Review of Odd and the Frost Giants, by Neil Gaiman

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Stand-outs, Starred Review 2

Odd and the Frost Giants

by Neil Gaiman

with illustrations by Brett Helquist

Harper, 2009. 117 pages.
Starred Review.
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010: #4 Children’s Fantasy and Science Fiction

Odd and the Frost Giants would be a delightful choice to read aloud to children who are just ready to listen to chapter books. The book is a short original fairy tale, upbeat and filled with drama and humor, telling how a boy who is outcast and lame rescues Odin, Thor, and Loki, and saves his village from endless winter.

Odd had a lucky name, meaning the tip of a blade, but he wasn’t a very lucky boy. His father died when he was ten, and soon after Odd had an accident that lamed him. Then his mother married a man who didn’t like Odd, and that year winter lingered and lingered.

When Odd finally gets upset, he steals a side of salmon and flees with a limp through the snow back to his father’s old cabin. There his adventures begin when a fox scratches on the door and beckons Odd to follow. The fox brings him to a huge bear trapped in a pine tree, with an eagle circling overhead.

Odd rescues the bear and takes the three to his cabin, thinking himself crazy. But that night he wakes when he hears the three arguing. I like the scene when he confronts them:

“We weren’t arguing,” said the bear. “Because we can’t talk.” Then it said, “Oops.”

The fox and the eagle glared at the bear, who put a paw over its eyes and looked ashamed of itself.

Odd sighed. “Which one of you wants to explain what’s going on?” he said.

“Nothing’s going on,” said the fox brightly. “Just a few talking animals. Nothing to worry about. Happens every day. We’ll be out of your hair first thing in the morning.”

The eagle fixed Odd with its one good eye. Then it turned to the fox. “Tell!”

The fox shifted uncomfortably. “Why me?”

“Oh,” said the bear, “I don’t know. Possibly because it’s all your fault?”

It turns out that the three are Thor, Odin, and Loki, cast out of their city of Asgard and turned into beasts by the brother of the Frost Giant who built an impregnable wall around the city. Only Odd, with his cleverness and irritating cheerfulness, is able to save the day.

A thoroughly fun and entertaining story that the whole family will enjoy.

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Review of Once a Princess, by Sherwood Smith

Fantasy, Stand-outs, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 2

Once a Princess

Sasharia en Garde! Book One

by Sherwood Smith

Samhain Publishing, 2009. 278 pages.
Starred Review
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010: #7 Fantasy Teen Fiction

I read this wonderful swashbuckling tale on the flight to Los Angeles for Christmas, and was very upset with myself that I hadn’t brought along Book Two. (Though that’s the first book I’ve read in the New Year.)

The book begins in a January Los Angeles heat wave, but doesn’t stay there long. Sasha was born in another world, and now people from that world are looking for her.

Long ago, her father, a prince of Khanerenth, had come to our world and romanced Sasha’s mother. He married her and brought her back to his world, but when King Canardan took over the throne, things got dangerous for their family. Sasha and her mother got sent back to our world for their own protection, and now Sasha is an adult, still not knowing if her father is alive or dead.

When a young man disguised as a lawyer tricks her and transports her back to Khanerenth, they run right into a group of King Canardan’s guards. Fortunately, a mysterious pirate helps them fight their way out, and Sasha herself has been trained all her life for fighting.

As they continue, everyone has their own agenda, and Sasha is the only one with the spell that can release her father — if he’s still alive. Meanwhile, her mother, Princess Ataniel in Khanerenth, comes after Sasha but gets entangled with the king.

The evil war commander knows she is there and wants to find her to kill her father. Who can Sasha trust? The mages who forced her through the Worldgate? The handsome pirate who won’t even reveal his real name? And what about the useless prince, more interested in clothes and women than running a kingdom?

This tale is full of action and adventure, intrigue and romance. The story really isn’t complete with the first book, though, and you will definitely want to read the satisfying conclusion, Twice a Prince, as soon as possible.

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Review of Lips Touch: Three Times, by Laini Taylor

Fantasy, Short Stories, Stand-outs, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

lips_touchLips Touch

Three Times

by Laini Taylor

with illustrations by Jim Di Bartolo

Arthur A. Levine Books (Scholastic), 2009. 265 pages.
National Book Award Finalist, 2009.
Starred Review
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010: #8 Fantasy Teen Fiction

Laini Taylor is an amazing writer. Her imagination is extraordinary, as she here takes off from different mythologies to create three amazing worlds.

