Armchair Cybils Round-Up: Picture Books

Posted on November 15, 2013 by Katy K.

My Armchair Cybils Day of Reckoning Continues…
armchaircybils
In which it is revealed that I read a lot more picture books than I normally review.
I had two more books in different categories that I didn’t get to reviewing: Belly Flop, a grpahic novel, and the easy reader Penny and her Marble.

Dream FriendsDream Friends by You Byun. Nancy Paulsen Books, 2013.
Melody has a wonderful dream friend, a giant white cat who takes her on marvelous adventures while she’s sleeping. But she’s moved so often that she doesn’t have any real friends at the playground. When she closes her eyes and pretends she’s dancing with her dream friend, real children notice and ask to learn the dance, too. Soon she’s having a sleepover with a new friend, so they can both play with the dream cat. It’s beautifully illustrated with pen-and-ink in sherbet-like colors and a slight manga feel. My girl read it, left it for a couple weeks, and then went back to it.

hankHank Finds an Egg by Rebecca Dudley. Peter Piper Press, 2013.
Another wordless story, this time illustrated with awe-inspiring photographs of the hand-sewn Hank wandering through a wooly forest. He finds an egg, and spends the book trying to keep it warm and protected while he figures out a way to get the egg back to its high-up nest. The amount of labor to make all the scenes must have been incredible. The results are stunning and the story is heart-warming.

happyHappy Birthday, Bunny! by Liz Garton Scanlon. Illustrated by Stephanie Graegin. Simon and Schuster, 2013.
Even, balanced rhymes in a question and answer format follow the story of a small bunny celebrating her birthday. It’s illustrated in soft pastel colors, though the picture-snapping adults in one scene still include a good proportion using cell phones. It’s very, very sweet. It feels aimed at about 2 and up; simpler than my four-year-old usually reads, but perfect for her to memorize and read back to herself, which she did, often.

helloHello, My Name Is Ruby by Phillip Stead. Roaring Brook Press, 2013.
This was my daughter’s birthday present from some dear friends, and also the picture book I nominated. Stead uses few words to tell the story of a little bird named Ruby, and her attempts to make friends with other birds. It’s sweetly realistic, showing both successful and failed attempts, as well as friendships with birds like and unlike her. The paintings are charming. I loved it; I am not sure yet if my daughter is (very sadly) only so-so-about it, or if she’s just been distracted by the flood of other picture books I’ve been bringing in and her current Rapunzel obsession.

howtohow to by Julie Morstad. Simply Read Books, 2013.
This book has amazing graphic design combined with beautiful, retro-feeling illustrations with lots of white space and deceptively simple text. “How to be fast” reads one page, showing kids running, biking, jumping across the page. “How to be slow” reads the next, showing a girl tummy-down in the grass, watching for insects. There’s a nice child-like sense of humor as kids wash their socks by jumping in a puddle, make a sandwich of floor cushions and themselves. I was entirely charmed by it, and surprised and delighted that my kids loved it, too.

knityourbitKnit Your Bit: A World War I Story by Deborah Hopkinson. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2013.
It’s the World War II Homefront. A boy learns how to knit, so he and his sister can compete boys against girls to see who can do the most knitting for soldiers. It’s illustrated with fun, retro-cartoon feeling pictures. I think it’s better for early elementary school, where kids are old enough to have heard of WWII. I really liked the list of places for charity knitting at the end.

missmapleMiss Maple’s Seeds by Eliza Wheeler. Nancy Paulsen Books, 2013
Miss Maple saves the seeds all winter long, keeping them safe and telling them stories. Then, in the spring, it’s time to let them go. This is another one that I loved that neither of my children really took to.

moondayMoonday by Adam Rex. Disney Hyperion, 2013.
A dream-like story with realistic illustrations tells the story of the moon following a family home from a night-time drive. What happens when the moon is right there, filling up your whole backyard? Messed up sleep cycles, tides, and lots of barking dogs! This is quiet and whimsical, and appealed to both my children.

mustacheMustache Baby by Bridget Heos. Illustrated by Joy Ang. Clarion Books, 2013.
Baby Billy is born with a mustache, and the nurse tells his confused family that it could turn out to be either a good-guy or a bad-guy mustache. It starts out good (much to the distress of his older siblings), but a stint with it as a bad-guy mustache ends up with poor Billy in baby jail. This one felt a little hollow to me, but my girl loved the bright pictures and the silly story.

