Thank you all for your expressions of sympathy. It helps, as much as anything can. And now returning to our regularly scheduled programming…
The Time-Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer The title might say most of it – but I’ll elaborate a little more. To start with, Mortimer picks just one century of the middle ages, the tumultuous 14th century, home to Chaucer and the Great Plague and my favorite fashions, among other things. Rather than the standard approach of looking at the important people and events, he talks about what you’d need to know if you were actually to go to fourteenth century England as a tourist. What would the landscape look and sound like? How should you behave and what should you wear so as not to offend anyone? How do the different types of people live and eat? I found that I had to skip the detailed chapter on medical care, though that depends on your personal tolerance level. Still, so many aspects were covered and wittily described that I found myself engrossed and frequently wanting to share. Alas, my love decided that he wanted to read the book as well and so would not let me. Mortimer also discusses the philosophy behind his approach – reminding us that these were real people who shared a basic humanity with us and whose actions continue to affect life in modern-day England (this is explained in more detail especially in the legal chapter.) It’s unfair, he says, to call a fourteenth-century housewife dirty because she doesn’t clean with antibacterial wipes – our cleaning methods will probably seem ineffectual in 700 years, too, but that doesn’t mean that either we or the hypothetical housewives don’t care about cleanliness. There’s a lot to enjoy here both for the history buff and the re-enactor, and the annotated end-notes give even more commentary and jumping-off points for those who want to take it further.
Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear Maisie Dobbs is both the main character and the first book in a mystery series set in post-World War I England. It’s one of those that looked attractive when I first read the reviews several years ago, but I just now got around to reading. Maisie Dobbs is setting up shop as a private investigator when the book opens. Her first client is a husband who feels that his wife’s attention is straying and wants to know where she goes when she is out all day two days a week. Maisie solves this mystery in the first third of the book, but finds the case leading her on to a deeper mystery, one that turns out to have personal resonance. This involves finding a farm where WWI veterans with no faces go, and where they are called only by their first names. Investigating this draws us back into Maisie’s back story, a working-class girl whose aristocratic patron sent her to college, which she left to go to France as a field nurse. Maisie’s fairy-tale rise from the lower class and her great personal charm, beauty and intelligence go together to make a character that, while extremely likeable, uses more than a fair allotment of character points. I’m guessing, though, that this is laid on extra-thick because of it being the first book in the series and that Maisie will seem less magical in subsequent books. The darkness and probably reality of the battlefield story offsets this aspect of the book enough to make it neither too grim nor too sweet. This is an excellent choice for lovers of mystery and historical fiction.
Except the Queen by Jane Yolen and Midori SnyderThe first thing I noticed about this book when I opened it up was Jane Yolen’s dedication, which I will reproduce here in it entirety. This, my friends, is a recommendation list from one of the grande dames of fantasy. I find that I have read many of them, but there’s a good handful that I plan on hunting down: 
Guide to Pirate Parenting by Tim Bete Are your relatives telling you that you are too soft on your kids? Do you want your children to be bringing in income to help support the family? This book could be for you! Learn how long to maroon disobedient children (one month per age), how to train them in pirate skills and manners, and how to convert your minivan into a pirate ship. If you’re tired of serious parenting books or just need some more piracy in your life, try this book.
Under the Jolly Roger by L.A. Meyer. Read by Katherine Kellgren Several years ago, I read the first book in this series, Bloody Jack, a rip-roaring tale of adventure on the high seas, as Mary “Jacky” Faber, street orphan, disguises herself as a boy so as to make an honest living as a ship’s boy. I read it in print at the time, which was fun. Now my love and I are rediscovering the series on audiobook. I think that someday soon I will have to write Katherine Kellgren a fan letter, because she is such an amazing reader. The books are full of people and accents from all over, from Jacky’s Cockney to Irish to Jamaican and American, which Kellgren brings beautifully to life. There are also a number of folk songs, and Kellgren not only has a fine voice for singing them, but also manages to make the different character’s singing voices different. This series is winning her all the major audio book awards, and rightly so, but I also loved her work on the Enola Holmes series, where Enola putting on a Cockney accent still sounds different from Jacky in this one.
The Giant and the Beanstalk by Diane Stanley Otto is a gentle giant who, most improperly, chooses a sweet little hen for his pet instead of a fierce dragon. When Jack steals it, Otto chases him down the beanstalk to get his pet back. Jack’s mother is shocked at her son’s behavior, and sends the giant into town to find him. “Just look for Jack,” she says. Poor Otto has a hard time – not only do his looks put people off, but there are an amazing number of Jacks out there, jumping over candlesticks, falling down hills, and so on. This is delightful not only for turning the story around, but also as a puzzle to recognize the nursery rhymes for children, identified in the back, and the recognizably close imitations of medieval art for adults.
Dogzilla by Dav Pilkey Really, the title says it all, but for the sake of my own memory, I’ll write this down. Since LB is still interested in giant monsters, my love found this book. It’s made to look like an old-style monster movie, but with the innocent residents of Mouseopolis needing to defeat the terrible giant Dogzilla. It’s a fun mixture of photography and painting, just right for little monsters to enjoy.
The Princess and the Bear by Mette Ivie Harrison Here’s one I grabbed randomly off the teen new book shelf, rather than finding through reviews or from being previously familiar with the author. It turns out to be a second book, and so is somewhat mistitled to match better with the first book, The Princess and the Hound. Really, this book is about a hound (who was for a while in the previous book turned into a princess, and who becomes human partway through this book) and a bear, who really used to be a prince. If you got all that, I think that The Prince and the Hound would have been a more accurate title. They have been companions for a long time, living peacefully in the forest, and the chapters alternate perspectives between these two characters. As the story opens, the hound meets a cat-man who is spreading magical and literal death in the forest – unmagic. The hound and the bear reluctantly decide that the only way to stop this is to visit the Wild Man in the mountains, who first turned the prince into a bear a couple centuries previously. The bear who was a prince has a bear come to realize how terrible he was at being human, so that he is ashamed and even more reluctant when the Wild Man says that the only way to stop the problem is to go back in time to when he was prince and try to undo some of the harm that he did. The premise does not come off quite as convoluted as it sounds, though there is a bit of set-up. Anyway, the hound and Chala, when she is a woman, reflect a lot on the various natures of humans and animals, how they are alike and how different. The Bear/Prince, on the other hand, thinks about the nature of magic, gifts, and power. If the ending felt a little sudden and tidy to me, it’s still both exciting and thoughtful. Animal lovers especially will enjoy this tale of animals, humans and magic.
Lucia and the Light by Phyllis Root. Illustrated by Mary Granpre Root (Big Mama Makes the World) and Granpre (illustrator of the Harry Potter series) bring us the story of Lucia. Lucia lives with her mother and baby brother on the side of a mountain in the far north. Long ago, there were tales of trolls up in the mountain, but no one is really sure they believe these any more. It’s an ordinary cold winter, until one day, the sun doesn’t come back. The cow’s milk dries up, the baby won’t stop crying, and they are running out of food. Lucia decides to climb to the top of the mountain to see if she can find the sun. Together with her milk-white cat, Lucia battles cold, dark, and yes, trolls, to bring back the sun. It’s a fine new story for Lucia with luminous pictures, perfect for the dark of winter.
