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.

A Review of Knightley Academy by Violet Haberdasher

There's enough Harry Potter going on here that some might accuse Knightley Academy of being derivative: poor, underdog boy unexpectedly qualifies to go to a special school, arriving there via train, where he makes a couple of good friends, including a goofy boy and a clever girl... The boy's name is even Henry, which is of course a form of Harry. And yep, the author is a Brit.

Then again, I prefer to think of this book as being partially inspired by Harry Potter. Because Knightley Academy is a likable tale, with a likable main character, Henry Grim. And Haberdasher quickly turns the story into her own creation. For example, the school in question doesn't offer instruction in witchcraft and wizardry; it's a training school for knights. In fact, there's not a trace of magic in Haberdasher's book. (I should explain that these knights don't wear armor and joust, although they do fence. Knightley is basically an academy for nurturing leaders and certain kinds of civil servants.)

At her website, Haberdasher herself explains the genesis of her story:

Knightley Academy began quite innocently, in the dimly lit balcony of a theatre during intermission. I attended an elite school for young ladies, which I quietly despised. As my classmates giggled over the performance, I sat and wondered if every school had a student who felt like an outsider. I wondered what sort of boy would be branded odd and different at a school for knights.

Henry Grim is Haberdasher's outsider. At first he lives at another school, an academy for privileged boys. Only he isn't a student, he's a servant. Fortunately, a genial professor has proved willing to offer him secret lessons. All of the boys in the school are hoping for admission to Knightley Academy, and when the examiners come around, Henry is amazed to find himself sitting for the entrance exams. It turns out Henry is the only boy from Midsummer School who gets into Knightley, to the dismay of the regular students, especially the snobby Valmont (um, totally Draco Malfoy!).

Lord Winter, the new headmaster at Knightley, is much less conservative than the Board of Trustees, who are appalled at this turn of events, but grudgingly agree to let two more openings at the academy be given to commoners as a sort of pilot program. When Henry arrives at Knightley, he is snubbed by the arrogant noblemen's sons, including his nemesis Valmont, who manages to show up, after all. However, Henry is assigned to room with the other two commoners, Adam and Rohan, and the three become fast friends.

Rohan may be Haberdasher's most interesting character. In a book with an acknowledged alternative British setting, Rohan is the adopted son of a lord, but is actually Indian. This means that he has the upbringing and, to some extent, attitudes, of the privileged boys, but is completely disdained by those boys for being dark-skinned. For that matter, Adam is Jewish. One of the themes of the book is discrimination.

At Knightley Academy, Henry and his friends face, not only bullying from the other boys, but outright sabotage from unknown enemies who want to see this experiment with commoners fail. (Among the suspects is a Snape-like instructor, Lord Havelock.) Happily, Henry has allies—besides his roommates, he can call upon his old tutor, who is now at the school instructing Lord Winter's daughter, Frankie. The girl is another ally and a great character: she has been kicked out of various ladylike boarding schools for her irrepressible ways and soon teams up with the three commoners. One of my favorite scenes is when she warns a bully not to mess with her, citing her semi-delinquent history in a most sinister way.

The bigger threat in this book is a country called Nordlands, which promises to provide fodder for the rest of the series. In Nordlands, individual freedoms are increasingly curtailed—the place reads like a mashup of Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, and today's Iran. (For example, the government forbids education for women.) In a slightly awkward plot point, news of the oppression is printed only in the gossip rags in Britain. This means that the lower classes believe the rumors, but boys like the Knightley students do not. At least, not until the boys from Knightley travel to Nordlands for an inter-school tournament, and Henry finds out a few things for himself.

Now, perhaps I'm being unfair to first-time author Haberdasher when I compare her story to Harry Potter. But one of the strengths of her book is something I find very Potterish indeed, and that's a sort of hopeful, cheery tone, a convivial sense of the power of friendship among a group of nice kids. It's a tone that characterized J.K. Rowling's earliest books about Harry Potter, and I think you'll be pleased to discover it in this first book about Henry Grim. So while Haberdasher doesn't do the same kind of world building as Rowling in terms of wildly inventive details (e.g., quidditch and Bertie Bott's Everyflavor Beans,), she does write a group of characters worth reading about, in a new school that kids are going to want to visit.

Tellingly, Tamora Pierce is quoted on the front cover: "Steam-punky, subversive, and enthralling!" Pierce is best known for her series about girls training to be knights. Like Henry, they are outsiders, treated badly by boys who don't think they should be there. While I don't know about subversive or even steam-punky (what a word!), Knightley Academy is pretty enthralling.

Note for Worried Parents: Knightley Academy is middle grade fiction. Other than some bullying and an oblique mention of torture, it's quite wholesome.

Update: Here's a link to the Knightley Academy book trailer. If I'm not mistaken, the part of Frankie is being played by the author, the pseudonymous Violet Haberdasher.

A Review of Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins

I'm amazed I picked up this book. There are just so many teen books about vampire academies and fairy academies and zombie academies out there that I tend to walk right on by. But Hex Hall, besides having great cover art, gave me the feeling that it wouldn't take itself too seriously, and sure enough, I enjoyed Rachel Hawkins' take on the paranormal school story. Another first-timer, the author is a former high school English teacher, so she does know her teens and can no doubt diagram a mean sentence.

The initial scene in Hex Hall would be the last scene in a different book: young witch Sophie Mercer takes pity on a dateless fellow prom-goer and arranges for the girl's crush to come and dance with her. Only Sophie overdoes the spell and prom goes haywire. (As one boy shouts out, "Carrie prom!") A few days later, Sophie finds herself at a reform school for young Prodigium, meaning witches, faeries, and shapeshifters. All of them have misused their powers, putting the secretive supernatural community at risk.

Oh, and there's just one vampire—who happens to be Sophie's roommate and inspires fear in the other students. One of the funniest moments of the book is when Sophie sees how Jenna has decorated their room:

I don't know what I was expecting a vampire's room to look like. Maybe lots of black, a bunch of books by Camus...oh, and a sensitive portrait of the only human the vamp had ever loved, who had no doubt died of something beautiful and tragic, thus dooming the vamp to an eternity of moping and sighing romantically....
But this room looked like it had been decorated by the unholy lovechild of Barbie and Strawberry Shortcake... The curtains were beige canvas, but Jenna had twined a hot-pink scarf over the drapery rod. Between the two desks was one of those old Chinese screens, but even this bore Jenna's stamp, as the wood had been painted—you guessed it: pink. The top of the screen was draped with pink Christmas lights. Jenna's bed was covered in what appeared to be deep pink Muppet fur.
Jenna caught me staring at it. "Awesome, right?"
"I...I didn't know pink existed in that particular shade."

As you can see, Sophie has a lively narrative voice, which helps counterbalance the darker elements of this story.

Our heroine soon runs afoul of a coven of popular witches, all of whom look like supermodels. When Sophie refuses to join their ranks, they go out of their way to make her life miserable. It doesn't help that the boy Sophie finds herself attracted to, Archer, is dating the coven ringleader, or that Archer insulted Sophie himself when they first met. But a Hex Hall version of detention throws Sophie and Archer together, and they gradually become friends.

Meanwhile, Sophie plays detective, trying to figure out how a student who used to be in the coven died, especially after another student is attacked. She also learns some surprising news about her long-absent father and has a strange encounter with an apparent ghost. A group of humans determined to wipe out all Prodigium provides a big-picture threat that the author will be clearly be developing in future books. Hex Hall ends with a twist that caught me completely off guard.

Interestingly, Hyperion lists this book's intended audience as "11 and up." By which they mean tweens as well as teens, of course. (Amazon just says 9-12, although the book is too teenagey to be considered middle grade fiction.) I'm beginning to wonder if what I would call "wholesome YAs" will eventually get their own category as publishers try to reach the tween market without going quite as edgy as the more mature YA books.