ollieOllie and Claire by Tiffany Strelitz Heber. Philomel Books, 2012.
Ollie and Claire are two cute dog best friends who do the same things together every day. One day, Claire sees an ad posted: someone is looking for a companion to travel the world. She can’t resist, even though she knows she’ll miss her best friend. This is told in rhyming couplets that I thought might be annoying, but turned out to work well, along with the humorously drawn ink and watercolor illustrations, in this silly story with a deeper message about friendship.

brightOwly and Wormy: Bright Lights and Starry Nights! by Andy Runton Simon and Schuster, 2012.
Owly and his friend Wormy decide to go on a camping trip so they can see the stars better, but problems abound, including rain, lost telescopes, and bats. This is very like the Owly graphic novels, sweet and nearly wordless, but with a shorter storyline and glossy, full-color pictures. Both my kids and I loved it.

tapTap the Magic Tree by Christie Matheson. Greenwillow Books, 2013.
This is a fun, interactive book about the seasons and an apple tree for preschoolers. The reader is instructed to tap, rub, wiggle, or blow on the tree, which starts out a bare trunk, and the next page shows the effect – new leaves, buds, the petals fallen off, the fruit growing – all the way from spring until winter and the beginning of the next spring. It looks like a realistic painting of the tree trunk, with tissue paper cut-outs added to it for all the variations on the illustrations. It doesn’t have the silliness that makes There Are Cats in This Book work so well for a variety of ages, but it’s still a lovely and fun way for preschoolers to look at tree life cycles.

thatisThat Is Not a Good Idea! by Mo Willems. Harper Collins Children’s Books, 2013
We love Mo Willems! A group of ducklings watches a theater, where on stage a fox and a duck make plans to have dinner together. “That is not a good idea!” they keep shouting – and only at the very end is it clear for whom the warning is intended. Maybe the humor was too sophisticated for my then-three-year-old? In any case, it worked much better for the eight-year-old, who really liked the snarky humor.

xandersXander’s Panda Party by Linda Sue Park. Illustrated by Matt Phelan. Clarion Books, 2013.
Xander wants a party for his birthday – but he’s the only panda at the zoo. He sends out invitations to all the other bears – only to discover that koala isn’t a bear, but would still like to come. He doesn’t want anyone to feel left out, so his party gets bigger and bigger. This is brilliantly told, with rhyming invitations and main text full of play with the word sounds. I really loved it, and was shocked that it didn’t work for my daughter, who only let me read it to her once, even though we had it out of the library right around her birthday.

Here are the nominated Fiction Picture Books that I reviewed earlier:
Giant Dance Party
The Monstore
Unicorn Thinks He’s Pretty Great

And since I’m out of time to give them their own post, here are the Graphics I’ve reviewed:
Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant
Odd Duck
How to Fake a Moon Landing
March. Book One.
Primates
Relish
Soulless: the Manga. Vol 2.

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Armchair Cybils Round-Up: Middle Grade and YA Speculative Fiction

Posted on November 15, 2013 by Katy K.

It’s the first Day of Reckoning for the Armchair Cybils. armchaircybils

I am way behind in my reviewing. So for my first post of the day, I have reviews of four books that were nominated in the Middle Grade Speculative Fiction Category, followed by a list of the nominated books that I reviewed previously. Hopefully I’ll post reviews of the other dozen books nominated for other categories that I’ve read later today.

I did not hear about the More Diverse Universe event that’s happening this weekend in time to participate, but it sounds like a really wonderful event. I do plan to visit, and hopefully I’ll hear about it early enough to plan to read for it next year.

Iris Brave was kindly sent to me by the author; I checked out all the other books from the library.

Iris BraveIris Brave. Soul Jumpers Book 1. by Ali B. Dewey Larson Publishing, 2013
Iris has a tearful parting with her mother, Catalina, in order to spend the summer at her grandfather’s farm. While there, she learns that her beloved father, who died in a car crash when she was just a baby, was charged with drunk driving. A senator’s son also died in that crash, and the senator is now publishing a book about the whole event, laying all of the blame on Iris’s father. Iris is extremely upset by this news, which her mother and grandfather had managed to keep from her until now. When she notices a man in a gray hoodie stalking her, a man who looks exactly like the supposedly dead senator’s son, she agrees to take the journey he proposes to learn her father’s secret.

This book felt more like thriller than fantasy, as the fantasy element – the soul jumping of the series title – wasn’t explained until the very end (apologies for the spoiler!). I had some pretty severe problems with the logic of the soul jumping, too, which involved a soul jumping from one dead person to another, thus reanimating the formerly dead person who then doesn’t age. There’s neither explanation of what happens to the soul of the person whose body gets taken over, nor any reason that I could see that this would cause the body to stop aging. It didn’t really work for me as a fantasy for that reason, but I think it does work well as a thriller. Except for an early and unfortunate swimsuit shopping session at the beginning of the book which I think could turn off middle-grade boy readers, it would work well for both genders, and the cover does a good job of expressing this – my son thought it looked very exciting.

