Review of Drama, by Raina Telgemeier

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Graphic Novel 0

Drama

by Raina Telgemeier

Graphix (Scholastic), 2012. 233 pages.
2013 Stonewall Award Honor Book

I think this light-hearted graphic novel about middle school drama is going to be hugely popular. Raina Telgemeier has already won legions of fans with her graphic memoir about her own middle school experience, Smile.

Callie is in charge of sets for their middle school drama production. This graphic novel conveys all the fun and camaraderie of a group of kids who are into drama. And there are crushes on the wrong people and plenty of drama in the romance department as well.

Toward the start of the book, Callie meets twin boys new to the school and convinces them to get involved in the production. I did have a little trouble keeping them straight, but that’s probably appropriate. Justin, who is gay, is outgoing and auditions for the lead role. Jesse, who is more reserved, signs up for stage crew and ends up being Callie’s good friend. She’d like a bit more, but there are some surprises — and drama — ahead.

This is a quick read, and I don’t think it’s going to sit on the library shelves very much at all. Kids will be snapping this up. I think despite the crushes in the story, boys won’t disdain to read it since it is, after all, a graphic novel. (Am I assigning stereotypes there? I just think this book will have wide appeal.)

goRaina.com
scholastic.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Navigating Early, by Clare Vanderpool

Children's Fiction Review, Historical 2

Navigating Early

by Clare Vanderpool

Delacorte Press, 2013. 306 pages.

Let me say right up front that I don’t review books I don’t like. Navigating Early was a wonderful reading experience.

The book is set shortly after the end of World War II. Jack Baker and his Mom bore up when his Dad had to go to war. But then, at the end of the war, his Mom died in her sleep. Now Jack has been taken far from home in Kansas to boarding school in Maine. His whole world has changed.

Jack is a well-drawn character. The kids he meets at school aren’t intentionally mean; they seem like real kids. Jack often pretends to know about things like rowing that he knows nothing about; that seems realistic, too. Jack meets Early Auden, an autistic boy, before that word was really used. He simply comes across as strange. Early plays records of a different musician on different days of the week. He’s obsessed with the number pi. He’s a demanding coxswain and he knows how to rebuild a boat.

Then it’s fall break, and Jack’s Dad’s shore leave is postponed. Early had already invited him to go on a crazy quest to find the Great Bear of the Appalachian Trail. In a wave of disappointment and loneliness, Jack and Early set out on an epic adventure.

There were quite a few places where I had to stretch my belief a bit. I’ve read Born on a Blue Day, so I could accept that for some people, the digits of pi are like a landscape of colors and shapes. For Early, the digits of pi tell a story. That was a bit of a stretch, but I could believe it.

Then the story Early tells, from the digits of pi, mirrors what happens to the two boys on their quest. That’s a bit of a stretch, too, but I could suspend my disbelief.

The people they met on their quest all seemed pretty eccentric. Nobody asked why they were out in the wilderness on their own. Nobody insisted on taking them back to school. That was a bit of a stretch, but I could accept it.

Lots of different people in the story were dealing with some kind of grief. That was maybe a coincidence, but one that enhanced the story. In fact, the different shades of grief, experienced in the lives of the various characters, was a strength of the book.

What I absolutely could not believe? Well, Early’s obsessed with the number pi, right? Toward the beginning of the book, their math teacher tells them about a man named Professor Douglas Stanton:

He’s a mathematician at Cambridge who is on a quest of his own. He has spent much of his career studying this number and has a theory that, contrary to popular belief, pi is not a never-ending number. That yes, it is an amazing number that has over seven hundred digits currently known, and thousands more that haven’t been calculated yet. But he believes it will, in fact, end.

The fact is, pi was proven in 1761 to be irrational. That means it’s not a matter of “popular belief” that it doesn’t end. It doesn’t end, and mathematicians know it doesn’t end. They have proof. A serious mathematician would never entertain a theory like that with no possibility of it being correct.

It gets worse. At the culmination of the Fall Math Institute at the end of the book, Professor Stanton presents his “proof”:

Professor Douglas Stanton wrote out more than two hundred digits, which he explained, were the most recently calculated numbers of pi. He talked long and loud and wrote lots of symbols and equations on the chalkboard, highlighting the fact that there were no ones in the most recently calculated digits of pi. He explained that, based on this disappearance of the number one, he’d concluded that other numbers would also disappear and that pi would eventually end.

