Sneaky Fitness by Missy Chase Lapine and Laryssa Didio Everyone knows that kids need exercise, and that the only thing more certain to make a wiggle-worm hold still is to tell him or her that they need to get some exercise to be healthy. Lapine of Sneaky Chef fame joins with exercise therapist Didio to create this book of fun ways to make fitness a bigger part of your kids’ lives. The first part is an introduction on why kids need fitness and why it should be fun. For me, the best part of this was a list of equipment for active play that every kid should have, including some items that I need to look up as I’ve never heard of them. Then, the rest of the first half of the book is games for fitness. They are roughly organized by the age group they’re designed for (preschoolers, early grade-schoolers, tween and teen), and include when and where they should be played, equipment needed, time frame, and (rather unnecessarily in my view) the calories burned. In my opinion, the game ideas were not really earth-shattering – things like taking a parade through the house or jumping during tv commercial breaks. The book suggests a lot of activities for commercial breaks, which I notice particularly as we watch only dvds. I really feel that it’s better to cut down on overall tv time than to rely on commercial breaks. Still, the ideas sound like fun, and it’s often helpful to have a list of ideas to turn to when your brain inevitably freezes under pressure. The index lists the games organized by type – rainy day, beach, snow, inside, etc. The second half of the book contains new Sneaky Chef recipes. These seemed to focus on snacks and treats, with fewer regular meals. I would be especially interested in trying out the strawberry cupcakes, even if cupcakes are supposedly no longer the thing. I don’t think too many people need convincing that fitness is important for kids, and this is a good source for simple ways to keep kids active.
Crossposted to http://sapphireone.livejournal.com and http://library-mama.dreamwidth.org .
Library Wars by Kiiro Yumi. In the Japan of a not-too-distant future, libraries are at war. The central government-run Media Betterment Committee has been fighting for control of library collections, which are protected from their censorship by the Library Defense Force. As a young teen, Iku Kasahara had a longed-for book taken out of her hands at a bookstore by the Media Betterment Committee, then returned to her by an LDF agent. Now she’s joined the LDF as the first female agent. Does her supervising officer’s gruff exterior conceal a soft heart, or is he really just a jerk? Will she make it in the Defense Force? Who was her mysterious hero, and can Iku ever find him? This is written as a shojo, or girl’s manga, so romantic concerns take up most of the space for the first book and a half, with the censorship plot slowly gaining importance. Book 4 is due out in March 2011. The art is on the realistic side for manga. This is a fun and frothy read, with underpinnings of serious issues. 
Snow Play by Birgitta Ralston If you’ve never lost your child’s love of snow, but want something new to do, take a look at this book. Alternatively, if you have kids bringing you your coat and forcing you to go out in the cold, here’s a book to get you excited about it. This is a book of snow creations for adults, or adults and kids, with a few projects suitable for younger children by themselves. After detailed general instructions, including explanations of tools used and the difficulty and time to complete ratings, the book dives into projects. There are fresh takes on classics, like mutant snowmen or snow bunnies. There are giant, all-day projects, like a life-size Loch Ness monster and a fire pit with a circular surrounding bench. There are tiny projects, like little free-standing animals on straw legs or ice ornaments. And my favorites, the glowing ones – including a birthday cake and a lantern made of snow balls, lit with real candles or LEDs. 
All of the projects have gorgeous full-color photos of the finished product as well as step-by-step illustrations. The most commonly used tools are buckets, shovels, and snow block molds. Projects range from half an hour to a day in length, with most rated at half a day. Most of the projects also seem geared towards adults working with school-aged children or older kids and teens, though there are some suitable for young children as well. I asked for this book sight unseen, a rarity for me, and am now super excited to go out and play in the snow. 
Batwoman: Elegy by Greg Rucka and J.H. WilliamsI confess that I often have trouble really buying the superhero genre, but this is one title that really worked for me. Kate Kane stars as Batwoman, forced out of the army by DADT and her refusal to break the Cadet Honor Code by lying about it. Still with a drive to serve, she’s trying to fill in the gaps in Gotham’s protection. There are, of course, dark forces at work – including a cult whose Grand Madame is targeting Batwoman directly. This Grand Madame, when Batwoman meets her, is calling herself Alice and speaking only in lines from Lewis Carroll, despite murderous intent and a past more closely intwined with Kate than she realizes. They are strong characters with an interesting story line, but what really made this for me was the art. This is not your standard-issue lines of little boxes, but gorgeous big panels that could stand on their own. The word “gobsmacked” comes to mind. Batwoman isn’t one of D.C.’s major characters, and I’d have to agree with my friend David at 
The Naming by Allison Croggan Australian poet Croggan brings this lyrical fantasy, first in the Books of Pellinor quartet together from familiar elements, with recognizable influence most notably from Tolkien’s Middle Earth, but also with elements of Valdemar and Prydain. So: Maerad, a young slave girl, is discovered by an older wizard named Cadvan. He takes her to one of the ancient bardic schools, where she learns reading, riding, and basic sword. Then they are on their way: the dark forces of the Nameless One, long believed to have been completely defeated centuries ago, are rising again. There seems to be betrayal in the inner circle of the bards. Maerad is quite likely the person foretold in ancient prophecies to overthrow the dark, and she might even be in possession of an ancient magical artifact that the Nameless One is searching for. Pretty familiar, right? I might have enjoyed it a bit more if I could have turned off the Tolkien commentary in my head that kept saying, “Oh, look… this is just like when Gandalf… and now we’re at the siege of Minas Tirath.” However, Croggan is a poet, and her language is worth reading on its own, her characters interesting. The book moves along at a pace much like Tolkien’s, which is to say slowly, so you will turn to this when you are looking for something to savor and take your time with. This series will also appeal to those who found Tolkien’s ideas on gender roles, sexuality, and race troubling – you’d never find a Tolkien character tracking time by her menses as Maerad does, and Cadvan’s best friend (who takes on a bigger role in the later books) is black, from a black city prominent in the defense of the Light. Croggan also takes Tolkien’s appendices one step further by making them discussions by various scholars of the ancient civilization of Pellinor, referencing multiple imaginary scholarly works. If you are in the mood for Serious Fantasy Epic, this is a sterling example.
Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword by Barry Deutsch The line on the cover of this winning graphic novel sums it up nicely: “Yet another troll-fighting 11-year-old Orthodox Jewish girl.” Mirka, the 11-year-old Orthodox Jewish girl, is somewhere towards the bottom middle in age in a large blended family (helpfully for the character count, only those closest in age to Mirka are introduced). She longs to fight dragons and resents her mostly kind if ugly stepmother’s attempts to teach her to knit. It’s sweet family life sprinkled with Yiddish, until Mirka sees a witch in the forest and starts being chased by her talking pig. The art sets just the right tone between serious and funny, and the story is a warm-hearted adventure with a good sense of humor. I fell hard for Mirka, and loved the details of Jewish mythology and Orthodox life. I’ve been toting this one around with me, and everyone I’ve shown it to has been enchanted. I’d say it’s ideal for about third grade up, and I’m really hoping for a sequel where Mirka gets to use her new sword. 
Raising Happiness by Christine Carter Carter makes a convincing argument that raising our kids to be happy is worthwhile. Not trying to make them happy, but teaching them how to find happiness in what life deals. And it turns out that making things happier for the parents can make things happier for the kids as well. This book has ten concise chapters, each with a specific focus, like fostering generosity or gratitude, or how to get over periods of the day that consistently lead to unhappiness, such as the morning or evening rush. She’s summarizing a lot of solid research here. You could read it somewhere else, but her approach has two advantages: it’s all neatly in one place, and each chapter has concrete and doable action steps for busy parents to bring about the goal. Try them all or just one – you and your children will end up better for it. 
The Bards of Bone Plain by Patricia McKillip This new book from long-time favorite Patricia McKillip is a misty tale of magic, music, mystery and archaeology. In the distant past, Nairn was called the Pig-Singer, because the pigs were his only audience. Then he found himself studying at a newly-emerging school for bards, pushed into training to compete to be bard to the equally new but self-appointed king. This story is interwoven with a story of a time that feels closer to our present, where Phelan Cle, graduate student at the School for Bards, is in need of a topic for his final paper. Hoping for something easy, he picks a topic that has been done at least once a decade for centuries: What happened to Nairn after the legendary competition? Does Bone Plain, the site of the competition, really exist, and if so, where? His research may (oh, ok, will of course) turn out to be more relevant than he thought as he tries to finish his paper while keeping his drunken, wandering father from getting into trouble. Also in the present day is the stereotypically lovely but unconventional Princess Beatrice, who runs Phelan’s father’s archaeology dig in the city, and whose work will have more in common with Phelan’s than either of them realize. There is something about McKillip’s writing – perhaps the way the magic is clearly there with workings invisible to all the characters – that makes her magic seem more, well, magical, than most fantasy books, where magic is often a thing clearly understood. I haven’t read a bad McKillip yet, and this is worthy of her name. 
Snow Party by Harriet Ziefert. Illustrated by Mark Jones For those people who are looking (even if only sometimes) for a celebratory winter book that is not a Christmas or even a Hanukkah book to share with children, I humbly offer a title. In this book, a large group of snow people – made out of snow people – are coming together to celebrate the first day of winter. It is a great and glorious party, filled with color despite every page being filled with snow. My only beef with it is that this amazing party (secret to those who haven’t read the book) happens only in years when the first snow fall coincides with the winter solstice. That’s putting off the party for too many years in a row, I think, so I read it as when there’s snow on the first day of winter. That’s tonight in my neck of the woods. I hope it’s a good one. Happy solstice. 
Zombies vs. Unicorns edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier. Zombies are in right now. Really in, and I personally really don’t like them. That’s why I’m so glad that this anthology of short stories has come out, so that everyone can see once and for all why unicorns are so much cooler than zombies. That would be my way of looking at it, anyway. The book is geared towards a teen audience and has twelve stories, six each zombie and unicorn, each team headed by a separate editor. Here are the authors that I’ve heard of: Garth Nix, Naomi Novik, Maureen Johnson, Diana Peterfreund, Scott Westerfeld, Meg Cabot and Libba Bray. These are very good authors, though I admit that the only zombie story I made it all the way through was Alaya Dawn Johnson’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, and that only because the opening comments described it as funny. Every story is preceded by an argument between the two editors on the background of the story, tidbits about zombies or unicorns (depending) and the relative merits of zombies and unicorns. Even when I didn’t read the story, the notes were priceless. A thoughtful feature of this book is that every story is marked with a zombie or unicorn icon so if you are a diehard member of one team or another, as it turns out I am, you can avoid the stories from the other side. Some of the stories are dark, like Kathleen Duey’s “The Third Virgin”. Some, like Naomi Novik’s “Purity Test” (what if the girl the unicorn picks isn’t really a virgin?) and Meg Cabot’s “Princess Prettypants”, where the unicorn literally farts rainbows, are hilarious. I hear the zombie stories were pretty good, too. 
