The Storyteller and Her Sisters

Posted on March 9, 2015 by Katy K.

It was 2011 when my good friend Dr. M. and I discovered that we had both come home from the library with different novel-length retellings of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” and started trading titles. I’ve kept reading any of these that come out as I’ve found them, including last year’s The Girls at the Kingfisher Club. So I was delighted when my blogging friend Cheryl at Tales of the Marvelous offered me a review copy of her self-published novel-length retelling of that very story, which as a bonus is a companion to The Wanderers, which I also enjoyed.

storytellerThe Storyteller and Her Sisters by Cheryl Mahoney. Stonehenge Circle Press, 2014.
Alyra and her eleven sisters have names that all start with the letter “a” – Alyra, Avira, Amina, Atalya, and so on. Inside their private chambers, they drop the “A” and go by Lyra, Vira, Mina, Talya and so on. Outside, they dress identically and keep their names as similar as possible so that no one, including their father, can tell them apart. Because the secret under the castle has so warped their father’s mind that he will do anything to them to make it his own. Once, he followed their mother under the castle to the locked gates and saw the forest of gold and silver trees. Now all he wants is to make that wealth his own, and he will not let his daughters leave the castle until they give it to him. But they have their own reasons for resisting him…

The two big challenges in any “Twelve Dancing Princesses” retelling are giving the princesses a reason for their dancing – convincingly accomplished here – and handling such a large cast of characters. Mahoney deals with this second both by talking about the princesses’ efforts to blend together and by picking a handful of them to focus on. Lyra, our narrator, is the one we first met from an outside point of view in The Wanderers. She’s a storyteller, and fills the narrative with the traditional stories she adapts herself as well the larger narrative. The interfering would-be good fairy from The Wanderers also makes her appearance here in copious showers of sticky glitter, helping to lighten what could have been a grim narrative.

Indeed, even though this is a book with an abusive father about traveling to dark, cursed caverns, The Storyteller and Her Sisters maintains an overall light tone. It feels like a lovely, straightforward fairytale retelling, even as it slips in welcome if nontraditional themes of escaping from abuse and Lyra’s own particular desire to find out who she is without her sisters or her prince. In short, it is delightful. I very much look forward to reading what Mahoney writes next.

Read my interview with Cheryl about this book.

Other “Twelve Dancing Princesses” retellings:
The Princess Curse
Princess of the Midnight Ball
The Thirteenth Princess
Wildwood Dancing
Entwined
The Girls at the Kingfisher Club

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State of the Book Basket, March

Posted on March 8, 2015 by Katy K.

It’s another Sunday at the library, so I thought I’d share with you what we’re all reading right now.  I just returned a bunch of books yesterday, bringing my personal number of library books checked out to under 50 – but I’m guessing with the ones my love has out, and most especially the piles of books my daughter delights in bringing home from the school library, that we’re still well over 50 total library books in the house right now.

Cybils Finalists

handlewithcareThe numbers have gone down as I’ve read and returned them… these are the ones still out and in the general book basket rather than being read by anybody specific.

  • Handle with care : an unusual butterfly journey by Loree Griffin Burns – read to my daughter, who enjoyed it.
  • Firefly July by Paul B. Janeczko and Melissa Sweet – shared with my son’s former teacher, who’s always on the look-out for non-rhyming poetry to share with her students
  • Water Rolls, Water Rises by Pat Mora and Meilo So – another poetry finalist, which my daughter listened to and enjoyed despite a professed hatred of poetry (and I really don’t know where that came from!)

