Top 10 Things I Want to Tell Maggie Stiefvater

Posted on May 18, 2016 by Katy K.
MaggieTalking2

Maggie Stiefvater talks

So Maggie Stiefvater came close to my town this week!  I was super excited and hired a babysitter so that my love and I could go see her together.  There were about 250 people packed in between the shelves at the Barnes and Noble (that’s a guess – I was peering out from behind shelves myself) – so fun to be around the energy!  I’d never seen her before.  She was full of energy, turning everything that happens to her from her past career as a portrait artist to taking charge of rampaging miniature goats to having a guy try to hit on her in the parking lot of the Super Target into high-action stories that she acted out with voices.  The premises of her books are often so depressing that you might not expect this, but so it was.  The audience was in stitches the entire time.  While we were waiting for things, we chatted with other fans about things like, could I do a Raven Boys fan event at the library like my popular Crafts for Hogwarts Grads and what would it involve?  Also I learned that many of the teens had taken the day off school to hang out and wait for her to arrive.

MaggieTalkingThen it was time to stand in line to get the book signed.  My love had already bought us the book from Audible, but I bought a print copy just to have it signed.  I’d thought of lots and lots of things that I wanted to say to her, thinking about her advice A Shy Introvert’s Guide to Stiefvater Signings, but as it happened, the time was so short and line behind me so long that I could not possibly fit in everything I want to say.  So here they are: Continue reading →

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A Plague of Bogles by Catherine Jinks

Posted on May 16, 2016 by Katy K.

This is me catching up with series – a wonderful import from Australia that deserves more notice.

plagueofboglesA Plague of Bogles. City of Orphans Book 2 by Catherine Jinks. Read by Mandy Williams. Listening Library, Random House, 2015. Published in Australia by Allen & Unwin, 2013, as A Very Peculiar Plague.
This book follows How to Catch a Bogle, which I very much enjoyed when it came out.  I’d read that one in print, and then listened to both of them on audio.  This I highly recommend, both because Mandy Williams does such an excellent job of capturing the accents of Victorian London and because both books are full of songs, which of course are only fully captured when really sung.  I especially appreciated here how Jem and Birdy sing different varieties of street songs – Birdy’s featuring wronged women and Jem more often featuring men.

Birdy McAdam, the focus of the first book, is now living with Miss Eames and studying voice. This story is told from the point of view of Jem Barbary, her admirer, formerly employed as a pickpocket by Sarah Pickles.  Since Sarah Pickles betrayed Jem by using him as not-meant-to-survive bogle bait and then disappeared, Jem has been working as a street sweeper in hopes of finding her.  It’s the lowest of low jobs, so when Jem runs into Mr. Alfred Bunce again, he tries to convince him to go back to bogling and take on Jem as an apprentice.  There are unprecedented numbers of bogles appearing in one place, a fact Jem hopes will sway Mr. Bunce in his favor.

Meanwhile, Jem has also found a showman who’s displaying what turns out to be a false Birdy McAdam – something that Birdy is keen to stop herself.  Miss Eames, on the other hand, would like Birdy to stay safely at home while she takes care of the misuse of Birdy’s name herself.  It turns out that living in the lap of luxury, not allowed to leave that lap or do anything useful, is stifling for a girl who was raised to support herself while roaming freely around the city.

There are lots of hair-raising adventures with narrow escapes from both bogles and unsavory characters, while we’re getting to know Jem, Birdy, Mr. Bunce and Ned, another street boy now living with Mr. Bunce. But there is a whole lot packed in underneath all of this, too.  The bogling is made much more difficult because this is a modern era, and the people in charge of the city don’t want to believe that something as old-fashioned and country-bumpkinish as bogles could really exist inside their modern infrastructure.  The whole story is embedded within the strict class structure of the time, with entire aspects of how life works for one segment incomprehensible to the other.  Their explanations to each other are then very helpful for the modern-day reader unfamiliar with the time period.  The contrast between the lives of upper class children and the numerous street children is especially stark, without ever being dwelled on in such a way as to bog the story down with hopelessness.  While it’s hard as a parent not to feel sorry for them, the kids are never sorry for themselves, confident in their ability to take care of themselves and maybe rid the world of a few bogles while they’re at it.

