The Old Kingdom Chronicles

Posted on June 24, 2015 by Katy K.

Flashback to last week – I was so busy getting ready for taking my daughter’s Girl Scout Daisy troop on their first camping weekend that I forgot to mention that it was also Mother Reader’s 48 Hour Book Challenge, which I very much enjoyed participating in the last two years. I did not think I would be able to focus on reading while keeping a group of five- and six-year-olds out of poison ivy and lake. Indeed, one of my little campers got poison ivy despite our efforts to the contrary, though the girls all figured out how to paddle canoes and were very proud of themselves. I’ve been enjoying reading over the posts of all my blogging friends who did participate in the Book Challenge, though – you could go and enjoy a vicarious intensive reading weekend, too.

Sabriel, Lirael, and Abhorsen by Garth Nix. Read by Tim Curry. Listening Library, 2002, 2002, 2003.
After listening to the new entry in Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom Chronicles, Clariel, in December, I realized that my overall memories of this series were pretty hazy, despite my having read at least Sabriel more than once. I decided that that, combined with this being one of my favorite series to recommend to teens in search of a new epic fantasy series, warranted a re-listen.

sabrielI started off with Sabriel, of course, and was reintroduced to the world of the Old Kingdom: a medievalish kingdom where technology doesn’t work and evil and good necromancers battle to bring the dead back to the world of the living or send them back to the realm of Death, respectively. Kingdom is loosely applied in this case, as the monarchy was overthrown some 200 years previously, with rank anarchy for the last 20. The Old Kingdom share a long border with the kingdom of Ancelstierre, where magic only works when the wind blows just so across the Wall that separates them, and where the technology level is roughly 1910s, with telegraphs, bicycles, and rudimentary airplanes.

Sabriel is the daughter of the Abhorsen, the good necromancer whose main duty is to enforce the boundary between Life and Death. She’s about to graduate from an Ancelstierran academy for girls of good breeding, though her father has visited often to teach her the skills she’ll need to follow in his footsteps as Abhorsen.

Then Sabriel receives word that her father has been trapped in Death, along with his sword and the bandolier of magical bells that are used to control the Dead. It will be up to her to rescue him and stop the magical villain who’s trapped him from ending the world. She’s helped along the way by Mogget, a magical cat who’s the unwilling servant of the Abhorsen family, and by Touchstone, a young man whom she found trapped as the wooden figurehead of a ship.

LiraelSabriel wraps things up tidily, and Lirael starts with a whole new heroine. Lirael is a daughter of the Clayr, one of the three magical families (along with the Abhorsens and the Wallmakers) who keep the magic of the Old Kingdom running smoothly. We met the Clayr briefly near the end of Sabriel and were introduced to their role as the seers and prophets of the Old Kingdom. Lirael has always felt out of place among the Clayr, both because she hasn’t inherited their typical coloring of dark skin and light hair, but also because she is past the age when she should have received her gift of Sight.

Instead, she’s given an apprenticeship at the Great Library of the Clayr, which houses not only All the Books (magical books, needless to say), but also magical artifacts and monsters, not always successfully contained. (It’s always been a dream of mine to make her Second Assistant Librarian uniform, so clearly described here with red waistcoat, brass whistle attached on the shoulder for hands-free blowing in case of emergency, and a magical mechanical mouse in the pocket that can also be sent to summon help.) There she tries to make herself a dog construct as a companion, summoning instead the Disreputable Dog.

Meanwhile, we also meet Prince Sameth, son of Sabriel and Touchstone, and his best friend Nicholas Sayr. An ancient evil is trying to break free from its prison, and is using Nicholas as its voice in the world. Sameth has his own issues, as the presumptive heir to the Abhorsens with a horror of Death and the Book of the Dead that he is supposed to be studying. Tension mounts as Sabriel and Sameth work separately to stop the terror, which Nicholas is contributing to without knowing it. At the same time, King Touchstone and Sabriel journey to Ancelstierre to address the situation there, which is contributing to the difficulties in the Old Kingdom.

abhorsenLirael ends at a dreadfully tense point in the plot – naturally, someone else had checked out the next book in the series, so that I had to wait for a month to continue on with Abhorsen, the resolution of the story arc that started with Lirael.