Daughter’s Books

  • eldeafoEl Deafo by Cece Bell is the Cybils MG Graphic Novel winner and Newbery Honor Book, which I’m reading aloud to my daughter.  She’s loving it, and my son was also sneaking in to listen and then continuing on his own, a sure sign of a great book.
  • Barbie and the Secret Door: Magic Friends by Chelsea Eberly. This is not what I’d call a great book, but it demonstrates what I often tell parents: interest trumps reading level. The girl is reading this book aloud nearly perfectly, though it’s a year or two past what she’s able to read in school.
  • Sleeping Beauty by Mahlon F. Craft – because the three or four versions we have at home already were no longer enough.
  • magicfriendsThe last king of Angkor Wat by Graeme Base – picked by my colleague as emergency reading when my daughter was in the ER a few weeks ago.
  • The princess gown by Linda Leopold Strauss – ditto, and one of her favorite books.  We loved it!
  • Stars by Mary Lyn Ray and Marla Frazee – guility, I’ve forgotten which book blogger was sharing favorite Marla Frazee books a while back – but I was inspired to put this on hold, and it just came in. Just lovely!
  • The Noisy Paint Box by Barb Rosenstock and Mary GrandPre – a 2015 Caldecott honor book.  The girl is crazy excited about this book, looking at it by herself, wanting it read aloud, and making her teacher read it aloud to the class.
  • Nana in the City by Lauren Castillo – also a 2015 Caldecott honor book.  It’s a great story of an active grandmother, but more of a toddler/preschool book.
  • The adventures of Beekle : the unimaginary friend by Dan Santat – Hooray!  We loved this one, and it’s also been shared widely.
  • Eve of the Emperor penguin by Mary Pope Osborne – in print, to go along with the audio books for the car.
  • Magic Tree House Books 36-41 by Mary Pope Osborne (three audio cd sets) – now that we finished Ivy & Bean, the girl has asked to go back to Magic Tree House.

Son’s Books

  • smekforpresidentSmek for President by Adam Rex is our current read-aloud, and one I purchased because we loved The True Meaning of Smekday so much.  Will we be able to finish it before Jinx’s Fire comes out on the 24th???
  • Jupiter Pirates: Hunt for the Hydra by Jason Fry – reading to himself, from the copy we got him for Christmas
  • The Dumbest Idea Ever by Jimmy Gownley – a Cybils MG Graphic Novel finalist, which I read first and passed on to him.  It’s inspiring him to create his own comics – yay!
  • The Burning Bridge by John Flanagan – for his school DEAR time.
  • The life and times of Genghis Khan by Jim Whiting and Genghis Khan by Judy Humphrey, for a school biography project – he was so excited he dropped what he was doing and sat down to look through these when I brought them home for him, his school library not having anything on the topic.
  • The Search for WondLa by Tony DiTerlizzi (audio cd) – starting a new series, as we couldn’t get the next book in any of the series we were listening to.

My books
Currently reading

  • strangerStranger by Sherwood Smith and Rachel Manija Brown – because so many of my blogger peeps loved it.  It’s fantastic so far!
  • The little white horse by Elizabeth Goudge – a classic.  Somehow I’d only read her non-award-winning book, Linnets and Valerians.
  • Enchantment Lake by Margi Preus (e-ARC via Netgalley)
  • Lirael by Garth Nix (audio cd) – continuing my re-read of the series, sparked by listening to Clariel
  • A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett (e-audio) – ditto, except I was starting at the beginning and found the libraries just didn’t have the complete series

Finished but still have

  • Brown girl dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson – this book is covered in awards, and I’m so glad I finally read it.  It is just beautiful!
  • The Crossover by Kwame Alexander – winner of the 2015 Newbery. Had Brandy at Random Musings of a Bibliophile not raved about this one, I might have put off reading it longer – crisis averted! It is amazing. I brought both this and Brown Girl Dreaming in for my son’s teachers to peek at.

Waiting to Read

  • spiderringWhile We Run by Karen Healy – this and the next are more Cybils Teen Spec Fic finalists.  I had to take Winner’s Curse back and put my name back on the list for it. Sad face.
  • Noggin by John Corey Whaley
  • Fairest by Marissa Meyer – I’m not sure I’ll love this as much as the other Lunar Chronicles – but I still hope I can get to it before it comes due!
  • The Spider Ring by Andrew Harwell – and as if I didn’t have enough on my plate as it is, I read this moving blog post by the author in response to Shannon Hale, saying how he was the boy sneaking “girl books” out of the library and hoping he wouldn’t get caught.  Naturally, when I saw his book was checked in, I had to take it home.

Research

Probably not general interest – but hey, I’m going to be teaching a one-hour class on the music of the 13th century next month, and these are some of my research books.  Fun times!

  • Cambridge Companion to Medieval Music edited by Mark Everist
  • French Motets in the 13th Century by Mark Everist
  • History of Western Music by Donald Jay Grout
  • Concerning Measured Music by Johannes de Garlandia

What are you reading?

