by Joseph Delaney
Thoroughly enjoyable read: loved the tone of narrative, folky and wise, and never condescending. I would say it is highly young reader friendly — as long as the young reader is not squeamish or easily frightened. There are genuinely scary moments which for certain readers will be highly satisfying. Such fun!
Filed under Book Notes
by Charlie Higson
(This cover is the British version.)
It was a gripping read, to say the least. Really enjoyed how there are multiple story-lines and view points from several key characters. A bit surprised (and slightly let-down?) at the ending where things are left really open and is a set-up for a sequel without truly wrapping up the tale at hand. Now I am itching to read the next installment and feel a bit cheated by this dangling bait of a last chapter. The number of times where the adult zombies are described in gruesome details seems a bit on the excessive side — after the 10th vivid Enemy, I kind of had enough — so the subsequent drools, flabby skin, boils, rotten flesh, green ooze, etc. were simply skimmed over by this reader who was more interested in the next plot twist and how the children dealing with situations than visualizing the various lumbering decayed semi-corpses.Moments of the book made me think: “Whoa, Lord of the Flies crossed with The Animal Farm.” Especially when David (the self-proclaimed leader) keeps promising that he is not there to “rule” but to “sort things out” for others while schemes to suppress any opposition, with force and even with death of other kids.All in all — an entertaining read for those who are not disturbed by such violence and gore.
Filed under Book Notes
This is a post that catches a lot of stuff from the past few weeks:
1. At the Random House summer 2010 preview presentation, this new term surfaced several times: “Tween Clean” —
Books that feature probably slightly older teen characters, dealing with more mature themes but without the “scary” YA elements such as curse words, explicit portrayal of sex, drugs, and other taboo topics, designed for pre-teens and young teens (mostly girls?) who crave the books in the traditional YA Section in the library and at bookstores.
2. It is only a week away from when the Battle of the Kids’ Books (SLJ) officially starts on March 15th and we want your VOTE!!! for the Undead title at the final showdown!
3. Just finished re-reading LeGuin’s A Wizard of Earthsea and am in the middle of writing a post on figurative writing and its use (and mis-use) in children’s books.
Filed under Field Reports
This is a site that Monica Edinger and I have helped created and am running for this month and next. Come and follow the matches, vote for a book to come back from the Land of the Dead, and “talk back” to us, to each other, and to our very opinionated and passionate commentator Jonathan Hunt, via the Comment feature.
Tweet us, Facebook us — all very easy to do directly from the site.
This is a place where all lovers of children’s books should gather and have a great time!
The url of the site is: http://sljbattleofthebooks.com
Filed under Uncategorized
by David Eddings
Had a lot of fun with this second volume in the Belgariad Series. The large scale battle scenes are so grand and exciting. The characters remain true to their personalities and are often humorously presented. The world becomes more well defined as the series moves on and (Bel)Garion is maturing in a realistic and convincing way. Formulaic? Yes. But, like a good recipe, in different cooks’ hands, even without new inventions or varied spices, the outcomes can all still be very appetizing. (How many times have I had loved and been satisfied by the same hot chocolate?)
Filed under Uncategorized
What worked for me and Lily (age 11, and big fan of the series):
We thought that for the most part, the casting worked. Although we did not LOVE the fact that all the kids are older and some more romantic tension was thrown into the storyline, we accepted it as a necessary choice and it did not totally change how the story plays out.
Uma Thurman as Medusa, with or without her body attached, is quite effective. And we stayed until after the credit to see the very satisfying scene of Gabe vs. Medusa’s-head-in-the-fridge.
The special effects that show Percy’s command of water are cool to watch and thoroughly enjoyable. And we appreciated that the humorous tone is still present in the movie, although not as palpable as it is in the book. (Remember those funny chapter titles?)