If you've read Marlene Perez's Dead Is the New Black and sequels, you'll have a ballpark idea of this book's tone, although Hawkins tells a longer, more detailed story. For those who like their witches and vampires with a touch of humor, Hex Hall promises to be the start of a satisfying series.

Note for Worried Parents: Girls die in a gruesome way, and there are scary supernatural threats. Also some romance and kissing.

Update: Here's an interview with Rachel Hawkins at Enchanted Inkpot (September 2010).

A Review of The Birthday Ball by Lois Lowry

Princess Patricia Priscilla is bored, bored, bored—both right this minute as the book begins and by the thought of the upcoming royal ball. When the almost-16-year-old finds out she is expected to choose among three (well, four) royal suitors, she is aghast, and with good reason. Not only is she uninterested in the idea of marriage just yet, but the suitors are uniformly horrible.

I shouldn't say "uniformly." Lowry's greatest creations in this book are these suitors, who would fit nicely in a lineup with Roald Dahl's most appallingly icky characters. Actually, you may not be surprised to learn that the book is illustrated by Jules Feiffer, America's answer to Quentin Blake.

Suitor #1 is Duke Desmond, who is so hideous that no mirrors are allowed in his presence. Duke Desmond has issues with dental hygiene, and with hygiene in general. Even his hair is a menace, a coarse whip-like tuft that has been known to brain people who are foolish enough to get in its path.

Duke Desmond abuses his power and wealth, but he seems pleasant in comparison to Prince Percival of Pustula, who dresses in black, adorns his dyed black hair with grease, and stares in the mirror constantly, murmuring compliments to his own pecs and thighs. The prince has a habit of spraying saliva when he says words that start with P. Here's how Lowry introduces Prince Percival:

Black matched the darkness of his moods—he was always depressed—and, in fact, the color matched his heart. Percival was a black-hearted man who hated his subjects, the Pustulans, the populace of his domain; who hated his own family (he had sentenced his own mother to a minimum-security prison seven years before and he did not venture there on visiting days, never had, not once, and on the most recent Father's Day he had given his aged father a tarantula); and who, in truth, hated everyone but himself.

Quite the romantic, Percival figures that he and Princess Patricia Priscilla will be a good match because they both have a lot of P's in their names.

I'll leave it to you to discover the third, or rather third and fourth suitors, for yourselves. Suffice it to say that you wouldn't want your daughter to go on a date with any of these guys, let alone marry one of them.

But the princess has found a way to distract herself from the upcoming ball, as well as from her everyday ennui. She trades clothes with her maid and sneaks out to go to school in the village, calling herself simply "Pat." There she notices that the young schoolmaster is rather appealing. (I was happy to see that school and reading are presented as privileges in this book.)

The Birthday Ball represents a departure from double Newbery winner Lowry's dystopian works for older readers. Turns out Lowry can write comic fantasy, although I'll admit I was on the alert for social satire at the very least. I did find it, but more than anything, this book is just a rollicking, goofy read.

Lowry has fun with fantasy tropes, let alone plain old human nature. For example, Patricia may have changed her clothes, but she has no idea how to act like a commoner and puzzles everyone she meets with her strange pronouncements, all the while thinking to herself that she's pulling it off just fine.

We also get three singing servant girls, the princess's spoiled cat, and a romance between Patricia's maid and the pulley boy. Not to mention a king who collects butterflies and a nice nod to Lewis Carroll.

At 186 pages, The Birthday Ball isn't a very long book, but that should add to its appeal for reluctant readers. It is such an absurdly delicious read, with little surprises tucked in among the well-chosen fairy tale tropes, that I can recommend it to readers of Dahl and fairy tales and everything in between.

Note for Worried Parents: The Birthday Ball is middle grade fiction. There's a little mild bathroom talk from some of the princes, who are meant to be repulsive.

FYI: I requested a copy of this book from the Amazon Vine program. The Birthday Ball will be available on April 12th.

The New Fantasy for Kids

I just posted a panel discussion I'm leading over at the Enchanted Inkpot, a blog created by a group of children's and YA fantasy writers. This week's topic? "'New-Fashioned' Fantasy: What Does It Look Like?" We talk about current trends in fantasy for young readers, indicating how the genre has changed since the days of Tolkien, Lewis, and Barrie. Take a look!

Looking Glass Reviews of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland

This morning I took a quick look at rottentomatoes.com to see what the reviewers were saying about Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, and I had to laugh. Talk about mixed reviews! "Loved it" alternated pretty evenly with "hated it."

So this afternoon I saw the movie for myself, and I think I've figured out why the reviewers are so riled up. The following are my Tweedledum and Tweedledee takes on Tim Burton's Alice.

The Review for Alice Purists: Why You'll Dislike This Movie

What a travesty! Tim Burton takes the complex, whimsical world of Alice in Wonderland, where anything might happen, and transforms it into a setting for a straightforward, predictable quest fantasy in which an insecure main character, aided by new friends, must get the courage and self-confidence to slay a dragon and return home triumphant. The story is too linear, not to mention unsurprising. So what if a cool-looking CGI monster pops up every so often? Those things are a dime a dozen in today's movies.

I ask you: who wants to see a jabberwock, let alone a vorpal sword? The jabberwock is a legend for a reason, a terrifying collection of details like teeth and claws hiding in the shadows, here sadly reduced by being made visual. And if that sword truly had to be shown in a movie, I'm pretty sure half the kids in this country could have come up with a better design!

Besides, Burton followed the new rule of "children's" film-making: unless your movie is for five-year-olds, you will make the hero or heroine somewhere between the ages of 16 and 20. In fact, this Alice is so old and jaded that she thinks her long-ago childhood adventure was a dream, one she's mostly forgotten. She spends half the movie trying to convince herself that what's happening isn't real (cliché alert!).

As if this weren't enough, Alice is on the verge of marrying a smarmy, unimaginative man, pressured by half the population of England to say "yes." In other words, Burton wants this movie to be a feminist fable, showing us not-at-all-subtly that any girl who can drum up the courage to slay a jabberwock can handily turn down a bad offer of marriage, gosh-darn-it. (Watch for an ally near the end of the movie who, in the London of Alice's day, would never have cooperated in the least.)

Furthermore, the whole story has been written to give Johnny Depp as much screen time as possible, which throws the pacing off. Burton also insists on repeating some of Carroll's coolest lines until they're beaten into submission. Then he shows his utter lack of confidence in his audience's smarts by having Alice point out the last little Wonderland touch in the final seconds of the movie. Ouch!

The Review for Non-Purists: Why You'll Like This Movie

Location, location, location. What a gorgeous world Tim Burton has created! A marvelously long rabbit hole; dreamy, ominous forests; creepy fairy tale castles for the Red and White queens; and an appropriately odd tea party for the Mad Hatter and Company. (Watch for the Mad Hatter to hide Alice from her enemies in a fun way during the tea party scene.)

The characters are rendered wonderfully, as well, mostly in terms of design, but also thanks to great casting. You'll like Johnny Depp as a soulfully mad Hatter, but wait till you meet Helena Bonham-Carter as the Red Queen, or—my personal favorite—Alan Rickman as the Caterpillar (here named Algernon). The card soldiers are perfect, and of course, Crispin Glover as the Red Queen's evil knight is poignantly repulsive.

Small, creative touches abound, such as the Red Queen's oversized head, especially in combination with the way her courtiers wear false oversized body parts to curry her favor. I like the Dormouse as a miniature warrior with a ghastly penchant for spearing eyeballs. The Cheshire Cat is a tour de force, especially as used to further the plot and for one particularly lovely match cut involving the moon.

I'll remind you that Lewis Carroll's book is mostly episodic, albeit delightful. This means it meanders, which is not what movie scripts are supposed to do. Perhaps that's why Tim Burton decided to go his own way, using Wonderland's setting and characters to create something new. While his plot is fairly ordinary in fantasy terms, it does allow him to show off the setting and characters while moving things along at a brisk pace.