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Little Green Men at the Mercury Inn

Posted on March 7, 2015 by Katy K.

The Cybils panel was already feeling like distant and much-missed history when I read this nominated book. I read it anyway because a) it was nominated by Karen of Ms. Yingling Reads, whom I very much respect; b) there is visible diversity on the cover (and further research revealed that the author is Japanese-American as well); and c) the publisher was kind enough to send it to me to read. It’s now in both the library where I work and my kids’ school library.

Little Green Men at the Mercury InnLittle Green Men at the Mercury Inn by Greg Leitich Smith. Roaring Brook Press, 2014.
Twelve-year-old Aidan lives and works at his family’s old hotel, the Mercury Inn at Cocoa Beach, Florida. It’s not the fanciest of places, but with a vintage feel and a good view of the shuttle launches, it has steady business. His best friend, Louis, lost a leg in a car accident that he swears happens because of a UFO. Aidan, Louis, and mystery guest Dru Tanaka are all watching when a planned shuttle launch is scrubbed due to something that looks a lot like another alien ship. Soon the three kids – and crotchety old hotel guest Mrs. Fleance – are caught up in a mystery adventure that involves hiding things in the giant hotel freezer and Aidan retrieving poolside tables and chairs from the bottom of the pool every morning. Aidan’s parents, while certainly present in his life, are just too busy to note what’s going on.

This is approachable sci-fi with relatable characters, fast-moving adventure, a pleasingly twisty plot and lots of humor. The diversity shown on the cover works well, too, being necessary for the plot without overwhelming the characters. At 214 pages, it’s a great length for kids just moving up to middle grade books or reluctant readers. Those who want their science fiction Epic or including off-world journeys might be disappointed – but for the kid who likes almost realistic fiction with lots of humor, this is just the thing.

Here are other silly adventures involving aliens I’ve reviewed:
Astronaut Academy by Dave Roman
Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman
Geeks, Girls and Secret Identities by Mike Jung
The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex
What We Found in the Sofa and How It Changed the World by Henry Clark
Zita the Space Girl by Ben Hatke

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Clariel

Posted on March 6, 2015 by Katy K.

I read the whole Old Kingdom series when it first came out, long enough ago that I’ve never reviewed them for my blog, though I’ve recommended them and loaned them out many times since. I was very excited when Clariel came out last fall – except I couldn’t read it just then.

clarielClariel by Garth Nix. Read by Graeme Malcolm. Random House/Listening Library, 2014.
This story is set about 600 years before the events of the previous three books, before the great decline of the Old Kingdom. As with the other books, the story opens as a dangerous creature escapes from its bindings and sets off on a mission of destruction before introducing us to our heroine.

Clariel is a member of the Abhorsen family, though she hasn’t grown up with them. Her mother, Jaciel, is a master goldsmith, recently invited to leave their home at the edge of the Great Forest to join the Guild in the capital city of Belisaire. Clariel is expected to go to a finishing school for the older children of the well-to-do, in preparation for finding a nice city career or preferably a husband.

Clariel wants nothing to do with any of this. Her dream since childhood has been to live and work in the Great Forest, and she’s tried relationships and just isn’t interested. She also knows that stressful situations increase her chances of losing control of the anger that’s always simmering inside her, and nothing is more stressful than a big city where there are no trees and she’s never alone. Though she tells everyone that she needs to be in the forest, including her parents and her advisors at the finishing school, they are all full of reasons why she can’t, including her social status and her help being needed to fight the dangerous free magic creature now loose in the city.

Clariel is in some ways very similar to both Sabriel and Lirael. Garth Nix is master of the introverted character, and Clariel is no exception. Like Sabriel and Lirael, Clariel is faced with challenges that she is uniquely able to face, even though she doesn’t quite have all the training that would really be useful. Each book also focuses on a different aspect of the magic of the Old Kingdom – the bells of the necromancer in Sabriel, Charter magic in Lirael and now free magic. (I’m now re-listening to the rest of series, and haven’t yet gotten to Abhorsen.) But though Clariel is a similarly likeable talented but socially awkward young woman, things do not go well for her. This is, as my blogging friend Sondy at Sonderbooks also pointed out, a very sad book. It would be a spoiler, as things don’t start off looking like they’re going that way, except that it’s right there on the cover “A passion thwarted will often go astray…” And as Clariel knows what she needs and is quite articulate about it, it’s heartbreaking.