We couldn’t quite understand why
1. Percy’s mom has to accompany him to Camp and why she was there when they went to Mount Olympus.
2. That Camp Half-Blood looks so much LESS impressive, LESS fun, LESS like a camp that we would love to spend our summers at. We both imagined that the Camp, as such an important place for important people, would have been on a much grander scale, the training ground would have looked less like the Disney’s Camp Rock campus, but more like one might find in Ancient Greece or the “real” Mount Olympus with each House resembling a temple with columns, carvings, and statues. We both decided to re-read the descriptions in the book to see if our recollections are faulty.
Filed under Uncategorized
I (and thousands, if not millions of young readers) need, need, need, to read the NEXT INSTALLMENT in the Kiki Strike series. The second book was published in 2007. It’s 2010 and I know the manuscript has not even been submitted for book 3. Rumor has it that the projected publication date for the third book is 2012 — FIVE — FIVE years after its predecessor. A child who discovered Kiki Strike and the Shadow City in 2006 at age 9 will be 15 in 2012 and almost too old for it! We collectively BEG YOU, Kirsten Miller, to finish writing book three and let us have the joy of reading it! (But, at the same time… we DO understand that you want to make a good book, a good story, and to not disappoint your loyal fans — so, if you are having trouble, we wish you the best at overcoming the problems!)
Mockingjay, as the third (and final?) book in the Hunger Games series is titled, will be out in the stores on August 24th, 2010. The cover and announcement can be found at the Scholastic’s blog: On Our Minds @ Scholastic. What do you think of the color? And isn’t David Levithan hilarious? (Quote: “Panem is not shaken up when District 9 is nominated for a best picture Oscar.”)
And I can’t be more excited about the prospect of reading Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore — which is some sort of a sequel to Graceling but, as the title indicates, will be about Bitterblue and her Grace. I want to be surprised, moved, thrilled, and impressed by it the same way I did for both Graceling and Fire. And Ms Cashore, keep it up with the one-word titles! It will be your signature move.
Filed under Book Notes
by Caroline B. Cooney
So much fun to re-read this one, too! I forgot so many details and had a different recollection of the ending to the actual ending. Maybe I read the sequel and mixed them up. The pacing is just perfect: the suspense continues without sacrificing the passing of (quite a long) time it takes a teenager to deal with a truly traumatic event in life. Janie’s journey is entirely credible. Now I have to go and re-read Whatever Happened to Janie.
Filed under Book Notes
Next Friday, my 4th and 5th graders will participate in a grade-wide Library Quiz Show: Do You Know Books?!
This year, I picked twelve books for the children to read and enjoy and many of them have signed up to participate. These are all mysteries and thus I named this year’s Quiz Show “The Mysterious Dozen Edition.”
Here’s the list of titles:
I am re-reading Holes and just finished re-reading The Bad Beginning and The Face on the Milk Carton. SO much fun had I! Will write another post on these re-reading experiences.
Filed under Book Notes
by Michael Hall
I put this on my “poetry” shelf as well, since it IS an illustrated poem. The colors, shapes, and layout all work beautifully together with the light and bouncy text. Really enjoyed reading/looking at this one. So clever, too!
Filed under Book Notes
This is an open letter to thank Hope Anita Smith, poet, extraordinary teacher, and author of The Way a Door Closes, Keeping the Night Watch, and the 2010 poetry collection, Mother P0ems, for her amazing, awesome, and artistic ways in leading six poetry workshops for all our 7th and 8th grade students at The Dalton School, NYC.
Dear Hope,
We were all under your spell and now are all in awe of you! You brought such energy, generosity, and expertise with you into our classroom and every student got a chance to write a poem under your guidance and inspiration. Some of the poems that were shared brought chills down my and the teachers’ spines: they were good and the students really put their mind and soul into them.
It is not common when we have an author who prepares three different presentations when the audience is on the same level. But you did. The students loved working on the Cool Poem, they definitely struggled a bit with Seven Ways of Looking At ________, and were completely engrossed in “reading” the names of the paint color chips that you brought and applying those to their own Paint Me Like I Am poems.
