Cabbage Soup, Princess Stories, and the Ballou Book Fair

Posted on April 19, 2013 by Katy K.

It’s book fair time again at Ballou Senior High School! For those that haven’t heard of it, the community over at Guys Lit Wire has been working for a couple of years to build up a decent library for the kids at this inner city D.C. high school. The ALA recommends 11 books per child at school libraries; Ballou had less than one when Guys Lit Wire first hooked up with them. They’re now up to five books per kid, but there’s still a long way to go. They have a wish list over at Powell’s books, and lots of the books on the wish list are on sale. They are also fine with books in “standard used condition.” Buy your favorite teen books or buy what’s on sale – but please pause a moment to consider the horror of kids not allowed to feed a reading addiction and pick something out for them. Send them to:
Melissa Jackson, LIBRARIAN
Ballou Senior High School
3401 Fourth Street SE
Washington DC 20032
(202) 645-3400
From Chasing Ray: It’s very important that you get Melissa’s name and title in there – she is not the only Jackson (or Melissa) at the school and we want to make sure the books get to the library.
Read lots more about this at Guys Lit Wire and at Chasing Ray.

My daughter, at three and a half, is just getting old enough to ask for stories sometimes as well as music. Here is some of what we’ve tried.
Cabbage Soup
Cabbage Soup by Children’s Radio Theatre. It was not so long ago that my mother found this CD version of Cabbage Soup, which had been a favorite cassette when I was growing up in the 1980s. It has two stories on it. Cabbage Soup is a silly musical retelling of Rapunzel, while Beauty and the Beast is a straight-up radio drama of the original, both with full casts and soundtrack. In Cabbage Soup, the Rapunzel household is shared with a wise-cracking talking bear named Max, who occasionally interrupts the story to let the characters know that they are not following the story appropriately. The vegetables in the witch’s garden talk to Mr. Rapunzel; Mrs. Rapunzel’s craving is for cabbage soup, not rampion; the prince Rapunzel’s talking bird finds to rescue her wears thick glasses and hiking boots. It’s all punctuated with cute musical-style songs about the magical powers of cabbage soup and (from the witch) how tough it is being evil. I loved this so much as a child that I once inflicted the entire half hour on my birthday-party guests; my daughter listened to it endlessly for a couple of months and still asks for it frequently. The Beauty and the Beast retelling has only a couple of songs and much less to separate it from any other audio retelling, but my daughter seems to love it quite nearly as much, though it took us a few weeks of her asking for “Fairy on the Beach” to figure out what she wanted.

Princess StoriesBarefoot Books Presents Princess Stories retold Caitlin Mathews. Narrated by Margaret Wolfson.
I checked this one out from the library in a vain attempt to introduce some variety into my daughter’s audio fairy tale diet. This has seven stories from around the world, all featuring princesses. There are lovely harp and flute interludes between each of the stories. Here are the stories: the Princess and the Pea (Denmark), the Mountain Princess (Persian), the Princess Who Lost her Hair (Akamba), the Birdcage Husband (Central Asian), the Beggar Princess (Chinese), the Horned Snake’s Wife (Iroquois), and the Sleeping Beauty. I’ve been a fairy tale junkie since childhood – I read through nearly every anthology I could find at my childhood library – but only the first and last stories were familiar to me. There was a nice balance between more traditional princesses like the one in “Sleeping Beauty” and more active princesses like the one in “The Birdcage Princess”, who had to rescue her husband, as well as princesses who rescued themselves from bad husbands. The narrator has a rich voice that was very pleasant to listen to, though she didn’t do lots of voices for all the different characters. These are not necessarily gentle stories – the greedy husband in “The Beggar Princess” tries to murder her when he thinks he can find a better wife – but neither are they scarier than your average Disney fairy tale movie. Sadly, my daughter did not like them – I think the condensed amount of story-telling needed to fit seven fairly complicated tales onto one CD made them too hard for her to follow. I, however, enjoyed them very much, and think that she’ll be ready for them in a year or two, and at least up to age ten.

Posted in books | Tagged , | Leave a comment

The One and Only Ivan

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Katy K.