I don’t know that I’d say not to read it, especially for fans of the series. It is really interesting to see the Old Kingdom before its fall, not quite in its prime but certainly vibrant, to see another Abhorsen, and to meet up with Mogget, the free magic cat servant from Sabriel – but while the Old Kingdom is always dark and dangerous, this entry in the series is even darker. The hallmarks of the series are still here – the strong characters (more than just Clariel here, though I’ve only talked about her), the compelling plot, the detailed world with its intricate magic system – but with the edge of hope taken away, it was a lot harder for me to get through. I’ll still read anything Garth Nix cares to write about the Old Kingdom, and I’m very much enjoying my trip back re-reading the rest of the series.

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House of Sand and Secrets

Posted on March 3, 2015 by Katy K.

The book that made it to two of my Top 10 Lists in the past year – both 2014 Releases I Didn’t Get To and Books I Want to Read But Don’t Own Yet. It’s the sequel to When the Sea Is Rising Red, which I very much enjoyed. Thank you to my brother-in-law for getting it for me for Christmas! Warning: spoilers for the first book are inevitable.

House of Sand and SecretsHouse of Sand and Secrets by Cat Hellisen. Folded Wherry Press, 2014.
Hellisen must not believe in straight-up happy endings… because what looked like hard-won peace and tentative love at the end of When the Sea Is Rising Red has turned to mistrust and small acts of cruelty by the beginning of this book. Felicita married Jannik, a young vampire who wooed her with poetry, and they ran away from the chaos of Pelimburg. Felicita has claimed her rank in the city of MallenIve – but gaining a toehold in high society is both difficult and necessary. Vampire-human relationships weren’t socially acceptable in their home city of Pelimburg, but vampires were at least regarded as full members of society. In MallenIve, they are regarded as suitable only for slavery. Besides the strain created by their difference in rank, they are haunted in the not-literal sense by the ghost of the lover they shared. Did they really ever love each other? Magic for the high-class humans is literally a drug, addicting even as it activates their latent powers, and Felicita has gone cold turkey. The withdrawal symptoms put her on edge and are especially difficult when she’s around the other high-class ladies all using publicly.

On top of these nebulous relationship issues is a pressing outside concern: increasing numbers of vampires found murdered. The numbers of those who care about this are few indeed, and Felicita and Jannik will have to find some way to convince someone – anyone – to work with them before they get completely out of hand. The book is filled with mystery, politics, magic, art, and people repressed by society. Though there’s a lot going on, it’s an introspective story, and we spend a lot of time in Felicita’s head as she tries to figure out who she is and her relationship with Jannik, enough that those who prefer plot-focused books might feel bogged down.  The focus on the post-marriage relationship makes it feel a little more adult, though the content isn’t really more than other teen books and the characters are still in their teens. It is dark and gorgeous and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

I’d read When the Sea Is Rising Red first if you haven’t. This might also pair well with Maggie Stiefvater’s Shiver and Holly Black’s The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, though neither of these have the Victorian historical feel of this one. The Golden City by J. Kathleen Cheney also has some of the same dark paranormal mystery/romance in a historical setting.  And of course, I still need to read Hellisen’s latest book, Beastkeeper, a middle grade Beauty and the Beast retelling

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Cybils Easy Reader Finalists

Posted on February 28, 2015 by Katy K.

I read all of the Cybils easy reader finalists that I could get my hands on for the Armchair Cybils (hosted as always by the lovely Amy of Hope is the Word) and I thought I should maybe tell you about them. I have put in purchase requests, but not yet received, the winner and two more of the finalists, but these are the ones I was able to read. I’m putting them in order from lowest to highest reading level. Easy readers are an especially tricky sort of book, as they have to walk a very careful line to stay easy enough for their target audience to read without being boring. I have seen a lot of failed easy readers, but these are all excellent.

