The Knitter’s Life List

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Katy K.

book coverThe Knitter’s Life List by Gwen W. Steege. More than once, I’ve heard that knitting is a hobby you can never get bored with (assuming, of course, that you like it to start with.) But what all is there to do with knitting? Steege sets forth a list of knitting-related things to do that could easily take more than one lifetime to accomplish. It includes things like techniques from beginner to advanced, from making a gauge swatch to learning to knit backwards. It includes lists of all different kinds of things to try – fiber types, sweater and mitten styles, ethnic traditions. There are famous knitting people to meet, like Cat Bordhi or Jared Flood, and places to go – yarn stores, historic mills, conventions, fiber festivals, and cruises. It’s divided into chapters: yarn; know-how; sweaters; socks; scarves & shawls; hats; gloves & mittens; bags; kids; home decor ; fiber lovers. Each one starts off with a checklist, with room for the reader to add a few more items. Each check-list includes people to meet, places to go, things to knit, techniques to learn… and I’m sure more that I forget. I found these lists – basically notes on what’s covered in the following chapter – unfortunately a little tedious, given that the whole notion of the list was what drew me to the book in the first place. I did enjoy that Steege put so much effort into making the lists diverse, not just ways to become a more advanced knitter but also ways to enjoy your knitting more and find more knitting delight in the world around you. And if the list gets long, the chapters expand on everything in it, explaining why you’d want to include that item on your personal life list. I’m currently at a point with the very active, not-sleeping two-year-old and the job that I feel like being less ambitious with my knitting is probably happier for me – but even I can look for knitting in art or for the books, classic and modern, that involve knitting. The appendix includes bibliographies and current websites mentioned in the text for easy reference. If you’re the ambitious knitting type, afraid of getting stuck in a knitting rut, or just want to learn more about the broad world of knitting, this is a book to look for.

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Ivy’s Ever After

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Katy K.

book coverIvy’s Ever After by Dawn Lairamore Princess Ivory, who prefers to go by Ivy, is the unconventional princess of the tiny, rural and isolated kingdom of Ardendale. Her nurse and tutor would like her to settle down and learn how to be a proper princess, of course, but her father – always a bit spacey since Ivy’s mother’s death at her birth – insists that she needs time to be a child. So Ivy explores the countryside, makes friends with the servants, and reads just the exciting books in the library. Then she discovers that it’s the ancient law and tradition that the oldest princesses of Ardendale be locked up on their fourteenth birthdays in a special white tower guarded by a dragon, until a prince can kill the dragon. That prince then gets the hand of the princess and the kingship of Ardendale. (The dragon kingdom gets the assurance that only that one dragon in every human generation will be killed.) Ivy, just a few months shy of fourteen, is horrified at the whole business. Things get even worse when the first contestant prince turns up months before her birthday in a bone ship. Prince Romil is a mighty, power-hungry and cruel second son, except that Ivy is the only one who hears his dastardly schemes. In desperation, Ivy sets out to save the kingdom without the help of the adults she’s always counted on. She befriends the peaceful and bookish dragon guarding the tower, Elridge, and the two of them escape to find Ivy’s missing fairy godmother, Drusilla, in hopes of saving the kingdom. On the way, they encounter trolls, fairies, an enchanted swamp, and a crusty Dragon Queen. This is a delightful romp of a fairy tale, perfectly suited to elementary school-aged kids, probably from about 9 years independently and younger as a read-aloud. I also very much enjoyed the second book of Ivy and Elridge, Ivy and the Meanstalk, which as Charlotte rightly points out, adds thoughts on more serious issues to the adventure. This felt very similar to Patricia Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Chronicles, but for a slightly younger audience. If it were only available on audio, I think the Boy would very much enjoy it.

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Ruby Red

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Katy K.

