level. Diane Swanson is apparently the author of many other nonfiction books, so I’ll be keeping an eye out for them. For now, I am happy to report that animals are still doing the strangest things!

A Review of Secret of the Singing Mice...and More! by Ana Maria Rodriguez

Secret of the Singing Mice has one of the coolest titles ever, but how does it compare to Animal Aha? The books are very similar in design, actually. This one also presents five cases of animal research in five small chapters. The title chapter is especially compelling. Like bats, whales, certain insects, and a few other rodents, mice make some sounds that are so high-pitched humans can’t hear them. These songs are produced by male mice when they meet female mice, and scientists recorded them and were able to play them back and analyze them at a lower decibel. To their surprise, they found out that a mouse’s “love song” isn’t just a single note, but a little pattern—and each male mouse’s song is unique. (I’m picturing American Idol for mice now.)


Three of the five chapters in this book are about animal sounds. Like the mice, Richardson’s ground squirrel sometimes makes ultrasonic noises. The calls are part of the ground squirrel’s repertoire of warning signals, and the book details how scientists figured out when these calls would be advantageous to use—or not, depending on how near a predator might be. The third chapter about animal calls also focuses on an animal that can make ultrasonic noise: bats. It turns out baby bats “babble,” playing with sounds the way human infants experiment with vowels and syllables before learning to make words and sentences.

The two chapters which aren’t about sound give us case studies involving smell and vision. The star-nosed mole is already a bizarre creature, but it turns out to have an intriguing habit discovered by scientist Kenneth Catania: while looking for food underwater, the bat breathes bubbles out of its strange nose to touch potential food in the murky water, then snorts the bubbles back in to check them for smells. The chapter about vision introduces us to a little rodent called the degu that can see ultraviolet light—but what for? The answer has to do with the degu’s urine, which is bright with UV rays!

I was a little thrown by this book’s emphasis on sound in three of the five chapters. Part of me wanted to see a chapter for each of the five senses. But then, describing three sound experiments gives students the opportunity to compare different scientists’ approaches to similar questions, which is certainly valuable.

Singing Mice is written on a second or third grade level. The book offers us various sidebars, though some contain information that could have been worked into the text. I especially liked the idea of sidebars called Meet the Scientists, but was disappointed by their lack of detail. The font size in this book is quite small, which might be overwhelming for reluctant readers. Some chapters seem a little short on photos, as well. I was pleased to discover experiments at the end of the chapters until I realized that only chapters one and five had them. Of course, it would have been nice to see an experiment for each chapter. In addition to an index, Singing Mice provides chapter notes at the end of the book, giving us specific sources for the information in the text. This is not only useful, but is also good modeling for students being asked to document their own report writing. The book is part of a series called Animal Secrets Revealed, and I’m going to try to track down some of the other titles, particularly Secret of the Puking Penguins...And More.

Secret of the Singing Mice gives us a clear picture of how five science teams conduct their animal research. Again, these science stories are powerful examples for students who might not otherwise understand how all those “science facts” they encounter in school are generated. In the midst of recent talk in the news regarding problems with education in the United States, I’ve read that pursuit of careers in the hard sciences is on the wane. Good nonfiction showing kids dynamic, creative science engagement should be part of the solution.

Word I Looked Up This Week

pompatus--Yes, after hearing Steve Miller’s song, “The Joker,” on the radio and wondering about the line, “I speak of the pompatus of love” for the zillionth time, I finally remembered to look it up!

According to Wiktionary, we’ve got a noun meaning a pompous person, or a verb meaning “to act with pomp and splendor.” Apparently it’s a real, though faint, entry in the Oxford English Dictionary. (Faint pompatuses? Fainting pompatuses?) Of course, I’m also having a little trouble with the conjugation: “William pompatused throughout the meeting” sounds weird to me. Maybe I’d better stick to the noun in my many upcoming uses of this word...

Which reminds me: did you know that there are a mere handful of words in the English language that are entirely made up rather than derived from older/other languages? Most of them come from brand names like Xerox. The exception--and my personal favorite--is copacetic, which is said to have been invented by Bojangles Robinson!

Blog Award from Charlotte's Library

Thanks to Charlotte of Charlotte's Library for giving my site the beauteous “One Lovely Blog Award”! I will note that Charlotte seems to be a fellow fantasy fan and posts reviews of so many books I’ve either read or am wanting to read that I feel like reading her blog instead of working on my own posts. However, I beg to differ with Charlotte’s About Me, formatted as “X by day, Y by night.” You see, traditonally the X would be something mundane (e.g., Clark Kent’s day job), while the Y would be something a bit odd (e.g., Clark Kent’s night job). Yet Charlotte’s About Me reads, “Archaeologist by day, president of the Friends of a small New England library by night.” Setting aside the fact that “Friends of a small New England library” sounds like an Illluminati-type secret society, how cool is that? “Archaeologist by day!” Now I'm wondering what slice of history Charlotte studies, of course.

In thinking about passing the award along, I quickly realized that Laura Salas has been adding to my personal joy with her 15 Words or Less Poems--I really like reading everyone else’s poems, as well as adding one myself every so often. (And where does she get those intriguing photos?) Her other posts are also a delight. It’s official: Laura Salas has created “One Lovely Blog.”

Book Trailer for The Runaway Dragon

While the purpose of this blog is to review children’s books and riff about the world of children’s literature, I will share any key news from the writing side of things. In this case, I am very excited to have created my first book trailer! It’s for The Runaway Dragon, a funny fantasy due out on September 1, 2009, from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The book is a sequel to The Runaway Princess, an ALA Notable Book in 2007.

Here’s the YouTube link for the book trailer.

A Review of Bloodhound (Beka Cooper Book Two) by Tamora Pierce

Is bibliophilia contagious, like swine flu? (Sorry, pig farmers: like 2009 H1N1?) Take a look at the evidence in a recent case study I’ve inadvertently conducted. It started with my sister asking to borrow my children’s books. She began leaving the TV off and making her way through my large library. Next she wanted gift cards to bookstores for Christmas so she could get her own copies of her favorites, and she was unwilling to relinquish my copies until they’d all been replaced. Now she’s waiting with me for certain books to come out, most notably the sequel to Megan Whalen Turner’s The King of Attolia, apparently expected in 2010.

The point is, I gave up my brand-new Beka Cooper, Bloodhound, about five seconds after I finished reading it because Krista had been waiting for it just as breathlessly as I had. No matter my protests that I planned to review it for my blog this weekend—the girl is relentless! All I can say is thank heavens for appendices. I printed out a copy of Tamora Pierce’s six-page list of characters, four-page glossary of local terms, and one-page list of dog commands before handing over the book, so I’m armed and ready.