Up next in the series: The Last Bogler.  This series would pair well with Rose by Holly Webb or The Night Gardener  by Jonathan Auxier, also featuring plucky British orphans facing down dark magic.

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State of the Book Basket, May 2016

Posted on May 15, 2016 by Katy K.

Here’s a look at what we’re reading in my family right now – at least as far as I know.

First Girl Scout by Ginger WadsworthMy Daughter (age 6) has started reading chapter books to herself! She still doesn’t have the patience to read them through from start to finish, but she’s definitely sitting down and reading them. She brought home a Boxcar Children mystery from the school library, as well as a longer biography of Juliette Gordon Lowe, First Girl Scout by Ginger Wadsworth. I’m reading Hooray for Anna Hibiscus by Atinuke to her officially, as well First Girl Scout. She’s working on a nonfiction book project for school, and has decided to adapt a recipe into the style used in Pretend Soup by Mollie Katzen. To this end, I was reading her recipes from one of our favorite baking cookbooks, The Weekend Baker by Abigail Dodge at bedtime. She’s drawn to both the Old-Fashioned Berry Icebox Cake and the Two-Bite Whoopee Pies. We’re re-listening to all of the Clementine books by Sara Pennypacker in the car.

Escape fr0m Wolfhaven Castle by Kate ForsythMy Son (age 11) is currently going back and forth between reading Escape from Wolfhaven Castle by Kate Forsyth (kindly sent to me by the publisher, Kane Miller) and Lumberjanes vol 1: Beware the Kitten Holy by Noelle Stevenson and Grace Ellis. We are slowly working our way through the Chrestomanci books by Diana Wynne Jones on audio – tricky as the library doesn’t have all of them on audio – but we’re currently on Conrad’s Fate and enjoying it very much. I just finished reading Geeks Girls and Secret Identities by Mike Jung to him and was unprepared with a new library book. Last night, I pulled a small selection off our shelves at home. He decided he wanted to read both Boneshaker by Kate Milford and The Enchanted Castle by E. Nesbit (which I have on my ereader free, courtesy of Project Gutenberg). A coin toss decided in favor of The Enchanted Castle, which I’m glad of because the appeal on that one skews a little bit younger, and I want him to read it while he’s still young enough to enjoy it. Plus, we’ll be reading it over the summer, and it has such a strong kids-enjoying-summer vibe that I used to love re-reading it every summer.

The Raven BoysMy love just finished listening to The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater on audio and will perhaps hopefully chime in with what he’s moved on to next. He’s been looking through Cook it in Cast Iron by the editors at America’s Test Kitchen, which I requested the library buy for him to look at. I’m very glad I did, as not only is he enjoying it, but so many other people at the library want to read it that we’ve had to buy three more copies of it!

Tangle of Gold by Jaclyn MoriartyAnd finally, myself. Readers may remember that I tried writing out reading plan for April for the first time. I based the number of books in my list on the total number of books I typically finish in a month, without looking at how many of them are my personal reading versus reading with the kids. Probably half of my reading is kid reading, it turns out, so that I got through just about exactly half of my reading list last month and have now moved seamlessly on to reading mostly the other half this month. I’m reading A Tangle of Gold by Jaclyn Moriarty in print at home and P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han at work. I’m really hoping to finish my re-listen of Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater before I go to see her at a local B&N tomorrow night – I’d like to have at least started The Raven King before I get there! But Charlotte’s review convinced me that I did need a refresher on the series, and it has been highly enjoyable. I’m still debating what to listen to after I finish that series – maybe Eleven Birthdays by Wendy Maas, an older Cybils finalist that I’d never gotten to and was excited to see in the Hoopla library.

I’m also planning to read Escape from Wolfhaven Castle (which I plan to put in the sadly outdated school library when we finish). I have probably a month’s worth of print books checked out waiting at home. These include A Thousand Nights by E.K. Johnston, Brownie: the Girl’s Guide to Girl Scouting, Court of Fives by Kate Elliott, Delilah Dirk and the King’s Shilling by Tony Cliff, Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, The Winner’s Kiss by Marie Rutkoski, and Vitamin N by Richard Louv.