You are going back to LA today and I wish you the best and I want you to come back to us to work with more students and I want many many more other young people to be inspired by you to explore the wonders of words, to stretch their minds and to discover their hidden potentials as writers and poets. (I know you have many different workshops for different age groups.)
Hope, take care and let our paths cross again soon!
Filed under Field Reports
J.D. Salinger, celebrated and reclusive author, dies at age 91, as reported in Boston Globe and many other news sources.
I still remember reading Catcher in the Rye as a high school student in Taiwan. I read the Chinese translation, of course. And I don’t think I quite “got” the book — partly because the portrayed culture was so foreign to me and I suspect that some meanings might have lost in the translation. Still, I treasured the book and the almost outlandish experience I had encountering the book. Years later, when I started work on my Master’s in children’s lit at Simmons College, I re-read the book in English and was delighted to fall in love with it again. My teen, NYC independent school students still read and are moved by the tale of Holden — more than half a century after its publication (in 1951.)
Filed under Book Notes
On a snowy morning like this, you should read at least one of these:
The Snow Queen by Andersen
Some Moomin tales by Jansson
East by Pattou AND East of the Sun, West of the Moon
and Ronia, the Robber’s Daughter by Lindgren.
Filed under Uncategorized
Reading Kristin Cashore’s article, “Hot Dog, Katsa!” in the Jan/Feb 2010 Horn Book (first issue entirely in color!) reminded me why I admire good fantasy writers so much! It also made me search online and re-read two fantastic articles that also discuss fantasy world building and what makes Good fantasy stories outstanding (or what makes them less so.) These two articles are Sam Swope’s review in the New York Times: Moonlighting (partially about fantasy books but the focus is on adult writers writing for children) and Jane Langton’s The Weak Place in the Cloth: A Study of Fantasy for Children from the October 1973 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.
I am not embarrassed to report that tears rushed into my eyes as I was moved by some of these authors’ (all fantasy world building masters themselves) insights. I won’t repeat everything they say here — please please read their articles. In essence, all three agree that:
just because a writer can dream up a whole lot of fantastic situations, weird creatures, and unusual characters does not make this writer a good fantasy storyteller. In fact, without the harnessing power of logic, realism, and careful planning — in short, the self-editing process — the work could turn out to be a huge and unconvincing mess.
In Cashore’s article, she also specifically points out the importance of selecting appropriate words in keeping with the setting of the fantasy world. As the title indicates, you don’t say, “Hot dog, Katsa!” because it takes the reader out of the world of vaguely medieval setting (in her book Graceling) and shatters the otherwise solidly constructed illusion of a magical realm that could have actually existed.
I think that is why I felt so jarred when encountering the word “okay” on page 4 in the 2010 Newbery Honor title Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin. This book is set in a mythical, undetermined, but quite solidly yesteryear China. There is no usage of electricity or references of modern day conveniences. Instead, one meets dragons, talking gold fish, the Goddess of Heaven, and many other fanciful characters while the people work the earth and walk long ways on foot and push carts to sell their goods. So, seeing a highly Americanized and fairly contemporary word like “okay” used in the dialog between the main character and her father made me cringe.
As a lover of fantasy, I have formed certain ideas. I hold quite tightly a set of internalized rules. In short, I ask a lot of the storytellers. I want them to be versed in the fundamental requirements of good fantasy world building as presented in the articles cited above. Or, at least, as mentioned in Cashore’s article, I want them to let their characters talk in the “right” language, with the “right” tone. Of course, what is right or what is not right might vary from one reader to the next in certain cases. But, there is a general sense of the time and place where people talk a certain way which is not so hard to pin down. In the case of Minli and her father (Ba,) OKAY is simply Not OK.
Of course, this is not the only book where OK or Okay are used casually by authors when their characters should have no inkling of what this word might mean. (According to the OED, the expression “OK” meaning “all correct, all right” did not appear until early 19th century USA.)
