Tonight I finished making my lists from which I’ll choose the 2011 Sonderbooks Standouts. Not counting picture books, I read 132 books in 2011. Also not counting books during the year that I read but decided not to review. I’ve got 35 picture books on my list (only my favorite picture books read), so that will also be a challenge to narrow down.
I really do enjoy looking over a year of great reading. I hope to post the Standouts tomorrow.
Happy New Year!
What I like to do, ever since New Year’s Day 2001, is use New Year’s Day to post my list of Sonderbooks Stand-outs, my favorite books I read in the previous year.
I always do wait until the year is OVER to decide which books were my favorites, because, the truth is, I always hope to get a lot more books read than I actually do finish.
The list will not be Newbery or Caldecott or Printz predictions. I think I’ll make another post about those in a couple weeks. These are just the books that I, personally, most enjoyed reading this year. They were not all published in 2011, but my rule is that I had to read them in 2011.
Oh, and today the Cybils announce their short lists. These are great reading, but I’m not even going to peek until I’ve chosen my Sonderbooks Stand-outs, because I don’t want to be influenced.
This year, there’s a catch: I’m way behind. I’m way behind on writing reviews, and I’m way behind on posting reviews.
Now, I have a very good excuse. I had a stroke at the end of July, and wasn’t recovering as quickly as I’d hoped. In fact, as of October, I was feeling worse instead of better. But when I went to the ER about it, they told me I hadn’t had another stroke and just sent me home, so I decided to try to ignore it.
However, a few days before Christmas, I saw the neurologist. He was not impressed with my tales of slight dizziness, which I had to admit was nothing at all as bad as when I actually had the stroke. But then he did a neurological exam and found that my eyes aren’t tracking together if I look up and to the right. He said I probably had another stroke, a mini-stroke this time.
So, it seemed perhaps I shouldn’t ignore my symptoms after all. On Tuesday, I noticed at work that now I was seeing double when I looked up and to the left as well. The neurologists’ office said I should go to the ER for that, though they did a CT scan that didn’t show any problems. I had an MRI & MRA done on Thursday and now need to wait for an appointment to go over the results. And on top of everything else, I’m still feeling a persistent low-grade dizziness and am extra tired. And this all happened right in the middle of trying to get Christmas gifts and cards sent.
What it all boils down to is I haven’t been posting much. I’m reading as much as ever — lying around a lot, so of course! But getting the reviews written and posted is harder. I’ve missed a lot of work, and when I do work, I tend to be too tired to do much at home. So I’m getting more and more behind.
I’m afraid that by the time I post the 2011 Sonderbooks Stand-outs, no one will care any longer. But I’m going to do it anyway! (After all, the fun of having your own website is doing it for your own enjoyment.) Here is my plan:
1. I will make my list. I’ll post it, with links to the reviews that are already up.
2. I’ll post the already-written reviews of stand-outs, probably one category at a time.
3. All the while, writing reviews of the books I haven’t reviewed yet.
4. I’ll post the rest of the reviews as I write them.
Some day, maybe I’ll catch up! I’m probably going to be forced to stop reviewing every book I read, but for now I’m going to at least review the 2011 Stand-outs.
I’ll get back to you soon!
Daughter of the Forest
by Juliet Marillier
Book One of the Sevenwaters Trilogy
TOR Fantasy, New York, 2000 554 pages.
Starred Review
A huge thank-you to my sister Marcy, who gave me this book. I began reading it on the first leg of my trip to ALA Annual Conference 2011, read the first two chapters, and actually somehow left it behind between flights. So as soon as I got home, I ordered a replacement. Now I’ve read the second book as a library copy, but I’ve decided to order both the second and third books to have for my own. I am absolutely sure I will want to reread them again some day.
Daughter of the Forest is incredibly well-written. This is one of those books I love, a fairy tale retelling, but it’s done with a tremendous amount of loving detail, creating an intricate tapestry of a book. The story is told in old Ireland, in the time of the Druids, with Christianity just beginning to come. Sorcha and her six brothers are the children of Lord Colum, the powerful chieftain of Sevenwaters. Sorcha runs a little wild, the youngest of so many brothers. She has a bond with her brother Finbar, so they can speak without words.