Even though the plot is tense in all the books, I found that the details had mostly slipped away from my memory in the decade or so since I had last read them. What I remembered was the dark atmosphere and the magic, the River of Death with its seven gates and the seven bells, each with its own name and powers, that the Abhorsen uses to fight them, and the Charter of flowing golden marks that the baptized can reach into for individual spells as needed. I remembered the characters, particularly Sabriel, Lirael, and their companions, Mogget and the Disreputable Dog. Re-listening, I recognized details that had appeared in Clariel that I should have recognized, but didn’t, including the pan pipes, villains and their goals recurring through the centuries, and Clariel’s discomfort at reaching into the charter as opposed to the comfort it gives all the other characters.

This series has stayed on top of several lists of books to recommend to library patrons for years now, including epic teen fantasies, books for teen boys starring girls, and books for zombie-lovers. My love and I have successfully given it to teens (especially boys) of the voraciously reading but reluctant to try new books type. With good characters, a tight plot, and stellar world-building, this series is still strong, despite having started a couple of decades ago. I really hope that Garth Nix does carry on with more books in the series, as he’s said he will.

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The Sculptor

Posted on June 24, 2015 by Katy K.

When I started as a librarian and started reading graphic novels, Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics: the Invisible Art was the book that my friend David at Yet Another Comics Blog recommended as the book to read to, well, understand how comics work.  I’d read very little in the way of comics or graphic novels before, and if you, like me, find them difficult to read, this is the book to read. Not that I had taken graphic novels lightly before, but this book both made them easier for me to read and showed me how much was going on in them that I just hadn’t realized.  [End the book love for the book I’m not really talking about.]

So more than 20 years after that now-classic book was published, McCloud has come out with a really long, detailed graphic novel that’s been getting rave reviews everywhere.  Naturally I had to read it.  It’s in our adult section due to being about adults and having some sexual content.

The SculptorThe Sculptor by Scott McCloud. First Second, 2015.
David Smith is a washed-up artist with nothing left.  His promising career has come crashing down around his ears, all of his family members are dead, he’s not in a relationship, and he’s about to be kicked out of his apartment.  He’s spending his last money on a cup of coffee at his favorite diner to celebrate his birthday when he’s visited by someone who looks remarkably like his Uncle Harry, who died some years before.  Death has chosen to look like Uncle Harry (who looked rather like Stan Lee to me),  and Death is offering him a deal: 200 days to achieve the fame David so desperately wants.

Then, as he’s walking home, a very solid-looking angel – wings and all – comes down from the sky, kisses him, and tells him that everything will be all right.

So maybe that part wasn’t as real as it first appears – but David’s life really does start to turn around, though even the magical path to fame isn’t as smooth as David would like.

This is a book that asks deep questions about the worth and meaning of both art and life.  Even though I couldn’t quite personally empathize with David’s willingness to put fame above life, his struggle to make a name for himself and to stay a decent human being at the same time made me care about him anyway.  I adored Meg, his muse. I couldn’t stop turning the pages, even though I had to go into the story knowing that the ending couldn’t be happy.  It is excellent, indeed, and well worth the press it’s been getting.

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Shadow Scale

Posted on June 17, 2015 by Katy K.

And in contrast to Death Marked, which was ready for me right when I wanted to read it, I (along with other fans) had to wait three long years for this book, the sequel to Seraphina, which I liked so much that I even did a multi-type advisory post on it.

Shadow ScaleShadow Scale by Rachel Hartmann. Random House, 2015
Things are not going well for Seraphina’s kingdom.  Glisselda, just a young princess in the last book, is now queen, and the Queen Mother, her grandmother,  is not doing well, Jannoula, the half-dragon woman who took over Seraphina’s mind when she was a child, is trying again to take over the world.  On a personal level, Seraphina and Prince Lucian Kiggs have mutually agreed to ignore their feelings for each other in favor of protecting Glisselda, to whom Lucian is engaged for very good political reasons.   Seraphina decides that the best defense, both against Jannoula and the threat of future dragon attack, is for her to find the other ityasaari or half-dragons from her visions and ask them to join together to protect the kingdom and each other.