Lips Touch: Three Times is a collection of three stories, all of which involve a kiss in some way. All also involve something fantastic and haunting. Before each story is a sequence of pictures by Jim Di Bartolo showing something that happened before the story began.

The first story, “Goblin Fruit,” is about wanting. The beginning gives you a clue how entrancing these stories are:

“There is a certain kind of girl the goblins crave. You could walk across a high school campus and point them out: not her, not her, her. The pert, lovely ones with butterfly tattoos in secret places, sitting on their boyfriends’ laps? No, not them. The girls watching the lovely ones sitting on their boyfriends’ laps? Yes.

“Them.

“The goblins want girls who dream so hard about being pretty their yearning leaves a palpable trail, a scent goblins can follow like sharks on a soft bloom of blood. The girls with hungry eyes who pray each night to wake up as someone else. Urgent, unkissed, wishful girls.

“Like Kizzy.”

The second story, “Spicy Little Curses Such as These,” takes us into the depths of Hell, where an Englishwoman barters for lives. She’s allowed to save all the children in a village if she will curse a newborn little girl. The girl will have the most beautiful voice ever to slip from human lips, but anyone who hears it will immediately fall down dead.

Anamique gets along, not challenging the curse, until she falls in love. The consequences of her love and her first kiss are surprising, perhaps not what the demon expected.

The third story, “Hatchling,” also draws you in with the first paragraph:

“Six days before Esme’s fourteenth birthday, her left eye turned from brown to blue. It happened in the night. She went to sleep with brown eyes, and when she woke at dawn to the howling of wolves, her left eye was blue. She had just slipped out of bed when she noticed it. She was headed to the window to look for the wolves — wolves in London, of all impossible things! But she didn’t make it to the window. Her eye flashed at her in the mirror, pale as the wink of a ghost, and she forgot all about the wolves and just stared at herself.”

This story develops an intricate mythology, telling of the soulless Druj, who can take the shapes of animals or humans, but always have pale blue eyes. They like to inhabit humans, and Esme’s mother has a history with them, a history about which Esme is going to learn much more.

In this book, you’ll be drawn into three worlds, left thinking about them long after.

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Review of Empire of Ivory, by Naomi Novik

Adventure, Alternate History, Audiobooks, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

empire_of_ivoryEmpire of Ivory

by Naomi Novik

Read by Simon Vance

Random House Audio, 2007. 11 hours, 7 minutes on 10 compact discs.
Starred Review

Ah, the fourth book about Temeraire, the celestial dragon who fights with his captain William Lawrence in England’s Aerial Corps against Napoleon’s forces!

You definitely need to read these books in order. By this time, I am wholly caught up in the saga. Although Book Three, Black Powder War did not end with a cliffhanger, Empire of Ivory begins in the thick of things as if it did. It turns out that the expedition that ended the previous book was not as simple a solution as we thought it would be, and this book begins in the middle of a struggle to carry it out.

When Will Lawrence does get safely to England, he learns that the dragons of England are sick. However, it turns out that Temeraire may be able to find a cure in Africa. Along the way, we see the repercussions of the slave trade in a world where the natives of the African interior have dragons of their own. There’s all kinds of danger and ingenuity and narrow escapes.

I’ve been listening to these books on my commute to work, thankful that I moved further away! Empire of Ivory does end on a cliffhanger, so I checked out the next book the very same day I finished it, and am now eagerly looking forward to my next day’s commute. I have also gotten hooked on Simon Vance’s reading style, complete with accents, which is just as well. I’m sure I’d stay up all night reading the next book if I was enjoying the print version. Listening slows me down in a thoroughly enjoyable way.

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Review of Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, by Grace Lin

Children's Fiction Review, Fairy Tale Variant, Fantasy, Readalouds, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

where_the_mountain_meets_the_moonWhere the Mountain Meets the Moon

by Grace Lin

Little, Brown and Company Books for Young Readers, New York, 2009. 282 pages.
Starred Review
2010 Newbery Honor Book
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010: #5 Children’s Fantasy and Science Fiction

“Far away from here, following the Jade River, there was once a black mountain that cut into the sky like a jagged piece of rough metal. The villagers called it Fruitless Mountain because nothing grew on it and birds and animals did not rest there.”

Minli lives in this village with her Ma and Ba. They are poor, like the others in the village, but Minli is different.