Each scene is a nice little capsule of lunatic dialogue and bizarre beauty. And as fantasy battles go, the climactic scene is especially good.

Could Burton have done justice to Carroll's Alice if he'd stuck to the original storyline? I doubt it, although I would have liked to see him try. But while this movie isn't a perfect rendering of Carroll's story, it does capture the author's vision of a strange and wonderful world, a happy departure from our own reality.

Note for Worried Parents: Small children will probably be frightened by the monsters, menace, and occasional gore in this film.

A Review of Falling In by Frances O'Roark Dowell

I know this writer best for her moving, literary contemporary and historical fiction, e.g., Dovey Coe and Shooting the Moon. (Here's my review of the latter from last year.) So of course, I was intrigued to see how she would handle fantasy. It didn't surprise me to find that Falling In felt as much like magical realism as fantasy in spots, despite the whole portal-to-another-world trope with its nod to Alice in Wonderland.

Because Falling In isn't really about magic, it's about people and prejudice. It's about being a loner and an outsider, whether you're a grown woman or a young girl. It's about the power of the imagination, the way it comforts and protects the outsider, and the ways it can fail her. Also the way imagination can change the world. No small themes here.

First we meet Isabelle Bean and find out that she's not like the others. She's quirky, imaginative, a dreamer. She is also thoroughly ostracized by the kids at school. Even her mother, an orphan and a widow herself, isn't certain how to interact with a girl who isn't interested in shopping at the mall.

There's a barely visible edge of otherworldliness to Isabelle, a silver thread that runs from the top of her head to the bottom bump of her spine. It frightens other children away. They're afraid that if they sit too close, the thread will weave itself into their hair and pull them into dark places they can't find their way out of. A girl named Jenna claimed it reached out to grab her one day as she walked up the aisle on her way to recess, but she had her scissors in her pocket (don't ask why) and nipped it before it could entangle her.

Isabelle is surprisingly stoic about all of this, as much puzzled as troubled by the situation. A great reader, especially of fantasy, she decides she must be a changeling. For one thing, what is that buzzing noise she's been hearing all morning at school? Sent to the principal's office for not paying attention in class, Isabelle steps into the nurse's office and, imagining the possibilities, opens a mysterious door. Her final remark to a classmate waiting for the nurse is, "Yes, I believe I'd like to visit the country of Mice. I'll try to be back by lunchtime, but if I'm not, save one perfect french fry for me, would you?" Then Isabelle "falls in," emerging in another world, another school.

There the children take one look at her clothes and accuse her of being a witch. After semi-convincing them she's not, Isabelle sets out to explore her new domain. It turns out the local villages send their children away to camp in the forest for fear of a horrible witch. (This witch, like a medieval queen, embarks on a grand progress each summer. Only instead of simply visiting her subjects, she travels from village to village in search of children to catch and devour.)

Isabelle being Isabelle, she heads straight for the witch. Along the way, she meets a village girl named Hen who agrees to accompany her, although Isabelle hides her true purpose. They eventually come to the cottage of an old herbwoman named Grete who feeds them and teaches them her craft—but Isabelle begins to suspect that Grete is the witch.

Other than Isabelle's initial journey to another world and some mild psychic powers, there's not a whole lot of magic in this book. Instead, Dowell is interested in the idea of how someone might come to be labeled a witch, and how awful stories might be born from communal fears. Fortunately, she is also interested in laying such fears to rest.

Isabelle's own connection to this strange land and its witch add further dimension to the tale.

The author occasionally comments during the story, interposing short chapters in which she addresses the reader. Because she's a very good writer, the interludes are well written and often funny, but they do pull the reader out of the story. This is done deliberately, so you'll have to see for yourself whether you like the effect. For example, just as Isabelle is about to turn the knob of that mysterious door, the writer interrupts to say, "I'd like to stop for a moment, if I could. I want you to think about how many times you've opened a door. What happened?"

Dowell asks readers if they've ever imagined opening a door and finding something unusual on the other side. Then she suggests:

If you have a little time to waste, go put your hand on the knob of the door to your room. Close your eyes and take a deep breath. What's that noise you hear? Could it be your books reading themselves to one another? Is that your goldfish whistling Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik? That thump, thud, crash!—your pillows having a pillow fight? Do you smell the earthy, froggy smell of trolls? What exactly goes on in your room when you're not around?
But I digress. Back to the story.

In the end, Isabelle's adventure in the world she visits is more character than plot driven, and a bit didactic to boot. Still, Dowell is talented enough to make this work. She spices her tale with humor, too: when the witch finally runs into trouble, the situation is both scary and amusing. Then things get darker and Isabelle has to do some quick thinking to turn the tide.

Falling In is a quirky book, but a likable one. I think my biggest disappointment might be expressed as a dream of my own. I can't see Dowell writing a traditional fantasy—I know she needed to do her own thing here, and her roots as a writer of tender real-life stories sort of seeped into the genre she chose. Pragmatic Dowell seems to pull back from the magic in her tale. For example, having given us the "silver thread" passage quoted above, which is lovely and unearthly, Dowell tells us a few pages later that a strange light the other students see hovering around Isabelle turns out to have a realistic explanation. Dowell then goes on to tell the story of a witch who isn't one, or at least not very much. I realize one of the themes of this book is how small communities can transform a slightly unusual person into a monster, but I feel that something else might be going on, as well: this author seems torn between her habitual reality hat and the new fantasy one she's trying on.

What Dowell does beautifully here is write magical realism. The places where she uses that approach in this book, primarily in the early chapters, make me long to see a story from her that is neither contemporary realism nor fantasy, but entirely magical realism. Because anyone who imagined Isabelle Bean could create something truly wonderful in that genre.

Finally, I want to point out that I was an Isabelle once, and I suspect that some of Dowell's readers will be, too. While Falling In doesn't make everything right for the dreamers of this world, it does offer them comfort, laughter, and a kind of secret hope.

Note for Worried Parents: Bullying, threats of violence, and an upsetting story about a baby who is hurt. Generally encouraging, however.

A Review of The Pickle King by Rebecca Promitzer

The Pickle King reminds me of a particular group of books, most of them about villainous factory owners, particularly food fabricators, and many of them drizzling with perpetual or near-perpetual rain: Fortune's Magic Farm by Suzanne Selfors, The Secret of Zoom by Lynn Jonell, Canned by Alex Shearer, and The Deep Freeze of Bartholomew Tullock by Alex Williams. More distantly, Pickle King has echoes of Charles Dickens and Joan Aiken. In each book, evil rich people oppress a town, their misdeeds covered up by bribery and/or dark magicks. The awful secrets are eventually brought to light by a kid or a group of kids.

Amazon calls this a YA, although it reads like middle grade fiction much of the time. The publisher's website says "10 and up." The Pickle King includes horror elements such as rats, roaches, and, most important, human body parts. In some ways, the book is simply a mystery about contemporary kids. But psychic powers, hidden histories, and things like a secret community of misfits living beneath a garbage dump make it more of a paranormal/fantasy/horror story, part of a new subgenre inspired by books like Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book.

This entrant is a little uneven, but there are quite a few things I liked about it. The setting has a nice Twilight Zone vibe, and Bea draws you into her worries as well as her friendships and adventures. I was basically a happy reader for about half the book, after which I felt a slight loss of interest. I ended up being disappointed by the way the story concluded—as much for plot choices as for a heavy-handed cliffhanger after what seemed like four final chapters in a row.

