The Willow Falls series by Wendy Mass

Posted on April 12, 2017 by Katy K.

Last year, my library started subscribing to a digital service called hoopla.  As I was browsing through the children’s audiobook selection, I found a 2009 Cybils finalist – from before I started following the Cybils, but had wanted to go back and catch up on.  My daughter and I started with that one, and went on, over the course of several months, to the whole series.

The Willow Falls series by Wendy Mass.

Welcome to Willow Falls, a small all-American town.  Everything is pretty normal here, except that children really never have to go to the hospital after they’re born.  Oh, and be careful if you run into an old woman with a duck-shaped birthmark on her face.  Especially if you meet her around your birthday…

This is fun, contemporary fiction with a fantasy touch that varies from nearly undetectable to large from book to book.

Eleven Birthdays by Wendy Mass. Scholastic Audio, 2010. In this first book in the series, we meet Amanda and Leo, who were best friends, even celebrating their birthday together, until a horrible event that happened at their tenth birthday party.  Now they’re turning 11 – a mysterious old woman named Angelina keeps turning up.  And Amanda keeps reliving the same day, including being startled awake by a giant Sponge Bob Square Pants balloon.  This was charming, and while I found the plot a little predictable, it was still very much enjoyable.

Finally by Wendy Mass. Scholastic Audio, 2011. Now that she’s finally 12, Rory begins to check off the list of things her parents will finally allow her to do.  Each and every one of them goes horribly and painfully wrong.  At the same time, she strikes up a friendship with the cute young movie star who’s filming his newest movie at her school.  The magic here isn’t really obvious, and I couldn’t understand why it should be necessary for Rory to go through so much pain for wanting things that seemed age-appropriate to me.  My daughter and a young friend of the target age both thought it was hilarious, though.

13 Gifts by Wendy Mass. Scholastic Audio, 2011. Tara has never been to Willow Falls – until she gets in trouble at school and is sent to live with her aunt and cousin for the summer while her parents go to Madagascar. Rory is her cousin Emily’s babysitter, and for the first time in her life, Tara finds herself welcomed as part of a community, nearly all of whom know just what it’s like to have Angelina DiAngelo pay special attention to you around your birthday.  The one diverse note in the series comes as she falls for David, a boy who’s been practicing for his bar mitzvah in her cousin’s swimming pool hole.  This one got my daughter excited both about Judaism and Fiddler on the Roof.

The Last Present by Wendy Mass. Scholastic Audio, 2013.  David’s best friend Connor has a little sister named Grace.  On her 10th birthday, she falls into a coma.  The story turns back to our original characters, Amanda and Leo, as they journey in time to different birthdays in Grace’s past, trying to stop the magical mistake that will cause the coma.

Graceful by Wendy Mass. Scholastic Audio, 2015. Now it’s Grace’s turn for the limelight, as she tries to figure out what’s causing the magic in Willow Falls to run haywire.  The only sour note in this otherwise sweet series closer was the epilogue, which featured the girls having visions of the future involving important events happening to the boys in their lives with their own futures mostly side notes. Only Amanda got a vision where she and Leo were equally important.

If only my library had her Candymakers series on audio…

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The Magicians of Caprona and The Seventh Wish

Posted on April 5, 2017 by Katy K.

Here are some short takes catching up on my reading during Cybils season.

Magicians of Caprona by Diana Wynne JonesThe Magicians of Caprona by Diana Wynne Jones. Greenwillow Books 2001, 1980.
This is a relatively stand-alone volume in the Chrestomanci series, in which he appears (as my good friend Dr. M. says) as Deus ex machina in the middle of the book.  You’ll have more background on Chrestomanci if you’ve read some of his earlier adventures, such as The Lives of Christopher Chant, but it’s not essential.

The city of Caprona has always been helped by two magical families, the Montanas and the Petrocchis, both of whom believe the other to be despicable.  The weakening of magic must be because of the other family’s misuse of magic, though everyone is searching for the original words that go to the tune given to them by the Angel of Caprona – the most powerful magic of all. Young Tonino Montana is embarrassed by how little of the family talent he has – he can’t do any magic at all, although he is able to talk to the family cats.  It isn’t surprising that two young Montana boys are find themselves in situations where they need to work with similarly aged Petrocchi girls.  But these are mixed Jones’s trademark humor and a number of highly unexpected twists – involving Punch and Judy puppet shows, of all things – as once again, the children must save the day when the adults fail to grasp the depth of the problem.  I read this aloud to my son (pushing my narration skills by trying desperately for a not-cartoonish Italian accent), before continuing on to more DWJ.