Early ends up refuting this so-called “proof” by showing that the calculations were wrong, and there actually should have been ones in the recently calculated digits.

Okay, this is wrong on many levels. I’ve been told that since pi is infinite, every conceivable sequence can be found among its digits if you go out far enough. There probably is a stretch of 200 digits somewhere that has no ones. And that would not prove anything! And a mathematician would know that it wouldn’t prove anything.

If Early finds an error in a published expansion of pi, great. But that wouldn’t disprove anything, either. The proof that pi is irrational (published in 1761) had nothing to do with its calculated decimal expansion.

Based on the Author’s Note at the end, the author knows that pi is irrational. I simply could not even come close to believing that a respected mathematician would seriously put forth a “proof” or even a conjecture that pi is a rational number. If this had been set in 1700, maybe. Or some alien, medieval-type world. In a historical novel set in 1945? No way.

I’m not sure if I think it’s good or bad that that particular plot point could be completely taken out of the book without any harm to the plot. (And I really don’t think that telling you what happens is a spoiler.)

I am afraid that once I noticed this, it’s bordering on a little obsession for me to point out that it’s incorrect. I suspect it bothers me, with a Master’s in Math, a lot more than it will bother most readers, particularly kids. But that bothers me, too. Mathematicians would never act as this Professor Stanton is portrayed acting, and I feel like it gives mathematicians a bad name. I don’t like kids getting the impression that pi’s irrationality is open to debate or that mathematicians aren’t absolutely certain about it. I would way rather she came up with something mathematicians actually might set out to prove, like the distribution of different digits in the expansion of pi. (How likely is it that a stretch of 200 digits has no ones? Now that’s an interesting question!)

Another question: How much do we hold writers of fiction to the facts? If her presentation of rowing terms were all wrong (I have absolutely no idea if they were or not; I assume they were correct.), would that be considered a flaw in the book? And would I accept the word of an expert who told me it was incorrect? I think this presentation of a mathematician claiming to “prove” pi is a rational number is completely unbelievable (Shall I say “irrational”?) in a book set in 1945. Will those without advanced mathematical training agree with me? Will they take my word for it? I can’t help but think of the much-decorated book The House of the Scorpion, by Nancy Farmer, which had a huge plot point turn on the completely impossible scenario of a clone having the same fingerprints as his “father.” There is absolutely no way that would happen. And how much does a flaw like that affect your opinion of a work of fiction?

Did I mention that the writing is lovely and the characters are well-drawn? Yes, I enjoyed this story. But I was annoyed every time it mentioned the idea that a mathematician thought pi would end. And now I find myself annoyingly obsessed with making sure that people know that WOULD. NOT. HAPPEN!

It’s a good book, though! And, please, tell me what you think. Did this bother you? I’d love to hear from non-mathematically-minded and mathematically-minded alike. Would it not have bothered you if I hadn’t pointed it out? Does it not bother you despite the fact that I pointed it out? I’m really curious if I’m the nutty one here!

randomhouse.com/kids

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/navigating_early.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of The Adventures of Nanny Piggins, by R. A. Spratt

Animal Characters, Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Humorous, Starred Review 0

The Adventures of Nanny Piggins

by R. A. Spratt
illustrated by Dan Santat

Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2010. First published in Australia in 2009. 239 pages.
Starred Review

Move over Mary Poppins! Nanny Piggins is not a nanny who teaches her charges valuable lessons. In fact, the Disclaimer at the front warns you of things to come:

You are about to read a wonderful book. Nanny Piggins is the most amazing pig ever. It has been a privilege to write about her. But before you begin I must (because the publisher has forced me) give you one small warning. . .

Unless you are a pig, do not copy Nanny Piggins’s diet IN ANY WAY.

You see, pigs and humans have very different bodies. Pigs are a different shape (mainly because they eat so much). Plus, Nanny Piggins is an elite athlete so she has a freakishly fast metabolism that can burn a lot of calories.

So please, for the good of your own health, do not try to eat like Nanny Piggins. There is no doubt that chocolate, cake, cookies, tarts, chocolate milk, sticky cream buns, candy, ice cream, lollipops, sherbet lemons, and chocolate chip pancakes are all delicious, but that does not mean you should eat them seven or eight times a day.

Also, you really must eat vegetables, no matter what Nanny Piggins might say to the contrary, or you will get sick.