Then her father and brothers capture and torture a Briton. Finbar, who is different, not so warlike, takes a bold step to help the Briton escape. The Briton is sheltered in the friar’s house. Can Sorcha, learning skills as a healer, help him survive? Will he be even willing to survive?
But her time helping the Briton is interrupted when her father comes home — with a new wife. This wife has a strange power over him. Sorcha and her brothers are uneasy.
And then the fairy tale I recognize begins. The evil stepmother turns all the brothers into swans. The only way Sorcha can restore them is to knit them all shirts out of nettles. But she must not utter even one sound until the work is done.
I never thought about it before, but there is definitely a novel in that tale! Juliet Marillier brings it to us with rich detail. There are some horrible moments, but you will be completely captivated by Sorcha’s tale. She goes from Ireland to Britain. The Fair Folk get involved. And the romantic hero is one of the most wonderful men I have ever encountered in fiction. He’s so loving, so careful to protect Sorcha.
Here’s a taste of Juliet Marillier’s rich prose, in the first chapter, when Finbar has declared he will not join his father’s military campaigns:
“Why do I remember this so well? Perhaps his displeasure with what we were becoming made Father take the choice he did, and so bring about a series of events more terrible than any of us could have imagined. Certainly, he used our well-being as one of his excuses for bringing her to Sevenwaters. That there was no logic in this was beside the point — he must have known in his heart that Finbar and I were made of strong stuff, already shaped in mind and spirit, if not quite grown, and that expecting us to bend to another will was like trying to alter the course of the tide, or to stop the forest from growing. But he was influenced by forces he was unable to understand. My mother would have recognized them. I often wondered, later, how much she knew of our future. The Sight does not always show what a person wants to see, but maybe she had an idea as she bade her children farewell, what a strange and crooked path their feet would follow.”
A truly magnificent tale.
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/daughter_of_the_forest.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 book given to me by my sister Marcy.
Star Crossed
by Elizabeth C. Bunce
Arthur A. Levine Books (Scholastic), 2010. 359 pages.
Starred Review
2010 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #8 Teen Fantasy Fiction
I so enjoyed Elizabeth Bunce’s first book, A Curse Dark as Gold, when my library didn’t order a copy of Star Crossed as soon as it came out (They do have several copies now.), I ordered myself a copy. I was glad I did, because I’m sure I will read it again, especially since it turns out to be the first book of a series.
The fantasy world of Star Crossed is complicated and complex, but Elizabeth Bunce doesn’t lose the reader or blast us with a data dump. She feeds the information to us gradually and skilfully, stringing us along, making us want to know more. By the time the book is done, you look back at an intricate web of history, magic, relationships, betrayals and loyalties, just wanting to find out what happens next.
The book begins with Digger, a skilled thief, escaping from a heist that has gone bad, trying to escape the Greenmen. Her partner, the man she loves, was captured. Now she needs to get out of the city.
While she’s walking by the river, trying to figure out how to get on a boat and leave the city, she gets a lift with a group of young noblemen and women on a pleasure boat. She pretends to be a lady herself, Celyn Contrare, fleeing from the convent school of the Daughters of Celys.
They take pity on her and get her out of the city. She becomes Merista’s lady’s maid and they go to Meri’s family’s castle to get ready for her kernja-velde. Digger does not have magic herself, but she does have the unusual ability to sense magic, and magic is strong on Meri.
Many guests come to the family’s castle, ending up getting snowed in for the winter. One of them recognizes Digger for the thief she is. He won’t turn her in — as long as she does some stealing for him. Digger gets more and more fond of Meri and her family, but is trapped into spying on them. Can she keep them from getting in trouble? What are they plotting? She finds out more and more secrets that she does not want to reveal.