For those of you who keep up with Pierce’s action-fantasy series, Beka Cooper is an ancestor of George Cooper, Alanna’s pirate husband in the Song of the Lioness Quartet. For those of you who watch TV shows like Law and Order, you’ll recognize the Beka Cooper books as police procedurals.

The cops in Corus, the capital city of Tortall, are called the Provost’s Dogs in this era, with supporting slang referring to their barracks as kennels and trainees as puppies. Besides being a lot of fun, these designations give us the book titles and deliberately apt metaphors for Beka: Terrier and Bloodhound.

Beka comes from the streets, so she’s mildly accepting of bad behavior in a “you’d better not do that where I can see you” kind of way—note that her housemates include Corus’s slightly moral Rogue or crime lord, Rosto, who has a cranky crush on Beka. But mostly Beka is completely, pigheadedly determined to uphold justice and catch the bad guys, even if that means putting herself in extreme danger and stirring the pot of city politics. I’ll just mention that Beka reminds me of a young (and sober) Sam Vimes from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books, with maybe a little Captain Carrot thrown in, to boot.

In this fantasy series, Beka has a couple of magical tools at her disposal: she can hear the talk of the ghosts that sometimes ride the city’s pigeons, and she can also hear the scraps of conversation hoarded by the city’s dust devils. These are lovely creative touches from Pierce. A magical cat has been helping her, as well, though he steps out of the picture for much of the current book.

Did you know that flooding an economy with false coin can bring about rampant inflation, starvation, and riots? After one such riot in Corus, Beka heads south to Port Caynn, the suspected source of the counterfeit coins. She accompanies Corporal Guardswoman Clara Goodwin, whose partner has been badly injured in the riot. Beka’s other companion is a scent hound named Achoo Curlypaws that she has rescued from an abusive new handler. Achoo is a terrific addition to these books and obviously shares title character rights with Beka.

As a not-so-undercover cop in Port Caynn, Beka gets involved with a group of gamblers who seem to know something about the counterfeiting, eventually taking a lover named Dale Rowan from among them. Unfortunately, she’s afraid he’s one of the counterfeiters, so she can’t completely trust him.

Beka quickly runs afoul of the City Rogue, a crude and terrifying crime boss named Pearl Skinner. Beka being Beka, she’s not that shaken up about becoming Pearl’s enemy. She even plays an especially brazen trick on the woman while on the run late in the book.

Bloodhound is full of jargon and street slang, which may throw some readers off a little. Just keep in mind that a cove is a man, a mot is a woman, and a cole is a false coin; the rest will follow after a few chapters. You may also be alarmed by the sheer size of Pierce’s cast of characters: a quick count gives us 83. And this is a pretty big book, 560 pages long.

I found that the slang and the page length and the number of characters simply weren’t a problem because Tamora Pierce is what people call a consummate storyteller. The tale just keeps pulling you along as you look forward to finding out what Beka will do next, how she’ll survive it, and of course, how the counterfeiting ring operates.

In answer to my previous question, yes, bibliophilia is contagious. And Tamora Pierce’s writing is particularly virulant, so read it with full awareness that you might very well become infected.

Note for Worried Parents: This is a Young Adult book, and it’s also a cop book, so there’s plenty of violence and a little sex, too. Though not presented in a really offensive way, they’re not oblique, either.

A Review of Fortune’s Folly by Deva Fagan

My favorite character in this book is Fate—or perhaps Dame Fortune, as the title would imply. In a near-Shakespearian convolution, author Deva Fagan has her main character, Nata (short for Fortunata) make a prophecy, then scramble to bring the prophecy to pass, thinking guiltily all the while that she is a cheat and a fake. But Nata’s father—and the reader—will be inclined to believe that the fortune Nata tells is true, and that her desperate efforts are part and parcel of Fate’s plans for the girl.

Nata’s adventures begin while she is trying to sell some of her father the shoemaker’s hideous shoes. Ever since her mother died, he has been incapable of making the once-glorious shoes he was known for. (There’s a nod to the story of “The Elves and the Shoemaker” in this part of the narrative, the first of several fairy tale allusions.) Nata tangles with the diabolical Captain Niccolo, winning in the short term but losing in the long term. She concludes that she had better leave the city before the man exacts some kind of revenge against her. And indeed, we haven’t seen the last of Captain Niccolo.

While on the road, Nata and her father fall into the clutches of another villain, a traveling con artist and player named Ubaldo who brazenly steals Nata’s donkey and forces her to work for him. Unfortunately, Nata’s father is ill, so she goes along with Ubaldo’s injustice in order to protect him. She also befriends Ubaldo’s fortune-teller, Allessandra, who offers to teach the girl her trade.

A third villain is yet to be encountered—or rather, villainess. After Allessandra escapes, Ubaldo forces Nata to tell fortunes for him. When they reach Domo, he brings Nata to the queen, who is searching for a true fortune-teller to create a royal prophecy and quest for her son, Prince Leonato. But the queen’s sister Donata is manipulating events so that the prince will fail and she can take control of the kingdom. Soon Nata and handsome stutterer Leonato are launched on a quest involving a sword in a stone, a missing jeweled slipper, the defeat of a witch, and the rescue of a princess of Sirenza. Of course, most of these tasks are nearly impossible, and the prince’s aunt is working to assure that he fails no matter what. If he does fail, Nata’s father will be executed.

I liked watching Nata’s behind-the-scenes attempts to ensure the prince’s success. Since he seemed to be falling in love with her, I was especially curious to find out how she could turn into a princess of Sirenza—especially after a fair-haired princess who appeared to be the real deal was discovered languishing in a tower.

At first glance, it might seem that the author of Fortune’s Folly is telling us we are at the mercy of our fates. In light of Nata’s hard work, however, it seems more likely Fagan is suggesting that our best efforts will make our fates. This is a very fun story, not to mention an auspicious beginning for Deva Fagan’s career as a children’s fantasy writer. I do recommend you join Nata on her journey. Then the next time you order Chinese food and read the little fortune inside, you can decide if you want to invest yourself in the hard work of making it come true.

Note for Worried Parents: Ubaldo and his virtual enslavement of Allessandra and Nata are a little scary. For most kids, it’ll be like a lot of what they see on TV, but if your child is on the young end of the book’s 9- to 12-year-old range or is easily spooked, you might want to wait a year or two for this one.

Words I Looked Up This Week

Chthonic--of or relating to the underworld. The “ch” is silent, so it’s pronounced “thawnic.” The alternative would be chthonian, with a long o. I don’t know if I’ll ever have occasion to use it, but I like it!

Puce--I keep seeing this word and not quite knowing what color it is, so I finally checked. That would be a dark grayish purple or a purplish red. It’s a homely sounding word, isn't it? Too close to puke for my liking, but nevertheless a handy addition to the mental dictionary.