Yours sincerely,
R. A. Spratt, the author

P.S. The publisher also wants me to mention that you really should not try a lot of the things Nanny Piggins does either. For example, throwing heavy things off roofs. Firstly, because you might give yourself a hernia lugging it up there. But mainly, because if it landed on someone that would be terrible. So please do not copy Nanny Piggins’s behavior (unless you are under the close supervision of a responsible adult pig with advanced circus training).

Yes, Nanny Piggins is a pig. A pig who has left the circus, where she was a flying pig shot out of a cannon. Mr. Green hires her to watch his children because she only charges ten cents an hour. Yes, Nanny Piggins’s behavior is completely outrageous — and therefore tremendous fun to read about. Sensitive parents who aren’t sure their children would fully understand why they do not apply Nanny Piggins’s methods might find this book would make an excellent family read-aloud. (Then the parents can include wise instruction as to why such behavior is not advisable. They can also enjoy the fun along with their kids.)

Here’s an example that made me laugh, from when Mr. Green gives Nanny Piggins money to buy uniforms:

Happily, as it turned out, Nanny Piggins’s idea of a good investment was to buy four tickets to an amusement park. The children had the most wonderful day. They went on all sorts of terrifying rides. On some they were flung high into the air until they were convinced they were going to die. And on others they were spun around and around until they were utterly sick.

In fact, Michael was sick. Fortunately the ride was going at full speed at the time, and the vomit flew cleanly out of his mouth and into the face of the person behind him. So Nanny Piggins did not have to trouble herself with cleaning up his clothes.

“Well done, Michael,” Nanny Piggins complimented him. “With aim like that you could get a job at the circus.”

Here’s the way Chapter Four opens:

It was seven o’clock at night, and Nanny Piggins and the children were happily crouched on the floor of the cellar, holding a cockroach race, when they heard the distinctive harrumph sound of a throat being cleared behind them.

Now, one of the first things Nanny Piggins had taught the children was what to do if someone walks in on you when you are doing something bad. So the children did exactly as they had been trained — they stayed absolutely still and did not say a word, completely ignoring the four cockroaches as they scattered across the floor in front of them. Nanny Piggins made a mental note to recatch hers later because it was a big one with long legs and it would be a shame to let it run wild. Apart from making excellent racers, cockroaches can be tremendously handy for shocking hygenic people and clearing long lines at the deli.

As the author warns us repeatedly, Do not try this at home! But you can certainly enjoy reading about it at home. And if you won’t feed your kids junk food at every meal, where’s the harm in letting them fantasize about a nanny who does? This book is full of silly, over-the-top, good-hearted fun.

raspratt.com
dantat.com
lb-kids.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/nanny_piggins.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Jinx, by Sage Blackwood

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

Jinx

by Sage Blackwood

Harper, 2013. 360 pages.
Starred Review

Jinx is the first book I’ve read in 2013 that’s also published in 2013. (I was catching up reading 2012 books for Capitol Choices the first few weeks of January.) And I like it! I recently read lots and lots of middle grade fantasy for the 2012 Cybils shortlist, and this one stands out from the pack.

Jinx has world-building with faultless, albeit complex, internal logic. (Messed up internal logic is always my pet peeve with fantasy books. This one has no such problems.) Jinx has grown up in the Urwald. (That’s German for “primeval forest.”) Here’s how the book begins:

In the Urwald you grow up fast or not at all. By the time Jinx was six he had learned to live quietly and carefully, squeezed into the spaces left by other people even though the hut he lived in with his stepparents actually belonged to him. He had inherited it after his father died of werewolves and his mother was carried off by elves.

But then a spark from a passing firebird ignited the hut, and within a few minutes it had gone. The people in the clearing built another to replace it, and this new hut was not his. His stepparents, Bergthold and Cottawilda, felt this keenly. Besides, the harvest had been bad that autumn, and the winter would be a hungry one.

This was the sort of situation that made people in the clearing cast a calculating eye upon their surplus children.

With that beginning, you might get the impression the book is darker than it is. Yes, there’s danger pretty much throughout the book, but Jinx is so good-hearted, the overall feeling is much more positive. Jinx’s stepfather does try to abandon him in the Urwald, but he gets picked up and taken in by a wizard named Simon.

I like the complexity of the characters in this book. You’re not quite sure all along who is good and who is bad. And when you figure it out, the good characters still have plenty of flaws, and the bad characters have some good qualities.