The rain is essentially a character here, and Promitzer describes it really well, bringing it up over and over again. If you get tired of this, recall that main character Bea is just as sick of it as you are! One of her chief goals in life is to escape the rainy town of Elbow and go visit a place like Florida, where the sun shines. Here's a rainy sample from the first chapter:

Anyway, it was summer vacation in Elbow and, of course, it was pouring rain.
I don't know if you've ever been anywhere where it rained for a few days without a break, not even a little one. If you have, you'll know that it makes you feel edgy, kind of jumpy inside. There are shadows, an unnatural kind of light, strange rainy noises, and you start to feel like you can't trust the regular things around you, the things you take for granted. Sometimes it seems like the things you've seen in scary movies or your own nightmares have come alive and are real—and have moved in for good. Other times it's as though you're living underwater and there's no air, and you really start to believe the sun will never ever shine again. It's no good for anybody to spend the summer in Elbow, but it's the kids like me who have to hang around; kids with no money or no parents or a bit of both. Some of us have got green growing between our toes from all the rain. It's a kind of mold. Bertha says it's the start of webbed feet.

TV screenwriter Promitzer tells a fairly compelling story in The Pickle King, and readers will find themselves going along for the ride with Bea on the bike she has spray-painted purple. The first place Bea brings us is an old house, where her friend Sam shows her a dead body. Aspiring photographer Bea takes pictures of the corpse, only to find when she gets home that the dead man's ghost appears to be haunting her camera.

Bea is accompanied by a nice little cast of characters. First there's Sam, a kid from the wrong side of the tracks who is alternately neglected and abused by his thuggish older brother and his father the drunk. We also get Sam's dog Jellybean, who provides comic relief along with some Lassie-like proclivities in a crisis. Sam and Bea reluctantly seek out other members of "The Summer Club," starting with rich girl Madison, whose initial superficiality and shoe fetish turns out to hide her unhappiness and a bad habit. Next we meet Eric, a young mad scientist who's really not that good at inventing things, and Butterfly, who is endlessly doomed to babysit her younger brother, Nelson.

Throw in some sinister villains, a jar of Herman's Red Devil Relish (also haunted), and you've got quite the summer vacation! Although sometimes the "blech" factor seems a little calculated, young readers will probably get a kick out of it. This book is obviously intended to be followed by a sequel. While I could wish for a slightly stronger plot next time, I do recommend Bea Klednik as your guide to some unusual adventures.

Note for Worried Parents: Sam smokes, and he offers to share his cigarette with the other kids, one of whom accepts. Other than that, just the horror elements mentioned above and a little preteen attraction—one kiss and some hand-holding, for example.

Wimp Yourself

Thanks to Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect and Travis at 100 Scopes Notes for this link, where you can "Go Wimp Yourself!" Here's my Diary of a Wimpy Kid avatar. (Note the astonishing similarity to my Book Aunt portrait...) I'd say it's worth the movie ad--go try it for yourself!

Jane Gets a Makeover

I was making my rounds through a bookstore the other day, scanning the YA (teen) shelves, when my eyes were caught by another imitation-Twilight cover, stark black with a passionate red rose and a couple of white roses hovering behind. I picked it up, expecting to see a title along the lines of Fangs in the Night or My Brooding Werewolf Lover.

But the book was Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. With a teaser phrase on the front in all caps: "THE LOVE THAT STARTED IT ALL." The back jacket let me know that there are two more books in this set, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, AKA "LOVE NEVER DIES," and Romeo and Juliet, "THE ORIGINAL FORBIDDEN LOVE."

Just so we're clear, what this means is that Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, and William Shakespeare are jumping on the Twilight bandwagon—courtesy of HarperTeen. (This edition of Pride and Prejudice is ranked #7,707 in sales on Amazon today, not a bad number, really. FYI, Stephenie Meyer's Twilight is currently ranked #121 in Amazon sales. In terms of total sales, Twilight is catching up fast, with more than 17 million to P&P's 20 million.)

So how does Pride and Prejudice stack up against Twilight? Yes, thousands of women just howled in outrage, sounding like Taylor Lautner in full fur. But read on...

We've got Elizabeth vs. Bella, for starters. Elizabeth is a little older and has way more confidence. She spends most of the book irked at Mr. Darcy and only gradually relents, overcome by a growing awareness of her mistaken assumptions, as well as by Mr. Darcy's unexpected gallantry and his really gorgeous mansion. Bella, for her part, is addicted to Edward Cullen almost from the get-go and is pretty self-effacing, even self-deprecating.

Mr. Darcy vs. Edward? No contest. Mr. Darcy outbroods Edward Cullen and Robert Pattinson put together, and without being melodramatic. Each hero is capable of leaping into the fray to help his ladylove, but Mr. Darcy sacrifices his famous pride on the altar of Elizabeth, humbling himself to aid his enemy Mr. Wickham for her sake. Edward merely beats up a vampire and manages not to drink all of Bella's blood.

As for wit and fine writing, craftsmanship and subtle humor... No, I can't go on. I'm starting to howl like Taylor Lautner. Let's just state the obvious: Jane Austen is a really, really good writer.

Having gotten a kick out of seeing these new editions, I walked a few steps farther and came across a Marvel Comics version of Pride and Prejudice which insisted on coming home with me. I'm not sure how you feel about graphic versions of classic literature—appalled? amused? But I was curious to see just what the adapter and illustrator had done with one of my favorite books ever.

Apparently this edition was originally published as a series of four comic books. The covers are nicely tongue-in-cheek, each set up to resemble a magazine cover. Fake article teasers used on the book jacket include "Lizzy on Love, Loss, and Living," "Bingleys Bring Bling to Britain," "17 Secrets about Summer Dresses," "How to Cure Your Boy-Crazy Sisters," and, of course, "Who Is Mr. Darcy?" Marvel has kindly included the other three jackets in the back of the book for your enjoyment. (I should warn you that the interior artwork does not look anything like the cover art.)

The oddest thing about this book is the front flap copy, which could have been highly entertaining, but isn't. Not a bit. It seems more like a super-condensed version of CliffsNotes, to tell you the truth, remarking on social relevance, major themes, and Austen's writing style. If the Marvel people were going to go there, they should have just thrown in a more detailed note at the back of the book.

I have to say, Nancy Butler does a very good job of picking out the best of Austen's wonderful dialogue and including it in this graphic adaptation. Think of the book as a movie. Like a movie, a graphic novel has to re-envision a novel as a series of scenes and preserve key dialogue while replacing description and action with visual images.

Presented in such a tight format, P&P does seem a little more soap opera-ish. This impression is aided by Hugo Petrus's artwork, which conforms to comic book conventions by giving almost every woman in the book, and certainly the Bennet sisters, surprisingly full lips for people living in an age prior to Botox. However, to Petrus's credit, he doesn't enhance anybody's breasts except maybe Mrs. Bennet's, and that suits her portrayal as a rather blowsy woman. The only moment that seems truly out of character and anachronistic here is when the artist shows Mr. Darcy holding Elizabeth in his arms (entirely off the ground, cheerleader-catch style) after he has re-proposed and she has accepted. Highly improper! But it's just the one frame, so I think I'll forgive the guy.

Petrus's palette is inclined towards browns and golds, a good match for the era. He manages to give the long dialogue scenes a surprisingly energetic feel by varying his compositions and showing characters' shifting emotions. The only thing that threw me off about the artwork was that in the fourth segment, Petrus's style seems to have changed—maybe he's using a different medium, or the printing method has changed, or he's simply using fewer lines to portray these characters.

As for the artist's rendering of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, I wasn't on board at first, but they grew on me. I imagine most of us have pictures in our heads of favorite literary characters, and these didn't match up for me. Still, once I got used to them, I rather liked them, Botox and all.

Another version of P&P that has been shelved in the YA section lately is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. I had such a good time writing my Amazon review of this book last year that I'll share it with you here:

Imagine a fifteen-year-old girl reading Pride and Prejudice. No, better yet, imagine her watching a DVD of Pride and Prejudice, preferably the one with Keira Knightley. Her best friend is plopped down beside her. They're eating low-fat microwave popcorn and sighing blissfully every so often, when suddenly the girl's younger brother shows up, along with his own best buddy.