The intrigue in this book has many layers. There was a historic battle years ago where one side was defeated because of a traitor. There is a missing prince who is out of favor with those in power. There are the Greenmen, vigilant in looking for the forbidden use of magic. There are some surprises in Digger’s background. She gets drawn further and further into the plots until it all erupts into a dramatic, exciting, and satisfying showdown. I found myself immediately rereading the last several chapters, simply to enjoy them again and make sure I saw all the threads weaving beautifully into place.
The best part of the book may have been on the last page: “Digger will return in Liar’s Moon.” I hope I don’t have to wait long!
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/starcrossed.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 book I ordered from Amazon.com.
The Dreamer
by Pam Munoz Ryan
drawings by Peter Sis
Scholastic Press, New York, 2010. 372 pages.
Starred Review
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010: #5 Children’s Fiction
2011 Pura Belpre Author Award
2010 Boston Globe-Horn Book Fiction Honor Book
I loved this book. I had hoped it would be a Newbery Honor Book, but can’t really complain because of the other awards it won. One thing I like about the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award is that they select based on the entire book, words and illustrations together and give the award to both the author and the illustrator, if both contributed to the complete book. In this book, the drawings work beautifully with the text to present a wonderfully poetical story.
This book is a novelization of the childhood of Pablo Neruda, who ended up being a great poet. Pablo Neruda was not his birth name, and we start out the book with a boy named Neftali, whose father thinks he daydreams far too much.
“On a continent of many songs, in a country shaped like the arm of a tall guitarrista, the rain drummed down on the town of Temuco.
“Neftali Reyes sat in his bed, propped up by pillows, and stared at the schoolwork in front of him. His teacher called it simple addition, but it was never simple for him. How he wished the numbers would disappear! He squeezed his eyes closed and then opened them.
“The twos and threes lifted from the page and waved for the others to join them. The fives and sevens sprang upward, and finally, after much prodding, the fours, ones, and sixes came along. But the nines and zeros would not budge, so the others left them. They held hands in a long procession of tiny figures, flew across the room, and escaped through the window crack. Neftali closed the book and smiled.
“He certainly could not be expected to finish his homework with only the lazy zeros and nines lolling on the page.”
Neftali is weak and shy. He stutters. His father is demanding and believes its shameful to spend your time daydreaming or writing.
The style of this book suits the subject. The language is poetical, and inserts some lines from actual poems by Pablo Neruda (with several complete poems at the back). When telling about his daydreams, the text may take on a shape or there may be an imaginative drawing from Peter Sis.
There is a plot, as Neftali learns to be the poet he was born to be, despite his father. But I think daydreamers will most enjoy the languid beauty of this book. It gives a leisurely and lovely look at the imaginative life of a child who notices things. Like me, readers will certainly want to read more of Pablo Neruda’s poetry.
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/dreamer.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 copy I got at ALA Annual Conference.
Casting Spells
by Barbara Bretton
Berkley Books, New York, 2008. 308 pages.
Starred Review
2010 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #6 Fiction
Happy Valentine’s Day! Today I’m appropriately posting the review of a romance, but this one is a paranormal knitting mystery romance! The combination is delightfully original and a whole lot of fun.
Here’s how we meet Chloe Hobbs:
“By the way, I’m Chloe Hobbs, owner of Sticks & Strings, voted the number one knit shop in New England two years running. I don’t know exactly who did the voting, but I owe each of those wonderful knitters some quiviut and a margarita. Blog posts about the magical store in northern Vermont where your yarn never tangles, your sleeves always come out the same length, and you always, always get gauge were popping up on a daily basis, raising both my profile and my bottom line.”
Chloe’s store seems magical because it is. She’s the daughter of a sorceress who fell in love with a human. But her father died in a car crash when she was six years old, and her mother chose to leave this world to be with the man she loved. Chloe inherited several things from her mother including a basket of roving that remained full to overflowing no matter how many hours she spends spinning it into yarn. But she also inherited a responsibility to the town.