Song of the QuarkbeastThe Song of the Quarkbeast. by Jasper Fforde. Harcourt, Houghton Mifflin, 2013.
What a happy return! Faithful Jennifer Strange, the Last Dragonslayer, is back, along with fellow foundling Tiger Prawns. The Great Zambini, official owner of Kazam, is still missing, leaving his business to be run by the foundlings. Now Kazam is involved in a struggle with the only other large magic agency in the kingdom, iMagic, for the future of magic. Can it be preserved to do actual good in the world, or should the still very limited stocks of magic in the world be used to fund the selfish desires of those who can pay? The story involves such characters as the Once Magnificent Boo, the King’s Useless Brother, the “All-Powerful” Blix and magician-in-training Perkins, who keeps trying to ask Jennifer out and botching it so badly that she has to refuse. Magic is represented as programming, with old spells written in archaic RUNIX. And, despite the sad demise of Jennifer’s faithful Quarkbeast in the first book, we now learn more about Quarkbeasts and their odd reproduction and self-destruction habits.

This is pure delight, exciting and witty with a lot of heart. Jennifer is a hero who puts kindness first and wins by quick thinking rather than violence, in a series I can’t wait to share with my son.

A Box of GargoylesA Box of Gargoyles by Anne Nesbet. Harper Collins Childrens, 2013.
Maya is still in Paris. She’d thought things were under control: her evil uncle turned to dust, her mother’s health recovered, a best friend found. Now everything is falling apart again. Her mother is seeming weak and tired again; her best friend Valko is in danger of being sent back to Bulgaria, and Henri Fourcroy has bound her to bring him back again. We see him put his mind into a stone wall, so that it develops gargoyles that search for Maya. Ever-larger waves of strange happenings spread across Paris, things like old ladies bursting out into song in Bulgarian and the Eiffel Tower bursting out into iron flowers. The gargoyles give Maya a present, a large stone egg covered with beautiful pictures. Everything will come to a head right around Maya’s 13th birthday, and she must find for herself the delicate balance between doing what must be done herself and getting help from her friends as well as finding the loopholes for making choices when she has been set on a path that she must follow to completion.

This is a simply gorgeous book, creepy, atmospheric and tense, while still maintaining strong characters and a whole lot of deep thought that’s applicable to anyone, not just young teens with latent magical powers.

Princess of CortovaThe Princess of Cortova by Diane Stanley. Harper Collins Childrens, 2013.
This is the last book of the trilogy that started with The Silver Bowl, which I think I nominated for a Cybils award when it was first published. In the last book, The Cup and the Crown, Molly worked very hard to make and bring to King Alaric a Loving Cup that would ensure him a marriage to a princess, thus helping to stabilize his kingdom and of course providing uncontested heirs. Now, it’s time to deliver the cup to the princess of Cortova. The story actually opens with Elizabetta, with her remembering the lesson beauty as more of a weapon than as a gift that her mother gave her before her death. Elizabetta is the same princess who was trying to marry Alaric’s older brother when all of the royal family but Alaric was killed, and her first husband also died. She’s really not keen to be used as a marriage pawn again, but her father, King Gonzalo, tells her that it is her duty to charm both of the royal suitors who will soon be at their door. In exchange for her cooperation, she makes him sign a document that would make her heir to the kingdom, instead of her sociopathic younger brother Caspar. (He’s never called sociopathic, and Gonzalo doesn’t see anything wrong with him at all, but it’s quite clear.)

Meanwhile, Alaric orders Molly and Tobias to pretend to be betrothed, apparently unaware that Tobias would much prefer to be betrothed to Molly for real, so that he can bring Molly with him to Cortova to court Elizabetta without arousing suspicions. Once there, he is shocked to discover that King Reynard – the king who tried to take over Alaric’s kingdom in the first book – has also been summoned to Cortova to court Elizabetta on behalf of his son, Rupert, who is so uninterested in the whole affair that he almost doesn’t count as a character. But only almost.

On the way there, Molly has dreams of a large cat telling her key rules of chess, as well as a huge but unspecific sense of Doom. She is both surprised and not when Elizabetta summons her for a private audience and teaches her to play chess, in the company of her cat Leondas, the very one from Molly’s dreams. The chess is highly relevant, and the book is divided into sections named after the parts of a chess game, with definitions of relevant chess terms.