What is your family reading?

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Peas and Carrots

Posted on May 13, 2016 by Katy K.

This is one that lots of other bloggers I trust liked – intriguing enough to induce me to read contemporary YA.

peasandcarrotsPeas and Carrots by Tanita S. Davis. Alfred A. Knopf, 2016.
The story alternates between the points of view of two teenage girls – Hope, a little shy, dealing with things like her period and auditions for the super-competitive singing group at school, used to helping her family with the young foster children they take in.  Dess is a foster kid who’s been shunted from house to house and group home to group home.  Now that her mother has been arrested, she’s sent to yet another place, farther away from home.  She’s very surprised that her request to visit the four-year-old brother she still thinks of as Baby ends up with her being placed in the same foster family.  Neither girl is happy to have to deal with another girl her age. Dess puts on the tough, abrasive face that she’s developed over the years.  Underneath, though, she’s still terrified that her abusive, gang-leader dad might track her down, even though he’s in prison, and hurt that her grandmother didn’t take both the siblings back to live with her four years earlier.

This is first of all a story of friendship developing in the face of the initial dislike.  It’s also a look at the assumptions we make about race.  Did you assume, looking at the cover, that the Black girl is the foster child?  You would be wrong – the stable, loving family that Hope belongs to is African-American.  (I might have assumed that if I hadn’t read other reviews before reading the book – it was one of the factors that attracted me to it.) Dess has never thought of herself as racist, especially with her adored little brother being mixed race, but living with a Black family forces her to confront the racism she didn’t know she had – things like being surprised to see her foster mother doing yoga.  It would have been easy, too, to show Hope as selfish and spoiled, compared with Dess’s huge struggles, but here again Davis doesn’t take the easy route.  Just being a teen is plenty hard, and having a parade of needy foster children coming through your home is even harder. And Hope finds she has her own prejudices about teen foster kids to face – but Dess works hard at school and cares passionately about the sewing her grandmother taught her.  The alternating viewpoints make you the reader sympathetic to each girl as you’re reading her voice.  And though the book deals with some heavy topics, it doesn’t feel heavy-handed or depressing. There’s plenty of humor and real life to carry things along, and I believed in both Hope and Dess all the way.  I highly recommend this for readers of contemporary fiction from middle school up. Even if this isn’t normally your thing, you might find yourself drawn in as I was.

Many more thoughts on Peas and Carrots at Charlotte’s Library,

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House of Shattered Wings

Posted on May 11, 2016 by Katy K.

Once again, the Book Smugglers and Fan Girl Happy Hour, convinced me to try a book from a new author – even though it’s meant for adults.  I swear I picked this up without even reading what it was about simply because Ana said she liked Aliette de Bodard.

House of Shattered Wing by Aliette de BodardHouse of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard. Roc, 2015.
In an alternate Paris, the wars fought in Heaven have spread to Earth.  It’s been years since the bloody wars that tore the world apart, but Paris is still divided into houses, mostly run by fallen angels, still at each other’s throats. Outside of the houses, it’s a rough world for the Fallen, who arrive with no memory of why they were cast out, but brimming with much-coveted magic.

As the story opens, Philippe (described first as an Ammonite and later a Viet) feels the rush of a new Fallen arriving and must come along with another member of his gang to try to chop her up for parts to be distilled into powerful angel essence before she comes to her senses.  Before they can get far, they are stopped by a member of the most powerful of the houses, Silverspires, started by Morningstar himself.  While Philippe is glad that Isabelle’s life is spared, he’s much less happy with being forced to join Silverspires by its current head, Selene.  But while there he runs into a hidden trap, inadvertently loosing shadows that starts hunting down members of houses all over Paris. And since it’s clear that things started going wrong right after Philippe arrived, he’ll have to figure out what exactly is going on before it’s too late for him.