A quick note to say that it’s Kidlit Blog Hop day today. I’ve put in my review on Dragonbreath from last week, but you should go over and check out the rest of the hop!

This is both the last book of my reading of the 2012 Cybils mg sf/f finalists, and the book that won this year’s Newbery. The way it always works in the library is that the books that win the Newbery and Caldecott medals develop an instant wait list as soon as the awards are announced. Sometimes I put my name on the list right away; this time I just waited for the demand to die down.

The One and Only IvanThe One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate.
Katherine Applegate is also one of the co-authors of the Animorphs series. This book, she says, is loosely based on the true story of a gorilla who was kept in a mall for many years before finally being moved to the Atlanta Zoo. Ivan, the narrator of our story, lives in the highway-side Big Top Mall, where he makes pithy observations on humans and their ways. A large billboard by the highway advertises “The One and Only Ivan, Mighty Silverback.” He writes, in brief, poetic chapters, of his life and friendships at the Big Top Mall and before. Initially, he is completely absorbed in the present. He talks of Stella the elephant and her stories, Bob the homeless dog who prefers to be free, and George the janitor, who brings his daughter Julia, who in turn provides Ivan with art materials, which he likes both for drawing with and for eating. The Big Top Mall is no longer doing well. Mack, the owner, can’t afford proper food or medical care for the animals, but decides that what he needs is a new baby elephant. When Ruby comes, heartbroken at being taken from her family, Stella and Ivan are determined to protect her. It is only for Ruby that Ivan remembers his past and the painful events that brought him to his cage in the mall. Finally, Ivan realizes that he has to help Ruby escape the slow death of the mall and find a better life.

It’s a deeply moving story with strong characters told in lyrical language – but I was still a little dubious when reading it that it would actually appeal to kids. Even the biggest, most dramatic events seem to happen slowly and are described very calmly by Ivan – actually probably a good thing for children reading of the deaths of gentle animals. And, though the thinking animals make it fantasy, the animals still behaved like animals, so it’s more like Charlotte’s Web-style fantasy than, say, Redwall. However, my son’s best friend read it with his class, and said that they liked it. G’s favorite character was Bob, the scrappy little dog. In short, if you’re looking for heavy action or magic, this isn’t the book for you. It’s still beautiful and well worth reading.

Just for reference, here’s the full list of the finalists:
Beswitched
The Cabinet of Earths
The False Prince
Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities
The Last Dragonslayer
The Peculiar

Posted in books | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Bad Girls

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Katy K.

Bad GirlsBad Girls by Jane Yolen and Heidi E. Y. Stemple. Illustrated by Rebecca Guay.
I first heard about this on the Kidlit Celebrates Women’s History blog, and the teen librarian was kind enough to buy it for me. The basic premise is just so fun – the book gives brief prose biographies of famous “bad girls” from history, from Delilah and Jezebel to the women of crime who inspired Chicago. Following the bio is a one-page comic panel discussion between the authors – the famed Jane Yolen and her daughter, Heidi E.Y. Stemple – about whether the woman in question was a truly bad girl or just misunderstood by history. Each biography is preceded by a full-page portrait by Guay, which are breathtakingly beautiful and beg to be made into posters. The bios are told in zippy modern language – just enough to whet the appetite, with enough resources for a full school report listed in the back. I ended up being frustrated by what I’d thought would be my favorite part of the book, the mother-daughter debates. I still think the idea has potential, but unfortunately, they always take the same positions – Jane says that the women are misunderstood, and Heidi, with a criminal justice background, says that they are bad. I would really have liked to see some more nuanced discussion, with the two agreeing about a person one way or the other at least some of the time. Another slight but understandable disappointment is that the book covers only women from classical history and the West, with the single dubious exception of the Russian Madame Popova. On the one hand, I’d’ve liked to see a little more diversity; on the other, if the subject is famous bad girls, it’s much harder to dig for women whose notoriety hasn’t spread to us. In short, I ended up not loving this quite as much as I’d hoped I would, but it’s still a lot of fun. It’s good light reading (um, considering the number of murderesses covered) for teens and up, both for fun and as preliminary research for biography projects.