I love Jinx’s magic. He can see the shape and color of people’s thoughts. He thinks everyone can do that. He’s also exceptionally good at listening, even to the trees of the Urwald. But he’s good at listening to other people and things, too, and quickly picks up a variety of languages. Simon and his wife are clueless about Jinx’s abilities, because they aren’t nearly so good at listening. I liked that little detail. And Jinx’s seeing Simon’s thoughts gives him good reason to wonder whether Simon is good or bad.

The biggest catch to this book is that it’s the start of a series. Yes, it ends at a good place, but Jinx and his friends are about to start off on an adventure, and that’s likely to be significant. There are some unfinished details we’ll want to find out about. But that’s also a good thing about the book — I’m happy there will be more to come.

This book lays the groundwork. It tells about Jinx growing up in Simon’s house and figuring out how things work. About halfway through the book, when Jinx is 12 years old, he sets off to seek his fortune. He gains two companions and sets off on an ill-conceived adventure. The adventure is ill-conceived, but I can believe the author’s explanation of how Jinx got pulled into it. The rest of the book deals with the consequences.

The big strengths of this book are the fascinating world Sage Blackwood has built (Hmm. Could that be a pseudonym? It’s almost too perfect for writing about the Urwald.) and the complex characters. Besides not knowing who is good or bad, I love the way Sage’s abilities affect his character. His two companions each have a curse on them, and that makes them all the more interesting, as well.

All in all, my 2013 reading year is off to a marvelous start!

harpercollinschildrens.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on an Advance Reader Copy I got at KidLitCon 12.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Three Times Lucky, by Sheila Turnage

Award Winners, Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

Three Times Lucky

by Sheila Turnage

Dial Books for Young Readers, 2012. 312 pages.
Starred Review
2013 Newbery Honor Book

I didn’t read Three Times Lucky until 2013 had started, so it didn’t have a chance to be on my 2012 Sonderbooks Stand-outs. I did read it in time for our library’s first Mock Newbery voting, and Three Times Lucky was our winner. It hadn’t gotten a lot of attention on the Heavy Medal blog, so I was thinking of it as kind of a longshot and was very happy when it achieved Newbery Honor.

Three Times Lucky has so much to like about it: Quirky characters in a Southern small town. A girl without parents who doesn’t know who they are (she was found in a hurricane). Good friends who get into scrapes and adventures. A hurricane and deadly peril. And, oh yes, a murder mystery. With meddlesome kids.

The first paragraph gives you the flavor of the book:

Trouble cruised into Tupelo Landing at exactly seven minutes past noon on Wednesday, the third of June, flashing a gold badge and driving a Chevy Impala the color of dirt. Almost before the dust had settled, Mr. Jesse turned up dead and life in Tupelo Landing turned upside down.

Mo LoBeau was named Moses because she was “taken out of the water.” She and her best friend Dale are opening the town cafe while Miss Lana is gone, but they aren’t allowed to use the stove, “which the Colonel says could be dangerous for someone of my height and temperament.” I like the paragraph where she lists off the day’s specials:

I stood up straight, the way Miss Lana taught me and draped a paper napkin over my arm. “This morning we’re offering a full line of peanut butter entrees,” I said. “We got peanut butter and jelly, peanut butter and raisins, and a delicate peanut butter/peanut butter combination. These come crunchy or smooth, on Wonder Bread, hand-squished flat on the plate or not, as you prefer. The special today is our famous peanut butter and banana sandwich. It comes on Wonder Bread, cut diagonal on the plate, with crust or without. What can I start you with?”

Yes, there are some coincidences. A few details of the plot are maybe a tiny bit of a stretch. But most of all, the book is fun reading. The townsfolk of Tupelo Landing, with all their quirks, come to life and seem real. And besides having a mystery to solve, there are budding romances, Dale’s brother in a big race, and Mo’s sending bottles upriver hoping to find her mother.

This book is a heap of fun, and I’m so glad it’s joining the Newbery canon.

sheilaturnage.com
penguin.com/youngreaders

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There, by Catherynne M. Valente

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There

by Catherynne M. Valente

Feiwel and Friends, New York, 2012. 258 pages.
Starred Review
2012 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #9 Children’s Fiction: Fantasy and Science Fiction

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There is a sequel to The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. A friend of mine calls both of them The Girl With the Very Long Title. I think you can get away without having read the first book to read this one, because September’s adventures continue to be quite episodic, but she does meet many characters she met in her first set of adventures, or their shadows, so you may appreciate it more having read the first book.