A long, episodic tale follows, as Seraphina travels from one kingdom to the next trying to find the other ityasaari as well as her uncle, who had left to do some research stopped sending messages some time ago.  Some of the ityasaari want to come, some are repelled by the very idea.  I enjoyed seeing all the different cultures, with their varying people, foods and views on the roles of ityasaari.  Seraphina’s young acrobat ityasaari friend Abdo comes from a culture that sees people as having six genders, for example, which was fascinating.  And after the journeying part comes a quig rebebellion – quigs being small, intelligent lizard-like creatures that the dragons have long used as slaves – and that was even more fun.

I had somewhat mixed reactions to this.  Seraphina is very unhappy much of the time, in both this and the previous book.  That book, though, was leavened by her music, lovingly described, and by her relationship with Kiggs.  Now the romance is put on hold and there is much less music, so that even though I couldn’t honestly say that Seraphina is more depressed than she was in the first book, it was much more noticeable here.  I spent a long time thinking over the ending, trying to decide if it was just me being upset with it – but I think not.  I can’t say more without risk of too many spoilers – but it was unsatisfying on many levels, the kind of ending that was too much finding peace with the way things are and not enough happiness for people who have earned it.  I know that one can’t really earn happiness in the real world, but one of the reasons that I prefer reading children’s and young adult literature is that I like to read happy endings anyway.

I still love Seraphina.  I will still read anything else that Rachel Hartmann writes.

Even if that makes me inconsistent.

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Death Marked

Posted on June 15, 2015 by Katy K.

The nice part about not reading books right when they come out is that sometimes then the sequel is already out.  Here is the sequel to Death Sworn, one of my favorites of the most recent Cybils Teen Spec Fic Finalists.  If you’re spoiler averse and haven’t yet read either of these books, you may want to do that first.

Death MarkedDeath Marked by Leah Cypess. Greenwillow Books, 2015.
At the end of the last book, Ileni set out on her own.  Unfortunately, that didn’t last for very long.  Within the first few pages, she’s a resident of the Imperial Academy, where the magicians who are the embodiment of the evil and corruption Ileni has been raised to combat are trained.  It’s dreadfully seductive, as there is plenty of stored magic around that Ileni can draw on to supplement her own dwindling powers.  Unfortunately, the head of the Imperial Academy knows both of these things, and can cut Ileni off from the magic as easily as grant it.  Ileni also gets to know the other advanced magic students, rich boy Evin and warring twins Lis and Cyn.  She also recognizes an assassin from the mountain fortress she so recently left.

The longer Ileni is there, the less certain she is of anything.  Should she do what would benefit her people, the Renegi, who cast her out?  The assassins, now headed by her former lover? Or believe the head of the Imperial Academy, who points out the many lives the Empire saves just by preventing endless wars between tiny kingdoms?  Before Ileni can decide on any course of action, she must find out the source of the power that the Empire’s sorcerers stores in its lodestones, power that she’s always been told comes from the slaughter of innocents.  And every night, she stares at the mirror in her room that would let her contact her former lover – but would be sure to give them away as well.

This was just as intense as the first book. All of Ileni’s choices put lives at risk. The new setting added even more depths, exploring character and morality all wrapped in magic, intrigue, and entirely relatable themes of trying to find a place in a new school.  I continue to be impressed at Cypess’s ability to pack so much meaning into a story that refused to take the expected turns.

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State of the Book Basket: June

Posted on June 14, 2015 by Katy K.

My kids got out of school last week, to the delight of my ten-year-old and the dismay of the five-year-old, who is already fiercely missing her teachers. We’ll be signing them up for the two different library summer reading programs, as usual. I also designed a Summer Library Passport for all the kids at their school. This is designed to encourage kids to visit the library over the summer and complement existing public library summer reading programs. I’d be happy to provide more details in the comments if anyone is interested.