Posted in books | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The Scorpio Races

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Katy K.

The Scorpio RacesThis is me, resolving to read more books by authors I like, rather than trying to explore the maximum number of authors. Here, I continue my love affair with Maggie Stiefvater with a book that I didn’t quite get around to when it came out in 2011.

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater. Read by Steve West and Fiona Hardingham.
In this standalone book, we travel to the remote British island of Thisby. There, every November, people train and race the deadly water horses called capaill uisce (pronounced “kapull ishka”) on the beaches. The narration alternates between Sean Kendrick and Kate “Puck” Connolly. Sean Kendrick, 19, effectively an orphan since his mother left for the mainland when he was tiny and his father was killed in the races when he was 10. Now he’s a four-time winner of the Scorpio Races, working for the breeding stables of rich Benjamin Malvern, and longing more than anything for a chance to own the red capaill uisce, Corr, that he’s ridden since his father fell off during the race. Puck, a couple of years younger, lives with her two brothers since they were orphaned when a capaill uisce took both of their parents from their fishing boat a year ago. Now they are barely making ends meet, as older brother Gabe has the only real job among them, working at the hotel, while Puck paints pottery for tourists and Finn bakes cookies for local stores. When their situation suddenly gets worse, Puck decides that the only solution is for her to race as well. It doesn’t even occur to her that she is the first girl ever to attempt it, or that the men who manage the races will do whatever they can to stop her.

It’s a dark and bloody story, filled with the crash of black water on cold, rocky beaches, the desperation of people determined to survive on the inhospitable island, the love of horses both natural and supernatural, the thrill of the race, and a wee bit of romance. Stiefvater has built a whole island culture around the sketchy existing myths, with rituals, charms, costumes, music, and food (there’s a recipe for the tantalizing November Cakes that appear in the books on her website. And while there, I found that the German version of the book is titled Rot Wie das Meer or Red Like the Sea – poetic but quite different.) Once again, I was drawn in by the audio version, featuring her original music and two narrators, just as she had for Shiver. She says in her author’s interview that she has music for every scene in her head, but she only writes down one tune for each book – surely I’m not the only one who wants them all. I think that when I get around to reflecting soberly on the matter, I might find that I prefer Raven Boys to this – but while caught up in this one, there’s no room for comparisons. Just go read it.

Posted in books | Tagged | 6 Comments

Dragonbreath

Posted on April 13, 2013 by Katy K.

I’ve been waiting for a couple of years now for my son to be old enough to read this series, which I keep hearing about from Charlotte at Charlotte’s Library. Finally, I thought, we might be there. I brought it home from the library – but not quite yet. The handy Scholastic book leveler says that it’s a grade 4.3 or Guided Reading level R book, and my son is reading on target for late grade two. I read it aloud to him instead, and he gave it an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

Dragonbreath

Dragonbreath by Ursula Vernon.
Danny Dragonbreath, 5th grader, is “the only mythical creature at a school filled with reptiles and amphibians.” He can’t breathe fire yet, though he practices frequently. This is the first of his adventures with his best friend, Wendell the iguana. He’s got some troubles at school with Big Eddy, a Komodo dragon who resents Danny says he’s a dragon, and keeps stealing his lunch. This time, Danny might be saved by a rogue potato salad. But he’s on to bigger problems – the report on the ocean that he made up in the bus on the way to school got an F, and Danny needs to rewrite his paper with some actual research fast. Wendell, a cautious critter prone to do things the traditional way, suggests a trip to the library, but Danny isn’t interested. Instead, he decides to pay a visit to his Uncle Edward, a sea serpent. Taking the handy bus that goes from their town to the Sargasso Sea, they are soon ringing Uncle Edward’s doorbell on the docks. He provides them with some breathing mints so they can join him underwater, and they are soon on their way, exploring a coral reef, skirting the guards around Atlantis, and visiting a shipwreck and the dark deep sea. Except for Atlantis, the information is realistic, and could inspire some trips to the nonfiction section of the library. It’s all exciting fun with a big sense of humor, perfect for grade school boys. (Not that girls wouldn’t enjoy it – I did – but for those looking specifically for books for boys, this is a good one.) In addition to spot illustrations, there are comic panels interspersed every so often – a little like Diary of a Wimpy Kid, but with segments that will go for a page or three, showing the most exciting parts of the story before switching back to prose. The blend of regular school mishaps, science adventure, and fantasy was a potent one for my boy. It made for fast reading aloud. We finished off the last half in under an hour while he was in bed with a fever, perfect entertainment for the situation. It’s a great choice for reluctant or beginning readers, and I’ll add it to my list of First Fantasy Chapter Books.