Thanks to Farida, Minh, and Harold!

Okay, I’d like to thank my mother, my six brothers and sisters, my chiropractor, and my neighbor across the street, also SCBWI. Yes, I actually won a contest! But mostly I had a VERY good time writing entries for Farida and Minh's cool competition, Picture Book Sequels That Never Were. (Instead of working on my current manuscript, ’cause who wants to do that?) My prize-winning entry was a sequel to Harold and the Purple Crayon called Harry and the Can of Purple Spray Paint. Check out the announcement of my win, then scroll up (and down!) to read more entries, all of them very funny in different ways, at Farida’s website, Saints and Spinners. Then take a look at Minh’s new jacket art for my entry and many others at wry and hilarious Bottom Shelf Books. I especially like the sequel to Kitten’s First Full Moon! I also like knowing how funny and warped (in a GOOD way) the people who love children’s books can be. And here’s a picture of the prize Farida sent me in its new home with other artful oddments atop my file cabinet. That would be the handmade green butterfly herder with his blue donkey standing front and center. I believe Farida will be selling her dolls starting in May at a site called Alkelda, so watch for them!

A Review of Help Me, Mr. Mutt! by Janet Stevens and Susan Stevens Crummel

I’ve liked Janet Stevens’s work for years—she may be best known for her Caldecott Honor book, the folktale Tops and Bottoms, but my personal favorite is her rendition of The Three Billy Goats Gruff, complete with the biggest goat brother in a leather motorcycle jacket and dark glasses. Priceless!

Help Me, Mr. Mutt! by Stevens and her sister came out about a year ago, in Spring 2008, but if you’re like me, you missed it. I discovered the book a few months ago, and I’ve been sharing it with friends ever since. I suppose the ideal audience for this picture book would be dog lovers, but pet owners in general and just about anyone with a sense of humor will probably appreciate it.

Mr. Mutt gives us a series of letters from dogs to a canine Dear Abby whose responses will amuse humans because they implement dog logic, not people logic. For example, a dachsund writes that he is wasting away because his owners have put him on a diet. Adding to the humor, he includes a drawing of himself as stick thin—alongside a photo that shows he truly is plump. Mr. Mutt’s advice? Swipe people food. The counselor includes a doggy food pyramid which indicates that dry dog food should be avoided and things like hamburgers, birthday cakes, and Thanksgiving turkeys should be ingested at a high rate. Mr. Mutt recommends that big dogs scavenge on countertops, while smaller dogs will have to use teamwork. Checking the trash or lying under the baby’s highchair should also help. And for an after-dinner drink, try the toilet.

If it just consisted of these letters, the book might not quite work. But there’s a running gag which provides a narrative thread: Mr. Mutt and his correspondents are constantly exchanging jibes about spoiled house cats, and a cat named The Queen in Mr. Mutt’s own home takes offense. The cat, who is apparently lurking beneath the very table where Mr. Mutt is typing, begins inserting warning letters on regal stationery, e.g., “Watch it, Muttface. Cats are not spoiled rotten. Especially me. I am royalty. I am The Queen. P.S. The Queen would never drink from a toilet.” Little by little, as the book progresses, The Queen gets more angry, until at last she goes after Mr. Mutt, who must then be rescued by his loyal fans.

The humor in this book is on the sophisticated side--a four-year-old wouldn’t really get it. But six- to eight-year-olds should be vastly amused, especially with some help from a grown-up reader and more particularly if they own cats and/or dogs. Be sure to look at the final endpaper, which rounds out the tale. Help Me, Mr. Mutt! may be something of a niche picture book, but it is also the funniest thing I’ve seen since The Flim-Flam Fairies.

A Review of Bubble Trouble by Margaret Mahy and Polly Dunbar

New Zealander Margaret Mahy is one of those rare authors who writes cross-genre with incredible skill: picture books, humorous chapter books, and dark, sophisticated books for teens. Before there was ever such a character as Edward Cullen, I fell in love with the troubled witch boy in her classic supernatural tale, Changeover. But today I’m reviewing something at the other end of the spectrum, Mahy’s latest giddy picture book, Bubble Trouble.

The story is fairly simple: a little girl named Mabel is blowing bubbles and one bubble lifts her baby brother into the sky, where he floats along, chased by a growing crew of would-be rescuers as colorful as that chain of goose-grabbing people in the old fairy tale about making a sad princess laugh. As her brother is faced with increasing peril late in the story, Mabel manages to save the day.

This is all very nice, but what it doesn’t tell you is just how amazing the rhymes are. We’re talking page after page of near-tongue twisters. The internal rhymes in particular are works of genius. If Bruce Degen’s Jamberry went to Oxford University, I’m thinking it would graduate as Bubble Trouble.

In fact, enough of the vocabulary words in this book are rather elevated that some people might be a tad intimidated by them:

In her garden, Chrysta Gribble had begun to cry and cavil at her lazy brother, Greville, reading novels in his bed. But she bellowed, “Gracious, Greville!” and she groveled in the gravel when the baby in the bubble bibble-bobbled overhead.

I’m here to tell you that this book is worth it—your child won’t need to understand every word to follow the story, and the rollicking sounds of the words will be a pleasure to adult readers and lap listeners alike.

For their part, Polly Dunbar’s lively illustrations contribute great good humor to the narration. Watch for the innovative use of a Scrabble board in both the art and the story telling, for example. I also really liked Dunbar’s work on Jane Yolen and Andrew Fusek Peters’s terrific poetry collection, Here’s a Little Poem. She’s one of those British illustrators we need to import more often.

If you want an upbeat read as well as a workout for your tongue, get your hands on Margaret Mahy’s Bubble Trouble and share it with the nearest small human!

A Review of A Walk Through a Window by kc dyer

I’ll start with my bias alert: This book is by a member of my writing group, kc Dyer! kc is the author of the Eagle Glen trilogy, about a girl named Darrell Connor who travels through time to Scotland, Italy, England, and Spain at crucial points in history and deals with villainous intrigues; she is also the author of Ms. Zephyr’s Notebook, about three kids who share a teacher—and secrets—on a hospital ward.

With A Walk Through a Window, Dyer returns to time travel, this time in her native Canada. Our intrepid traveler is Darby Christopher, a teenage girl whose parents send her to a small town on Prince Edward Island for the summer. Darby stays with her grandparents, but as the book begins, two things are apparent: Darby doesn’t want to be there, and something is wrong with her grandfather.