The two boys look at the screen for about three seconds and say, "Gross!" Then, with an evil look, the first one says loudly, "You know what would make this better? If there were zombies in it."

"Yeah," his friend says, "hungry for brains. And that girl right there could be a kick-butt zombie fighter."

"Elizabeth Bennet?" the big sister says, appalled, yet vaguely charmed by the thought.

"Ha," her friend says, "she and Mr. Darcy could kick zombie butt together! That would be kinda romantic. In a disgusting way, I mean."

Just then Mr. and Mrs. Collins come on-screen. It doesn't take long for the boys to realize how boring they are. "That guy has to die," says the girl's brother.

"Yeah, and the girl could turn into a zombie," says his friend.

"Okay, you can shut up now," the fifteen-year-old tells the intruders. "We get it. You're funny."

But her brother isn't quite finished. "What this story needs the most is a lot of vomit. Because it makes me sick!"

Um, so, anyway—that's what this book is like. Just exchange the ten-year-old brother for a literate thirty-something screenwriter and you've got this hybrid, which is said to be 85% Jane Austen, 15% Seth Grahame-Smith.

What's most impressive is how smoothly the guy weaves his "unmentionables" and things like the Bennet sisters' martial arts training into the original text. Take this bit, for example:

"Upon entering Meryton...the eyes of the younger [Bennet] girls were immediately wandering up the street in quest of officers, and nothing less than a very smart bonnet indeed, or the wail of the undead, could recall them."

Then there's a parlor game that's all the rage—Crypt and Coffin. Or the fact that London is a walled city divided into military enclaves in order to deal with the zombie menace. Elizabeth's favorite aunt and uncle live in Section Six East, just in case you were wondering.

One thing Grahame-Smith has fun with is letting Elizabeth and her sisters' combat training render them rather bloodthirsty, especially in response to the most irritating characters in the book:

"To the girls, who could not listen to their cousin [Mr. Collins] without taking a silent inventory of the countless ways they could kill him, the interval of waiting appeared very long."

Grahame-Smith also gives Mr. Wickham a much more severe comeuppance than Austen ever did. And Elizabeth gets into angry martial arts face-offs with, not only Mr. Darcy himself, but Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

Austen's "co-author" occasionally misses a beat when it comes to having other characters respond normally to his additions, and he gets a bit carried away with the vomit, but I have to admit, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is remarkably clever in its own little rotting-flesh way.

Of course, the greatest irony of all is that avowed anti-snob Seth Grahame-Smith has a name that makes him sound like he'd fit in nicely with Darcy and Bingley's elegant London crowd.

Now, zombies aside, what do you think about that phrase on the imitation-Twilight book jacket of the latest edition of Pride and Prejudice? Is this book really "The Love that Started it All?" Well, HarperTeen's other title, Romeo and Juliet, came long before Austen's book and arguably defined star-crossed lovers for all time. Which makes it a better comparison to Twilight, actually! (Hm. How many of you just howled like a drunken Elizabethan?) As for Pride and Prejudice, let's just say that every romance novel written in the past century or so and every rom-com ever filmed, particularly the ones with the slightest hint of initial dislike between hero and heroine or any sort of witty banter, owes a big fat thank you to Ms. Austen. With or without that black cover adorned by a bloody-looking rose.

A Review of Steel Trapp: The Academy by Ridley Pearson

Steel Trapp: The Academy is Book Two in a series I think of as one of the Alex Rider imitators, and I mean that in a good way. Few children's and YA books tend to be written for and about boys, so I deeply appreciate Anthony Horowitz's series about a reluctant teen spy. When I asked one of my new tenth grade students recently what he'd been reading, he told me how much he loves the Alex Rider books. A few days later, I gave the first book in the series to another student to read.

Of course, within the Alex Rider school of writing (James Bond or The Bourne Identity for kids), some titles are better than others. I thought the first book in Ridley Pearson's new series, Steel Trapp: The Challenge, was one of the better entries in the espionage/thriller genre for kids. I was particularly pleased that the whole story was set around a national science fair, and that Steven "Steel" Trapp was nicknamed for his mind. His compatriot, Kaileigh, was also presented as a science fair competitor. The only reservation I had about the book was that I felt that the adult characters (e.g., federal agents) got too much page time and had too much power over the plot. This is, of course, where teen spy books get tricky—they are essentially a thinly disguised form of fantasy. In real life, how much access could a couple of teens possibly have to things like weapons and national secrets?

In Steel Trapp #2, The Academy, Steel goes to spy school, although the school won't admit what it is up front. Steel, who discovered in Book One that his own father was a spy, gets suspicious when Kaileigh shows up at the same East Coast boarding school on scholarship. He and his friend begin investigating a secret society on campus.

Eventually Steel confirms his growing suspicion that Wynncliff Academy is a recruiting ground for future spies. He and Kaileigh are invited to join a junior espionage team whose mission is to track down a group of sophisticated young pickpockets stealing diplomatic secrets from guests at elegant Boston hotels. Of course, Steel and Kaileigh spend much of the book wondering who to trust.

The author intertwines Steel's story with the experiences of the pickpockets, essentially a group of bright street kids recruited by a mysterious woman, a chilly faux mother figure. The pickpockets are presented as an intriguing opposite number to Steel's group of privileged young academy spies. This gives us a feeling of having the best of both worlds, say, from Horowitz's Alex Rider series and Robert Muchamore's grittier Cherub series.

Pearson has a good time with Steel's difficulty in reading Kaileigh's signals when she subtly expresses her attraction to him. There's no sex here, just some social interplay that adds liveliness to the plot. Steel is also attracted to an older girl who has her own reasons for keeping an eye on him. (Note to the author: "handsome girl" is not a term used by today's teens! At least it's not in the dialogue...)

I'll just point out that Pearson's wording is occasionally clunky, but generally serviceable.

I was happy to come across a sports subplot in The Academy. Steel not only has some very physical adventures while playing spy games—most notably one involving hiding between the valve arms of a giant pipe organ to avoid being caught—but he learns to play a variation of dodgeball called ga-ga. According to Wikipedia, the game is Israeli in origin. Steel's sports practices and games add further appeal for boy readers. I have to admit, I found myself thinking about quidditch, despite the lack of flying brooms.

While Steel is athletic, his greatest ability is a photographic memory, which proves useful whether he's playing ga-ga or spy games. Pearson shows that Steel's abilities can't always save him from disaster, however, which makes the boy more likable. In fact, Steel is a little embarrassed about his gift because people have fussed about it so much over the years.

Less finely drawn as a character because the books are really about Steel, Kaileigh Augustine does make a good hook for bringing girl readers to the series. She is bright and talented in her own right, although she is set up to be a more cautious counterpoint to Steel, which struck me as a bit stereotypical.

As a relative newcomer to the teen spy genre, Steel Trapp seems more than capable of holding his own. I was pleased to find that Book Two kept its focus squarely on the kids. Let's hope the series just keeps getting better!

Note for Worried Parents: This book is listed for ages 9-12, but it feels like a wholesome YA to me. That simply gives it a nice broad range! There's a little flirting and boy-girl stuff here, nothing major. For example, Kaileigh suggests that in a pinch, she and Steel can pretend to kiss (yes, that old chestnut). Much blushing ensues on Steel's part, although at one point he really does kiss the girl.

A Review of Jack: Secret Circles by F. Paul Wilson

Here's another Book Two, Jack: Secret Circles, which follows Jack: Secret Histories, published in 2008. Both books are essentially prequels to the author's adult series about a man called Repairman Jack. In fact, after I read the first book about a teenage Jack, I went looking for some of the Repairman Jack books. They are quite bleak, a cross between detective fiction and horror. What I like best about them is the idea of the title character. Jack operates off the grid, solving problems that can't be solved by the law. This makes him something of a vigilante, although Wilson gives him a supernatural mythos, defining him as a dark warrior for the Light, AKA an antihero. The most intriguing thing about Repairman Jack is how creatively he solves problems, although his turn-the-tables approach sometimes backfires.