Posted in books | Tagged , | 12 Comments

Cold Fire

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Katy K.

I actually bought this book for myself. It was sitting on the shelf waiting for the flow of library books to slow down enough to read it. Then my friend L asked for a steampunky book to take home right then, and I had nothing to give her but the first book in the series – so I had to start the second right away so I could be ready to loan it to her when she finished the first one.

Cold FireCold Fire by Kate Elliott.
This is volume two in the series. When last we left our friends… well, honestly, it was a while ago and I didn’t have the first book on hand to look through and it took me a little while to get back in the swing of things. Cat, our heroine, her beautiful cousin Bee, and her half-brother (and saber-tooth cat) brother Rory are on the run from the mage house she married into. They take refuge in the law firms of some trolls that Cat befriended in the last book. Cat and Bee are initially hoping to find a job there, but things do not go as planned. The former and would-be future emperor Camjiata (who seems much like Napoleon, though he is from Spain) tells Bee that his now-deceased wife had told him of her. She, like the dead wife, walks the dreams of dragons, which shape the world. To walk the dreams is both to have knowledge of the future, and to be targeted by the Wild Hunt. He, of course, wants Bee and Cat to help him. But as Camjiata and his party hide, Cat’s husband, Andevai, comes, followed by a party of soldiers. Mass chaos and chasing ensue, followed by an interlude of prophetic conversation at the University Cat and Bee used to attend – and then a trip to the Underworld. When Cat resurfaces, she’s in the Caribbean. She has found out – to her horror – who her actual sire is. A lot of time has passed on Earth and she now has only a few months to figure out how to save Bee from the Wild Hunt. In Elliott’s reimagined Earth, most of the Caribbean is still the Taino empire, with European ownership limited to the sprawling city of Expedition.

There is really too much going on here to summarize it all. There is lots of excitement, both political and personal, and we learn more about the various people and cultures of the world, all interesting. In the hot Caribbean, the cold mages that rule in the cold north are considered mythical, and power goes instead to fire mages. Cat has some very close encounters with a fire mage who works for Camjiata. Cat and Andevai meet again, and I’m happy to say that their relationship in this book is much more satisfactory. In the first book it was all cruel words and thoughts of undeniable attraction – because men being deliberately unkind always make women want to kiss them, right? Here they’re able to avoid the love-hate relationship, and while the path to true love is still fraught with difficulties, it’s much more Cat trying to avoid attachment to Andevai because she’s on a dangerous quest. One of the cool things about this series is that while Elliott has mixed the cultures up in new ways, except for the troll culture, they are all real historical cultures. There isn’t much room for Cat’s religion, but she follows the traditional religion of the people who call themselves Kena’Ani and whom the Romans call Phoenicians. She prays to Ba’al and Astarte, gods whom I’d been familiar with only from the Bible where they are the Evil Enemies of all Good Israelites. You know, as opposed to the gods of Greece and Rome and the Norse, who don’t really figure in the Bible and whose mythology we read straight up. This perspective shift fascinates me, though it was really a tiny part of the book. Elliott still does an amazing job with keeping a large cast of characters and multiple plot lines straight, in this series, all told from Cat’s perspective. Even though there’s plenty of darkness what with constant danger, threats on people’s lives, and emotional uncertainty, I found this deeply satisfying to read.

Posted in books | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Crewel

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Katy K.