While exploring the neighborhood on her skateboard, a cranky Darby meets a boy named Gabriel who apparently lives in an abandoned house. After hearing her complaints about being stuck in a small town instead of Toronto, Gabriel pulls her into a series of time travel adventures. A shadowy Darby joins the Inuits crossing the Bering Strait, the Irish fleeing the Potato Famine to worse troubles on a coffin ship, and finally some later immigrants who turn out to have a direct connection to her own family.

Along the way, Darby loses her attitude, caught up in her curiosity about the past. She also grows a little more patient with her grandpa, who is beginning to suffer from Alzheimer’s. In fact, the subplot with Darby and her grandfather, which at first seems less important in the book, eventually takes center stage, becoming especially poignant in the final chapter or two.

This book is about history, but it is also about family. As the author gently reminds us, our families make us who we are. Like the inuksuk, a small Native Canadian sculpture made out of a hodge-podge of rocks and used to good symbolic effect in A Walk Through a Window, our lives are composed of bits and pieces of experience and heritage. Take a walk with Darby, and discover what it means to come from somewhere.

What Is It with British Writers and Fantasy?

There’s just something about British fantasy—but what is it? You’ve heard of the “It” factor in Hollywood (no doubt sex appeal), but what is the “It” factor when it comes to fantasy, and how come British writers seem to be so very good at that particular genre?

Or, to be less intimidating about it, since many American fantasy writers are very talented, how is British fantasy unique? To answer that question, we obviously need to compare Monty Python and the Holy Grail to I Love Lucy, or Wallace and Gromit to The Simpsons, or When Harry Met Sally to Bridget Jones’s Diary. Therein we will surely find the answer, especially if we stick blithely to sweeping generalizations, which I hereby pledge to do in today’s post.

Actually, I looked at a couple of lists of American film comedies and TV shows, trying to decide what they have in common, and I concluded that Americans are very good at what the term “sitcom” tells us: situational comedy. Our humor is based on plot twists. We’re especially good at putting people in embarrassing situations and watching what happens—e.g., I Love Lucy, Everybody Loves Raymond, Get Smart, Seinfeld, and just about every “reality” show ever made. And just like in reality shows, the situations we find funny tend to be derived from things that do actually happen, or things that could happen very easily.

In contrast, British humor tends to lean towards the surreal—witness any number of scenes in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but just for instance, take the one where the guy’s arms and legs have all been chopped off and he’s yelling at his opponent to come back and fight. Or the killer rabbit, or the coconuts. It’s all kind of nuts, and I mean that in a good way!

Combined with the strangeness, we get a real deadpan reaction from the characters. When something goes wrong for Lucy, she scrambles to handle it, but ends up flipping out. Wallace of Wallace and Gromit fame, like other British comedic characters, reacts to the most bizarre happenings with equanimity and an air of faint puzzlement.

Which brings me back to books: there’s something literary, not to mention clever, about British comedy, and about British fantasy writing. The words that keep coming to mind are wit and whimsy. I realize these tend to be used stereotypically, but then, stereotypes can have their roots in truth. I suppose we can define wit as cleverness and surprising humor. Just what is whimsy? Overused, it can become saccharine attempts to be cute, or as the British themselves, especially Terry Pratchett, might say, “twee.” But whimsy is creativity with a cheery grin. It is the oddly hopeful thought processes of a child, taking us to strange places which are not inhabited by vampire boyfriends, but rather by giant, traveling peaches and by baby griffins who eat too much and require our young heroes to earn extra money in order to feed them (thanks to Roald Dahl and Joan Aiken, respectively).

Beyond offering up solid plotting and appealing characters, children’s books—especially fantasy—really should surprise us. I’ve written before on this blog about the Fresh Factor, by which I mean innovation, the kinds of plots and language and details that make us sit up and take notice. Perhaps it’s a sad tribute to the televisionization of American culture that so many of our stories are prone to being predictable. In any case, I don’t know why some of the best or certainly most off-the-wall fantasy is British, but I can only surmise that there’s a little less TV involved and a lot more Lewis Carroll.

Whatever the explanation, the most innovative children’s fantasy I’ve read in recent years has been by British writers. This may seem like a cruel thing to say considering all of the excellent American fantasy out there, but I’m comparing good books to other good books, truly. My point is simply that the most fantastical fantasy tends to be British. There’s Diana Wynne Jones with her dragon’s blood smugglers and moving castles, Terry Pratchett with his frying pan-wielding young witch and his tidal wave-and-ghost-washed island, and Philip Reeve with steampunk space adventures and moving cities that devour smaller cities, for example. Not to mention Garth Nix’s bell sorceress in the land of the dead or his key-seeking Arthur Penhaligon in the seriously strange House, let alone Neil Gaiman’s Other Alice and Mowgli-in-a-Cemetery. (Yes, I realize Garth Nix is Australian, but I’ve decided to lump him in!) Frankly, one of the most original concepts I’ve seen in years is from a less well-known book, Eva Ibbotson’s Dial-a-Ghost, in which a temp agency that places ghosts in houses gets two orders mixed up. I also recently read the collected Armitage Family stories by Joan Aiken in The Serial Garden—and really, if you want to know what I mean by British wit and whimsy, her book perfectly exemplifies the phrase.

Of course, the big name in British fantasy today is J.K. Rowling. People who fuss about her rather ordinary prose are completely missing the point, which is that this is the woman who invented Bertie Bott’s Many Flavored Beans and quidditch. Besides the lovable characters, it’s those crazy, brilliant details that lift the Harry Potter books out of the ordinary.

And despite all the press, Rowling hasn’t actually unseated Roald Dahl—his stuff is still the best bet I know of for almost any eight-year-old on the planet. Talk about wit and whimsy! Golden tickets for the possibility of entrance to a mysteriously unknown chocolate factory? A girl who chews a stick of gum and turns into an oversize blueberry? I won’t get into lions and witches and wardrobes, but I hope you get the idea.

I got started thinking about all this because I read two British fantasies this week: Magical Kids by Sally Gardner and The Deep Freeze of Bartholomew Tullock by Alex Williams. I didn’t realize they were British at first, but I started getting the feeling I wasn’t in Kansas anymore and checked those back flaps to see where the authors were from. Suspicions confirmed!

Neither book is amazing, though both are pretty good. Magical Kids is a flip book—one side is a novella called The Smallest Girl Ever and the other is one called The Boy Who Could Fly. The idea of a shrinking child is not new, nor is the rather pop psychology explanation that Ruby Genie shrinks because adults are belittling her. The idea of a boy getting his wish to be able to fly is an oldie, as well, and it’s burdened by a creaky subplot about a dad who has forgotten how to have fun. But in each case, the story telling rolls cheerfully along just the same—especially in The Smallest Girl Ever, whose title character spends part of the book inhabiting a ladies’ purse while improving the magic tricks of an inept but helpful magician. (Apparently this is the second volume, by the way; the first volume consists of The Strongest Girl in the World and The Invisible Boy.)