The focus is mostly on Molly and Betta, with both Tobias and Alaric falling somewhat into the background. Still, I’d like to note (especially after Charlotte’s excellent post on gender expectations in youth and teen fantasy) that Alaric is a king of books and thinking rather than athletic knighthood.

There are politics, reversals, assassination attempts, and wrenching surprises. Molly will have to draw on everything she has to figure out what is going on and how to save Alaric, and Betta too must use all of her wits and wiles to make a future that is good for both her kingdom and herself. It’s a really, really good book, and my biggest complaint is that the beautiful dresses on the cover are likely to turn off any chess- and fantasy-loving boys who would otherwise very much enjoy it.

Other Middle Grade Speculative Fiction Books I read:
Handbook for Dragon Slayers
Jinx
Return to Cardamom
The Cats of Tanglewood Forest
The Last Enchanter
The Rithmatist
The Runaway King
Wednesdays in the Tower
What We Found in the Sofa and How It Changed the World

Young Adult Speculative Fiction
A Corner of White
Clockwork Princess
Crewel
Dark Triumph
Etiquette and Espionage
Golden Girl
Scarlet
The Dream Thieves

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The Dream Thieves

Posted on November 13, 2013 by Katy K.

[Updated to add] Authors and illustrators are getting together to help victims of Typhoon Haiyan in the Phillipines.
Authors for the Philippines (an online auction from Nov. 13 – 20)
Art for Haiyan

This was one of my most anxiously-awaited books of the year… we bought it on audio as soon as we could, and I made extra time to listen to it, finishing it in maybe two weeks.

The Dream ThievesThe Dream Thieves. The Raven Cycle Book 2. by Maggie Stiefvater. Read by Will Patton. Scholastic, 2013.
This is the middle book of a trilogy. It’s obvious from the cover that this book focuses on Ronan, where Raven Boys was more about all four teens coming together in the search for Glyndwr. Ronan was my least favorite of the gang last time, but here, seeing him more from the inside, he’s much more sympathetic. We get to know all the other characters as well: Blue shows some impressive backbone, the various facets of Gansey are explored, there are some very sweet moments with Noah. With Adam, we learn more about what the sacrifice he made in the last book means and, heart-breakingly, disappointingly, yet realistically, see the effects of growing up with abuse. More characters are introduced for Ronan to play against, including his adored younger brother Matthew, of golden curls and ready smile and for whom I was instantly afraid; and a fellow Aglionby student, Joseph Kavinsky, known for his forgeries, illicit substances and, most irresistible to Ronan, late-night street drag racing. It became clear to me that Persephone, Maura and Calla are the Maiden, Mother and Crone of the Triple Goddess, as well as balancing out the overwhelming maleness of the Raven Boys. Filling the role of villain abandoned in the last book by Mr. Welk and possibly Neeve, we have Mr. Gray, a hit man searching for the Gray Warren, a mythical object for bringing things out of dreams.

So here I get around to plot (yes, I read for character first). The search for Glyndwr continues (and here I’m distracted in my review writing by noting that my library owns a 1965 book by Rosemary Sutcliff called Heroes and History that includes a chapter on Glyndwr), but is stymied when Cabeswater, the most magical and promising place on the ley line, disappears. There are relationship developments for Blue. We – and Ronan – explore his power to bring things out of dreams. It’s not at all the happy power it could be: he can’t control what he dreams, and frequently nightmare creatures come out whether he wants them to or not. Mr. Gray, the hit man looking for Ronan, visits 300 Fox Way and gets involved with Maura – a very odd development indeed, but one I think worked. The progress towards actually finding Glyndwr felt very small, both to me and to the characters – but I noticed it mostly only in retrospect, as the book is so filled with other interesting things. While this book is definitely darker than the last one, I still didn’t feel that we’d touched on whatever dark thing Neeve was dealing with in the last book. Was this an omission or even more darkness waiting for the next book?

I was interested to note that it’s been nominated for ALA’s Rainbow list (as well as the Cybils), and am not sure quite why. There isn’t any explicit non-hetero –sexuality in it, though maybe a suggestion of an idea that maybe Ronan isn’t straight. He feels more asexual to me, though, too busy with all of the enormous things going on in his life right now to be bothered with anything so extraneous. Actually, I really like that while these teens feel to me like they’re living in the modern world, just getting to dating and kissing is a big deal. The jokes are not clean, but the behavior on exhibit is. Part of that is Blue’s curse, of course – but it’s still lovely to see the importance of being friend-friends before dating friends and the magic of first kisses celebrated.

