This is me catching up with series – a wonderful import from Australia that deserves more notice.
A 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.
My 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, 
My 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 L
My 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!
And 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 
Peas and Carrots by Tanita S. Davis. Alfred A. Knopf, 2016.
House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard. Roc, 2015.
It 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. 
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. Ten Speed Press, 2014.
My Two Blankets by Irena Kobald & Freya Blackwood. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015.
Secrets of the Dragon Tomb by Patrick Samphire. Illustrated by Jeremy Holmes. Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt, 2016.
alibrarymama 