The Deep Freeze of Bartholomew Tullock features one of those moustache-twirling villains intent on taking the family farm, also the farmwife. Only in this case, the farm is an oddly crafted house where the Breezes make intricate mechanical fans, and the farmwife is Elizabeth Breeze. Bartholomew Tullock has turned the town into a wintry, miserable place where everyone but the Breezes works in his turnip fields under a dark gray sky. As the villain increases the pressure, Madeline Breeze and her father leave town with a charming con artist to try to sell their fans in a warmer climate, while Rufus Breeze and his mother try to keep the bad guys from destroying their house. The book is a fun, fast-paced read, but as other reviewers have pointed out, the best thing about The Deep Freeze is the fans, which are utterly bizarre and are described in loving detail, making readers want to own one.

Like Magic Kids, The Deep Freeze of Bartholomew Tullock is a good way to spend an afternoon. Both books have that sense of whimsy, a valuable commodity in a fantasy world often overrun by dour plotting.

Of course, all is not lost on the American front. Going back to humor, I am happy to report that Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid and sequels actually give British humor a run for its money (particularly Louise Rennison!). And when it comes to TV, I am both relieved and proud to say that The Simpsons makes up for any number of predictable, unfunny TV comedies cobbled together by less creative Americans.

As for children’s fantasy, I suppose we can attempt to claim Neil Gaiman, despite the deplorable persistence of his entrancing accent. More important, we have some innovative newcomers appearing on the horizon: Marie Rutkoski (The Cabinet of Wonders), Ingrid Law (Savvy), and Joseph Helgerson (Horns and Wrinkles) all seem promising.

But let’s focus on the really kooky stuff. For madcap, whimsical, Britishy off-the-rails books, there are two American writers to watch: Ysabeau S. Wilce and James Kennedy. Wilce is the author of Flora Segunda: Being the Magical Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog. The sequel, just in case you can’t guess, is Flora’s Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room). The first book tends to ramble, but is nevertheless something new and intriguing—imagine a California about a century or so ago if the Aztecs were still around and had territorial rights, and if all concerned had magical abilities. Throw in a teenager with a Califan slang vocabulary and insufficient supervision, then watch what happens. Flora’s mother is the Califan military leader, while Flora herself is a rambunctious fourteen-year-old who gets suckered by a banished magical butler. I will say that the second book hangs together better. (It is also more clearly a Young Adult title.)

James Kennedy’s The Order of Odd-Fish isn’t perfect, but it is astonishing and funny. Here’s my Amazon review:

Jo was discovered as a baby by the flamboyant actress, Lily LaRouche, inside a washing machine, accompanied by a note that read: “This is Jo. Please take care of her. But beware. This is a DANGEROUS baby.” When our story opens, Jo is thirteen years old, living with Aunt Lily in the extravagantly moldering ruby palace in the middle of the California desert. The night of Lily's annual costume Christmas party, a Russian colonel whose actions are directed by his intestinal rumblings shows up, as does a narcissistic giant cockroach butler, not to mention a package for Jo that falls out of the sky. Chapter One ends, “After that, everyone had the leisure to start screaming.”

Soon Jo and company are being chased by a billionaire with evil aspirations. They end up in Eldritch City, where Jo finds out just why she is considered dangerous and must continue to hide her identity from her newfound friends, fellow squires to the Knights of the Order of Odd-fish. The order is working on making, not an encyclopedia of all knowledge, but an appendix “of dubious facts, rumors, and myths.... A repository of questionable knowledge, and an opportunity to dither about.”

As this task implies, author James Kennedy prefers to range along the road from the absurd to the ridiculous, stopping along the way in the outrageous. He also makes arguably masculine side trips into the realms of bodily functions and violence.

The plot is a little uneven in spots, perhaps because Kennedy combines one of those dark end-of-the-world story lines with the aforementioned nuttiness—and sometimes these two efforts seem to pull each other sideways. A few bits and pieces work better than others: I didn’t quite buy the parts involving a pie-loving character called Hoagland Shanks, for example. However, many OTHER bits are simply hilarious—and refreshingly creative. The rituals related to dueling, particularly the exchange of insults, are among Kennedy’s bizarre gems. Think of Eldritch City as the love child of Lewis Carroll and Neil Gaiman. It is well worth the trip.

I will caution you that Kennedy does not shy away from big words, nor from an irony worthy of a satirist writing for adults. I suspect a lot of the humor will sail right over young readers’ heads, although Lemony Snickett has already established a precedent for using irony and obscure vocabulary in children's books. Watch in particular for the subplot involving the vain cockroach butler, Sefino, and his archenemy, a centipede newswriter.

I can’t resist closing this review with the most astonishing sentence in The Order of Odd-Fish, a lovingly concocted work of art that will give you some idea what you’re in for: “But soon Ken Kiang found he was both cat and mouse in a bewildering showdown with the Belgian Prankster, in which strategies of ever greater sophistication were deployed, canceled, reversed, appropriated, adapted, and foiled; pawns sacrificed, attacks repulsed, fortresses stormed and captured, treaties signed and betrayed, retreats faked and traps sprung, territory gained, lost, besieged, divided, despoiled, and exchanged—it was a shadow world, of infinite levels of deceit and disguise, of decoys that were Trojan horses full of more decoys that were red herrings in non-mysteries that had neither a solution nor a problem, concerning people that didn't exist in a place that was nowhere in a situation that was impossible!” (275)

Frankly, I can’t wait to see what Kennedy writes next.

Now, I suppose this idea of British fantasy I’ve been trying to describe may be a style—and it may even be partly imaginary. (How apt!) But if there’s a lesson American fantasy writers can learn from the Brits, it is that we needn’t limit ourselves to simply finding a new method for establishing a portal to another world or swiping a medieval setting and introducing sorcerers. There’s a special kind of risk-taking involved in letting your imagination go significantly farther afield. So perhaps with this entry, I’m issuing a challenge to children’s fantasy writers, myself included. Because the mind can come up with far more creative worlds and plots and details if you will only let it travel higher into the ether.

A Review of Mama Says: A Book of Love for Mothers and Sons by Rob D. Walker and Leo and Diane Dillon

The more poetic type of concept book has lost ground in recent years. At a recent SCBWI conference I attended, it was clear that editors were hungry for action-packed, TV-esque plotting in children’s books. I’ve also heard it from my own editors: “This is lovely, but it’s not commercial enough.”

A concept picture book is centered around an idea rather than a plot. Or plot may be hinted at, but only because the concept conveys a certain degree of chronology or simply because pages are being turned. Alphabet books and books about colors or opposites are well-known examples, but the best concept books may be less obviously educational: take a look at Charles G. Shaw’s dreamy cloud book, It Looked Like Spilled Milk; Laura Vaccaro Seeger’s First the Egg; and Margaret Wise Brown’s The Important Book, for instance.