book coverRuby Red by Kerstin Gier. Translated from German by Anthea Bell.
16-year-old Gwyneth (Gwendolyn in the original German book) has grown up living life as a normal kid, except that she now has to keep an eye out for her cousin Charlotte. Charlotte, glamorous and sophisticated, has been trained all her life to prepare her to be a time traveler. Except that Gwyneth turns out to be the one with the time travel gene, something she never wanted. Time travel is dangerous unless controlled – Gwyneth ends up in the same place but a different unknown period in the past for an unpredictable length of time, with only a few minutes of nausea and dizziness for preparation. To counteract them, the secret organization known as the Guardians trains time travelers and owns the Chronograph, a clockwork machine that can send time travelers to a planned place for a planned length of time. For that reason, Gwyneth’s mother takes Gwyneth to the Guardians, despite a distrust she hasn’t explained. It turns out that Gwyneth is the Ruby, the last of twelve known time travelers, each represented by a jewel. The other time traveler in her generation is handsome 18-year-old Gideon de Villiers. The previous two time travelers, close friends with Gwyneth’s mother, fell in love and are hiding in the past with the only other existing Chronograph. The Guardians want to send Gideon and Gwyneth on missions to get blood samples from all of the previous time travelers, which were lost when the original Chronograph. When all twelve samples are present, something will happen – but what? Should Gwyneth trust the Guardians, or Lucy and Paul, the couple she’s never met but whom her mother trusted? Though it’s fairly clear that Lucy and Paul are Good Guys, Gwyneth and her best pal and research buddy Lesley, have yet to figure out why Lucy and Paul distrusted the Guardians enough to give up their lives in the present. There’s a slowly percolating romance between Gwyneth and Gideon, which helps nicely to make Gwyneth’s choices harder, as Gideon has no reason to distrust the Guardians.

German book coverDespite the dangers of time travel and the potential evil nature of the Guardians, the book never gets bogged down in heaviness. (I think the German cover conveys this better.) There’s the romance, more fun than fraught; Lesley and Gwyneth’s friendship, and – I really loved this part – costumes. The Guardians hire a full-time French costume designer, whose sole job is to make historically accurate clothing for each of the trips back in time, which are all described in detail. I really liked the original German covers, but I guess you can’t have everything. This is the first of a trilogy, all of which are now published in Germany but which I guess are taking some time to be translated. The translation is done by the inestimable Anthea Bell, who also translated the Inkheart books as well as tons of others. The time travel, romance and history combined to make this a quite lovely book for me, and I’m now anxiously waiting for the next installments to arrive.

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The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Katy K.

book coverThe Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente. This is now my second Valente book, after last year’s Deathless. While this one is definitely intended for children and the other as equally not, I deduce from both of these that Valente likes her fantasy on the dark and wild side. Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making feels a lot like Alice in Wonderland. as our heroine, young September, goes on a journey in a fantastical realm, meeting many interesting characters and places along the way. I never really liked Alice, though – the whole thing felt too random. September’s story was focused and purposeful while still whimsical, a much better fit for me. But to start at the beginning, it feels like World War II in Kansas, as September’s father is off fighting a war and her mother is working in a factory. September, as one would expect, finds her life dull and so follows right along when the Green Wind comes and carries her off to Fairyland. Once in Fairyland, at a crossroads, September is given the choice of losing her life, her way, or her heart, and chooses her heart. As she travels, she hears stories of the former beloved Queen Mallow and the current heartless and bureaucratic Marquess. The first people she meets are a trio of witches, and September promises to try to retrieve the spoon of the witch Goodbye from the Marquess, who in turn gives September an impossible mission to complete to earn it. On the way to the Marquess, September befriends a Wyverary named A through L, offspring of a Wyvern and a Library. Later on, a Marid named Saturday (a boy of September’s age) joins their party after September rescues him. He is dark blue and drawn with African-like features for a supporting character of unconventional color. As you can tell from the title, the book is written in flowery language. It has chapter titles like “The Wyverary: In Which September Is Discovered by a Wyvern, Learns of a Most Distressing Law, and Thinks of Home (but Only Briefly)” and is full of references to other beloved children’s books both new and old. The narrator is given a prominent voice, telling us not only plot pieces that September doesn’t know but also explaining how Fairyland and stories in general work. I found this to be delightful, but my mother reading the book found this voice to be arch and annoying. She also found the book to be too cruel for her to enjoy it as much as she’d hoped, causing me to go back and think about what she might have found to be so cruel. The Wyverary going around with his wings chained up on the Marquess’s command that no one be allowed to fly? September having to give up her shadow to prevent another child from being given to pirates? I’m not exactly sure, but I think that while there is definitely cruelty there, it felt to me like a child-like sort of cruelty. I don’t think that most children old enough to be aware that the world isn’t always rosy would be bothered by it. I quite enjoyed Valente’s Fairyland, even if I wouldn’t want to live there. While many things about the book are based on predictable fairy tale patterns, the journey was delightful and the ending still quite surprising.

Cross-posted to http://library-mama.dreamwidth.org and http://sapphireone.livejournal.com .