So this book is a whole lot darker than my usual middle grade fare – there’s lots of blood, people we care about die or are addicted to the horrifically derived angel essence, and none of the characters (with the possible exception of Isabelle) are straightforwardly good or bad.  I was still hooked.  Philippe himself is intriguing – we know pretty early on that he isn’t Fallen himself, but he’s also been around too long and knows too much to be a regular mortal.  And despite his actions at the beginning of the book, he is a true friend to Isabelle, working hard to help her adjust to life on Earth.  There is a lot of suspense, but even as there’s lots going on, this is also a deep look at faith from lots of angles, both in the face of being rejected by one’s deity and the truth of multiple religions.  Nothing is simple or perfect and it is beautiful partly because of it. The book is deeply impressive, and I will definitely look into de Bodard’s work in the future.

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A Tiger for Malgudi and The Man-Eater of Malgudi by R. K. Narayan

Posted on May 9, 2016 by Katy K.

Back in February, my friend Maureen at By Singing Light interviewed a blogger I’d not yet run across – Deepika at Worn Corners.  I started following Deepika, too.  And in April when Deepika proposed a readalong for one of her favorite authors, I signed up, despite never having heard of him before, because of my resolution to really work at diversifying my reading this year.  Plus, India!!!  How fun! Here follows my experience with reading R.K. Narayan for the first time for the #RKNReadalong.

#RKNReadalongIt turns out that I’m not the only American not to be familiar with R.K. Narayan – I was able to find exactly one book by him to interloan from all the libraries in my state.  At least it contained two novels, so I was able to broaden the reading experience that way. Continue reading →

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The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

Posted on May 4, 2016 by Katy K.

I’m always game for a good organizing book, and I figured that this one, still with a months-long hold list at my library over a year after we got it, was a good candidate.

lifechangingmagicThe Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. Ten Speed Press, 2014.
Paring your possessions down to just the ones that “spark joy” will change your life, claims Kondo.  You’ll have a clearer idea of who you are and who you want to become.  There’s a whole cult of Kondo now – the book has been an international bestseller, with Kondo making appearances all over the world.  Still, she’s not without her detractors – one of my friends got so angry while reading that she threw the book across the room.  I wanted to see what I thought myself.

Pros: I really liked Kondo’s central idea, that if you hold your things and let them speak to you, you’ll know if you really need them or not – the “spark joy” that’s also the title of her second book.  Some people may find that too woo-woo, but I’m all for a little more concrete woo-woo in my life.  It’s also a short, easy-to-read book with main points bolded and summary lists at the end of each chapter – very easy to read.  I liked the piece of advice on not to pass your unwanted things on to family and appreciated, given that she says it’s better to go through and declutter in one fell swoop, that she gives a concrete order for this, based on experience.  I’m very good at organizing small bits at a time, but I always lose steam before getting to everything.  Especially those boxes in the basement that have been there since we moved….

Cons: her thoughts on books, papers and photos.  I am both a book lover and a public librarian – which for me does mean going through my books regularly to make sure I love them all and that they will fit in my house.  We have a wall in our living room devoted to tall bookcases (you can see a slice in my header bar), because I wanted it to be clear to visitors that books are important to us.  I don’t really ever want to have so few books that they’d fit inside my closet with my clothes, as Kondo suggests.  More dangerous are her suggestions about financial paperwork – maybe if you’re willing to scan them, or get them all electronically, you can do without saving them, but at least here in the U.S., you need to keep 7-10 years of financial paperwork for tax records, etc.  Also on photographs, Kondo says that you’ll remember everything, so you don’t need photos.  Yeah.  So maybe I will get rid of some of those photos of college friends whose names I don’t remember anymore – but that in itself is proof that my memory is not that great, even when I’m still relatively young.  I want to have enough photos to help me along when I’m old and maybe the photos will be all I have to remember when my kids were little, etc. (cue the violins.)  Kids are another weakness, I conclude from talking with my friend Dr. M (a professional organizer) about this.  Kondo’s clients seem to be mainly young childless professionals or empty nesters.  She doesn’t offer much help to parents of children who really are still genuinely attached to the three laundry baskets worth of stuffies, say, or for dealing with the massive rotating quantities of stuff that kids need as they grow.  She’s also very confident in her way being the right way – good if you’re either really wanting concrete advice or good at picking at choosing, less good if you want something that’s designed for you to customize it.

So it’s not perfect. I still found it hard to put down and immediately inspiring.  I found about 8 garbage bags of clothes that weren’t sparking joy any more.  If you’re looking for a push in the right direction to start you de-cluttering, by all means give it a try.