The books about young Jack aren't quite as successful as the adult series, but they still have plenty to recommend them. Jack lives near Jersey's Pine Barrens, where supernatural creatures roam and a secret society steals powerful magical objects. Jack himself is more of a pragmatist in his initial attempts at troubleshooting. His realism balances out the effect of the supernatural components of the story, in fact.

In Secret Circles, Jack tries to help his friend Weezy retrieve a mystical artifact that was taken from her in the first book, clearly by the secretive Lodge, a group led by creepy Mr. Drexler. Weezy is convinced that people like Mr. Drexler also have access to a book she is sure exists, The Secret History of the World. Jack doesn't believe her, but what if she's right?

Meanwhile, the circus is in town, a five-year-old boy is missing, and a monster is roaming the Pine Barrens, where Jack and Weezy discover an ancient stone structure that seems to have been designed as a cage. And when Jack discovers that a respected citizen beats his wife, he tries to make things right, only to find out that some problems aren't easily solved.

Adult writers who switch to writing for teens and children sometimes have trouble with the transition. Wilson's Jack is occasionally too grown-up in his thinking, and the author's pacing reflects the more leisurely adult novel, dragging in spots. Mostly, though, I suspect that Wilson's grand vision of his Secret History of the World books, which he is filling in little by little as outlined in an elaborate chart at the back of this and every book, sometimes lead him to forget to simply settle down and do some storytelling. So the plot's kind of up and down, too.

But I still like these books. F. Paul Wilson has an interesting mind, and Jack is one of speculative fiction's most original characters. For young conspiracy theorists who like some paranormal with their suspense, the YA Jack stories are a creep-worthy read.

Note for Worried Parents: I looked up the target audience on Amazon, and it's ages 9-12. This is another book that I feel has more of a teen/tween sensibility than a middle grade one. The darkest parts of Secret Circles are probably some horror elements (dead bodies) and the wife-beating, though both are presented in a fairly restrained manner. Some parents may be bothered by the author's attempt to show that the wife who is being beaten resents being rescued, but it's really pretty thought-provoking, illuminating Jack's growing awareness that there are a lot of things he doesn't understand about other people's lives. I would recommend a family discussion about this aspect of the plot.

A Review of Heist Society by Ally Carter

Ally Carter should be thanked for giving teenage girls their very own Alex Rider in her Gallagher Girls books: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You; Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy; and Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover; with Only the Good Spy Young coming out in June of this year. Now Carter brings us another series, but instead of a girl spy-in-training, we get a girl thief, one who's already surprisingly well trained in the family business.

A note about tone: unlike the boy spy and amateur vigilante/detective books reviewed above, let alone the Alex Rider books themselves, Ally Carter's books are lighthearted, fast-paced, and practically cute. Her work reminds me a lot of Meg Cabot's, with feisty heroines, conversations about clothes and boys, and plenty of humor. She also sprinkles in clever, good-looking boys who are attracted to our girl heroes. But saying that makes both Cabot and Carter's books sound like sheer fluff, and I would hasten to assert that one brand of good storytelling is, well, simply entertaining, with more of a movie/TV sensibility than a heavy-duty literary one.

In that light, I'll tell you that I got a real kick out of reading Heist Society. Here's how the flap copy starts out:

When Katarina Bishop was three, her parents took her on a trip to the Louvre...to case it. For her seventh birthday, Katarina and her Uncle Eddie traveled to Austria...to steal the crown jewels. When Kat turned fifteen, she planned a con of her own—scamming her way into the best boarding school in the country, determined to leave the family business behind. Unfortunately, leaving "the life" for a normal life proves harder than she'd expected.

Soon an old friend named Hale shows up and tells Kat that her father needs her help. One of the best thieves in the world, Kat's dad has been accused of stealing paintings from a very scary Italian business tycoon, the kind who employs his own people for handling payback. Disbelieving Kat's claims that her father is innocent, the man gives Kat a deadline for getting his paintings back. He also has his goons spy on Kat while she's working on the problem.

As the title suggests, this is a heist book. Think Ocean's Eleven with a group of teenagers. Although Carter's plot is stronger at some points than others, the overall trajectory of the story works. And teenage girl readers will enjoy the obvious attraction between Hale and Kat, as well as Kat's jealousy towards her beautiful, too-cool cousin, Gabrielle.

Kat is at the heart of the story, and while her unwillingness to see how much Hale likes her seems a little silly, her worries about the threat to her father and about engineering a successful heist in a nearly thief-proof museum make her all too human, someone readers will cheer for. (The only truly credulity-straining plot point is Kat's assumption about the location of the paintings, a gigantic leap upon which to base an entire heist! But oh well...)

Carter gives us some fun touches, such as the names of cons and strategies that our seasoned young thieves throw around during their planning meetings, e.g., Groundhog and Fallen Angels. Kat's team includes colorful characters, as does her larcenous family. We meet the mysterious Nick, an apparent rival for Kat's affections, and we glimpse the handiwork of a legendary thief, Romani, who takes a special interest in recovering artwork stolen by the Nazis during World War II. Plenty of sequel fodder here.

Heist Society is the kind of book that will make you smile—or, if you don't smile, your teenage daughter will. Because even though I really like Alex Rider's seriousness, it's a nice change to meet up with Ally Carter's version of the YA suspense story. One with a definite sense of humor.

Note for Worried Parents: This book is listed for YA, but it's pretty wholesome. I'm guessing some parents might not want their kids to read a book that glorifies teen thieves, though Kat is presented as being conflicted about her family's career in general, not to mention about the possibility of going to jail. Overall, she tends to have kind of a Robin Hood sensibility. There is some teen attraction in this book, also talk about how sexy Gabrielle looks. When Kat's boy buddies see her dressed up (for the first time), they comment with humorous amazement that she has boobs. Otherwise, we get some hugging, a quick kiss or two, and that's about it.

Percy Jackson and His Sexy Friends

So I went and saw The Lightning Thief movie on Friday. It wasn't bad overall, although it didn't hold a candle to the best of the Harry Potter movies. No full review here, just an observation, and that is, apparently Hollywoodizing a children's book now includes a sensual if not sexual component. Thank you, Twilight. Or should we be thanking the likes of movie directors Judd Apatow, Todd Phillips, and John Hamburg, not to mention the last decade or two of Saturday Night Live writers, all of whom seem incapable of telling a story without a dose of steam?

For example, when Percy Jackson arrives at Camp Half-Blood in the movie, he sets his eyes on his about-to-be-sidekick, Annabeth, as played by Alexandra Daddario. Only in the movie, unlike in the book, Percy and Annabeth exchange a seemingly endless series of longing looks that reminded me of the yearning looks exchanged between Bella and Edward in the movie version of Stephenie Meyer's YA paranormal, Twilight. Here Annabeth Chase's slightly parted pillowy lips seem designed to accessorize her noticeable bosom. Yes, this is the hot version of Annabeth, which threw me off a bit as a reader of the series and also makes the Potter movies' cute-but-true-to-the-book-character Hermione seem better than ever. Especially considering Annabeth is written by Riordan as such a strong character, smart and independent. At least she gets to show off her combat and archery skills as the movie progresses!

Even Grover does not escape unscathed: he is presented as what the Brits in our midst would call randy. (In the books, Percy and Grover sometimes notice girls are cute, but that's about it.) Grover is also a hip-hop caricature; I suppose this is sort of fun, but I'm not sure I'm sold on it. Anyway, movie Grover acts hot-to-trot in Vegas, land of the Lotus Eaters, and even with Hades' wife Persephone, who also gets to be sexy in this film, coming on to Grover in turn. I realize satyrs have a reputation in mythology, but Riordan really didn't go there.