Both of my kids made some really poor choices regarding library books recently, so we’re taking a short break from checking out library materials for them. That means they are mostly limited to reading the books we own, and might actually (but no breath-holding here) get caught up on the books we’ve bought for them.

snowwhitesevenrobotsThe five-year-old has been wanting a lot of graphic novels lately – re-reading El Deafo by Cece Bell, and some others that Daddy bought for her recently: Snow White and the Seven Robots by Louise Simonson and Jimena Sanchez and Phoebe and her Unicorn by Dana Simpson. We’re also making our way slowly through a My Little Pony chapter book that she picked at the school book fair, Rainbow Dash and the Daring Do Double Dare by G.M. Berrow. In the car, I was really surprised when she wanted to try Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu, which I’d checked out for her brother. She made it through a couple of discs before deciding to switch back to Magic Tree House. We’re on book #48 A Perfect Time for Pandas, still written by the indefatigable Mary Pope Osborne. Both the brother and I are excited that we’ve now made it past the books that he and I listened to together.

bignateoutloudThe ten-year-old was recently given a whole stack of Big Nate by Lincoln Peirce and is rapidly working his way through them. He also expressed interest in reading Frank Einstein and the Antimatter Motor by Jon Scieszka, which I’d checked out to read for myself because of putting it on my 11 Recent Sci-Fi Books for Grades 4 and 5 list. We are still working our way slowly but enthusiastically through Jinx’s Magic by Sage Blackwood at bedtime. In the car, we’re back to Spirit Animals with Book 6: Rise and Fall by Eliot Schrefer.

agathaHMy love has been re-reading the Agatha Heterodyne series by Phil and Kaja Foglio. Last I heard, he was enjoying listening to Magic Marks the Spot by Caroline Carlson.

As for myself, my print reading includes Prairie Fire by E.K. Johnston at home and Fly Trap by Frances Hardinge at work, both well-done sequels to books I enjoyed. I recently finished The Clockwork Crown by Beth Cato, and still need to a) read the first book, The Clockwork Dagger and b) download something else for the e-reader. prairiefiresmallI’m listening to The Penderwicks in Spring by Jeanne Birdsall in the car – the Penderwicks are just as delightful as ever. I’ve taken to listening to podcasts rather than audiobooks for my chore time at home. Of potential interest to my readers here are The Witching Hour, a college-run wizard rock podcast, which punctuates the music with in-depth discussion of the Harry Potter books and fandom from silly to serious; and Fangirl Happy Hour, a fun if decidedly R-rated podcast for geek girls of all stripes (ok, mostly speculative books, graphic novels and movies), run by Thea of the Book Smugglers and Renay of Lady Business. I have another four print books from the library in queue, but as I’m running out of time now, they’ll have to wait for another time.

What are you reading these days?

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The Search for WondLa and A Hero for Wondla

Posted on June 12, 2015 by Katy K.

I had this series vaguely in the back of my mind from maybe hearing other bloggers mention it when I was hunting for a new series for my son and me to listen to.

Search for WondlaThe Search for WondLa by Tony DiTerlizzi. Read by Teri Hatcher. Recorded Books/Simon & Schuster, 2010.

Eva Nine has been raised by a MUTHR robot in an underground sanctuary, training with holo simulations for the day when she’ll be old enough to go to the surface.  She feels stifled living underground, and dreams especially of a future that mirrors the old picture she found on a scrap of cardboard in an abandoned tunnel: a child, a woman and a robot holding hands.  But when her Sanctuary is attacked, Eva Nine is forced to flee into the wild on her own, and the wild is nothing at all like what her training prepared her for.  There are walking trees, carnivorous birds, giant multi-legged creatures that her “omnipod” identifies as closest to microscopic waterbears – and intelligent alien species.  Eva Nine bonds with a lanky blue alien named Rovender Kitt as they are both captured multiple times by Basteel, the Queen’s huntsman who’s determined to capture Eva Nine in particular for the Queen’s collection.  Together they escape, try to rescue other creatures and MUTHR, explore the world, and are captured again.

I had really mixed feelings about this book.  On the one hand, the basic premise – humans as a species being kept alive by robots and coming back to find Earth no longer Earth at all, but a planet with its own new civilization, flora, and fauna.  The new species and the old Earth technology that Eva Nine uses are all fun to explore.  On the other hand, Eva Nine was horribly whiny, especially as narrated by Teri Hatcher.  I might have liked the whole series better if it had been narrated by someone else – Hatcher did a great job at MUTHR’s synthesized old-movie mother voice, and indeed at creating distinct voices, but the narration as a whole felt like she never got out of robot mode.  The whole thing was read as if it were nonfiction, with lots of careful pauses for comprehension that interrupted the flow and lulled the adult listeners (driving the car) dangerously close to sleep.  However, my son still really enjoyed it.  The print book, while long, is full of pictures that would make the world building and diverse characters even more fun.