As always, Stiefvater’s writing is amazing. Here’s a small example, a description of Ronan’s father:

“a handsome devil of a man, with one eye the color of a promise and the other the color of a secret.”

I fell right into Will Patton’s narration, which took me a while to get into the first time, loving the toughness of Ronan’s voice, the cool, wariness of Mr. Gray, Calla’s growl. Even the basic narration shifts slightly in tone depending on which character we’re following, while still remaining distinct from that character speaking out loud. Now, a month after finishing the book for the first time, I’m listening to it for a second time in leisurely fashion, and still ignoring all the other books that I know I want to listen to.

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Handbook for Dragon Slayers

Posted on November 11, 2013 by Katy K.

Sorry for the silence, folks! It’s been a rough fall for viruses at our house, and I was running a game day at the library over the weekend as well. (Not going to Kid Lit Con… but hopefully some year!)

Handbook for Dragon SlayersHandbook for Dragon Slayers by Merrie Haskell.
I really liked Haskell’s first book, The Princess Curse, so naturally I wanted to read this one as well. It’s also been nominated for a Cybils in Middle Grade Speculative Fiction.

Princess Tilda is the heir to a tiny principality on the Rhine. Her mother rules since her father failed to come back from the Crusades, and tries to train Tilda in her duties as well. But Tilda would much rather be a nun and have the time to devote all day to becoming a scribe. One day she hopes even to write her own book, instead of just copying old ones. She has a lame foot, and is very sensitive to the people in her kingdom who take this as a sign of demonic affliction.

Tilda and her maid, Judith, are visiting a neighboring castle (where Tilda’s crush Parz just happens to be squired.) Then Tilda is kidnapped by her cousin Ivo, who already has her mother captive and plans to take over their kingdom. Though Parz and Judith rescue her the same night, Tilda, in a somewhat hard-to-accept way, is inclined to just give up her kingdom. After all, Ivo isn’t deformed – maybe she can just join a convent and have the life she always wanted.

Before breaking that news to her companions, though, they decide to do a little dragon hunting. This will help Parz gain some points with his knight, as well as giving Tilda a topic for her very own book. Naturally, hunting dragons with a small and untrained party of three turns out to be more dangerous than they’d realized. Dragons turn out to be not what they’d thought. And Tilda has soon gained the attention both of the Wild Hunt and of the wicked Sir Egin, a Bluebeard-type knight beside whom Cousin Ivo seems endearing.

It will take a good deal of persuasion from loyal Judith, Parzival, as well as a dragon who ends up helping her for Tilda to work up the gumption to try to reclaim her kingdom and decide not to let her lame foot define her. It’s a story of resilience, transformation and love, in a beautifully detailed medieval German setting.

There are still some weaknesses to the book, however. Tilda is somewhat frustrating in her willingness to let other people push her around in the first part of the book, and it takes a bit for the plot to heat up. There is not as much dragon hunting as readers might hope for from the title. And Judith – Judith I never felt I knew as well as I felt I should, considering the book has only three main characters. But I can’t decide if this is a weakness in the book, or if Haskell is making a deliberate point here: while Tilda doesn’t like that people don’t see past her foot, she also doesn’t see past Judith’s station in life. Tilda may tell Judith everything about her own life, but she doesn’t try to learn as much about Judith.

These things aside, I very much enjoyed this book. I’d recommend it for readers of about 10 and up, looking for a fantasy story focusing more on character and setting than on action.

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Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant

Posted on November 6, 2013 by Katy K.

Delilah Dirk and the Turkish LieutenantDelilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant by Tony Cliff. First Second, 2013.
Constantinople, 1807. Lieutenant Erdemoglu Selim first meets Delilah Dirk in prison, when he takes her official interview. She’s in for trespassing. Miss Dirk is an adventuress: half English, half Greek, all trouble-maker. When she escapes quite handily shortly afterwards, Selim ends up being blamed. Miss Dirk is not wandering aimlessly: she plans to steal loot back from the evil pirate captain Zakul, whose depredations have made life difficult for her struggling merchant uncle.

There are lots of fun action scenes, reminiscent to me of the Three Thieves books, but here they are punctuated by quiet conversations between Mr. Selim and Miss Dirk on board ship or around a campfire in the wilderness, where they discuss things such as good quality tea and the relative merits of city versus wilderness living. Always, the reader wonders where Mr. Selim will find his next cup of tea and if he will survive making the acquaintance of Miss Dirk.

The story is drawn with angular lines and fluid faces, making for a very fun story. My love and I both found historical quibbles – he thought the boat looked much too late period, though he withdrew his objections when it started flying. I thought Delilah Dirk’s outfit resembled nothing historical and was wildly improbable. It’s a fantasy adventure, so we let these things go in favor of enjoying the ride.