Here are some of the other organizing books I’ve read over the years:

Home Comforts: the Art and Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mendelson

It’s All Too Much by Peter Walsh

Life’s Too Short to Fold Fitted Sheets by Lisa Quinn

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Diversity on the Shelf – April Update

Posted on May 2, 2016 by Katy K.

I am participating in the Diversity on the Shelf Reading Challenge hosted by the Englishist.

The Englishist

I read 14 books in April. For the first time ever, I tried planning ahead what I was going to read, with limited success: I did read mostly from my list, and I think this was very helpful in making sure I read diversely.  But I was way off in the number of books I thought I’d be able to read, so I read 10 of the 20 books I’d planned to read and then an extra four that weren’t on my original list.  I will experiment and possibly confer with Brandy on this planning-of-reading thing.

Four of these were by authors of color:

  • Under a Painted Sky by Stacey Lee (YA)
  • Something Like Love by Beverly Jenkins (Adult)
  • Anna Hibiscus by Atinuke (Early Chapter)
  • Echo by Pam Muñoz Ryan (Middle Grade)

(I started listening to the Alvin Ho Collection Books 3-4 by Lenore Look with my daughter, which would also have counted, but my daughter decided she was tired of Alvin Ho.)

Four more had main characters of color:

  • Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton (YA)
  • Kindred Spirits by Rainbow Rowell (YA)
  • Space Hostages by Sophia McDougall (Middle Grade)
  • Lumberjanes: Friendship to the Max by Noelle Stevensen and Grace Ellis (Middle Grade-YAish)

Bonus diversity points for

  • The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. Read by Jayne Entwistle. (Middle Grade) The main character here has a disability which is pivotal in her worldview.

Hopefully soon I will catch up with reviewing all the great books I’ve been reading!  But, my total count for reading books by authors of color stands at 21 for the year, with an additional 13 books with main characters of color.

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My Two Blankets

Posted on April 29, 2016 by Katy K.

mytwoblanketsMy Two Blankets by Irena Kobald & Freya Blackwood. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015.
Our young narrator loved her life at home in Africa, until war came and they had to leave.  Now she lives in a place where everything is strange, unfamiliar, and she doesn’t speak the language.  She clings to a brightly colored blanket made of familiar fabrics from her home for comfort. Then one day, a girl at the playground makes friends with her and gives her words as gifts.  The words and the welcome combing to make a new, metaphorical blanket – very different from her old one, but just as comfortable.

This is a cozy, approachable book about a difficult situation.  The reasons for leaving the home country are only briefly mentioned, and kept at a level appropriate for older preschoolers and early elementary aged children. Most of the focus is on the difficulty of adjusting to life in the new country, and how much this is helped by having a friend.  Freya Blackwood’s pencil and watercolor illustrations go a long way towards giving the story a cozy, relatable feeling.  (Hooray for another book from Freya Blackwood!  I hadn’t seen any of her work since Ivy Loves to Give, though that’s mostly negligence on my part.) It felt a little stereotypical to me that the little girl helping the narrator is blond, until I read in the afterward that the author is herself immigrated to Australia from Austria, and the story is based on her own daughter’s friendship with an African immigrant.

This would work very well for my Girl Scout Daisy Diversity project – it’s perfect for the friendly and helpful petal.  Those of the girls for whom English is their first language all have classmates for whom it isn’t, and many of them have also moved, so the applications are immediate.  Really, that’s most schools these days.  Besides the thoughts on welcoming and friendship, there’s the shared love of words, a beautiful thing in itself.  It’s short, poignant, and optimistic – highly recommended.

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The Exiles by Hilary McKay (series)

Posted on April 27, 2016 by Katy K.

It was almost exactly three years ago that Charlotte, commenting on my review of Saffy’s Angel, suggested that I try The Exiles as well.  I thought at the time that this book might be fantasy, thus explaining why so many of my fantasy-reading friends loved it – but it is particularly British-feeling family fiction.  I had to interloan it, so it took a while to burble to the top of my reading list.  Once I read the first one, though, I moved on to the others directly.  Continue reading →

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