Hero for WondlaA Hero for Wondla by Tony DiTerlizzi. Read by Teri Hatcher. Recorded Books/Simon & Schuster, 2012.

Despite my reservations with the narration, my son was excited enough about the series that we went on to book two.  At the end of the first book (spoiler alert), Eva Nine finds a ship ready to take her to an actual human settlement.  She is thrilled! Her dreams of meeting other humans are finally coming true! But her belief in a utopia doesn’t even last out her first day there, as she finds that the humans live in a bubble world, tightly controlled by a patriarch who keeps even the knowledge of the new sentient species on the planet a secret.  She also meets Eva Eight, the previous resident of her destroyed Sanctuary, who wants only to go back to her life as it was and live as a family with MUTHR and Eva Eight.  When Eva Nine realizes that the patriarch is in fact an Evil Dictator, out to enslave the rest of Orbuna, she must take action!!!

My mixed feelings continue with this book.  The world building is still fun, and Eva Nine does grow as a character.  Eva Eight seemed unbelievably immature to me, especially considering that she’s supposed to be decades older than Eva Nine.  The characters and dialogue felt hackneyed at times.  Worst of all, even though our protagonist is a girl, all the other characters were male unless there was a specific reason for them to be female.  Here’s my count: Female: the queen, one of five Mystical Alien Siblings, one alien mother, a trio of extremely shallow girls in the human city, Eva Eight, one of the nine elders in Rovender Kitt’s village, for a total of 8. Male: Rovender Kitt, the hunter Basteel, the sweet big alien water bear, alien father and son, the two members of the Queen’s staff, the pilot who rescues Eva Nine, his grandfather, the patriarch, two or three advisors to the patriarch, three prisoners, eight other advisors in Rovender’s village, for a total of 24.  Once I started counting, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.  Do we really still need to be sending the message that only exceptional girls can be leaders?  On the other hand, the message of humans getting along with other species is a good one, and addressed in a very interesting way.

We’ve stopped reading the series at this point, mostly because of the narrator.  It’s on my list of 11 recent sci-fi books for fourth and fifth graders, and we’ll see if we continue with the series in print sometime later.  I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts on this if you’ve read it.

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The Darkest Part of the Forest

Posted on June 3, 2015 by Katy K.

This is one I’d wanted to read since I first heard it was coming out.

The Darkest Part of the ForestThe Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black. Little, Brown and Co, 2015.
Hazel and Ben are teen twins living in Fairfold, a modern-day town with close ties to Faerie. Close as in Ben’s best friend, Jack, is a changeling, still living with his human brother Carter, since Carter’s mother fought to get her own baby back and decided that the fairy mother wasn’t fit to have her son back if she was willing to give him back in the first place. Close as in there’s a glass coffin in the woods with a sleeping horned boy in it.

Outsiders come from all over to see the horned boy, but they don’t seem to be able to remember or remark on the darker things that happen in Fairfold, things like tourists regularly going missing. And while all the teens regularly party on and around the coffin, Hazel and Ben have been coming there on their own since they were kids, pretending that Hazel was a knight fighting monsters and Ben her bard, both of them hoping for the regard of the prince in the coffin.

Now it’s clear that the fragile balance that has held in Fairfold is cracking. Darker things are on the way, and Hazel and Ben’s secret pretendings will come out into the open and turn out not to be pretend.

Hazel and Ben are both scarred from growing up with their neglectful parents and in such close proximity to magic, as even the kindest of the Fae do not really have human interests in the fore. So it is that they have twisted their own lives to protect each other, making the relationship between the two of them both loyal and full of lies. The book is full of curses as blessings, lies and truths that are not what they seem on the surface.

Black works her usual magic to make the old  stories of untrustworthy faeries into something surprising. I loved how the gender roles were reversed, with Hazel being the warrior and Ben the openly gay musician. (The partying and dating behavior of the teens in this book pegs it solidly as one for high school and up.) Black is drawing mostly on British folklore, but modern-day Fairfold isn’t lily-white: Carter and his family have Yoruba ancestors, and some of that folklore is woven in as well. This is Holly Black in top form, mingling modern-day concerns seamlessly with the old legends into something compelling and darkly beautiful.