Finally, Logan Lerman, the actor who portrays Percy, looks like a young Chase Crawford. Which is pretty funny, since Gossip Girl's 24-year-old Chase is so young himself that he really shouldn't have a junior clone. But he does. Meet the movie Percy, who, like Annabeth, is fully capable of smoldering stares in the middle of the action.

At best, these touches of sensuality are a little distracting. At worst, they mar what started out as perfectly good middle grade fiction. Again, I have to recommend the Harry Potter movies, which manage to show adolescent crushes in a natural way, as part of the storytelling, i.e., without any panting, lip-parting, or pat sexual innuendos.

Good things about the movie? Well, the depictions of the gods and monsters are terrific. In particular, as the critics are saying, Uma Thurman's Medusa is wonderful. And I really did enjoy seeing this best-selling adventure story retold onscreen. But if you go to the movie theater to watch The Lightning Thief, be prepared for a few surprisingly sultry moments.

Cybils Award Winners

Just in case you didn't catch the link elsewhere, the 2009 Cybils Award winners have been announced. These awards for the best children's books of each year are nominated by the Kidlitosphere blog community, i.e., librarians, teachers, parents, writers, and other bibliophiles, with final judging done by committee. One nice thing about the awards is that they include genre categories such as Sci-fi/Fantasy and Graphic Novel. Here are a few of the top picks:

Picture Book: All the World by Liz Garton Scanlon, illustrated by Marla Frazee

Middle Grade Fiction: Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson

MG Fantasy and Science Fiction: Dreamdark: Silksinger (Fairies of Dreamdark) by Laini Taylor

Note that both of the award-winning graphic novels, The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook by Eleanor Davis for middle grade and Gunnerkrigg Court: Orientation by Tom Siddell for YA, are reviewed in my recent "Getting Graphic" post.

And Pam Turner's wonderful book, The Frog Scientist, won for YA nonfiction! (It's equally accessible to middle grade readers, so they shouldn't miss out.)

A Review of Jasper Dash and the Flame-Pits of Delaware by M.T. Anderson

Reviewing Mac Barnett's The Brixton Brothers: The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity a few weeks ago reminded me that I had yet to read the latest in M.T. Anderson's series of tongue-in-cheek adventure stories, M.T. Anderson's Thrilling Tales, AKA Pals in Peril. (The first two books are Whales on Stilts and The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen.) So now I have, and I've got to tell you: I thought M.T. Anderson was giddily over-the-top with the first two books, but he really outdoes himself here.

Which is all the more odd and impressive when you consider that this author is better known for writing award-winning, dark, and dense historical fiction for teens about an African American boy during the American Revolution: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, volumes 1 and 2. Not to mention for writing a tough futuristic YA book, Feed, a work notable in part for having some of the best opening lines ever written.

Come to think of it, Anderson is just a whiz at openers. Here is the first sentence of Whales on Stilts:

On Career Day Lily visited her dad's work with him and discovered he worked for a mad scientist who wanted to rule the earth through destruction and desolation.

Linoleum Lederhosen starts off:

"Great scott!" cried Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut. "Your mother just lost her hand in the rotating band saw!"

(Um, she didn't really. In case you were worried.) And then we come to Flame-Pits of Delaware:

When Lily Gefelty got out of bed on the morning of the big game, she looked out the window to see what kind of a day it was going to be. She discovered that it was the kind of day when a million beetles crawl out of the ground and swarm the streets, forecasting evil.

Anderson shows his funny side in this underappreciated series—spoofing and satirizing along at a hundred miles a minute. His three main characters are Lily, an ordinary girl; Katie, star of a series of monster-fighting books called Horror Hollow that were popular just a few years back; and Jasper Dash, star of a series of adventure books for boys published a good sixty years previously and now thoroughly out of print.

Section One of Flame-Pits is subtitled "An Eye for an Eye." It turns out that the top sport at the local high school is staring matches—and we get to hear all about one such match, with Jasper as a top contender against a suspicious team of out-of-towners with eerie eyes and powers. (Jasper and his friends are apparently in high school, but the kids seem more like middle schoolers, and except for the sophistication of the satire, the books read like middle grade fiction, which is also how they're labeled for marketing purposes. Whew!)

Soon Jasper receives a psychic distress call from an old friend, a young monk named Drgnan living in a hidden monastery high in the mountains of Delaware. (Don't worry, Lily and Katie are just as incredulous about hidden monasteries, oppressive governments, and dinosaurs in the mountainous jungles of Delaware as you are, at least until they arrive and see it all for themselves.)

Here's a sample for your reading pleasure, showing Katie spying on the scary parent leader of the scary staring team:

Katie craned her neck. Still she couldn't see whatever it was that lurked in the dark. Luckily, Katie had hidden beside a battered Oldsmobile Delta 88 jammed diagonally in a compact-car parking space with its front tires up on the curb. The Oldsmobile Delta 88 was a car so enormously long that Katie could have slunk down its tawny side with a whole SWAT team gesturing to each other behind her and still have been masterfully concealed. She thanked the stars above for good old-fashioned gas-guzzlers with room for twenty clowns and a hurdy-gurdy and snuck forward in a crouch, her fingertips padding along the car's pockmarked surface.

And Katie is masterfully concealed, spying on the bad guys in their van—right up until her mother comes up the sidewalk and says loudly, "Hey! Katie!...Yoo-hoo, honey! What are you doing crouched over like that?" And then, "Straighten your back, darling! You're beautiful! Is crouched over next to a Delta Eighty-eight the kind of posture they teach at this school?" Whereupon the villains naturally emerge and get a good look at Katie. (Hee hee.)

And then there's Jasper Dash. In this outing, he gets a little blue about not fitting in. More fun from Anderson, since Jasper is so screamingly different from everyone else that the real surprise is that it took him this long to notice! Technonaut Jasper is big on inventions, although his creations are generally bulky and old-fashioned and prone to blowing up at inopportune moments. The mere fact that Anderson casually drops such a character into this series is head-scratchingly brilliant. Watch how Jasper reacts when Katie and Lily stand by him in a difficult situation:

Jasper was clearly moved. "By the squealing fruits of Arcturus, you are the best friends a man could have," he said.

Not every kid is going to get these books, but if your child has a quirky sense of humor, reads voraciously, and likes sci-fi/fantasy and adventure/suspense, give the series a try. Because where else are you going to meet the kangaroo-riding cannibals of Delaware but in Anderson's East Coast jungle?

With cruel shrieks and hooting calls, the cannibals of Delaware dismounted and began to pace toward the three friends. Except for six who, disoriented by all the hopping, paced in the wrong direction, spun in circles, or went to throw up in the bushes. The rest, however, looked menacing. They looked hungry. They dressed in loincloths and terrycloth sweatbands. They were greased, and their hair was long and shaggy like rockers'. In their hands were spears, long forks, chips and salsa, and, cradled in one man's arms, a Cobb salad in Saran Wrap.
Their kangaroos hunkered behind them, waiting for the slaughter. The chief stood on the path right in front of Lily, Jasper, and Katie. He wore a headdress—a busy, brutal confection of pheasant wings, rat skulls, and sequins—and an old barbecue apron that said I'M HERE WITH SCRUMPTIOUS.

As Publishers Weekly said succinctly of Whales on Stilts back in 2005, "Highly wacky."

Note for Worried Parents: Monsters and peril, but it's all very funny. I mean, if you can't joke about cannibals, what can you joke about?

A Review of The Ever Breath by Julianna Baggott

The first thing that grabbed me about this book was the back jacket flap, wherein I learned that this author is the elusive N.E. Bode, writer of the Anybodies series. Perhaps you already knew that, but it was news to me! And I can see parallels, as the first book in that series, Anybodies, featured a strange old house and an unusual grandmother, too.