So what does it take to get a concept book published these days? Well, in the case of Mama Says: A Book of Love for Mothers and Sons, it takes the grand lions of illustration and a message the world seems to be in need of. Rob D. Walker is a fairly new author, but I hope you’ve heard of the formidable husband-and-wife illustration team, Leo and Diane Dillon.

Memorable concept books read like poems, and Mama Says is no exception. Each spread shows a different mother teaching her son, with her words presented as an unpunctuated seven-line poem. The lines are brief, as you’ll see in my favorite stanza:

Mama says
Embrace the moon
And marvel at the sun
Mama says
To study stars
And make a wish on one

This is about as specific as it gets, which isn’t what you want to see in poetry. Most of the stanzas sound like proverbs or the types of pat advice parents give their children, e.g., “Mama says/To put my heart/In everything I do.” But saying this does the book a disservice because Mama Says works better as a whole than in parts. One of the strongest messages of the book is that we live in a global community. Each spread represents a mother and son from a different part of the world, and each stanza is also given in translation from the corresponding language: Cherokee, Russian, Amharic, Japanese, Hindi, Inuktitut, Hebrew, English, Korean, Arabic, Quechua, and Danish (key at the back of the book). I also noticed that some of the messages seemed particularly relevant to the culture being depicted, another thoughtful aspect of the book, e.g., inner peace relating to meditation practices in India.

If the “showing” is not given in the words, it is provided in the illustrations, done in the Dillons’ signature soft-edged style. The idea of “sharing” sounds pretty vague, but it becomes clear as a Russian boy gives a loaf of bread he and his mother have just baked to an elderly man. The Japanese boy who is told to be true and put his heart in everything he does is shown in a smaller left-hand illustration confessing to having broken a vase, then repairing the vase with his mother’s help in the larger illustration on the facing page.

Good poems tend to conclude with a bang, and the last line of this book, in conjunction with the illustration, gets it right. The ending ties everything together with uncommon grace.

While I’m presenting Mama Says right now partly so you can think about ordering it as a Mother’s Day gift, I did wonder about the role of fathers and wish for a book like this for them, too.

There is more than one reference to God in Mama Says, which some readers might not relate to, but then again, the references are presented as being culture-specific and furthermore seem appropriate in a book about teaching children values in different countries. The mercenary, splintered, and combative nature of the modern world is a source of worry to many parents. Whether you’re religious or not, I believe you’ll find inspiration in this beautifully made book, Mama Says: A Book of Love for Mothers and Sons.

Because of the importance of Leo and Diane Dillon in the picture book world, I want to add a brief note about their other books. They are best known for winning back-to-back Caldecott medals, in 1976 for Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears (author Verna Aardema) and in 1977 for Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions (author Margaret Musgrove). They have won numerous other awards and created a lot of jacket art, along with many picture books. Recent books include Jazz on a Saturday Night (a Coretta Scott King Honor Book), Mother Goose Numbers on the Loose, The People Could Fly: The Picture Book (also a Coretta Scott King Honor Book), Earth Mother, and Whirlwind Is a Spirit Dancing. My personal favorites are out of print: two books by poet Nancy Willard—Pish, Posh Said Hieronymous Bosch and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice—and Wind Child by Shirley Rousseau Murphy.

But the most gorgeous book by the Dillons, which is still in print, is their rendition of To Every Thing There Is a Season, the famous verses from Ecclesiastes. A precursor to Mama Says in terms of both design and the theme of universal human truths, the book uses a different culture to represent each couplet, yet each spread is done in a different art style, from different periods of time (with a key at the back). If you don’t own this book, you should. It’s a real showpiece, one of my picture book treasures.

Note for Worried Parents: Mama Says includes one scene where a child’s dead male relative, presumably his father, is shown. The image is presented in the context of Hindu burial customs and is perfectly tender, but I realize some of you may shy away from the book for this reason.

A Review of Blueberry Girl by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess

If Neil Gaiman wants to make a concept picture book, he doesn’t exactly run into an argument from his publisher about how concept books aren’t that hot right now. Still, you might expect said concept book to be pretty dire, given Gaiman’s work as a horror/fantasy writer. Instead, his Blueberry Girl is warm and upbeat. I present it here as the mother-daughter counterpart to the mother-son book reviewed above, Mama Says. (Sorry, fathers, this just isn’t your year!)

According to the author, the book started out as a personal poem written for the soon-to-be-born daughter of a friend, singer Tori Amos. At that time, the child was affectionately being referred to as “the Blueberry.” Perhaps this explains the book’s intimacy, despite its universal themes and the depiction of more than one girl in Charles Vess’s illustrations. Gaiman recounts that people kept hearing about the poem and asking him for copies, and then Charles Vess saw it and liked it, and the two of put their heads together, deciding they could use it to raise money for causes protecting women and girls, and well—here’s the book!

Blueberry Girl is written as a prayer, but it isn’t addressed to a Judeo-Christian god. Instead it’s addressed to “Ladies of light and ladies of darkness and ladies of never-you-mind.” The illustrator has drawn three women in long robes who might be the Three Fates from Greek mythology, the Maiden-Mother-Crone triple goddess, or even the Queen of Faerie and a couple of her ladies.

Mind you, Gaiman doesn’t seem to be making a point so much as inhabiting his rightful fantasy milieu as he calls on the logical deity for blessing a small girl child. This is the world of metaphor, after all. The blessings themselves are a mixture of the thoughtful and the playful, beginning with “First, may you ladies be kind” (which encourages me to go with that Three Fates interpretation). The second blessing is from a fairy tale, a famous story about fairy gifts, no less: “Keep her from spindles and sleeps at sixteen....” Some of the blessings are more contemporary and long-sighted in nature: “Nightmares at three or bad husbands at thirty, these will not trouble her eyes. Dull days at forty, false friends at fifteen—let her have brave days and truth....” Having worked with high school students, I suspect a lot of girls could use protecting from “false friends at fifteen”!

From a poetry standpoint, the best language here is when the author names the Ladies, which he does two more times for a proper fairy tale thrice.

As lilting as the words, the illustrations show a hopeful girl skipping along treetops, riding an owl, or diving with whales. She is always moving forward, accompanied by a small parade of animals and birds. Framing art at the beginning and end show a woman in a blue dress, first very pregnant and then holding her baby. The art has a loose, Earth Mother sensibility which may strike some as granola-ish, but I hope the book is read by more traditional folks, as well. The joy conveyed by Blueberry Girl is worth sharing with mothers and daughters everywhere.