You could pair this with any of Black’s previous works, such as Good Neighbors: Kin and White Cat. Maggie Stiefvater’s books (Ballad, Shiver, The Scorpio Races, The Raven Boys) also have a similar real modern day and real magic feel, while Alex Bledsoe’s The Hum and the Shiver takes an adult (in the library sense) spin on encounters with the fae.

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This One Summer

Posted on May 29, 2015 by Katy K.

I’m reviewing this one separately from the other Caldecott winners (see Caldecotts Part 1 and Part 2) because it’s neither a picture book nor appropriate for younger teens. I had been looking forward to reading it for a very long time, and featured it on the Asian-American Graphic Novels list I posted last year.

This One SummerThis One Summer by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki.  First Second, 2014.
Rose has been going to the same cabin on a lake every summer for as long as she remembers.  Windy, a year and a half younger, has been her summer friend that whole time, too.  This year, Windy in particular is looking forward to puberty.  Rose is less interested in how her body might change than in the cute convenience store clerk, a much older teen.  Her mother is depressed and her parents struggling to get along as they have tried and failed to have another baby, something that Rose isn’t really sympathetic towards.  In between swimming in the lake, starlight hot dog roasts, and late-night horror movie sessions with Windy, Rose and Windy piece together the story of the rocky relationship between the aforementioned cute clerk and his girlfriend.

This book got a lot of buzz when it first came out last summer, and I’ll just be kind to myself and say that I waited for the demand at the library to die down before reading it myself.  I was really excited to see it winning so many awards, including Caldecott and Prinz honors and lots and lots of best graphic novel and books for teens list. There’s diversity from the authors, and from Windy being adopted, though it’s unclear if she’s meant to be explicitly Asian.

Now that I’ve read the book, my feelings are mixed.  There are lots of good things about it – the casual friendships, the painful secrets, and the depiction of lazy summer days.  The art is absolutely breathtaking, from scenes of Rose swimming underwater to energetic panels of Windy krunking, to the girls swinging.  Everything is colored in peaceful shades of blue-gray.

On the other hand, I really didn’t like Rose. Even though I knew Rose was going through a hard time with her family’s stress and was clearly ignorant about a lot of things, it was really hard to sympathize with her when she did said yet another condescending thing to Windy and got verbally angry with her mother for being depressed.  Worst of all was the slut shaming – Rose frequently calls the convenience store clerk’s girlfriend a slut many times, and believes that it’s the girl’s responsibility to “protect herself” and keep things from going too far.  While an adult calls her on using the word “slut”, they don’t discuss it past that with her.  The clerk himself treats his girlfriend horribly.  We see Rose thinking about things, but the format doesn’t let us see into her head.  It’s never clear if she or the clerk ever revise their attitudes, ones that I considered horribly sexist even as a very conservative teenager myself.  I got the impression that the authors meant for her to be changing her mind on this, but if it was confusing to me as an adult, it would be even more confusing to a younger teen reading it. The older teens plot line was a huge part of the book, so this rather spoiled the story for me.

I could hope that being confronted with these ideas will make teens think about them, even if Rose doesn’t change her mind.  In any case, the peaceful summer cycles are just what they should be, and the art is breathtaking.

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Caldecott Winners 2015 Part 2

Posted on May 27, 2015 by Katy K.

This year’s Caldecott winner, with two honor books – many of these I had to wait for at the library because everyone wanted to read them.

adventuresofbeekleAdventures of Beekle, the Unimaginary Friend by Dan Santat. Little, Brown & Co., 2014.
This is the title that won the Caldecott, and which I’d somehow missed hearing of, though I’ve enjoyed Dan Santat in the past – we own and love The Three Ninja Pigs. This one is even more charming. On an island far away, outside of reality, imaginary friends are born, and hang around waiting for a person to imagine them. Our hero, Beekle, has been waiting and waiting, watching his friends leave. Finally he decides to take matters into his own hands, journeying to the real world to find his friend himself. Things in the real world aren’t quite what he expects – but sometimes things are better that way anyway. Santat’s style has a unique quality of looking blocky and rounded at the same time. The colors are gorgeous, and Beekle and his friend as cute as can be. I wasn’t at all surprised to find this a hit with my daughter and her K/1 class.