inchandrolyInch and Roly and the Sunny Day Scare by Melissa Wiley. Illustrated by Ag Jatkowska. Simon Spotlight, 2014.
There is a strange object in the garden, and the assortment of tiny creatures who live there investigate it with a good deal of trepidation. Each, from the titular Inch the inchworm and Roly the roly poly to Beetle and Dragonfly, has his or her own interpretation, but it’s not until they put their observations together that they can figure out what’s going on. This is that rare and valuable book, a truly early easy reader builds both tension and humor while staying approachable for the youngest readers. The illustrations are what my daughter likes to call adorable.

mynewfriendissofunMy New Friend Is So Fun! by Mo Willems. Disney-Hyperion, 2014.
Elephant and Piggy are back! I don’t know how Willem keeps coming up with story ideas that are so deeply funny while exploring real childhood fears, all within the easy reader framework. In this outing, Elephant Gerald and Snake are nervous because Piggy is off playing with Snake’s best friend, Brian Bat. What if Brian Bat were to replace Gerald as Piggy’s best friend??? What if Snake loses his best friend, too? As always, Willem’s art conveys worlds of emotions with a few simple lines.

extraordinarywarrenExtraordinary Warren by Sarah Dillard. Simon & Schuster, 2014.
Warren is a chick who dreams of a life beyond the barnyard. Sadly, even though his fantasies are bigger than those of the other chicks, he can’t even get off the ground in flight class. But when a too-friendly fox comes by offering all the chicks dinner, Warren’s imagination might just save the day. The simple but expressive illustrations fit this story of an everyday hero just perfectly. This is told in short chapters of sequential panels, and kept in the graphic novel section rather than the easy reader section at my library. But whether you consider it a graphic novel or an easy reader, it’s a great story. My daughter and I both very much enjoyed it.

pigsticksandharoldPigsticks and Harold and the Incredible Journey by Alex Milway. Candlewick Press, 2014.
This is another one where the Cybils judges and my library disagreed as to classification – we have it in our early chapter book section rather than the easy readers. I’d say it is right in between. It has chapters and is 68 pages long, but the type is bigger than most early chapter books, and there are lots of full-color illustrations. The story is (again, hooray) both exciting and very funny. Pigsticks is one of a long line of famous pigs, bent on making his mark on the world. He’s chosen to be an explorer, but decides that he needs an assistant. He hires the mostly unwilling hamster Harold to carry his abundant luggage, convincing him with promises of eating mostly cake along the way.

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Around the World

Posted on February 25, 2015 by Katy K.

My friend A~, with whom I share many aspects of taste in books (including getting reading material primarily from the public library), is not generally one for graphic novels. So when she has laid down money for one, and then put it my hands to tell me to read it, I do. (Even if I had to wait a few months for it to burble to the top of the pile.)

Around the WorldAround the World by Matt Phelan. Candlewick Press, 2011.
In the late 19th century, Jules Verne’s still-entertaining Around the World in 80 Days rocked the world with the idea that one could easily and quickly travel around the world. It was fiction when it was first written, to be sure – but could it be done? Phelan’s historical graphic not-a-novel recounts the stories of three real-life adventurers who made it around the world.

We first meet Thomas Stevens, a young Californian who used all the savings from his mining job to buy himself a Columbia Standard bicycle in order to ride across the United States. It was 1884, and the still-new invention cost $110, which an on-line inflation calculator tells me would be $2,444 in today’s dollars. He learned to ride the bicycle with its giant front wheel along the way, and decided when he got to Boston to continue his journey around the world – by ship across the oceans, and by bicycle across Europe and Asia.

In 1888, Nellie Bly, the already-famous intrepid reporter, decided to try to go around the world in 74 days, becoming in the process the first solo woman to travel around the world. Travelling with just a carpet bag, primarily by train and ship, she battled sexism, seasickness and storms. Her progress was anxiously followed by newspaper readers around the world.

Very different from these energetic young adventurers, Joshua Slocum was a widowed grandfather when, in 1895, he decided to sail solo around the world. His journey lasted for years instead of months, but was no less entertaining to read about.

As with Phelan’s 2013 book Bluffton, the story is illustrated in energetic pencil filled with soft watercolor washes. Phelan includes his sources, both the memoirs all three travelers wrote and more recent books about them. Nowadays we think ourselves the most modern generation ever – and while of course we are, it’s easy to forget how exciting and world-changing things like trains, bicycles and steamships were when they were first invented. Phelan’s book reignites that old excitement in a book that feels vintage while using modern picture storytelling and language to make it easily accessible to today’s readers. But if you’re giving this to a kid (and you should) you can leave out the important historical and educational aspects, and just tell them about the adventure. There’s plenty of it.