Now, if you really want a treat, also a preview of the book, watch this YouTube trailer and listen to Neil Gaiman reading the entire text. He has such a lovely, word-loving voice that you may feel a little funny reading Blueberry Girl aloud after hearing him! In case you also want to see more of Charles Vess’s art, go to his website, then scroll down and click on What’s Old: Recent Projects and Paintings.

Proximidade Award

Em of Em's Bookshelf gave me (or rather my blog) a Proximidade Award! Thanks very much, Em! "This blog invests and believes in the PROXIMITY-nearness in space, time and relationships. These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement! Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this clever-written text into the body of their award."

For my part, I nominate Laura Salas's blog for her friendly 15-words-or-less poetry contests, which keep intriguing me; Candace Ryan of Book, Booker, Bookest for her fresh and thoughtful comments; Susan Thomsen of Chicken Spaghetti for reminding me to celebrate the birthday of Strunk and White's Elements of Style; Lynn Hazen for having an Imaginary Blog, my favorite kind; Linda Gerber for interviewing sooo many authors and having excellent contests, also for talking shop with me; Enna of Squeaky Books for her great Shannon Hale header quote, t-shirt designs, and chocolate analogies; Oops...Wrong Cookie because you can't go wrong with Texas librarians--plus they keep reviewing books that I really like; and Deanna H. of Once Upon a Time for sharing cool stuff like creative bookshelves and the Poetry Month poster, which I now covet avidly. Okay, Proximidade Award winners, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to give this award to eight blogs you like and leave them a comment letting them know they've been honored!

A Review of Thirteenth Child by Patricia C. Wrede

I’ve been looking forward to this book coming out for months! So when I saw it in the bookstore yesterday, I snatched it up, ran home, and read the whole thing straight through. Why, you may ask, such transportations of delight? Well, fantasy is my favorite genre, and Patricia C. Wrede has written some very fun books, most notably the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, starting with Dealing with Dragons. She also coauthored Sorcery and Cecilia or the Enchanted Chocolate Pot and its sequels with Caroline Stevermer—novels of manners set in an alternate England where magicians are the norm.

Another reason I’ve been dying to read Thirteenth Child is because it clearly falls in the new subgenre I’ve been talking about, rural fantasy. (See my blog entry for January 16: “Move Over, Steampunk!”) With this book, Wrede is starting a new series called Frontier Magic, in which Americans in the 1800s have magicians to help them settle the Wild West (only here they're called Columbians). Wrede’s world is new in other ways, I discovered: the frontier is populated by “natural” animals such as mammoths, bison, and woolly rhinoseroses, along with magical creatures such as steam dragons, spectral bears, and swarming weasels.

On the far side of the plains were mountains, sharp and high, that no one had seen but a few explorers. Papa said that at least ten expeditions had tried to find a way through them to the Pacific Ocean, but only three men had ever come back alive, and they were stark out of their heads. There was a monument in the capital to Lewis and Clark, who headed the first group that went missing, back in 1804. It was more than wild country; it was unknown.

Alternative history, indeed! But there’s more: formerly, magicians led by Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin erected the Great Barrier Spell, intended to keep the lethal beasts of the frontier from overrunning and devouring Columbians. Now Eff and her family are moving out to the edge of the frontier, where her father will teach magic at a small college.

Eff is the hero of our story, though she thinks she's its villain. Because she is the thirteenth child, her superstitious uncles and aunts and cousins tell her over and over that she will turn out to be evil and should have been drowned at birth. To make matters worse, her twin Lan is the golden boy, seventh son of a seventh son and mightily magical. Fortunately, he and Eff are very close. But one of the reasons Eff’s parents are moving out west is to get away from the relatives who treat their daughter as if she were cursed.

The story telling has an epic feel, beginning when Eff is five and ending when she is eighteen. Eff and Lan attend a small public school out in the settlement, though Lan is given supplemental lessons to cultivate his gifts. It doesn’t occur to anyone except the amazing Miss Ochiba that Eff might be plenty gifted in her own right. Miss Ochiba schools Eff and her friend William in Aphrikan magic during after-school tutoring sessions while Lan is busy learning the more commonly valued Avrupan (European) magic.

We also meet the Society of Progressive Rationalists, who abhor magic and are determined to build a settlement without using any at all. One such rationalist, Brant Wilson, studies with Eff’s father and turns out to be a bit of a hero; he also turns Eff’s older sister’s head. Another character of note is “Wash” Washington Morris, a circuit riding magician who troubleshoots problems in the scattered settlements.

In time, Eff’s gifts begin to show in unexpected ways as she and her family and friends take on a problem that is destroying the crops of the entire region. It’s not dragon fighting, but it’s a matter of life and death for these struggling farmers.

Thirteenth Child reads like historical fiction, and I was thoroughly caught up in the way the Columbian settlers handled their challenges. One of the strengths of the book is the way Wrede captures the "can do" feeling of frontier living and this era in our country's history. Her greatest success, though, is the character of Eff and her story, which is what really kept me going. I did get a little bogged down near the end of the book during explanations about different stages of beetles, but that’s the only place my reading faltered. I can assure you that Patricia C. Wrede’s latest series, like a settler taming new land, is off to a brave, strong start.

A Review of The Books of Umber: Happenstance Found by P.W. Catanese

In some cases, as an author launches into a new fantasy series, there’s a noticeable grinding of gears, the kind you might hear at a large and prosperous gristmill during the Middle Ages. I didn't get that feeling with Wrede's new series, Frontier Magic (reviewed above), but I did get it with this first volume in P.W. Catanese’s Books of Umber, Happenstance Found. Still, the series definitely has potential.

The story begins with the discovery of a young boy in a series of ancient caves. His name is Hap, short for Happenstance, and he has no memory of anything prior to about five minutes before he is found. Hap turns out to be the hidden treasure an adventurer named Lord Umber has been seeking. Like a foundling on a doorstep, the boy has a note in his pocket, and it is addressed to Umber himself. Soon Umber and Hap are making their way out of the caves, accompanied by Umber's companions--a strongman named Oates who is magically compelled to speak only the truth and a shy one-handed archer named Sophie. The four barely manage to escape a dreadful wyrm, the collapse of part of the cave network, and a volcano. Then, as they set out across the sea on a leviathan boat, they realize they are being followed.

It soon becomes obvious to the others that Hap is a little different. He never needs to sleep, can leap much higher than ordinary people, can see in the dark, and can read and speak any language—even dead ones and languages from other worlds. He also has strange, glimmering green eyes. For his part, Hap finds out more about Lord Umber, especially once he is ensconced in the man’s fortress, the Aerie. Umber is a stranger to this magical world, bringing with him knowledge from the land of his origin. He is essentially a Renaissance man, but in addition to his own brilliance, Umber has a secret device that provides him with information.