“Over three hundred years ago one of my sorcerer ancestors cast a protective charm over the town designed to shield Sugar Maple from harm for as long as one of her line walked the earth and — well, you guessed it. I’m the last descendant of Aerynn, and if you thought your family was on your case to marry and produce offspring, try having an entire town mixing potions, casting runes, and weaving spells designed to hook you up with Mr. Right.”
Unfortunately, the protective spell seems to be weakening. And there’s more than just protection from accidents and crime at stake. Because Sugar Maple “wasn’t the picture-postcard New England town our Chamber of Commerce would have you believe, but a village of vampires, werewolves, elves, faeries, and everything else your parents told you didn’t really exist.” However, Chloe’s mother really came into her powers when she fell in love, so maybe that’s all that Chloe needs.
But then a visiting beautiful stranger dies. The first tourist or nonvillager ever to die within town limits. Aerynn’s spell is definitely waning, because that’s not supposed to happen.
Sugar Maple doesn’t have any police force, since it doesn’t have any crime. So a policeman from Boston, who knew the deceased, goes up to the scene of the crime to investigate.
What follows is funny and quirky and full of surprises. Can the whole town hide the truth from him? And what will happen to the town if the spell fails? What will happen to Chloe?
I must admit, the romance is not exactly subtle. As Chloe begins to have magick, it basically throws her into the guy’s arms. But it is humorous to read about her trying to explain it!
This book is a light-hearted romp through a most imaginative situation. Definitely the best paranormal-romance-knitting-mystery I’ve ever read! And there are knitting tips at the back! How can you go wrong?
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/casting_spells.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.
Feel
The Power of Listening to Your Heart
by Matthew Elliott
Tyndale House Publishers, 2008. 266 pages.
Starred Review
2010 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #3 Other Nonfiction
My home Bible study group leader picked out this book for our group to study for several weeks, and I thought it had some beautifully revolutionary things to say.
I don’t know how many times I’ve heard it preached: “Love is not a feeling. Love is a choice.” Or I’ve heard sermons about the Fact-Faith-Feeling train — that “Feeling” is supposed to be the caboose in our Christian lives. Matthew Elliott says that such teaching is missing out on a full and rich Christian life. God wants us to feel.
Here’s what he says in the first chapter:
“The second thing that has gone terribly wrong is that we have become indoctrinated in the belief that emotions are unreliable, dangerous, and bad. Philosophy, psychology, our scientific culture, and the church have taught us that logic and reason must reign supreme, while feelings are trivialized and seen as something to be suppressed or ignored. Many successful contemporary writers have brainwashed us into believing that we must stifle what we feel in favor of what we think.
“The messages I have read recently in popular inspirational books include the ideas that emotions leave us in a fog and cloud our thinking; the notion that in order to live a godly life, we must control our emotions; and the belief that following our emotions often leads us to sin.
“I’ve heard nationally known speakers assert that anger, sorrow, and jealousy are signs of spiritual weakness; that our feelings cannot be trusted; and that God cares about what we believe, not what we feel.
“These are all myths. None of them are true; none of them hold up to good science; and none of them are from the Bible….
“I have come to believe that our emotions were given to us by God to drive us to our best.
“I have come to believe that emotions are among the most logical and dependable things in our lives.
“I have come to believe that emotions give us a window to see truth like nothing else.
“I have come to believe that the true health of our spiritual lives is measured by how we feel.”
Those surprising assertions (Emotions? Among the most logical and dependable things in our lives? Really?) are all supported convincingly in the pages that follow. I came away with completely new ideas about what constitutes a growing Christian life.
The author spoke from the same kind of Christian background I’d grown up in, teaching that love in the Bible is not really a feeling, but more of a duty. He points out:
“There is no special category for ‘Christian love,’ that agape kind our Christian leaders like to talk about — intellectualizing an emotion into a philosophical ideal. Love, hope, joy — and even hatred — in the Bible are not lofty ideas and concepts; they are feelings and emotions, just as we know them in our own lives and talk about them with our families and friends….
“It occurred to me that our spirituality is all about how we are feeling — whether we are feeling life or are numb to it. If we are not feeling as we should, something is really wrong with our relationship with God.