The Seventh Wish by Kate MessnerThe Seventh Wish by Kate Messner. Bloomsbury, 2016.
A book that made some waves around censorship last year as it covers some sensitive but important issues.  Charlie Brennan is terrified of ice fishing, but willing to try to earn enough money to buy herself a really beautiful Irish dancing dress for her first feis.  When she catches a fish with emerald eyes, it’s willing to grant her a wish – but it proves harder than she realizes at first to make a wish that will really do what she wants.  When she hopes that handsome Roberto Sullivan will return her crush, for example, she instead finds geeky Robert O’Sullivan following her around. All the normal she’s hanging on to comes crashing down as it turns out that her beautiful older sister Abby, newly gone to college, has an addiction problem.  The family’s journey to recovery is moving, not preachy, and blended with the rest of Abby’s life, including her friendship with Dasha, a recent immigrant still learning English.  I feel like the drug use in particular – is an issue that parents want very desperately to pretend will never happen if it’s not talked about and that kids want and need to know about in case it does.  And I’d rather have a discussion over a sensitively written book like this than be blindsided by needing to explain it from real life.  So while I won’t yet read this with my seven-year-old, to whom it would otherwise appeal, I’d have no qualms about listening to it with my middle schooler (though it’s a little more dance-focused and non-epic fantasy than he likes) and getting ready for some discussions.

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State of the Book Basket – April

Posted on April 3, 2017 by Katy K.

Ok, so it looks like it’s been months since I’ve done one of these posts.  Did you miss them?  Here’s what we’re reading right now:

Critter Club 14: Ellie the Flower Girl by Callie BarkleyThe Daughter, 7 ½, is going full tilt on chapter books right now, while still taking breaks for picture books.  Early chapter book series she’s read through include the Kingdom of Wrenly series by Jordan Quinn, the Critter Club series by Callie Barkley, the Enchanted Pony Academy series by Lisa Ann Scott, and the Inspector Inspector Flytrap by Tom Angleberger & Cece BellFlytrap series by Tom Angleberger and Cece Bell.  Laundry Day by Jessixa Bagley. We were listening to the Game of Silence by Louise Erdrich in the car until it flaked out on it.  Now we’re going back to the Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place by Mary Rose Wood while we wait for another copy of The Game of Silence to come in.  She’s been on and off about letting me read to her in bed, sometimes preferring to read separate books side-by-side, but when she does let me, we’re working on the third Cupcake Cousins book, Winter Wonders, by Kate Hannigan.

The Son, at 12, still prefers graphic novels to prose, and audio for longer fiction.  Still, he’s plowing determinedly through Illuminae for his at-school reading time, and reading the Runaways graphic novel series at home.  He just finished The Bronze Key on audio and started on The Force Awakens: Junior Novelization. We’ve restarted the Septimus Heap series, which we first listened to when he was about 7, and are now on book 2, Flyte.  We still enjoy whatever read-aloud time we can squeeze in and are reading The Merlin Conspiracy by Diana Wynne Jones, who’s written so much that it will take us a very long time indeed to get through all of it.

Strangers in Paradise by Terry MooreMy love is currently re-reading Strangers in Paradise by Terry Moore.

 

Myself, I had a brief phase a few weeks ago when I had only one or two books on my waiting-to-be-read shelf.  Naturally, I went overboard trying to rectify this problem, including putting in book requests to three different librarians at my work.  Now I’ve been scrambling trying to read multiple books at a time as three and four come due back at the library within days of each other.

Gemina by Amie Kaufman and Jay KristoffI’m currently reading Gemina by Amie Kaufmann and Jay Kristoff (YA sci-fi), 1984 by George Orwell for a book club, Hilo: Saving the Whole Wide World by Judd Winnick (youth graphic novel), and Juana & Lucas (early chapter book) by Juana Medina in print, and finished off Binti by Nnedi Okorafor (adult sci-fi) on Friday evening as well.

The White Road of the Moon by Rachel NeumeierOn the shelf waiting to be read are This Savage Song by V.E Schwab (YA fantasy), Under the Sugar Sun by Jennifer Hallock (historical romance), Once upon a Marquess by Courtney Milan (more historical romance), The White Road of the Moon by Rachel Neumeier (YA fantasy), and The Masked City by Genevieve Cogman (adult fantasy). I have nothing in text electronically right now because I have so much in print, though it’s making me feel a little nervous about getting stuck somewhere with nothing to read.