The author gives strong clues early on, so I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that Umber is a refugee from Earth. The explorer appears to be manic-depressive, as well, which is an interesting component in a fantasy. (At one point he tells Hap he misses his meds.)

Umber is well regarded as the savior of his city-state and a provider of ideas such as how to build a better ship. When Hap visits the royal palace with Umber, he meets three princes: the duty-driven heir to the throne, a jolly drunkard, and a poisonous snake type. Back at the Aerie, an uptight housekeeper, a miniature man, a mad librarian, and an extremely dangerous captive witch round out the cast. It is clear that the author intends to write future books involving the princes and the witch. But this volume is mostly about how Hap is pursued by a horrible being who seems to want to assassinate him. Even though Umber draws on all of his resources to protect the boy, the Creep eventually closes in on Hap. The climactic scene brings Hap face-to-face with his stalker, who turns out to have something far more terrifying than death in mind.

Fortunately, one of the best things about Happenstance Found is the way the good guys defeat the villain. I had been wondering how they were going to pull it off, and the answer turns out to be surprising, effective, and even funny. Watch for it!

As for flaws, I did get a little irked by the larger story arc and the way it’s presented: a powerful unseen being has led Umber to Hap, and his goal has to do with helping Umber save Earth, not the world of this story. That aspect of the plot felt like we were seeing the man behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz. Besides relying on deus ex machina, Catanese devalues the world of the story by making it a sort of byproduct of the problems on Umber’s home world. Fantasy imperialism rears its ugly head, as does a messagey “save the environment, ‘ware the apocalypse” agenda for readers here on Earth. (Useful thoughts, perhaps, but difficult not to wield heavy-handedly in a fantasy adventure story.)

Even so, the array of characters in Happenstance Found bodes well for future volumes, and I’m curious to see what the author does with them, especially Hap and his strange gifts. The book is told from Hap's point of view, yet there’s no doubt Umber is really the star of the show, an intriguing cross between Indiana Jones and Leonardo Da Vinci, with a morose drop or two of Sylvia Plath thrown in for good measure. And so it begins: If this first volume is all about setting the stage, then the stage is very well set.

Note for Worried Parents: The bad guy is pretty scary. I mean, really scary, especially in that climactic scene. The witch is kind of horrific, too. Amazon lists the book as being for 9- to 12-year-olds, but I’d say it depends on the 9-year-old.

A Review of Tiger Moon by Antonia Michaelis

A story within a story, Tiger Moon owes a debt of thanks to Scheherazade. In this case, however, there’s a slightly different reason that the young wife is doomed: having failed in various attempts to escape, she will be killed when her new husband finds out she is not a virgin. As the book begins, this girl is sold by her poverty-stricken parents to be the eighth wife of a volatile and wealthy Indian merchant, Ahmed Mudhi, who prefers to be called Rajah. The girl herself is named Safia, meaning Virtue, but prefers to be called Raka, the Full Moon. Or so she tells a young eunuch who sometimes attends her in the Rajah’s harem. He is called Lalit, The Beautiful One, by the household, but prefers his own name, Lagan, meaning The Right Time.

In case all this talk of names seems like a muddle, think of it as a symbol of the surprises to come. For one thing, the "fictional" framed story is far more powerful than the "real" framing story. For another, all of the important characters in Tiger Moon first appear to be something other than their true selves. The main character, Farhad Kamal, is even able to change his appearance readily, beyond what would be explained by mere disguise. Later in the book, he uses a series of names that represent transformation. Michaelis makes us think about the differences between who we are and who we seem, as well as the differences between who we are and who we may become.

As she awaits her fate, Raka begins to tell Lalit a story about the Hindu god Krishna setting a trap to catch a hero. Of course, Krishna doesn’t seem to get quite what he expected. Even the place he sets his trap has been altered—an ancient sacred grove turned into a large garden by the British. The author writes, “Krishna ground his teeth, but he sat down and waited patiently for his hero. The hero turned up around midday.”

We learn that “Farhad means Happiness and Kamal means Lotus Blossom, and up to this point in Farhad Kamal’s life, he had not discovered what his life had to do with either of them.” A scruffy sixteen-year-old trickster and thief, Farhad is drawn to the silver amulet Krishna has placed in the center of a lotus blossom. But as soon as he touches it, he is also drawn into Krishna’s schemes, assigned to rescue the god’s daughter from the demon Ravana. As the story continues, we understand that the girl Farhad must rescue and Raka are one and the same—only they’re not. Michaelis's two stories overlap lightly and cleverly in the beginning, then boldly and mystically by the end of the book.

In the meantime, we are utterly captivated by Farhad, a flawed but likable young man whose doggedness charms even though we know he’s mostly pursuing Krishna’s quest so that he won’t spend his next life on Earth as a worm or a woodlouse. (I was reminded of Lloyd Alexander's slightly vain, mistake-prone heroes.) Farhad's task is not a straightforward one. Before he can rescue Krishna’s daughter, he must steal a cursed jewel, the bloodstone, in order to bribe the Rajah’s chief servant. Farhad must also steal a sacred tiger, for the tiger will be his steed as he races across the desert, trying to reach the girl before it’s too late.

No quest would be complete without a villain, and Farhad's is a man he first encounters as a fellow prisoner when the boy is thrown into jail. Like Farhad, the Frenchman is in pursuit of the lost jewel. Like Farhad, he is more than a master of disguise, changing his appearance as he comes after the bloodstone again and again with increasing viciousness. But Farhad has allies of his own, most notably the great white tiger, Nitish. The two bicker, yet gradually become partners in Krishna’s enterprise, compensating for each other’s weaknesses—selfishness and cowardice in Farhad’s case, pride and a fear of water in Nitish’s.

Farhad’s growth during the course of his journey is rough, but nevertheless heartening. By the end of the book, we are more than ready for the framing story and Farhad’s tale to merge, and the transformation somehow works. From a writing standpoint, it’s a tremendous accomplishment. Most of all, however, Tiger Moon is a magical reading experience. I found myself madly rooting for Farhad to succeed.

I’ll just mention that this book came to my attention because it won a 2009 Batchelder Honor award, given to the finest children’s books in translation. Originally written in German, Tiger Moon was translated into English by Anthea Bell.

Note for Worried Parents: This is most definitely a Young Adult book, and it’s pretty open about sex. There are a couple of discreet, yet clear scenes of sex between main characters, as well as a few less pleasant encounters and references. I have already mentioned that a key plot point is Raka’s not being a virgin. Though none of this particularly detracts from the story telling, some readers might find it offensive.

Update (5-16-12): Rethinking my take on this book after reading a review from Book Smugglers. Wow!