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Ivy + Bean (series)

Posted on February 20, 2015 by Katy K.

IvyBeanIt’s a little disconcerting after a son who really only likes speculative fiction, but so far, my daughter seems to prefer realistic fiction.  It’s a good opportunity to reacquaint myself with the world of Ramona-like quirky girl protagonists.  We had previously listened to nearly all of the Junie B. Jones books by Barbara Park.  These were a big hit, but we had to reluctantly conclude that as funny as Junie B. is, our five-year-old wasn’t quite old enough to separate the funny-in-a-book naughty behavior from good to emulate behavior.

IvyBeanBoundtoBeBadSo, on to something else. We just finished going through all ten books of the Ivy and Bean series.  These are short books – one disc long on audio or a little over a hundred pages with lots of pictures in print.  My library’s early chapter book section has a strict cut-off of 100 pages, which puts these in youth fiction instead – but if these aren’t early chapter books, they’re the very next baby step up, and perfect for my five-year-old, who’s just getting used to listening to books that can’t be read in a single sitting.  We listened to all but one of these on audio, and I read her the last one aloud because my library’s audio copy had gone missing.  (It’s now back, of course.)

IvyBeanWhatstheBigIdea
Ivy + Bean by Annie Barrows. Illustrated by Sophie Blackall. Read by Cassandra Morris Chronicle Books (print) and Recorded Books (audio), 2006.
Ivy + Bean and the Ghost That Had to Go, 2007.
Ivy + Bean Break the Fossil Record, 2007.
Ivy + Bean Take Care of the Babysitter, 2008.
Ivy + Bean: Bound to Be Bad, 2008.
Ivy + Bean: Doomed to Dance, 2009.
Ivy + Bean: What’s the Big Idea?  2010.
Ivy + Bean: No News Is Good News, 2011.
Ivy + Bean Make the Rules, 2012.
Ivy + Bean Take the Case, 2013.

Bean is an outdoorsy, active play kind of girl with a disregard for all things girly and bookish.  That’s why she’s always ignored her mother’s suggestion that she should be friends with that prissy Ivy across the street, who always has her nose stuck in a book, just because they’re both seven.  But when circumstances push them together, Ivy and Bean discover that they really do have a lot in common.  They set off on a series of adventures that involve playing pranks on Bean’s mean older sister, Nancy, as well as playing with the other kids in their second-grade class and on their street, Pancake Court.  (Pancake Court seems to be relatively diverse – my biggest quibble with the series is that all the diversity is kept to the sidelines.) Through subsequent books in this lighthearted series, their adventures range from trying to find a way to set a world record to convincing adults to care about global warming to opening up a PI office.  Sometimes they are on the side of chaos, sometimes of order, but they are always entertaining.

ivyBeanTaketheCaseCassandra Morris does an excellent job of reading with a variety of convincing little-kid voices and very clear diction – always, for instance, clearly separating the two “k” sounds in “Pancake Court”. This might sound trivial, but kids usually aren’t easy to understand.  Making the narration easy to understand while at the same time engaging and sounding like a wide range of kids is a feat for which I have the utmost respect. I really appreciated the illustrations in the one volume that I read aloud.  Sophie Blackall’s cartoony illustrations have expressive faces that really convey the characters’ emotions and add to the fun feeling of the series, even when the characters are clearly upset.

This is a deservedly popular series, perfect for both reading aloud and reading to self for kids new to chapter books.  It’s obviously marketed to girls, but the humor makes it equally appropriate for boys interested in everyday sorts of adventures.  Even my ten-year-old son, usually interested in more epic fiction, laughed aloud to the books in the car and crept into my daughter’s room to listen when I read it to her at bedtime.

Other short chapter books my daughter has enjoyed include

We’re currently reading El Deafo by Cece Bell, which I’d guess to be aimed at a slightly older audience – but she is loving it anyway.

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Picture Book Round-Up

Posted on February 18, 2015 by Katy K.