So, I am making a fairly personal and weak plea to authors of fantasy novels — unless the world you have built is firmed anchored in a post-early-19th century world (like the one in Percy Jackson and the Olympians,) would it be possible to curb your urge to use OK and find another expression more in keeping with the setting of your world?
Filed under Book Notes, WIWWAK
A link to the official press release from the American Library Association announcing the 2010 Youth Media award winners and honorees.
Filed under Book Notes
Finnish author Tove Jansson’s beloved classic series of the Moomintrolls (Moomins) will be reissued this year to celebrate its 65th anniversary by Henry Holt/Macmillan. All eight of them will have a snazzy and fresh look. They are ready to be re-introduced to the next generation of young readers.
Anyone unfamiliar with the Moomins and their sweet but often comically unfortunate adventures might gain a bit of an insight by visiting the official characters site here:
Not available in English, here’s the site for the 65th anniversary illustration competition. It is absolutely joyful to look at and listen to :)
Filed under Book Notes
The American Library Association’s Midwinter conference is happening in Boston as I post. The weather has been very gentle on all attendees.
Some books to look forward to (and to wait for…)
* Kristin Cashore is writing the sequel to Graceling.. no Katsa and Po do not get a dog (as some fans want her to write about) … The book’s central character will be Bitterblue.
* The prequel (a few hundred years previous) to Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines is Fever Crumb and will be out in April, from Scholastic.
* A new Rick Riordan series called “The Kane Chronicles” (Book One: The Red Pyramid) will be released on May 4 from Hyperion Books.
* For the fans of Kiki Strike #1 and #2, it seems that you will have to maintain your patience since there is no release date for the third book yet. (sigh)
* Yes, The King of Clonmel (“Ranger’s Apprentice” #8) will be out in May while #7 (Erak’s Ransom) already hit the story earlier this month.
Tomorrow, we find out what books win major Children’s Literary awards. Quite exciting.
Filed under Field Reports
by Max Brooks
Although I thoroughly enjoyed many many aspects of this book, including its relentless social commentary about our current world and the author’s ability to present a global scene of one disaster that affects everyone on earth, and many of the scenes are haunting and affective. There are a few things that I thought are less successful:
Once in a while, you kind of “hear” some interviewees’ own voices but most of the time, you are just reading the reports from one person and that person is not very good at faithfully capturing the voices he encountered. Instead, most of the segments have the same sentence structures and choices of words or ways to present ideas so there are not the kind of oral history authenticity that one expects and thus lacks refreshing varieties. After 1/3 of the book, you feel like you’re being “droned on.”
The “plot” lacks an emotional arc — it follows a chronology of the war and at the very end some of the characters reappear to give their final says about WWZ but those words of wisdom pack little or no emotional punches. And the book just ends. When I finally finished the last page (after reading it quite slowly for something that’s supposed to be gripping,) my reaction was a plain, “Good, now I can get on to another, more exciting book.” The irony is that in the Introduction, the reporter/narrator specifically claims that he compiled these stories for their emotional values and that this book is not his but those who he interviewed, and how he has “tried to maintain as invisible a presence as possible,” while the whole time you cannot quite get to the emotional core or authentic voices of the interviewed.
I do understand that it is extremely high calling to tell a story via so many voices and Brooks achieved quite a bit in this audacious, imaginative, and oftentimes enlightening, book.
Filed under Book Notes
by David Eddings
This is an old fashioned, formulaic quest story and it absolutely made me happy to read. I love how the characters are portrayed — each with such distinct personality and their actions fit those traits. I love the mythology created to underline everything in the storyline. Can’t wait to read the next volume!
Filed under Book Notes
“When I’m reading, I’m neither a boy, nor a girl. I’m only a reader.” This was said because a fifth grade girl, upon seeing the book with a girl faerie depicted on the cover I was giving to this boy, remarked, “But he is a BOY!” (meaning, he would not read a Girl Book!)
His reply, my friends, made my day :)
Filed under Field Reports, Views