“Paul takes no time to explain what he means by love and joy and hope and hate and sorrow. He doesn’t try to tell us that joy is not a feeling or that love is just a choice. He speaks in plain language and assumes that emotions are simply recording our feelings — the stuff of life that God has given us. Paul assumes we will know what joy and love feel like, and he exhorts that if we live by God’s standards, there are certain kinds of feelings that will fill our lives.”
There’s so much that’s so good in this book. Most of it, I had not thought of before, but how it rings true! I like this part about obedience and duty:
“One of the things we sometimes get confused is the difference between being duty driven and obedient. God calls us to obedience, but somehow we make that into a rote thing. It’s as if we don’t consider it real obedience unless it feels hard and tough and bad….
“Having positive emotion for doing what we’ve been asked to do makes all the difference in how we obey the command. When we see the reason for it, when we enjoy doing it, or when we want to please the one giving the instruction, we are much more likely to obey, and to obey with energy and enthusiasm….
“As we grow in our faith, we will be driven more and more to obey God’s commands, not because they are things we should do, but because they are what we want to do, and we desire in our deep places to do them. As we learn how good they are for us and those we love, we will see how it is a joy to obey. As we grow closer to God and know more of his great love for us, our desire to please him will grow deeper and wider and all-consuming in us….
“Not only will it be easier to obey, but we will obey more fully with greater passion and results.”
Another thing Matthew Elliott points out which I’d never thought of that way is that, far from being irrational and illogical, our emotions are often ahead of our thoughts in judging a situation correctly.
“Emotions are a complex judgment or evaluation of someone or something in light of the past, present, or future. Hope, for example, is the expectation that something good is going to happen in the future to something or someone we love; whereas joy is felt when something good has happened in the past or the present.
“Emotions can do what a wise counselor does, what a veteran mentor does, or what a spiritual advisor does — help you make right decisions from complex information. Emotions carry truth and wisdom, just as a good friend does….
“To say that emotions are connected to thinking does not mean they always come from conscious, intentional thoughts. Rather, emotions have a wisdom all their own, which is naturally informed by our circumstances, situations, and relationships. They speak to us about truth that we cannot always know rationally or even think thoughts about….
“It’s not uncommon for people to feel fear when they enter their house while it is being robbed, even when they have no direct knowledge that someone else is in the house. They step inside, and all of a sudden they’re afraid. They know something is wrong. This feeling has saved many a person from harm, as they have acted on that fear…. That is the realm in which emotions operate, which can make it difficult to figure out exactly why we are feeling what we feel.
“Our tendency when emotions surface is to decide that we shouldn’t feel them, so we dismiss them, ditching them in the first mental trash can we can find. But our emotions often tell us things that our rational processes cannot get to, things we desperately need to hear.”
I don’t want to write out every great point the author makes in this book. I hope this review has given you a taste of all the rich and revolutionary thoughts found in its pages. Here’s a paragraph that sums up some of the ideas:
“God wants us to be emotionally mature with emotionally full lives. Becoming emotionally mature is not, as many teach, about becoming emotionally controlled. It is about becoming emotionally adept, emotionally wise, and emotionally skilled. It is about having lives that are chock-full of wonder and feeling — and then having the ability and practiced skill to live well and wisely in a richly emotional world.”
I’ll close the review with a line I just love:
“God wants you to soar. He wants a ‘you’ more full of vitality and spirit than you’ve ever imagined.”
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/feel.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 my own copy of the book.
Enchanted Ivy
by Sarah Beth Durst
Margaret K. McElderry Books (Simon & Schuster), New York, 2010. 310 pages.
Starred Review
2010 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #7 Teen Fantasy Fiction
I wonder if admission applications will increase for Princeton now that this book has been published. If I were reading it in high school, I would definitely have put Princeton at the top of my college wish list as a result. I love the author’s statement at the start of the acknowledgements:
“Yes, I went to Princeton. I went because of the trees. Junior year of high school, I walked onto campus, saw the arch of elm trees, saw the massive oaks, and I was sold. Perhaps not the best way to choose a college, but that’s the way it happened. Anyway, that moment changed my life and inspired this book.”