It’s been a year since September saved Fairyland. She does miss it terribly, and the experience has made her all the more different from other girls at her school. And what no one seems to notice is that September left her shadow behind in Fairyland.

When September does get to go back, it turns out that her own shadow has gone to Fairyland-Below and become the Hollow Queen, Halloween. What’s more, she’s gradually draining more shadows from Fairyland-Above, and so people there are losing their magic along with their shadows. She meets A-Through-L, her dear wyverary, and her friend Saturday the marid, but they are actually the shadows of her friends and behave quite differently.

Now, I don’t know how much children will enjoy The Girl With the Very Long Title books. It would be a fun one to try out in a family read-aloud at bedtime. They would have to have high tolerance for big words. And the many things in the book that an adult finds funny and clever might not appeal as much to a child, because it is so funny precisely because it mirror’s a child’s logic.

There were many, many clever bits, and with my son away at college, I just have to share them in the review. I don’t think it gives away the plot at all, but shows the fun the author has with the situations.

A Wyvern’s body is different from the body of a young girl’s in several major respects. First, it has wings, which most young girls do not (there are exceptions). Second, it has a very long, thick tail, which some young girls may have, but those who find themselves so lucky keep them well hidden. Let us just say, there is a reason some ladies wore bustles in times gone by! Third, it weighs about as much as a tugboat carrying several horses and at least one boulder. There are girls who weigh that much, but as a rule, they are likely to be frost giants. Do not trouble such folk with asking after the time or why their shoes do not fit so well.

I loved the Physickists September met, students of Quiet Physicks, Queer Physicks, and Questing Physicks:

We seek out Quest-Dense Zones and hop in with both feet. We Experiment. We prove. Mersenne has gone off into the Jargoon Mountains to work on his thesis, investigating the spiritual connection between dragons and maidens. Candella last reported from the bottom of Blackdamp Lake, conducting experiments on free-range treasure. Red Newton wholly devoted himself to the study of magic apples, immortality causing and otherwise, and that means setting up a year-round camp in the Garden of Ascalaphus. . . . It is my dearest hope that one day I shall be the one to discover the GUT — the Grand Unified Tale, the one which will bind together all our Theorems and Laws, leaving out not one Orphan Girl or Youngest Son or Cup of Life and Death. Not one Descent or Ascent, not one Riddle or Puzzle or Trick. One perfect golden map that can guide any soul to its desire and back again.

Avogadra grinned. “Whilst on an expedition to prove the Rule of Three, my honored colleague Black Fermat hypothesized that certain Quest Objects cast a field around them, like a magnet or a planet — an Everyone Knows That Field. This is how they draw in unsuspecting Heroes. When an E.K.T. Field is in effect, everyone within its power will know a good deal about the Object, even if they can’t say where they heard about it or why it’s so deathly important to remember all that dusty old nonsense. They’ll chat about it with any passing stranger like it’s sizzling local gossip. ‘Oh, the Troll-Goblet of Clinkstone Hall? A Forgetful Whale swallowed it, and took it to her pod so they could bring the Whale-Maiden Omoom back to life. Everyone knows that! — the sword Excalibur? Nice lady down by the lake will let you see it for a dime, swing it for a dollar — Everyone knows that!’ Trust me, if you want to know the score, just find out What Everyone Knows, and you’ll be on the scent.

Later, September talks with a Mad Scientist:

A wyrmhole just goes from one place to another place. Dull as a street. A squidhole starts in one place — like my shop here — and goes five or ten other places, depending on how many field mice you happened to get.

And there are bits of wisdom:

For there are two kinds of forgiveness in the world: the one you practice because everything really is all right, and what went before is mended. The other kind of forgiveness you practice because someone needs desperately to be forgiven, or because you need just as badly to forgive them, for a heart can grab hold of old wounds and go sour as milk over them. You, being sharp and clever, will have noticed that I said “practice.” Forgiveness always takes practice to get right, and September was very new at it.