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Pirate King

Posted on January 7, 2012 by Katy K.

book cover Pirate King by Laurie R. King This series has been getting good reviews for years, but this is my first try. It’s set in the 1920s, and Sherlock Holmes has married the much younger Mary Russell. Mysteries of course still ensue. This is the eleventh in the series, and I was finally encouraged to pick it up because it is about pirates. Not just any pirates, but the Pirates of Penzance, the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta which I have adored ever since I didn’t make my high school production of it. So: Fflytte films is a film company famous for filming the real thing. Now, there are two mysteries around it that Mary Russell is investigating: a missing secretary and surges in illicit items like arms and cocaine after Fflytte films does a film about such a subject. The easiest way to investigate is to apply for the missing secretary’s job, which Russell does. The current film – get ready for convolution here – is about a film company making a movie of the Pirates of Penzance (set in Portugal and Morocco instead of the actual Penzance in Cornwall), which gets overtaken by real pirates. Naturally, as the film company in our book heads off for Portugal and Morocco, they too are taken over by real pirates. Dun dun DUNNN!!! Despite the action, Russell felt developed enough as a character to keep the book from being a cardboard-character thriller. This was a mystery that hit the perfect balance of fun and literary without ever getting into the gory. It had plenty of both G&S and classic Holmes references to satisfy geeks of both varieties.

Cross-posted to http://library-mama.dreamwidth.org and http://sapphireone.livejournal.com .

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Once Upon a Cool Motorcycle Dude

Posted on December 30, 2011 by Katy K.

Another delightful recommendation from my good friend Dr. M., who loved it so much that she read it to me over the phone, despite much of the charm of the book being in the illustrations.

book coverOnce Upon a Cool Motorcycle Dude written and illustrated Kevin O’Malley. Illustrated by Carol Heyer. Illustrated by Scott Goto. Two children, a girl and a boy, are assigned to give a school report on their favorite fairy tale. Only as they couldn’t agree on a favorite fairy tale, they decide instead to write their own. The girl starts, telling a romantic tale of a sweet and beautiful princess whose beloved unicorn ponies are tragically being kidnapped by a giant. Then the boy interrupts, having a cool motorcycle dude come and battle the giant every night while the princess spins golden thread for him in payment. Then the girl interrupts again, incensed at her princess’s new role. Princess Tenderheart now goes to the gym to pump iron and becomes Princess Warrior, so she can rescue her ponies herself. From here, the interruptions from one side and the other become more and more frequent, until the children find a story and characters that they can both enjoy. The story is funny to start with, and the illustration really make it. O’Malley draws the two children in a fairly realistic cartoon style with pen and ink. Heyer illustrates the girl’s story in oil paintings that look like a mash-up of Beautiful Fairy Tale book and Barbie-level cheesy girl appeal. Goto illustrates the boy’s story in bright, vigorous pastels where the motorcycle dude and his motorcycle vye for space with the hideous giant and exploding volcanoes. This book was a hit with everyone who saw it, including adults, my son and his K-1 class, and my two-year-old.

Cross-posted to http://library-mama.dreamwidth.org and http://sapphireone.livejournal.com .

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Hannukah for Wee Ones

Posted on December 21, 2011 by Katy K.

My favorite Hanukkah book for years has been Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins. I’ll happily pull it out and read it to whoever wants to listen every year. As I noted in my review, though, it’s really too wordy for very young children.

This year, I also fell in love (not surprisingly) with Chanukah Lights by Michael J. Rosen and Robert Sabuda. Those who know the name Robert Sabuda, though, will know that this is an elaborate pop-up book. The text is simple and moving, and would probably be fine for little ones, except for the fragility of the art work. Last week, though, I was challenged to find a Hanukkah book that would appeal to two-year-olds, and so ignored the three other books I have notes for reviews on to hunt some down. Here are a few I found:

book cover Hanukkah, Oh Hanukkah. Illustrated by Olga and Aleksey Ivanov. The lyrics to the classic Hanukkah song are paired here with appealingly bright acrylic paintings featuring a modern family – grandparents, parents, two children, and a dog. The tune is written out on the first page, so those unfamiliar with (or rusty on) the song can still learn it. It’s bright, bouncy and short while covering the basics of Hanukkah – perfect for young children.

book coverHooray for Hanukkah by Fran Manushkin. Illustrated by Carolyn Croll.
Here, a menorah tells about growing brighter and brighter on each of the eight nights of Hanukkah, and what its family does to celebrate each night. While still fairly brief, this one has a sentence or two on each page, and so has room to get a little more into the holiday. The pictures show a large and happy early twentieth-century family, done in what looks to my untrained eye like watercolor with colored pencil.