“What kept Minli from becoming dull and brown like the rest of the village were the stories her father told her every night at dinner. She glowed with such wonder and excitement that even Ma would smile, though she would shake her head at the same time. Ba seemed to drop his gray and work weariness — his black eyes sparkled like raindrops in the sun when he began a story.”

However, spurred by stories, and a magical goldfish, Minli sets off on a quest to ask the Old Man of the Moon how to change their fortune.

This book is a wonderful quest tale, with stories woven throughout, all having the feel of Chinese classic tales. The book design is wonderful, with a small picture for each chapter, full color illustrations periodically, and a change in font whenever a separate story is told.

The stories Minli hears all tie together, helping her on her quest. She meets friends along the way, including a dragon who can’t fly, and must outwit some monkeys and get past an evil tiger. The story itself is simple and satisfying, but also intriguing.

The book reminded me very much of The Wizard of Oz, and I would love to read it to children who are just old enough to listen to a book with chapters. Like The Wizard of Oz, the quest leads our heroine back to those who love her, and everybody ends up happy, having learned their lessons well. Minli does face dangers, but none too horribly frightening.

As much as this book would be suitable for young children, I found it delightful reading myself. I liked the way Minli’s adventures tied in with the tales that were inserted. I’ve always loved fairy tales, and this book offered many original tales, all tied together in the quest of a delightful little girl with plenty of pluck.

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Review of A Wrinkle in Time Audiobook, Performed by Madeleine L’Engle

Audiobooks, Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Old Favorites, Science Fiction, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

wrinkle_in_time_audioA Wrinkle in Time

by Madeleine L’Engle

Performance by the Author

Listening Library (Random House), An Unabridged Production on 5 compact discs, 5 hours, 17 minutes.
Text copyright 1962, performance copyright 1993 Tesser Tracks, Inc.
Newbery Medal Winner 1963.
Starred Review
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010: Wonderful Rereads

In the online Newbery Medal class I took, we were all asked what was our favorite Newbery Medal winner, and no book was mentioned more than Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. (For me, it’s second only to The Hero and the Crown.) Imagine my delight as I was taking the class when I discovered that our library had a version of the book on CD read by the author herself!

Madeleine L’Engle spent some time in the theater, and she’s not a bad reader at all, besides knowing how she meant certain things to be pronounced. I wrote a review of A Wrinkle in Time way back when I first started writing Sonderbooks, in August 2001, in only my third “issue.” I find it amusing that I complained that it was hard to read it aloud because I couldn’t figure out how to read Mrs Which. Because when I listened to this production, and Mrs Which’s voice was done with a reverberating echo, I immediately thought, “Oh! That’s how she meant it to be read!” (I also thought it was a little unfair, because you can’t add that when you read it aloud to your own kids without special equipment!)

Listening to Madeleine L’Engle read the book herself was like hearing a friend coming back from the grave to tell a story, and a warm and loving story. Madeleine expresses all Meg’s peevishness in her voice. She’s an imperfect, flawed kid — but she saves the day.

Listening to A Wrinkle in Time inspired me afresh. I may have to purchase my own copy and make a new tradition of not only reading A Wrinkle in Time every few years, as I used to do, but now listening to it every few years, read to me by Madeleine L’Engle herself.

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Review of The Storm in the Barn, by Matt Phelan

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Graphic Novel, Historical, Starred Review 0

storm_in_the_barnThe Storm in the Barn

by Matt Phelan

Candlewick Press, 2009. 201 pages.
Starred Review.

The Storm in the Barn, like L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, is a uniquely American fairy tale, but this one is written in the form of a graphic novel.

Given the setting of the Dust Bowl, this book shows us poor dejected Jack Clark, a kid who’s eleven years old and hasn’t ever seen rain since he was seven. The doctor thinks he may have dust dementia, as his sister has dust pneumonia.

Jack isn’t sure himself. Is it dust dementia, or is he really seeing an evil man made out of a thunderstorm, with lightning in his bag, a man who is hiding in the old abandoned barn and causing all their troubles? If Jack can release the lightning, can he save the country?

The images in this book are haunting and surreal. They will leave the reader wanting to know more about this bit of American history. I like the way the author weaves in Jack’s sister reading from Baum’s Oz books, since telling American fairy tales was exactly what Baum also tried to do, along with Jack tales from Europe that fit right in with Jack’s own story.