I love the whole premise of an enchantment with a door to a parallel magical world at Princeton. After all, who hasn’t looked at gargoyles and wondered about their secret lives?
The book begins as Lily’s Grandpa is driving her and her mom to Princeton University.
“Normally, Mom avoided car rides altogether, but this wasn’t a normal weekend. It was Princeton Reunions Weekend. Reunions weekend! Lily couldn’t believe Grandpa had offered to take them. He always attended, even in off years like his forty-ninth reunion. It was his “thing,” his once-a-year break from mothering both Lily and Mom. But this year, he’d said that Lily should see her future alma mater.
“Not that she’d even applied yet. She was a junior, three weeks away from her final exams, but Grandpa claimed this place was her destiny. No pressure, though. Yeah, right.”
Grandpa takes her to the Vineyard Club, the most exclusive eating club at Princeton. Grandpa had been a member fifty years ago. The members of the Vineyard Club have been expecting her. They ask her if she’s ready for the Test. If she passes, she is guaranteed admission to Princeton.
“One of the perfect-posture women said, ‘If you fail, you are free to apply with the rest of the applicants. This test is outside the purview of the admissions committee. But if you fail here, you should not expect an invitation to join Vineyard Club. Indeed, you would not be welcome.’
“Success meant her dream come true; failure meant exclusion from this (admittedly nice) clubhouse but still a shot at her dream come true. Yeah, she could totally live with that. No wonder Grandpa was smiling so widely he looked like he might burst. She felt the same expressions spreading across her face. She was smiling so hard that her cheeks ached. She felt as if a hundred birthday presents, including the pony she’d wanted in third grade and the lime green Volkswagen she wanted now, had landed right in front of her. ‘What’s the Ivy Key?’ she asked. ‘What does it look like? What does it open? What do I do to find it? How do I start?’
“At her flood of questions, Mr. Mayfair and several others smiled indulgently.
“‘That’s the test, my dear,’ the man with the book said.”
Lily decides to take a campus tour to get her bearings and maybe learn something about what could be the key, when a boy with orange and black hair (Princeton’s colors) named Tye joins her and says he’s her guard. Then she sees a gargoyle wave at him, and she’s sure it’s rigged. She is NOT going crazy, like her mother. The gargoyle drops a clue.
And after she makes a trip to the library where she discovers something interesting about her father, a monkeylike creature attacks her, but Tye — and some ivy vines — saves her.
I like the scene where she talks to another gargoyle:
“She bent sideways to look underneath the gargoyle for a microphone and speaker. She didn’t see anything. ‘Mr. Ape,’ Lily said in an even voice, ‘are you talking?’ She wasn’t going to let the Old Boys rattle her this time. They’d rigged another gargoyle somehow.
“‘Professor Ape, if you please,’ the gargoyle said in the same soft-as-sand voice. ‘I have tenure.’ He chuckled as if he’d made a joke.
“‘Nice to meet you, Professor Ape,’ she said. ‘So am I talking through a microphone to someone in Vineyard Club, or is this a recording? Are you interactive?’
“The gargoyle sighed. ‘I would appreciate it if we could dispense with all the “you’re joking” and “this can’t be true” and “I must be dreaming” nonsense. Can we simply agree that I’m a magical being from a parallel world and pronounce this lesson done?'”
As Lily’s quest for the key continues, there turns out to be far, far more at stake than just her admission to Princeton. The fate of thousands of people, perhaps the world, is at risk. And she has questions about her father’s death and her mother’s mental problems. Something isn’t right, and it may get much, much worse.
I enjoyed every moment of reading this book, which sadly didn’t last too long, since I kept reading until I finished in the wee hours of the morning. Perhaps it was because I love stories where things that seem magical turn out to truly be magical, where there end up being doors to a parallel, enchanted world. Oh, and I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that a were-tiger boyfriend sounds so much cuddlier than a cold, hard vampire. I mean, if you’re going for a paranormal romance, I don’t think you could do much better than a were-tiger.