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine ArdenI’m listening to The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden (adult fantasy) on audio, with The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon (YA contemporary) up next.

 

What are you reading?

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The Goblin’s Puzzle

Posted on March 31, 2017 by Katy K.

This is me, slowly making my way through the Cybils Middle Grade Spec Fic finalists.

The Goblin's Puzzle by Andrew S. ChlitonThe Goblin’s Puzzle by Andrew S. Chilton. Alfred A. Knopf, 2016.
The boy has known nothing but the life of a slave, and believes further that being a slave is his proper lot in life, as chosen for him by the Fates.  He even does his best to remember and follow all the laws of being properly obedient to a master. But when he is sent to accompany one of his master’s sons on a journey and the son ends up dead, he must decide very quickly how deeply he believes in these laws and his life gets very much more interesting.  Quickly taken prisoner yet again, he and a goblin named Mennofar help rescue each other.  Mennofar doesn’t believe in fate at all, and keeps pushing at boy’s beliefs.

At the same time, in another kingdom, a very unpleasant duke works a spell and causes a dragon to kidnap a girl named Alice.  Unfortunately, the dragon gets the wrong Alice.  He ends up kidnapping Plain Alice, a common girl who wants nothing more than to be a sage like her father, if only the other sages would let a girl take the exam.  The dragon, Ludwig, turns out not to be the beast the duke thought, but is both clever and bound by the spell set on him. Princess Alice is left to deal with her own, different set of problems.

Goblins in this world can see the future, but their natural distain of humans keeps them from being open about what they see.  The boy is allowed to ask Mennofar one question a day, which he uses to try to find out who he is and what he should be doing with his life.  Will he ask the right questions? And what is the goblin leading him towards doing?

There are many layers to this story, as well as more point-of-view characters than you’ll usually find in a middle grade novel.  On the surface, of course, is the adventure, with life-and death struggles for all three children, ranging through countries and across mountains. The boy doesn’t have a name at all, a choice that brings the horribleness of slavery to the surface.  (While he is described as having dark skin while the two Alices have light skin, both of these skin tones are normal to the kingdoms they come from, not social markers.)  There are also fun logic puzzles involved, as you might guess by the title.  It was a little hard to buy that someone raised in slavery would buy into it as thoroughly as the boy does at the beginning, but his journey to freedom – both for himself and the girls –  feels authentically his.

I’m still waiting on two of these finalists to show up at my library.  Here are the rest of them:

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Miss Ellicott’s School for the Magically Minded

Posted on March 30, 2017 by Katy K.

Here’s one of the books I was very excited to see coming out this year, from the author of Jinx.  I was even more excited to see a galley in my kids’ school’s March is Reading month temporary Little Free Library, though my library also has it on order.  And I might need to buy my own copy, too.

Miss Elliocott's School for the Magically Minded by Sage BlackwoodMiss Ellicott’s School for the Magically Minded by Sage Blackwood. Katherine Tegen Books, 2017.
Chantel (pronounced shahn-TELL, not CHANtl) has grown up at Miss Ellicott’s school, which is populated by Surplus Females with Magical Ability.  There are a lot of surplus females in their little walled kingdom of Lightning Pass, and those lucky enough to be at Miss Ellicott’s are taught reading and magic as well as deportment:

“The fact was, Chantel did not like to deport… Good deportment… meant being shamefast and biddable.”

Chantel is anything but shamefast and biddable.  She has a Look and a snake for a familiar, and even Miss Ellicott telling her that she is the Chosen One (while mispronouncing her name) doesn’t make Chantel any more willing to give up thinking for herself. In a twist on the trope of describing darker-skinned characters using food words that made me laugh out loud, Chantel is described as having brown skin, while her best friend Anna has “skin the color of raw chicken.” Also included in their initial group is Bowser the pot boy, even though it’s generally agreed that boys are not magical.

The status quo is abruptly upturned when Miss Ellicott disappears.  Further search by our heroes reveals that all of the Sorceresses who keep Lightning Pass safe are missing.  The Patriarchs who are in charge of the Sorceresses are mostly incapable of hearing girls talk, asking Bowser to repeat whatever Chantel tries to say.

Then things get very much more exciting.  I will not get too much into the details in the interests of avoiding spoilers.  But I will say that there are chases, battles, a Marauder boy from outside the walls who insists that he is a Sunbiter, and most wonderful dragon.  Chantel never does learn to be either shamefast or biddable, but she does learn to use deportment as a weapon, as well as being put in some quite tricky situations regarding figuring out what the Right Thing to Do might be.