The story is episodic, with wild, random events happening to September one after the other, like a maze with unexpected turns. The author is incredibly imaginative, and I have to admit I enjoyed her little asides. I recommend trying the first book, and if you’re up for more of the same, you’ll definitely want to read on.

fairylandbook.com
mackids.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on an Advance Review Copy I got at an American Library Association conference.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of The Prairie Thief, by Melissa Wiley

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Historical, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

The Prairie Thief

by Melissa Wiley

Margaret K. McElderry Books (Simon & Schuster), 2012. 215 pages.
Starred Review
2012 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #10 Children’s Fiction: Fantasy and Science Fiction

I read this book as one of the many nominees for the Cybils Award in Middle Grade Science Fiction and Fantasy, and I can safely say it was distinctly different from any other of the 151 books we considered. The book is a sweet story, and it’s set on the American prairie among some of the first European settlers, who live isolated and far apart from each other. Louisa’s Pa has been imprisoned for thievery, even though no one — least of all Louisa — thinks he’s the kind of person who’d do that. But many missing objects have been found in his abandoned dugout. What other explanation is there?

When the little girl from the family who’s taken Louisa in sees a little man nearby, it’s not hard for the reader to guess what’s going on (especially combined with the cover illustration). So though the plot may not be surprising, there is a good story here. There are some lovely moments, like when Louisa gets to ride on a pronghorn antelope to speed to her father’s trial.

Yes, the ending has a rather large coincidence. But the story is so nice, it was easy to forgive, especially since the coincidence was told with humor. There are nice imaginative touches along the way, too. Reminiscent of Little House on the Prairie, but with little people, maybe it should be called Little People on the Prairie. I like the imagining how little people would deal with the New World if they decided to stowaway with the Big Folk.

melissawiley.com
KIDS.SimonandSchuster.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/prairie_thief.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, by Catherynne M. Valente

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

by Catherynne M. Valente

Feiwel and Friends, New York, 2011. 247 pages.
Starred Review

I’ve been meaning to read this book for a long time. I finally did so on the excuse that the sequel has come out, and I now I want to read both.

The Girl With the Very Long Title, as my friend calls it, reminds me a bit of Alice in Wonderland, because of the style of the illustrations, combined with one strange thing after another happening to the heroine, September, in seemingly random order.

The narrator has a strong voice. In many cases, the narrator treats the reader as a child, which seems reasonable.

By the time a lady reaches the grand, golden evening of her life, she has accumulated a great number of things. You know this — when you visited your grandmother on the lake that summer you were surprised to see how many portaits of people you didn’t recognize hung on the walls and how many porcelain ducks and copper pans and books and collectible spoons and old mirrors and scrap wood and half-finished knitting and board games and fireplace pokers she had stuffed away in the corners of her house. You couldn’t think what use a person would have for all that junk, why they would keep it around for all this time, slowly fading in the sun and turning the same shade of parchmenty brown. You thought your grandmother was a bit crazy, to have such a collection of glass owls and china sugar bowls.

In several other places, the reader is addressed as a grown-up, which seems perhaps out-of-place, although it certainly applied, in my case:

You and I, being grown-up and having lost our hearts at least twice or thrice along the way, might shut our eyes and cry out, Not that way, child! But as we have said, September was Somewhat Heartless, and felt herself reasonably safe on that road. Children always do.

Still, this book gives an enjoyable trip through Fairyland, which quickly becomes for September about saving her friends. I’m not completely sure I would have liked it when I was a child, but then, I didn’t like Alice in Wonderland then either. And I am still looking forward to seeing what the sequel is like. The book is full of imaginative details and fairyland logic, which isn’t quite the same as real-world logic. There were some statements from the narrator I particularly liked:

Stories have a way of changing faces. They are unruly things, undisciplined, given to delinquency and the throwing of erasers. This is why we must close them up into thick, solid books, so they cannot get out and cause trouble.

“When you are born,” the golem said softly, “your courage is new and clean. You are brave enough for anything: crawling off of staircases, saying your first words without fearing that someone will think you are foolish, putting strange things in your mouth. But as you get older, your courage attracts gunk and crusty things and dirt and fear and knowing how bad things can get and what pain feels like. By the time you’re half-grown, your courage barely moves at all, it’s so grunged up with living. So every once in a while, you have to scrub it up and get the works going or else you’ll never be brave again. Unfortunately, there are not so many facilities in your world that provide the kind of services we do. So most people go around with grimy machinery, when all it would take is a bit of spit and polish to make them paladins once more, bold knights and true.”