I’d recommended that the teen librarian buy this for her graphic novel collection, based on the large number of good reviews I was seeing of it. It’s been going out gangbusters here, and deservedly so. It’s also been nominated for a Cybils in the graphics category, though for kids rather than teens. It could go either way, really. There’s some cartoony violence and nothing really sexual, but the characters are all adults. Comic publishers like to publish things as “all ages”, which makes things difficult for libraries with separate shelving areas, but this really is one that would be fun from at least third grade up through adults.

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What We Found in the Sofa and How It Saved the World

Posted on November 4, 2013 by Katy K.

This is one that I asked my library to buy so that I could read it, based mostly on Charlotte’s recommendation, and especially because it sounded like a good boy fantasy.

What We Found in the SofaWhat We Found in the Sofa and How It Saved the World by Henry Clark. Little, Brown and Company, 2013.
River and Freak are always best friends; Fiona only talks with them while they all wait for the bus, before anyone else can see them. But the morning an old, claw-footed sofa appears next to their school bus stop, something is put in motion that brings them together in ways they never expected. We’re talking teamwork – this is middle grade fiction.

It feels like our time, our world, and not a particularly cheerful corner of it. All three of our kid protagonists have lost at least one family member, and their subdivision is nearly empty because it borders an underground burning coal seam, which leaks toxins into the air and sometimes sets nearby houses on fire. But this is just the backdrop, and in the foreground we have a talking, tessering sofa, frequent flash mobs featuring everyone around except River and Freak breaking out into numbers from classic musicals, and a rare zucchini-colored crayon.

The sofa turns out to be part of a computer named Guernica, more or less run by their eccentric neighbor, Alf, who turns out to be the only person trying to stop a total takeover of the earth by aliens from another dimension. These aliens usually look like humans, and have been working on their scheme to turn the residents of this small town into mindless factory workers for half a century, making processed food and giving away cell phones that let them control minds. Because they view kids as even less worth noticing than adults, the kids are a central part of Alf’s plan to defeat the Disin Corporation. But how far can they get, and is a rare World War II crayon really bait enough to lure a criminal mastermind into revealing himself?

This is really just about perfect fiction. The kid protagonists, mystery, humor, and lots of close escapes make for a story that will suck in even reluctant readers, while environmental themes and character growth give it some heft and depth. My son was definitely interested in it as I was reading it; my only quibble with it is that at 355, it’s a little long for him just yet. Still, I’d say he’s just on the lower edge of the age range for this book. More advanced readers and those in the middle or top side of the middle grade range should do just fine, and will love it.

What We Found in the Sofa and How It Saved the World was nominated for the Cybils award, and so counts for my Armchair Cybils reading.

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When the Sea Is Rising Red

Posted on November 1, 2013 by Katy K.

This book came recommended by my friend Annette over at The Stars Are Not Made of Fire, who knows the author through her writing group. She told me the book went unexpected places, and I have to agree.

When the Sea is Rising RedWhen the Sea is Rising Red by Cat Hellisen. Farrar Straus Giroux 2012.

Felicita is a teen heiress, younger sister to the man who rules a major port city in a world with a late-19th century feel. The ruling class rules because of the magic it controls, a genetic magic that’s only activated when members of the magic-bearing aristocracy take scriv, a very expensive and highly addictive powder. But though Felicita is given enough scriv to become addicted, she’s never given enough to do anything really powerful, nor is she trained to use her magic. Among the upper class, women are valued only as brides and mothers of male heirs.

Felicita had hoped to go to university for at least a couple of years, but when her best friend commits suicide after an unwanted engagement, Felicita’s mother and older brother decide to marry her off instead. Something snaps, and Felicita fakes her own suicide, running away to the dock-side slums and dying her tell-tale naturally red hair a doxy-bright red to cover it up. In the slums, she falls in with a group of young revolutionaries, led by the handsome and charismatic hob Dash. For the first time in her life, she’s working for a living, washing dishes at a tea house frequented by poets. She’s also being courted both by Dash and by a young vampire, Jannik, who knows who she is and who bonds with her over their mutual family difficulties. Vampire society is the mirror image of the aristocrats, with queens ruling the hive and young males considered disposable.

While Felicita is engaged in self-discovery, things in the larger world are not going well. Her friend’s suicide seems to have called a dark magic from the sea, one that threatens to bring up a red tide that’s dangerous both to marine life and to the people who make their living from the sea. Public sentiment, too, is rising against the ruling aristocracy – Felicita’s family. Very soon, Felicita will have to choose between her family and her new friends.