The only criticism came from my mother, who wished that the magical protections from the outside world had been called something more mystical sounding than the Buttons.  I myself am trying and failing to find anything that I didn’t like about it and look forward to reading it again.

Chantel is a much younger character than Princess Cimorene, but their mutual disregard for convention and friendliness towards dragons is calling Dealing with Dragons by Patricia Wrede to mind, while A Dragon’s Guide to the Care and Feeding of Humans by Lawrence Yep has a dragon’s point of view on a girl-and-dragon friendship for younger readers.

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Lowriders in Space

Posted on March 29, 2017 by Katy K.

One more late addition to Latin@ week!  Lowriders to the Center of the Earth was a Cybils finalist this year, and I thought I’d read this first Lowriders book while waiting for the second to arrive at my library.

Lowriders in Space by Cathy Camper and Raul the ThirdLowriders in Space by Cathy Camper and Raul the Third. Chronicle Books, 2014.
This book is a love song to the Mexican-American lowrider culture (with which I was utterly unfamiliar), with kid-friendly animal characters.  Three best friends, all working together at an auto shop, plan to win a car contest so that they can open their very own shop.  They will make a beautiful lowrider that will “go low and slow, bajito y suavecito.”  Lupe Impala is the “mechanic extraordinaire” who will take the old rust bucket that’s all they can afford and make it hum.  El Chavo Flapjack Octopus does the cleaning and polishing, while Elirio Malaria the mosquito is the detail artist.

The plot here is definitely third place behind the world-building and characters: the friends fix up the car using rocket engines, which take them to space and help make their car even cooler.  There are plenty of Spanish words mixed in to the dialogue, all defined at the bottom of the page where they’re used.  I saw some reviewers complaining that the definitions are overly simplistic.  My Spanish is rudimentary at best, but I will note that they use the word “Órale”, which Stef Soto, Taco Queen specifically called out as a word with many shades of meaning, as just “let’s go.”  I still loved seeing the Spanish, especially the poetry of rhyming phrases like the oft-repeated bajito y suavecito. The art, done in three colors of ballpoint pen on brown paper, made me work a little harder than the bright digital colors that are so common now, but packs in lots of detail and expression.  It ultimately succeeded in drawing me in and emphasized the homegrown artwork the book is about.

I’m so not a car person – to be honest, I resent the local car industry for doing away with robust public transportation in my state – so I wouldn’t have picked this up on my own.  The love of our characters for each other and for their cars is so joyful that I couldn’t help but be won over in spite of myself, and the notes at the end helped me appreciate the many details built into the book. This is perfect for car-loving kids.  I’m now very curious to see the second book.

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Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Posted on March 25, 2017 by Katy K.

I’m continuing Latin@ week at alibrarymama with a book that’s become a classic just in the five years since it came out.

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire SáenzAristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz. Read by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Simon & Schuster Audio, 2013.

Fifteen-year-old Ari has no friends and an inner boiling anger that he doesn’t understand.  One summer day at the pool, he meets Dante, friendly and cheerful and refusing to be put off by Ari’s bad temper.  He offers to teach Ari to swim, and slowly, Ari learns how to have and be a friend.  Dante’s openly affectionate, bantering relationship with his parents is baffling to Ari, raised on silent affection and family secrets, including a refusal to talk about his jailed older brother.  And just as Ari feels like he might be figuring the friendship thing out, Dante’s parents decide to move to Chicago for a year.  Ari adopts a dog, learns to drive, asks his parents for a red truck – but none of these stop the nightmares that keep him from sleeping well or help him figure out how to write letters to Dante.

Though there are exciting events, this book is high on self-reflection with a slow, slow two-summer journey from friendship to romance – I would have liked a little more on the romance side, myself, but that may just be my incurable romantic speaking.  There are desert stars, underage drinking and weed use, running, swimming, poetry and art, and pondering what it means to be a Mexican-American.  It is beautiful and literary. It made me wonder (again) – when does historical fiction start?  This book, set firmly in the 1980s, is within the period of my own memory, but this time before emails and texting will likely seem foreign to today’s teens.

I’d heard many people rave about this book being read by Lin-Manuel Miranda.  He does a very convincing voice, reading in a flatter tone than I’m used to for narrators, but which grew on me as it fit so well with a boy trying to keep his feelings tamped down.  This is good for introspective readers, as well as providing lots of fodder for group discussion.

Sáenz’s new book, The Inexplicable Logic of My Life, is out this month from Clarion Books.

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Hour of the Bees

Posted on March 21, 2017 by Katy K.