book coverHanukkah, Oh Hanukkah by Susan L. Roth. It’s the same classic Hanukkah song, and the music is still included. This smaller format book is illustrated with paper and fabric collage featuring a family of mice. This version has a sweet and clearly handmade look.

book cover Hanukkah: A Counting Book by Emily Sper. This is a counting book – from one to eight, obviously – with the names of the numbers written out in English, Hebrew masculine, Hebrew feminine, and Yiddish. All of the non-English words have American phonetic pronunciation written out as well as the words being written in Hebrew letters. After the shames candle is introduced, the counting proceeds with an appropriate number of Hanukkah-related objects, from one menorah to four dreidels, six heroes, and eight nights, on one page. The facing page is all black, with the numbers in the different language and cutouts of that number of candles, so that they show up brightly against the blackness . The combination of all these elements makes for a sleek, attractive book.

Do you have any favorite Hanukkah books?

Cross-posted to http://library-mama.dreamwidth.org and http://sapphireone.livejournal.com .

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Entwined

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Katy K.

This was the last Twelve Dancing Princesses retelling that I’ve read. I haven’t found any others, so unless one of you, dear readers, knows of another one, this is the last of the series.

book coverEntwined by Heather Dixon. Dixon boldly sets the story of the Twelve Dancing Princesses in the Victorian era, which we can tell by the clothes and the customs. (The cover, while beautiful, is much less historically accurate than the story.) She manages to give many more of her twelve princesses distinct personalities, better than any of the other books except for Wildwood Dancing, where there were only five sisters to keep straight. Blessedly, she even named them alphabetically – Azalea, Bramble, Clover, Delphinium, Evening Primrose, Flora, Goldenrod, Hollyhock, Ivy, Jessamine, Kale and Lily – making them the first dozen princesses I was actually able to keep track of. But onwards to the story. It’s the night of the Christmas Eve Ball. Azalea, the oldest princess, is hosting, due to Mother’s illness. Before the ball starts, Mother calls Azalea to her room and makes Azalea promise on her mother’s silver handkerchief to take care of her sisters, as well as talking about dancing. At the ball, Azalea meets a somewhat rumpled but very kind young gentleman, Lord Bradford, and it’s immediately clear that this is not the last we’ll see of him. Interestingly, Azalea is princess in a figurehead monarchy. The kingdom is run by the Parliament, which gives the royal family an allowance that isn’t quite enough to keep up the rambling, ancient palace. They also make the final choice on the spouse of the heir, which will make our Princess hesitant in matters of the heart. The country is run this way in large part in reaction to the defeated High King D’Eath, who in ancient times (Medieval? Enlightenment?) ruled the kingdom about as kindly as one might expect, given a name like D’Eath. He it was who built the palace, filling it full of secret passages and enchanted objects. Most of these are no longer in the castle, though one animated silver tea set remains.

The ball goes all right, despite all of the younger siblings hiding in the Christmas trees to watch. But in the morning, they discover that their mother has died, leaving new sister behind. The King – their father, though they call him the King – does not tell them in person. He only tells them that they will be in strict mourning for a year: All black clothes. All windows draped, all clocks stopped, no going outside except for church or Royal Business, and no dancing. But dancing is the girls’ sanity, an essential part of their relationship with each other and with their mother. So when they discover that there is a secret passage in their room that takes them not to a storage room, as they’d been told it would, but to an obviously enchanted dancing pavilion, they are delighted. They don’t ask very many questions of the pale, obviously magical man who invites them to come every night, saying that he is the Keeper of the castle. The reader will likely be more wary of him, even if he tells them that he is an ancient enemy of the High King D’Eath, trapped by him in the walls of the palace. He starts out creepy and gets truly scary, though at first he only reveals this side to Azalea.

In spite of this, the book felt much lighter than Wildwood Dancing – still probably appropriate in the teen books, rather than youth, but leavened by comedic attempts to find suitable partners for all three of the oldest sisters. There is a lot of discussion of the actual dances, so this is the book I’d recommend to dancers. (It’s rather funny how many books about dancing princesses gloss over the actual dancing.) There’s also a lot of family relationships, as the girls try to negotiate a new relationship with the King, now their only parent, no matter how cold and strict. This turned out well, though I found the King’s conversion to kindness a little too glib to be completely convincing. In any case, the story came to an exciting and satisfying conclusion, with Azalea doing a significant part of the rescue of the sisters herself. I think it’s being marketed as a teen book because of the focus on romance, though I didn’t find anything that would be inappropriate for older middle grade readers.