I was very impressed with Hellisen’s work here, putting some common teen elements together into something quite unexpected. This is complex, layered, and thoughtful in a way that made it very hard to put down. Felicita may be sheltered and ignorant of life outside of her circle, but she works hard to keep her head. Even the two men that could have felt like just another love triangle – it didn’t even register as a love triangle to me until after the fact. There was so much going on that I now want to go back and re-read, just to see what I might have missed the first time around. This is one for teens and up, with plenty of appeal even for adults who (unlike me) don’t normally go for YA.

This felt like a fine stand-alone novel, but looking it up, I see that a sequel, House of Sand and Secret was just published last month, in ebook only.

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March

Posted on October 30, 2013 by Katy K.

March. Book One.March. Book 1. by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell. Top Shelf, 2013.
African-American Senator John Lewis tells the first part of the story of his life, including his childhood and his collegiate activities with the Civil Rights Movement up to the March on Washington, in this graphic memoir. It’s told with a frame story of the senator getting ready to give a speech at Obama’s first inauguration, but pausing on his way to tell his story to two young boys who come to his office to meet him. I read in an interview that Lewis decided on the graphic format for his memoir because one of the key pieces of instructional literature that was passed around during the early days of the Civil Rights Movement was a comic book on the methods of non-violent resistance.

Lewis was a key player in the Movement, taking part in department store sit-ins, training people in nonviolent resistance, and participating in bus boycotts. While of course I’ve read about the movement – it feels like mostly (deservedly) worshipful juvenile biographies of Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks – I don’t think I’d ever before read a first-person account of someone involved at the grassroots level. Maybe the difference is that the other biographies are focusing on how special the individual was? Here, the spotlight is on the belief and dedication of all the people involved, even as it’s told from the perspective of one person. It’s an inspiring story, and the pictures really brought the story to life. Nate Powell is an acclaimed graphic novel artist in his own right, and it shows. The ink and watercolor pictures combine feeling with historical accuracy, while still keeping characters recognizable.

This is a challenging topic for a graphic novel – while the Civil Rights Movement is rightfully taught in schools, the first-person perspective and the graphic format could easily have made for a book with too much violence to be appropriate for kids. However, it’s very thoughtfully put together – while the text is clear that nonviolent protestors were treated violently, the violence is described briefly and matter-of-factly in the text but not shown in the pictures. While you’d probably still not want to hand it to a first-grader, I’d say this is appropriate for children old enough to really learn about what this period of history involved, about 10 and up, depending on the child. It has been nominated for the Cybils in the Elementary/Middle Grade Graphics category.

The book has a cover blurb from Bill Clinton, and was getting publicity lots of big places. We have copies here at my library in both adult and teen, figuring there’d be a lot of demand for it. So far, unfortunately, there hasn’t been, but I’m hoping that it will build momentum as time goes on. This is a deeply moving and important piece of American history.

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A Wisp of a Thing

Posted on October 28, 2013 by Katy K.

Look! Another case where I finished a book and checked out the sequel right away.
In Armchair Cybils news, I put together a list of all the Cybils-nominated books I’ve read in the four areas I’ve decided to focus on: Middle Grade and YA Speculative Fiction, Graphics and Picture Books. This is a continuation of my life-long inability to focus on just one thing. I note that without planning anything, I’ve read 9-10 nominated books in each of my four categories.

Wisp of a ThingWisp of a Thing by Alex Bledsoe. Tor, 2013
Wisp of a Thing is set in the world of the Tufa explored in to The Hum and the Shiver. It’s not quite a sequel, as Bronwyn, the main character from the first book, hardly appears at all. Instead, Bledsoe introduces a new main character, while expanding on themes and the stories of side characters from the first book.

Rob Quillen was a star on the reality TV show “So You Think You Can Sing” who gained even more national fame when his girlfriend, Anna, tried to fly out to surprise him and was killed when her plane crashed. It’s a kind of fame he never wanted, and when a young musician in an Elvis-style suit tells him that a Tufa song and words carved in stone could help him with his grief, he heads straight for Cloud County, Tennessee.

Rob isn’t Tufa, but part Filipino (part Filipino! That’s my love’s heritage, and I don’t think I’ve ever read of a protagonist with it before.). Still, part Filipino looks a lot like Tufa, so he’s able to get farther with his explorations than someone with obviously non-Tufa looks would, even though no one knows the answer to his question nor who could have sent him. He meets a crazed, wild girl named Curnen and her sister Bliss Overbay, the deputy for young Mandalay, the head of one of the two Tufa factions. We know Bliss from the first novel; it’s a question how much of the Tufa secrets Rob will learn.