I’m hereby declaring it Latin@ week here at alibrarymama and following yesterday’s review of Stef Soto, Taco Queen with another book starring a Latina middle schooler.  This is a subtly magical book for older middle grade readers, one of the many books that I read during Cybils season and got behind on reviewing.

Hour of the Bees by Lindsay EagarHour of the Bees by Lindsay Eagar. Candlewick, 2016
Carol  is forced to spend her summer on her grandfather’s dried up ranch in the desert of New Mexico. He suffers from advancing dementia and her parents have decided it’s time to get the house ready to sell and move him to a nursing home. Carol is resentful of not having her planned summer of swimming and shopping with friends, and being called CaroLEENa by her grandfather. babysitting her baby brother and helping to pack up the house are no kind of substitute.  Her older sister Alta keeps finding ways to leave, adding to Carol’s bad mood.

But, like Cat in Ghosts, this summer is a catalyst for Carol learning more about her heritage and the Mexican-American culture her birth family hasn’t really connected to. (I am not tagging it for Read Diverse, because I was unable to find out if the author has any Mexican heritage herself.) Her grandfather Serge, incoherent with almost everyone except for shouting matches with Carol’s father, tells Carol stories of the bees that took the lake away and vanished forever, leaving the village in drought ever since.  Carol doesn’t believe the story, especially since bees seem to follow her everywhere.  Slowly, slowly, Carol connects more with her grandfather and pieces together the unbelievable truth behind the old stories and the forgotten magic.

I hesitate to call this magical realism, because the magic is definitely real. But those coming in looking for large doses of magic are going to be disappointed, because the magic is all in the stories until the very end of the book.  This is perfect for those who like slow, lyrical explorations of character, the complications of family and coming to terms with old age.  That sadly makes me feel that its audience for middle grade readers is going to be small, but those few readers will love it.

The lyrical magic with bees reminds me of Robin McKinley’s Chalice, a full historical fantasy with a magical beekeeper.

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Stef Soto, Taco Queen

Posted on March 20, 2017 by Katy K.

Here’s one of the books I put on my Top 10 Books I Am Looking Forward to for the First Half of 2017 post (wow, that’s a long title!), based on hearing an interview with the author on PW KidsCast.

Stef Soto, Taco Queen by Jennifer TorresStef Soto, Taco Queen by Jennifer Torres. Hachette, 2017.
Middle school, with its shifting friendships, is already hard ground.  Stef – Estefania to her parents – finds it especially humiliating that her father insists on picking her up from school in the family’s taco truck, Tia Perla.  It only provides fuel for her former best friend, Julia Sandoval, who’s now openly hostile.  Fun and real life collide as Stef tries to convince her father to let her go to a big concert with her current best friend Amanda, while her father’s business is put in danger by proposed food truck regulations. There’s a sideline of humor and chef respect as her father keeps trying to come up with new tasty dishes for Stef’s other best friend, Arthur Choi, who’s vegan and allergic to nearly everything.

I loved so much about this book. Stef herself, despite her conflicts with her parents and other flaws, is still devoted to them and unafraid to help out with the taco truck.  This is a close look at a new American family, trying their best to live the dream and do right by their daughter even as they as parents just don’t get parts of the culture.  There are Spanish words sprinkled through the text – especially “Órale”, which Stef says is a “word that comes in lots of flavors,” (mostly affirmative), and which is use throughout with various shades of meaning.  The parents’ dialogue is written in unaccented English, which I appreciated, though it’s clear in context that they’re speaking Spanish at home.  I appreciated the depth given to the “mean girl”, who isn’t randomly picking on Stef out of pure native meanness or for racial reasons.  This is a quick and cheerful read, perfect for those looking for realistic fiction about kids navigating middle school and realizing that they have the power to make a difference in the world.

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How One Mama Reads 250 Books a Year

Posted on March 15, 2017 by Katy K.

Last week on Fangirl Happy Hour’s Question Tuesday, Ana and Renay discussed when and how they make time for reading and asked listeners to tell them how we read.

I meant to write an answer and post it the same day I listened, but fate intervened in the form of the biggest wind storm and subsequent power outage that Michigan has ever seen.  My workplace lost power for four days.  My home lost power for five (luckily, we have a wood stove, so we were able to stay warm.) But we had no internet connection.

Now I’m back online, and ready to share with you how a working mother with young children is still able to read over 250 books a year.  I am not able to block off an hour at a time to sit and read, but I have found lots of ways to fit reading in over the course of the day.  Here are my (no longer) secrets. Continue reading →

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