Look! It’s a fiber-related dystopian fantasy/sci-fi novel!
CrewelCrewel. Crewel World Book 1. by Gennifer Albin.
Albin takes some modern teen dystopia tropes and mixes them up with her own take on Greek mythology. Arras is an extremely patriarchal world, where most women are assigned work as secretaries, teachers, or nurses, with male bosses. They are assigned beauty routines and told how many children they may have. Marriage is required by 17, strictly through marriage profiles, as families live in gender-segregated neighborhoods to help enable the strict purity standards. The lucky few who escape this life are called Spinsters. They never marry and are given the best in clothing, food, and up-to-date beauty procedures as a reward for their work, weaving the world of Arras on their looms. Adelice has known since she was eight and started seeing the weave of the world around her that she had the skills – but her parents have trained her to fail at the tests that would take her away from them forever. Except that, during the last test, she can’t make herself fail and is taken anyway. Her father is killed trying to cover her escape, her mother and sister taken captive, while she is still taken to the Coventry to be trained as a Spinster.

Once at the Coventry, Adelice quickly learns both that her talents are unusual even among Spinsters, and that those in power at the Coventry will stop at nothing to gain her cooperation, even wiping out an entire girl’s school when she refuses to pull out the thread of a life that is starting to fray. But not everything is black and white. The woman in charge of recruits, Maela, is sadistic and power-hungry, while her mentor, Enora, is kind if reticent. Very oddly, there are two boys on staff – the gardener/valet Jost and Maela’s personal assistant and pretty boy Erik, both of whom befriend Adelice. Jost is both kind and seems to know about underground resistance to the powers that be, while Erik charms Adelice despite her belief that he’s nothing but Maela’s lap dog. Adelice knows from the beginning that her parents must have had good reasons for trying to keep her out of the Coventry, but finding out what those were and what exactly is rotten in Arras is difficult. She must be trusted enough that she can continue her Spinster training, and despite everything, she is deeply attracted to the beauty of the weave. But the more powerful she shows herself to be, the more tightly she will be controlled. And they have her sister.

I was first attracted to this because of the fiber arts aspect. She does mix her fiber metaphors a bit, as Spinsters ought to produce thread, not weaving – but I can forgive her that, as the conceit seems to work, for the most part. Both Adelice and the reader have to ask what is real, if Spinsters can pull out the thread of a person, give them different memories, and weave them back into a different family. It came off as fairly light most of the time, which made the few moments of unexpected violence that much more powerful. I could have done without the obligatory love triangle, especially since her attraction to Erik seemed dubious at best. As far as appropriateness, there’s nothing to make it inappropriate for younger teens or advanced middle grade readers in the way of sex or violence. I’ll note that there is a lesbian couple, mostly as this is still relatively rare in genre fiction like this, but sadly, we don’t really get to see much of that couple’s romance. For those who like their series complete, this does end with a jolt, and the second book is not due out until October. It probably won’t go on my all-time favorites list, but this was a quite enjoyable dystopian-with-romance.

Posted in books | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Potty Training Favorites

Posted on April 7, 2013 by Katy K.

It’s time for my once-a-month Sunday booklist.
evenMy most recent request along those lines has been from my sister-of-the-heart, M. She was looking for toilet learning books for her two-year-old. As it happens, I have some potty training experience under my belt. Those of you happily past that time, feel free to move along or share your favorites.

This time, instead of first making my list a regular post and later converting it to a page for easier reference, I’ve made it a page right away. Here it is: Best Potty Training Resources. Please let me know what you think!

Posted in books, Movies | Tagged , | Leave a comment

The Last Dragonslayer

Posted on April 5, 2013 by Katy K.

This was on the Cybils middle-grade sf/f shortlist (though my library shelves it in teen.) It’s the next-to-last book for me to read on that list, and I finished the last one, The One and Only Ivan, yesterday.