nanainthecityNana in the City by Lauren Castillo. Clarion Books, 2014.
A preschool-aged boy is quite upset at spending a night at his grandmother’s in the city for the first time. The city is big and scary! Grandmothers belong in safe and cozy places! But with the help of a red cape that she sews for him, he’s able to share her joy in the exuberant life of the city. As Lindsey at A is for Aging, B is for Books http://www.lindseymcdivitt.com/, points out, positive images of aging are rare and important in children’s books. Not only is our young friend reassured about the safety of life in the city for his Nana and him, but readers get to see a grandmother who’s full of creativity and zest for life. The bright ink and watercolor illustrations bring the city beautifully to life and manage to be comforting at the same time. The text seems aimed at the toddler to younger preschool crowd and didn’t grab my five-year-old as much, but it should be a hit with the target audience.

samanddavedigSam and Dave Dig a Hole by Mac Barnett. Illustrated by Jon Klassen. Candlewick, 2014.
It seems like everyone but me had read this book before it won the Caldecott honor. It’s simultaneously funny and frustrating: two boys dig a hole looking for treasure. Every so often, they give up and start digging in a different direction. The illustrations show a cross-section of the earth, so that readers will see that the kids are missing bigger and bigger gems each time they turn. The dog keeps sniffing at where the gems are, but the boys never find them. The story goes on, becoming stranger and more ambiguous. I was just researching his art methods –he uses lots of traditional painting and drawing techniques, sometimes cutting out painted bits and photographing them, then mixing things together digitally. It all comes together into his very recognizable style, with muted colors and crisp outlines. I didn’t quite love it, but I can see the appeal. This one feels like kids may or may not fall in love with it, but there’s enough depth and information presented only in the pictures that it bears repeated reading.

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When We Wake

Posted on May 22, 2015 by Katy K.

This is the last of the Cybils Speculative Fiction for Young Adults 2014 Finalists, and another one that I would probably not have picked up otherwise.  It’s the sequel to When We Wake, which I have not read.  Though I was able to follow the action just fine anyway, if this premise sounds good, you’d probably want to star with that one.

While We RunWhile We Run by Karen Healey. Little, Brown, 2014.
The year is 2127.  Abdi Taalib, originally from Somalia, came to Australia with the promise of a full scholarship for his singing.  Things went horribly wrong with that in the previous book, and now he and his girlfriend Tegan (who was killed and frozen in 2027 and revived in the first book) both have implants in their heads that allow their sadistic controllers to cause them horrible, invisible pain any time they resist.  They’re forced to put on cheerful public concerts to raise money for a cryogenic space ship program. This plans to deal with the growing environmental and refugee crisis by cryogenically freezing a few rich people who can pay for their own passage and lots of refugees who will work for the rich people in exchange for free passage and a chance for life on a new planet.  The problems with this plan are legion – Abdi and Tegan are most concerned about the slave conditions of the refugees, as well as the complete lack of concern for anyone who might be stuck back on Earth.

Unknown to Abdi, there are lots of factions who see through Tegan’s brilliant smiles and are trying to rescue her in a movement called Save Tegan.  But escape will not be easy, and even if they can escape, those factions have aims of their own which will probably not align with Abdi and Tegan’s. What will they owe their rescuers?

Once again, I was impressed with the Cybils team’s choice in this book.  There’s a lot of action and excitement, but also introspection as Abdi examines his own goals and motivations.  That definitely added to my enjoyment as I really dislike it when the action moves so quickly that we never get to know the characters.  The cast is wonderfully diverse, with characters from several different continents, religious persuasions, and gender orientations, including a trans woman.

The dystopian future setting isn’t one of my favorites, but I’m in the minority on that, especially among teen readers.  I especially appreciated that the evil future government is a believable progression from issues that face Australia (and many other countries) today.  The cryogenics/space travel adds a welcome hard s/f aspect (Noggin had a softer take on the cryogenics topic.) I genuinely enjoyed getting to know Abdi and Tegan and cared about their cause.  There’s quite a bit of violence and some almost-intimate situations that would make me feel more comfortable giving this to high schoolers and up, but middle schoolers who are already reading the popular teen dystopias won’t really find any content more objectionable than what’s in those books.  This is highly recommended.

I was unable to tell if there will be a sequel to this book or not – right now, it looks like it’s a finished duology, though the story could certainly be continued.

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