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Review of The Hero and the Crown, by Robin McKinley

Fantasy, Old Favorites, Stand-outs, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

hero_and_the_crownThe Hero and the Crown

by Robin McKinley

Greenwillow Books, New York, 1984. 246 pages.
1985 Newbery Medal Winner
Starred Review
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010: Wonderful Rereads

Naturally, taking a class on the Newbery Medal was the perfect excuse to reread my all-time favorite Newbery Medal winner, The Hero and the Crown. I’ve already posted a review of my favorite Newbery Honor Book, The Blue Sword, which, no coincidence, is also by Robin McKinley.

I was a college student when The Hero and the Crown was written, and I’m not sure when I first discovered it, but now it’s one of those books I simply have to revisit every few years. Reading it again this time, I happened to have a persistent headache, but, my goodness, this book makes me feel ready to go out and slay my own dragons.

Technically, The Hero and the Crown is a prequel to The Blue Sword, since it was written second but the events in the story take place before those of The Blue Sword. Nowadays, they would call it a “Companion Novel,” because really the order doesn’t matter. I happened to read The Hero and the Crown first myself, and that worked fine. All I know is this: It doesn’t matter in which order you read them, just be sure that you read them!

If you like fantasy novels even the slightest bit, with these two books Robin McKinley established herself as the queen of the adventure heroine fantasy genre.

Aerin has always known she’s a misfit of a princess. Her mother was a witchwoman who enchanted the king, and Aerin has never shown any sign of manifesting the Gift for magic that all proper royals have.

Alas, the kingdom of Damar is having plenty of trouble, which is only to be expected since the loss of the Hero’s Crown.

Then her cousin Galanna goads Aerin into eating a Surka leaf — a plant that should manifest her Gift, if she had any. Aerin, instead, gets horribly ill. While recovering and trying to stay out of everyone’s way, she befriends her father’s old wounded warhorse, Talat. In her reading, she learns about an old potion that protects against dragonfire. Through persistent experiments, she perfects the formula for the ointment.

Now Aerin the witchwoman’s daughter is ready to make herself useful. With old broken-down Talat she begins fighting off the nasty vermin dragons that were out plaguing the villages.

But then, as her father is leaving to settle an uprising, a messenger comes bearing dread news.

“The Black Dragon has come…. Maur, who has not been seen for generations, the last of the great dragons, great as a mountain. Maur has awakened.”

This is the first tremendous challenge Aerin attempts and conquers, armed with her persistence and sheer determination.

The Hero and the Crown is one of the great girl-power novels of all time, along with magic and dragons and saving a kingdom and changing from a misfit to a true heroine. Fantasy lovers, like me, will come back to it again and again.

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Review of Fire, by Robin McKinley and Peter Dickinson

Fantasy, Short Stories, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

fire_talesFire

Tales of Elemental Spirits

by Robin McKinley and Peter Dickinson

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2009. 297 pages.
Starred Review

I found it amusing that the two books I was most eager to read as soon as I finished the assigned reading for my Newbery class were both titled Fire. I confess that even though Robin McKinley is one of my very favorite authors, I read Kristin Cashore’s Fire first, because I generally find complete novels more compelling than short stories.

This collection of five tales, with two by Robin McKinley and three by her husband Peter Dickinson, is truly wonderful. The theme is fire, and we have tales of a phoenix, a hellhound, a fireworm, a salamander, and, of course, a dragon.

I think my favorite was Robin McKinley’s story about a girl with a compassion for animals who takes on a scrawny dog even though he his eyes are rimmed with fire. Her compassion is rewarded when the uncanny dog takes on the hosts of hell for her.

None of the stories is weak. In “Phoenix,” by Peter Dickinson, Ellie learns what happens to someone who befriends a phoenix. In “First Flight,” Robin McKinley quickly develops a world where dragons fly through Firespace with their third eye. A boy and his humble Foogit help their brother’s dragon, who has been injured and has only two eyes.

Of course, my only complaint is that I’d enjoy spending more time in each of these worlds and with all of these characters. Each story contains the seed for a delightful book.

For a quick jaunt into five magical worlds, Fire delivers five memorable experiences. Definitely up to the standards of these two outstanding writers.

“I think that it’s the glitter of dragon eyes that’s the origin of all those stories about the beds of jewels that wild dragons are supposed to have made for themselves back in the days when dragons were wild, and used to eat children when they couldn’t find any sheep. Where all those jewels are supposed to have come from was always beyond me; even if you put all the kings and emperors and enchanters (good and evil) together and stripped them of everything they had, I still don’t think you’d get more than about one jewel-bed for one medium-large dragon out of it. But you see the glitter of the eyes and you do think of jewels. Nothing else comes close — not fire, not stars, not anything. Of course I, and most of the other listeners to fairy tales, have never seen more than the mayor’s beryl or topaz or whatever the local badge of office is, but we can all dream. When you see a dragon’s eyes up close — if you’re lucky enough to see a dragon’s eyes up close — you don’t have to dream.”