Fans of the book can find delightful princess Azalea paper dolls on the author’s website.

Cross-posted to http://library-mama.dreamwidth.org and http://sapphireone.livejournal.com .

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Snow in Summer

Posted on December 19, 2011 by Katy K.

book coverSnow in Summer by Jane Yolen. Master (mistress?) storyteller Jane Yolen moves the story of Snow White to 1940s Appalachia. For all the fairy tale novels that I’ve read, this is the first retelling of Snow White. And while I find the basic fairy tale over-told to the point of insipid, this was a heart-wrenching retelling. Snow-in-Summer, called Summer by her family, is just seven when her mother and new baby brother die together. Her father, formerly a happy, musical man, is unable to go on with life. He drifts aimlessly around their heretofore lush farm, and spends every evening at the grave site. The only person who takes care of Summer is Nancy, her father’s old high school friend. One day, following her father to the graveyard, Summer sees a pale woman in bright red lipstick come out of nowhere to sit with her father. Soon, they are married. Summer distrusts her new Stepmama from the start, but she is so desperate for someone to love and pay attention to her that she is willing to do almost anything to win her approval, even letting herself be called Snow instead of Summer. Instead of waking up with Stepmama’s potions, her father gets worse, often not even getting out of his chair. Stepmama is a truly wicked stepmother, starting out with classic abusive moves such as not allowing Summer to see anyone outside the house and doling out extreme punishments, such as cleaning hot ashes from the woodstove with bare hands, for infractions minor and imagined. Things only go downhill from there. Most of the story is told from Summer’s point of view, but the occasional chapter will be from Nancy or Stepmama’s point of view. Interestingly, Nancy and Snow-in-Summer both narrate in the past tense, while Stepmama mostly talks about what she plans for the future – plans that from the beginning involve the deaths of Summer and her father, but only if they don’t go along with her plans. She often closes her chapters with “After all, I’m not a wicked woman,” though her plans include taking years of her life in exchange for teaching Snow the Craft, without ever making it clear to Snow that that’s what she’s doing. There are hints of good magic in Papa’s resistance to Stepmama and in Nancy trying to help Summer protect herself, but Stepmama is the only full-on conscious magic user in the story.

Summer’s narration combines her present knowledge of how much she underestimated Stepmama with a strength and humor that keeps the bleakness of the story from being completely overwhelming. It’s three-quarters of the way through the book before Summer runs away from the Hunter she intuits that Stepmama has hired to kill her and finds the dwarves, mining their own little mine. In the traditional tale, Snow White keeping house for the dwarves never made much sense – a young princess knows how to keep house better than life-long bachelors? And wants to do it? Here, Summer may only be twelve, but she’s effectively been managing her father’s house for the past five years. She’s really good at what she does, able to introduce improvements like a bang-up home garden for the dwarves who are otherwise pretty competent. I was proud of Summer both for having the knowledge and the guts to do such good work for the dwarves, rather than presenting herself as just a charity case or trying to get back to her father. It was a long, hard battle for her, and the victory at the end is hard-won and sweet, with Summer herself the primary force behind her rescue. I’m sensitive to children suffering in a way that I think children themselves might not be, which made this difficult for me to read even while it was so compelling that I finished it in a day.

Cross-posted to http://library-mama.dreamwidth.org and http://sapphireone.livejournal.com .

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All Wound Up

Posted on December 16, 2011 by Katy K.

book coverAll Wound Up by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Just about any day can be improved for me by reading one or two or three of the Yarn Harlot’s essays on knitting and life. I don’t know that there are so very many non-knitters who read her books and her fabulous, award-winning blog, though her humor and insight into life certainly goes beyond knitting. This is another book that looks at things like should knitting be treated as an addiction and how to answer questions from non-knitters like, “Did they let you on this airplane with those needles?” In the knitting realm, I recognized myself in the essay on why knitters feel compelled to knit gifts. In the non-knitting realm, there was a very funny obituary for a dead washing machine, as well as “That Kind of Mother”, the story of what one normally restrained mother (that would be Pearl-McPhee) did one hot August day when her three girls started in indoor water balloon fight. If there is a knitter on your Christmas shopping list this year, do her or him a favor and get this book.

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