My sweet little girl is home sick today, with Daddy and Brother.  Before I left for work, the two children were curled up on the sofa together, with Brother doing his very best dramatic reading of The Last King of Ankor Wat for her.  Here are three more picture books she’s enjoyed recently.

noodlemagicNoodle Magic by Roseanne Greenfield Thong. Illustrated by Meilo So. Orchard Books, 2014.
I put this title on hold as soon as I saw it come into the library because noodles! My daughter would eat noodles every day if we would let her, and I knew she would love a story of magical noodles. The Chinese setting is a bonus. Young Mei loves to help her Grandfather Tu in his noodle shop. But when it’s time to make the special long-life noodles for the Emperor’s birthday, he says it’s Mei’s turn to do in. She’s not quite sure he’s right that she has the magic she needs to do it already, and asks the Moon Goddess for help. The watercolor illustrations are both beautiful and full of humor, while the text has some fun repeated onomatopoeias that make it work well for reading aloud. A whimsical cat and rooster made of magical curling noodles appear in almost every picture, which led us to pick this book for my daughter’s kindergarten book project. Our noodles didn’t want to twirl around as much as the ones in the pictures, but we had fun making cats out of spaghetti noodles and gluing them to a moonlit watercolor landscape! This is an entertaining story of finding your own strength, with lots of appeal for young noodle lovers!

normanspeakNorman, Speak! by Caroline Adderson & Qin Leng. Groundwood Books, 2014.
Watercolor and ink illustrations give this modern American story a traditional Chinese feeling. A boy and his parents adopt the saddest-looking dog they can find at the shelter, and fall in love with his enthusiasm and affection. When Norman doesn’t learn to follow the boy’s commands, he decides that Norman just isn’t very smart, but he loves him anyway. Then one day in the park, they accidentally learn that Norman understands Chinese! Once they start trying to learn Chinese themselves, so they can talk to him, they find new respect for Norman’s intelligence – but that still isn’t why they love him. It took my daughter a while to let me read her this book, but she loved it once she did, and insisted I read it to her class. There, I was very lucky that there was a Chinese-American girl in the class to help me with the Chinese phrases in the book. I’m not sure that a Chinese-language dog counts as a diverse protagonist, but it’s a heartwarming book with a valuable, not-preachy lesson on the challenges of learning a new language and the really important things of life.

isthereadogIs There a Dog in This Book by Viviane Schwarz. Candlewick Press, 2014.
Tiny, Moonpie and Andre from There Are Cats in This Book and There Are No Cats in This Book are back! But there seems to be an intruder in their book/house – and who would want a rambunctious dog around? As before, the cats beg the reader for help lifting flaps and turning pages to help find the stranger and keep the cats safe. This is more silly, interactive fun, with a gentle message on getting to know people before passing judgment. It’s maybe not as wildly creative as the first two in the series, but was still very popular both at my house and in my daughter’s K/1 class.

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Sword Book Blitz with Giveaway

Posted on February 17, 2015 by Katy K.

Sword Book Blitz

Dear readers, I don’t think I’ve ever participated in a book blitz before.  But I read something from Amy Bai on John Scalzi’s blog, and she had me hooked at “inspired by Aerin-Sol”.  Even though I haven’t read the book yet, I hopped right over and signed up to participate.  Keep going for a summary of the book, author interview, and giveaways – one ebook copy just for readers of this blog, and an international giveaway of the print book plus goodies for all the book tour stops combined.

Sword by Amy Bai 

Publication date: February 10th 2015
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult

SwordSynopsis:

Sword shall guide the hands of men . . .

For over a thousand years the kingdom of Lardan has been at peace: isolated from the world, safe from the wars of its neighbors, slowly forgetting the wild and deadly magic of its origins. Now the deepest truths of the past and the darkest predictions for the future survive only in the verses of nursery rhymes.

For over a thousand years, some of Lardan’s fractious provinces have been biding their time.

Kyali Corwynall is the daughter of the Lord General, a child of one of the royal Houses, and the court’s only sword-wielding girl. She has known for all of her sixteen years what the future holds for her–politics and duty, the management of a House, and protecting her best friend, the princess and presumed heir to the throne. But one day an old nursery rhyme begins to come true, an ancient magic wakes, and the future changes for everyone. In the space of a single night her entire life unravels into violence and chaos. Now Kyali must find a way to master the magic her people have left behind, or watch her world–and her closest friends–fall to a war older than the kingdom itself.