I’m afraid there was one small error that glared at me, though not everyone would notice. The clue the gargoyle drops is a library call number — but it’s wrong. Not that it’s the wrong Dewey Decimal number, but college and university libraries rarely use Dewey Decimal numbers. They use LC (Library of Congress) numbers, an entirely different classification system. Of course I noticed right away that it was a call number, but I also noticed right away that it would never work to find a book in a Princeton library. I checked online today and sure enough, Princeton University Library uses the LC classification system. But this was a very small error in a fantastic book.
Now let’s see if I can talk my son into applying to Princeton.
a href=”http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1416986456/sonderbooksco-20″ target=”outside”>Buy from Amazon.com
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/enchanted_ivy.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 book sent to me by the author.
Penny Dreadful
by Laurel Snyder
drawings by Abigail Halpin
Random House, New York, 2010. 304 pages.
Starred Review
2010 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #7 Children’s Fiction
I admit I was predisposed to like Penny Dreadful. I’d met the author at KidLitCon09, right after I’d already posted a review telling how much I enjoyed her earlier book, Any Which Wall. I found her a kindred spirit and was absolutely delighted when, after an exchange on Twitter, she offered to send me a copy of Penny Dreadful.
But predisposed or not, there’s no way I wouldn’t fall for a book where the main character mentions reading all the Anne of Green Gables books on the third page.
Penelope was bored, but she has an unusual perspective on her own boredom:
“This sorry state of affairs was only made more awful by the fact that Penelope had read enough books (they were just about the only thing that Penelope did not find boring) to know that bored little girls who live in mansions are usually spoiled. Penelope did not want to be spoiled. Spoiled girls in books were silly and selfish. Still, Penelope could not help it. Whatever she did, wherever she went, she was horribly, hungrily bored.
“Penelope thought that perhaps things might improve in a few years, if only she could go away to boarding school. In books, boarding school was always very exciting, full of deep secrets and midnight escapades, and sometimes magic. But even if her parents agreed, that was still far off in the future, and in the meantime she could think of no other real solution to her problem.”
I found Penelope’s solution to her boredom particularly delightful. After her father tells her that people who are bored have no Inner Resources, Penelope makes a resolution:
“From that day on, she tried to do things every single day. Since she had little experience with doing, and didn’t know where to begin, she turned to her books for help. Each morning she stood in front of her bookshelf with her eyes squeezed tightly shut and ran a finger down the spines of the bindings, stopping when the mood struck her. Then she’d pull out that particular book, flip to a random page, and do whatever the people in that book happened to be doing.”
The section that follows completely charmed this particular librarian, since it tells about Penelope’s actions inspired by several classic and much-beloved children’s books.
Especially beautiful is Penelope’s action inspired by one of my favorites, Edward Eager’s Magic Or Not? In that book, the children make wishes in a wishing well, and interesting things happen. Edward Eager leaves it up to the reader to decide if it’s magic or coincidence. As a child, I was sure it was magic. As an adult, reading it to my children, I realized that it probably wasn’t, but loved it all the more that it had convinced me as a child that it was.
“Penelope wandered out into the perfectly manicured lawn of her backyard, holding a folded scrap of paper. There was a decorative wishing well of sorts in the middle of the Greys’ lawn, beneath a little red maple tree. The well had been designed by a famous architect, and a picture of it was in a book her mother kept on the coffee table.”
Penelope makes a wish: “I wish something interesting would happen when I least expect it, just like in a book.”
About a week later, her father quits his job in the family firm in order to become a writer, and everything changes for their family. They run out of money. Her tutor and the housekeeper quit. Her parents aren’t used to keeping up with a mansion, and they are not happy to be broke.
“Then Penelope realized something. Wait! she thought. If the well is magic, and this is my fault, then I can fix it. And if I can’t fix it — it isn’t my fault at all!