That’s the kind of fun observations and magical details you’ll find in this book.

fairylandbook.com
mackids.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Bink and Gollie: Two for One, by Kate Di Camillo and Alison McGhee

Beginning Chapter Books, Children's Fiction Review, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

Bink and Gollie
Two for One

by Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee
illustrated by Tony Fucile

Candlewick Press, 2012. 80 pages.
Starred Review
2013 Capitol Choices List
2012 Sonderbooks Stand-out:
#6 Picture Books

This follow-up to Bink and Gollie is as irresistible as the first. Bink is short and wild. Gollie is tall and sedate. They spend a day together at the fair.

In many ways this book is about failure. Failure at Whack-a-Duck and failure at the Talent Show. But it’s not treated as failure. Not at all. After both events, the girls find happy compensation.

The pictures are the crowning glory of this delightful book. Yes, the words are wonderful, but the pictures bring it to life. Bink’s efforts to throw the ball and Whack a Duck take up an entire dramatic two-page spread. Gollie’s stage fright is communicated without a word as the scene widens to show just how many people are listening to her and the frozen look on her face.

There are not very many words on each page, but there is lots and lots of story on each page. Beginning readers will feel they’ve accomplished something, and skilled readers won’t be bored for a second.

The two girls finish up the day in a fortune teller’s tent.

“I see two friends,” said Madame Prunely.
“Is one of those friends tall?” said Gollie.
“Yes,” said Madame Prunely.

“And is the other friend short?” said Bink.
“Yes,” said Madame Prunely.

“Are they together?” said Gollie.
“Without question,” said Madame Prunely.

“That’s all the future I need to know,” said Bink.
“Come on, Gollie!”

An absolute delight for beginning readers.

binkandgollie.com
candlewick.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/two_for_one.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of The Cabinet of Earths, by Anne Nesbet

Adventure, Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

The Cabinet of Earths

by Anne Nesbet

Harper, 2012. 260 pages.
Starred Review
2012 Sonderbooks Stand-out:
#2 Children’s Fiction: Fantasy and Science Fiction

It’s hard not to like a children’s fantasy tale set in Paris. (Okay, it’s hard for me not to like any book set in Paris.) Now, Maya, the main character, is not happy to be in Paris, and I like the way they explain it, not in a feel-sorry-for-herself way:

Her mother had a saying for bad days: Life is full of lessons, and the grades aren’t fair. By which she might as well have said, Sometimes your mother gets sick — really sick, like having to go through chemo and losing all her hair and most of her get-up-and-go — and you have to be a very good sport. Not just for a day or a summer, but for years. And here are the lessons Maya had learned about trying to be always, always a good sport:
1. it’s exhausting; and
2. nobody notices; and
3. it doesn’t really work very well, anyway.

After Maya’s mother is recovering from chemo, she encourages Maya’s dad to accept a fellowship he’s been offered to move the whole family to Paris for one year. Maya’s mom has a cousin in Paris. Maya’s little brother is annoyingly happy with the whole thing, and makes French-speaking friends at his new school almost instantly.

But there are some strange things happening in Paris. The Society of Philosophical Chemistry that gave her dad the fellowship has some mysteries. Its director is a distant relation. He’s young and handsome, and he seems awfully eager to meet Maya and her brother James. For years, children have gone missing from that section of Paris. Then there’s Cousin Louise, who is strangely invisible and unmemorable. She has to ask Maya to get even a waiter’s attention.

She was strangely hard to see. No color to her, somehow, just an oddly muted effect, as if there were a curtain of frosted glass between Maya’s eyes and her. Or a kind of haze in the air, almost. Just an ordinary sort of woman, but too vague to be properly ordinary, because ordinary ordinary people become more vivid when you pay attention to them, and this woman — well, you couldn’t quite focus on her, somehow.

All the mysteries seem to be focused around an amazing and beautiful old cabinet filled with bottles of earth that is in the possession of another distant relation of theirs — an eccentric old man who never leaves his home.

The mysteries and the adventure and the danger are woven together skillfully. Maya has to figure out her part in all these secrets, and then try to avert disaster.

I had one teeny-tiny complaint: I didn’t think that James talked like a five-year-old. But that’s minor, and I was able to adjust my image of him when the author mentioned his age. Perhaps his annoying charisma that makes everyone love him also made him a precocious conversationalist.

And like I said, that complaint was extremely minor. Overall, this book is a highly unusual magical adventure tale. We’ve got a modern child up against sinister forces in an unfamiliar environment and a mystery to solve before it’s too late. And it’s all set in Paris! Win-win!

annenesbet.com
harpercollinschildrens.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/cabinet_of_earths.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!