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23524359-sword

Purchase:
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Sword-Amy-Bai-ebook/dp/B00T74HLIO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423840247&sr=8-1&keywords=Amy+Bai
B&N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/sword-amy-bai/1121170315?ean=9781936460618

 AUTHOR BIO:

Amy Bai has been, by order of neither chronology nor preference, a barista, a numbers-cruncher, a paper-pusher, and a farmhand. She likes thunderstorms, the enthusiasm of dogs, tall boots and long jackets, cinnamon basil, margaritas, and being surprised by the weirdness of her fellow humans. She lives in New England with her guitar-playing Russian husband and two very goofy sheepdogs.

Author links:

AmyInterview with Amy Bai

1) What is your novel about?

Sword is a coming of age high fantasy about a girl pretty much at odds with everything, including and especially herself. It’s set in a fictional kingdom called Lardan, one with a long history of magic and war, and a population so complacent they’ve forgotten that either one ever applied to them. They learn differently when history begins to repeat itself: there’s an uprising, the kingdom is thrown into civil war, and the royal family, of which my main character Kyali is a satellite member, is murdered. Kyali, her brother, and the princess are forced into exile with a small army of refugees. Kyali was badly hurt during the uprising, and comes out of that a changed person; unfortunately for her she’s now the only person with the training to command what is left of the army, and her friends need her.

Sword is her story, how she learns to deal with what happened to her without shutting out the people she loves, and with the responsibilities she has to shoulder now that the older generation is dead and the kingdom is overrun. It’s about loyalty and love, fate and family and politics. It’s also violent, occasionally sarcastic, and unabashedly sappy.
2) What inspired you to write the story?

I had a very sullen young woman with a battered old sword and no patience kicking my frontal lobe. As motivators go, it was a pretty good one.

–Ok, so that’s a little dramatic, but really not too far from the truth (except the part about the frontal lobe, of course). Kyali Corwynall started out as a patchwork of some of my favorite characters from books like Robin McKinley’s The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown, and Patricia McKillip’s Cygnet, going all the way back to Barbara Helen Berger’s Gwinna, which I read when I was seven. My brain is like cosmic flypaper: the stuff I like (or hate) sticks, accumulates, eventually acquires a gravitational field, and before I know it light’s bending around it and I’m up at 3 am mainlining coffee and my keyboard’s broken. Sword was like that. One day I had scattered pieces, and the next I had a character with layers, flaws, goals, scars, and a complicated history. Stories always start that way for me, no matter how cool my premise may be (or how cool I may think it is, anyway) –my characters inspire and drive it, start to finish.

3) Since your novel is medieval-influenced, can you tell us a bit about your researching journey?

Wow. How I’d love to give you a list of planned, organized steps I took. It would make me feel so much smarter!

But no. I stumbled into the research for Sword much like I did the story itself. I think my research began the moment I realized I had no idea how heavy a sword really was, or how hard it might be to wear armor and, you know, walk at the same time. I remember thinking writing fantasy would be easy (yes, feel free to laugh at me). It didn’t take long before I realized it was very, very obvious when I didn’t know what I was talking about. So I went from looking up Irish baby names online to running to the library after work to find the Focloir Scoile or The Book of the Sword. I eventually learned to restrain myself, because research can be a wonderful excuse for not writing when you’re stuck– but overall, it was great fun.
4) What’s your best revision tip?

Remember basic dramatic structure when you’re reading your draft(s). It definitely doesn’t always apply, and definitely shouldn’t always apply, but I’ve found it can be a great lens: I can look at the whole story, each subplot and character arc, each chapter, and each scene with that structure in mind, and I’ll always find something to tweak. Or mangle. Or outright kill.

…Revision is a slightly violent process for me.

Giveaways

Win an ebook copy of Sword! Tell me about your favorite sword-wielding heroine in the comments.  This giveaway runs through midnight EST, February 26. You can (also or instead) use the Rafflecopter plugin to enter to win the grand prize package of a print copy of Sword with an extra short story, character sketches, and a poster.  The Rafflecopter giveaway ends February 26.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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