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Review of Fire, by Kristin Cashore

Adventure, Fantasy, Romance, Stand-outs, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

fireFire

by Kristin Cashore

Dial Books, 2009. 461 pages.
Starred Review.
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010: #2 Fantasy Teen Fiction

Fire is a “companion novel” to the powerful book Graceling. I don’t think it matters which book you read first, but if you read one, you will definitely want to read the other. The books are set in the same world, but the kingdoms of one book are set apart by impassable mountains from the kingdoms of the other. The one thing they have in common is a villain, and he is sinister enough whether you know what his power is or not.

The Kingdom of the Dells does not have Gracelings. Instead, they have monsters — both animal and human.

In the Dells lived colorful, astonishing creatures that the Dellian people called monsters. It was their unusual coloration that identified them as monsters, because in every other physical particular they were like normal Dellian animals. They had the shape of Dellian horses, Dellian turtles, mountain lions, raptors, dragonflies, bears; but they were ranges of fuchsia, turquoise, bronze, iridescent green. A dappled gray horse in the Dells was a horse. A sunset orange horse was a monster.

Larch didn’t understand these monsters. The mouse monsters, the fly and squirrel and fish and sparrow monsters, were harmless; but the bigger monsters, the man-eating monsters, were terribly dangerous, more so than their animal counterparts. They craved human flesh, and for the flesh of other monsters they were positively frantic….

He heard there were one or two monsters of a human shape in the Dells, with brightly colored hair, but he never saw them. It was for the best, because Larch could never remember if the human monsters were friendly or not, and against monsters in general he had no defense. They were too beautiful. Their beauty was so extreme that whenever Larch came face-to-face with one of them, his mind emptied and his body froze, and Immiker and his friends had to defend him.

“It’s what they do, Father,” Immiker explained to him, over and over. “It’s part of their monster power. They stun you with their beauty, and then they overwhelm your mind and make you stupid. You must learn to guard your mind against them, as I have.”

Larch had no doubt Immiker was right, but still he didn’t understand. “What a horrifying notion,” he said. “A creature with the power to take over one’s mind.”

Fire is such a monster. But she’s determined not to use her mind powers on people against their will. She’s determined not to be as monstrous as her father was.

However, she can’t help her overwhelming beauty. She can cover her hair; she can try to hide from the raptor monsters that thirst for her blood; but she can’t change who she is. People are powerfully attracted to her, but they also hate her for it.

Then a stranger comes to their land and shoots Fire by accident, and he in turn is executed by an archer with prodigious skill. The kingdom is at war, so Fire and her boyfriend Lord Archer head toward the queen mother’s stronghold to find out if the strangers are coming from the rebellious lords.

One thing leads to another, and the royal family asks Fire to come to the King’s City to interrogate another stranger. Fire doesn’t want to use her powers against people, but what if the kingdom is at stake? Meanwhile, the king can’t resist her beauty and asks her every night to marry him. His brother is far more restrained, so why is Fire dismayed to see how kind he is?

Fire is a powerful tale of adventure and romance about a young woman who is too beautiful for her own good.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Kristin Cashore has built a world that completely draws you in, just as she did with Graceling. She quickly establishes the “rules” of life in this other world, and gets you mulling along with Fire as to what that means about who she is and what she can be and do.

I was a little dismayed by all the casual sex in a young adult novel. It’s no different than our society today, I suppose, but I found it kind of sad that it’s just taken for granted. There are plenty of illegitimate births, but not too many other repercussions; it’s just treated as the natural way of things, and I found that a little sad. Fire’s boyfriend at the beginning sleeps with plenty of other women, and I suppose that makes you less sorry for him when Fire finds true love elsewhere. Call me a romantic, but I would have been happier for Fire if she had waited a bit for that true love. And the other women are surprisingly calm to find out about each other, too, I might add.

The book isn’t graphic about the sex, but the fact that it’s going on is no secret. As I say, it’s no different from our own culture any more, but ten years ago, I think you would have only seen this sort of thing in a book for adults, not one for teens.

Anyway, the book gives you a wonderful tale of adventure and magic and romance. But I don’t think of it as a children’s book.

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