In the first book, a handsome Tufa man named Stoney with a distressing tendency to date and drop young women, leaving them in despair so great they often commit suicide. That was just mentioned in passing, an example of the kind of behavior and disregard of non-Tufa held especially by those of the other Tufa faction, led by old Rockhouse. Now Rob sees the devastation Stoney causes in the lives of two women close-up: Berklee, the wife of a friendly local who had a brief fling with Stoney before they were married, and now drowns her feelings in alcohol; and Stella, another resident at the hotel where Rob is staying. But while locals are inclined to stay out of other people’s business, Rob can’t seem to stop himself from trying to save the troubled people he meets, even when it puts him in danger.

The first book was told primarily from the point of view of Bronwyn, herself a Tufa. Rob is somehow able to see things that only Tufa should be able to see, and so notices things that weren’t remarkable to Bronwyn. This continues a question that Bronwyn herself brought up in the first book: being Tufa is considered something you’re born to. In the first book, we saw Tufa people who had stopped listening to the Night Winds. Now, the story looks more seriously at the role of the Night Winds and the possibility that people not born to the Tufa might be able to hear them.

As before, this is a dark fantasy, filled with cursed women and haunting music; this time mostly original lyrics rather than the folk tunes used in the first book. It’s a lovely blend of character, drama and setting that would be perfect if you’re looking for something a little spooky to read for Halloween.

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The Last Enchanter

Posted on October 26, 2013 by Katy K.

Last EnchanterThe Last Enchanter. The Celestine Chronicles Book 2 by Laurisa White Reyes.
In the prologue of this book, we see the old king being poisoned by a trusted advisor. Then, the main story starts with young Marcus, taking care of his grandfather’s goat in a remote mountain village. His grandfather is the enchanter Zyll, and Marcus is also his apprentice. Zyll has a vision of the treachery at court, while Marcus has a vision of Zyll lying bloody and dying. This last vision is especially rare, as it shows that Marcus has the rare talent of seeing visions of the future, not just the past and present as most enchanters do. Clearly, it’s time to head for the capital, where Marcus’s older brother is heir to the throne so recently left vacant. His friend Clovis comes with Marcus (Zyll having travelled ahead) as does a girl named Lael, who’s escaping an abusive father and looking for her mother, and Bryn, a shape-shifting groc who prefers to take the shape of a little boy. Marcus’s mother, Ivanore, is also missing, though she appears to him in visions and seems to be leading him towards finding powerful magical artifacts.

There’s a lot going on in this book. Part of it was confusing to me because I hadn’t read the first book and events from the last book were not summarized here. It’s a challenging balancing act, trying to get readers up to speed, whether they’re starting in the middle or trying to remember the last book. I felt there was some critical information that I didn’t figure out until well into the book that would have been very helpful earlier on, like knowing that Zyll’s annoying bird sidekick, Xerxes, is wooden, and that Marcus’s father Jayson is a cat-person, not just a human oppressed minority. But there are a lot of plot lines going on in this book, too, a quest story with three or four different quests going on simultaneously.

While I found Marcus and Lael generally likeable, nice kids, there were some character things that didn’t quite make sense to me. Marcus first urges for the party to include Bryn the groc and for everyone to treat him fairly – they had gotten to know each other in the previous book. Then Lael comes along, and suddenly Marcus no longer thinks of Bryn as a real person and has to learn to do so from Lael, whose polished and feminine table manners he also admires. While I appreciate having a girl in what was clearly a previously all-boy story, it felt like Marcus was being set up to be improved by a Feminine Touch, Victorian-style. Clovis leaves to go back home partway through the book when Marcus tells him to, even though no one but Marcus is convinced that that’s the right thing to do. That felt very odd, and could be potentially jarring for readers who were fans of Clovis from the first book. And, when they reach Marcus’s brother in the capital, he is remarkably unwilling to listen to them. There are also some very brief discussions of a trade in indentured servants which felt unresolved.

While the characters didn’t quite work for a character-focused reader like myself, and kids will probably be better off starting with the first book in the series, there are still plenty of readers for whom this book would be thrilling. Stories of children who find out that they have hidden powers that they need to use to save the world always have a place. This one, filled with magical creatures, enchanters, and princes in danger, and told in very short, action-filled chapters, is especially good for reluctant boy readers in the upper middle grades.

This book was very kindly sent to me by the author in exchange for an honest review and participation in the blog tour, and was nominated for a Cybils award in the middle grade speculative fiction category.

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