The house in The Ever Breath is literally located in the middle of a golf course. Truman and Camille's grandmother ("call me Swelda") explains:

In this idiotic game of balls and clubs and loudly colored pants, the golfers must get from the seventeenth tee box to the seventeenth hole. Here, they have to go around this house... And they don't aim well! So don't be surprised if you wake up in the morning to the sound of golf balls popping off the roof. Louder than acorns, I tell you! I've boarded up the windows. Tired of replacing the glass! Golfers tee off at five a.m. I hope you two are early risers!"

But the golf course ends up being the least bizarre thing about Swelda and her home. Swelda feeds the kids unusual foods—which somehow don't cause an allergic reaction in Truman, who normally suffers from extensive allergies, asthma, motion sickness, you name it. (His sister Camille is extra healthy, in contrast.) During the ceremonial vegetarian meal, which includes seventeen types of tea along with delicacies such as pear noodles and apple-dipped jelly yolks, Swelda tells her grandchildren stories about a parallel world called the Breath World, where magic and magical creatures flourish. The Ever Breath, the talisman that maintains the balance between the two worlds, must never be moved, or both worlds will be in trouble. Although Swelda doesn't tell the kids quite yet, the Ever Breath is in fact missing.

Yep, it's a portal story! That night Truman finds his way into the other world and begins to bumble around trying to fulfill his mission there. Only he doesn't bumble as much as usual, since in the Breath World, Truman no longer needs his glasses or his inhaler. (But Camille does, when she shows up!) The Breath World is being ruled by an overly cheerful government whose motto is explained on a card with one black side and one white side, reading, respectively, "Us versus Them!" and "The difference is simple!" Or as one of Truman's new allies puts it:

"The Office of Official Affairs has divided all of us into the Officially Good and the Officially Evil, trying to make us believe that there are only two types of creatures. To protect the Officially Good, the Office has to do away with the Officially Evil."
"How can they tell the Officially Good from the Officially Evil?"
"Ah, well. It's simple." Artwhip raised his finger. "The Officially Good agree with the Office of Official Affairs, and the Officially Evil don't."

Members of the resistance movement, the jarkmen, end up helping Truman, who learns he has a very good reason to take an interest in the head jarkman, a boy about his age.

In a breezy, matter-of-fact tone, Baggott gives us a slew of colorful details such as ruckus tents, locus fairies, prophetic snow globes, and Truman's new sidekick, a cat-like creature named Praddle who can sort of talk. Truman attempts to save the head jarkman and find the missing Ever Breath while avoiding capture; he also hopes to protect Artwhip, since he's seen a dangerous future for the resistance fighter in his snow globe.

Truman thrives in the Breath World, which makes for a kind of instant character evolution. Camille is somewhat less important to the story, although I wonder if that will change in future books. Swelda is a hoot, and I particularly liked a talking mouse named Binderbee Biggby, who has the most interesting crisis of conscience in the whole book.

This is the start of a series, and it's a promising one. I'll admit The Ever Breath gets messagey in spots, and I was a little thrown off during the big fight scene by the author's overt efforts to keep the main villain alive to wreak havoc another day. But Julianna Baggott is a darn good storyteller, and I do recommend the book to young fantasy readers.

Note for Worried Parents: Monsters, peril, and villains, but no sex whatsoever. This is solidly middle grade fiction.

A Review of The Sixty-Eight Rooms by Marianne Malone

It's hard not to read this book without thinking back to another book about children sneaking around in a museum, E.L. Konigsburg's The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Only this time we're in the Art Institute of Chicago, zeroing in on the titular sixty-eight rooms in the Thorne miniatures collection. (And yes, I've been there, although I was more interested in the Chagall window, not to mention the satisfying discovery that a board game my family had when I was a child, Masterpiece, was obviously based on paintings from the Art Institute.)

As our story begins, Ruthie goes to the museum on a field trip and is entranced by the Thorne Rooms, encapsulations of different countries and eras in history. Ruthie, who shares a cramped room with her older sister, wishes she could have one of the beautiful rooms all to herself and sleep in an exquisite canopy bed. Meanwhile, her bold friend Jack asks a staff member, Mr. Bell, about the mechanics of the exhibit, and Mr. Bell lets Jack take a peek into the back hallway behind the miniatures. Jack pulls Ruthie over to take a look, too, and sneaks inside—where he sees something on the floor and tucks it in his pocket.

Jack's find turns out to be a beautiful little key. When Ruthie tells him he should put it back, he convinces her to return to the museum with him the next day and look for the lock the key fits. Only once they sneak back into the corridor behind the Thorne exhibit and Jack lets Ruthie hold the key, Ruthie shrinks down until she herself is a miniature girl. Briefly shocked and then thrilled by their discovery, Ruthie and Jack experiment with the key. Later, having properly tricked their families, they hide in the museum by night and explore the rooms in the exhibit at their leisure, even learning that they can walk through the outside doors of the rooms into the past and talk to people, i.e., in France a few years before the Revolution and in a Massachusetts village during the Salem Witch Trials.

One of the best things about this book are the strategies Ruthie and Jack come up with for getting around the exhibits while they're small, such as unshrinking when needed, using duct tape ingeniously, and dealing with a giant cockroach. Their adventures in the past are brief, but intriguing. They must also solve the mystery of who used the key before them, leaving items like an ordinary pencil and a barrette in surprising spots.

The Sixty-Eight Rooms is a pleasant book, though perhaps not a compelling one. Of course, the author's passion for the Thorne Rooms will be more appealing to some young readers than others. I did notice that exposition, a sort of adult voice which sounded a lot like my high school history teacher, crept in and out of the book, at times overanalyzing the rules of the magic and interfering with the storytelling. I also found myself wishing that Ruthie weren't so unwilling to take risks in contrast to Jack's brashness, a combination which felt a bit stereotypical. (Even their names reflect this—Ruthie is a sweet, old-fashioned name, while Jack sounds like the daring boy in "Jack and the Beanstalk" or even Captain Jack Sparrow.)

However, there are some nice adventurous moments in The Sixty-Eight Rooms. I was especially pleased when the kids were able to walk out of the rooms into the past, though a few more such occurrences would have really enriched the book. Fans of historical fiction, time travel, and intellectual puzzles are likely to wish they were Jack and Ruthie, shrinking down to explore a miniature world of mysterious rooms.

Note: This book is due out on February 23. I requested a review copy from the Amazon Vine program.

And So It Begins!

I woke up grumpy this morning and was saved by the realization that Betsy Bird of Fuse #8 has started her countdown of the Top 100 Children's Novels, the results of her poll regarding the best middle grade fiction. Bliss, bliss, joy!

I should point out that Bird gives quotes, commentary, history, and links for each title, so it's fascinating stuff, like opening a mysterious box of treasures (or a portal, or a time capsule: pick your adventurous MG analogy!). Please visit Betsy's blog and follow the evolution as she counts up to #1. It's better than breakfast cereal, trust me.

And even though the following is about a picture book, this seems like a good time for me to share a children's book moment. Yesterday I went to the home of a 6-year-old Latina child being treated for cancer and offered her a choice of picture book readalouds by way of starting class. When her eyes fell on Esphyr Slobodkina's Caps for Sale, her whole face lit up. She insisted on showing her mother that I had brought the book. "Te acuerdas, Mami?" Remember, Mom? Then she informed me, "There are monkeys!" A key fact, to be sure.

As I read her the book, she leaned forward, glowing with anticipation. When the peddler sat down beneath the tree to rest, she said again, "There are monkeys in the tree." (Like I said, key!). Of course, her joy brimmed over when the monkeys actually made their appearance.

She was a little less sure about joining me in acting out the fist shaking and foot stomping, but she loved making the monkey sound.

When the book ended, she sat back, her day made complete by the addition of monkeys. My efforts to teach her to count by tens seemed paltry at best after the glory that was Caps for Sale.

And that, my friends, is what children's books are all about.