The Last DragonslayerThe Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde.
Fforde is the author of the Thursday Next books, beginning with The Eyre Affair, which I have very much enjoyed. This is his first book for kids. Jennifer Strange, 15-year-old indentured foundling, runs Kazam Mystical Arts Management in the absence of its owner. In the old days, magic was plentiful and strong, and people lived in fear of dragons. Now, though, magic is hard to come by, and the proper forms must be filled out before performing any spells. Those gifted in the mystical arts are reduced to using magic to clean drains and rewire houses, while magic carpets are used for pizza delivery. Even those jobs are getting harder and harder to come by as magic dries up and drain cleaner becomes cheaper than magic. And then things change. Generations ago, the wizard the Mighty Shandar created the Dragonlands and set up the treaty that would keep humans and dragons separated, as well as establishing a Dragonslayer to enforce the treaty on both sides. Now, there are sudden surges of magic and multiple people having dreams and visions of Big Magic. They say that the last dragon is about to die, and that the last Dragonslayer will be the one to kill him. But when Jennifer finds out that she is the Last Dragonslayer, she doesn’t want to help the large corporations who are greedy to claim the Dragonlands for their own, and she especially doesn’t want to rush in and kill an aged dragon who’s never broken the treaty and who seems ready to die of old age anyway. Something must be done, and it’s up to Jennifer Strange, her fearsome pet Quarkbeast, and her new assistant and fellow foundling Tiger Prawns to figure out what. Continue reading →

Posted in books | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Will Sparrow’s Road

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Katy K.

I’ve submitted this as part of the 13th Kid Lit Blog Hop:

Kid Lit Blog Hop

[Edited 4/3/13 to add Kidlit Blog Hop link.]

Will Sparrow's RoadWill Sparrow’s Road by Karen Cushman. Read by Katherine Kellgren.
This is the most recent audio book that my son and I listened to. I was excited for this books on two counts – a main character I thought he would easily identify with from historical fiction favorite Cushman, paired with narration by our favorite Katherine Kellgren. I was not disappointed. Young Will’s mother ran away when he was very young, and his alcoholic father has since sold him to the innkeeper for beer. When the innkeeper says he’s selling him as a chimney sweep, Will runs for his life. Life isn’t easy for a homeless and penniless boy in Elizabethan England. After quite a while of trying to make it on his own, having his few possessions stolen and living in turn mostly off of stolen green apples, Will discovers the Fair. Not only do the food booths there provide easier targets, but the many performers there offer a means of earning actual money. He’s gotten a job passing the hat for a juggler and met a kind man with a trained pig named Duchess when the juggler unexpectedly leaves, sending him to a Master Trumball, owner of the Oddities and Commodities stall. Master Trumball travels from fair to fair with his combination mini-museum and freak show, which includes a baby mermaid in a jar, a girl with a furry face like a cat’s, and a foul-tempered and ugly dwarf named Lancelot FitzHugh. Will travels England, getting to know the colorful regional fairs, which is quite a lot of fun. But as he gets to know the people he’s traveling with, he also learns a lot about himself, about prejudice and that a person’s nature isn’t necessarily matched to his or her appearance. He goes – slowly, with some painful lurching – from viewing the cat girl as a mostly cat monster, to seeing her as a friend and helping her in her quest for a human name (she decides to go from Graymalkin to Grace Wise) and a life apart from being an Oddity, for example, and has similar revelations about his other companions. Although some of the character revelations came sooner to me than to my son, we were both waiting anxiously to find out what would happen to Will Sparrow and Grace Wise. It’s told in energetic, language that strikes a graceful balance between being easy-to-understand and having the flavor of Elizabethan language – both my son and the three-year-old now frequently go around saying, “Nay – ne’er!” from listening to this. Real Elizabethan songs (mostly of the tavern variety) appear frequently, of course sung beautifully and accurately by Kellgren. (What to make of my boy being old enough to cover his face in embarrassment when Will sang his own variation on “Greensleeves” to Grace Wise?) I also noticed my son being more appreciative of always having enough to eat, even if he’s still a very cautious eater, as Will is always hungry, and lovingly describes every good thing to eat that comes his way. Cushman concludes with an author’s note about English fairs and provides historical background for the people and acts at her fairs. Will Sparrow’s Road is a tempting mix of an exciting historical setting and plot with strong, likeable characters and a not-medicinal dose of thoughtfulness.

Posted in books | Tagged , , | 11 Comments