“Straightaway she ran downstairs, grabbed a pencil and a sheet of paper from the kitchen table, and dashed out into the garden, where she stood by the well. This might not work, she told herself, but it can’t make things any worse. With a brief thought for how best to word her wish, Penelope bent over and scribbled a note.
“I just wish something would happen to make everything better right away!”
And, what do you know, shortly afterward, the doorbell rings. A telegram arrives. Penelope’s mother has inherited her great-great aunt Betty’s house.
The majority of the book happens after the family moves to the house, called the Whippoorwills. It is not at all what they expect. It turns out that Aunt Betty had let several other people add on to the house and live there, rent-free. At first, they are startled and upset that people are living in “their” house. As the summer goes on, Penny gets to know her quirky and interesting neighbors. She finds a friend not where she expects, and then learns how to be a friend.
Of course there are further problems. The back taxes on the property need to be paid, and if not, it will revert to the bank. They may not be able to stay at the Whippoorwills after all.
Of course Penelope, who now goes by Penny, tries to fix the situation, and I love the way things come together in a way that Penny, at least, doesn’t expect.
Altogether this is an absolutely delightful story. You’ve gt summer adventures with friends. You’ve got interesting characters who have conflict but are quite charming. You’ve got a revelation of Aunt Betty’s life story and how she came up with such interesting neighbors and possessions. And you’ve got a main character who reads great books!
This book would be a wonderful choice for a mother-daughter book club. Or a class read-aloud. In fact, on her website, Laurel Snyder has a fabulous offer:
***BRAND NEW PROGRAM! Join the PENNY DREADFUL BOOK CLUB! For 2010, I’m trying out a crazy new idea, a book club. Essentially, it works like this– you and your group of kids (class, library book club, bookstore regulars, homeschool co-op, etc) pick any five of Penny Dreadful’s 20 favorite books to read (Penny is a BIG reader). Contact me and tell me which books you’ve chosen, and I’ll supply my own special study guides for each of them (along with bookmarks and a poster for your library/store/classroom). You simply read and discuss the books you’ve chosen, and then I’ll come and join you for your discussion of the sixth book– Penny Dreadful! I will do this FREE OF CHARGE for groups of ten or more kids within driving distance, or for the cost of transportation/hotel if I must travel. I’m doing this–waiving my fee–because the books on the list are books I love personally, and the idea of kids reading them makes me so happy!
Isn’t that just wonderful? And the books are like the ones I mentioned, great classic children’s books.
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/penny_dreadful.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 book sent to me by the author.
Women Who Run With the Wolves
Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD
Ballantine Books, New York, 1997. First published in 1992. 582 pages.
Starred Review
2010 Sonderbooks Stand-outs: #2 Other Nonfiction
This wonderful book is full of riches. I read it very slowly, and will definitely want to read it many more times to better grasp the wisdom it contains.
For some time, I’ve loved books by Allan B. Chinen, such as Once Upon a Midlife, that take fairy tales from around the world and reveal the psychology behind them and what it means about the passages in a person’s life. Women Who Run With the Wolves is similar, taking fairy tales and stories from all over the world that shine light on women’s lives. Only Clarissa Pinkola Estes is much more poetical and symbolic in applying the fairy tales, so that her own skills as a storyteller shine out even in the explanations.
Here are some thoughts the author shares in the Introduction:
“Healthy wolves and healthy women share certain psychic characteristics: keen sensing, playful spirit, and a heightened capacity for devotion. Wolves and women are reolational by nature, inquiring, possessed of great endurance and strength. They are deeply intuitive, intensely concerned with their young, their mates, and their pack. They are experienced in adapting to constantly changing circumstances; they are fiercely stalwart and very brave.
“Yet both have been hounded, harassed, and falsely imputed to be devouring and devious, overly aggressive, of less value than those who are their detractors. They have been the targets of those who would clean up the wilds as well as the wildish environs of the psyche, extincting the instinctual, and leaving no trace of it behind. The predation of wolves and women by those who misunderstand them is strikingly similar….
“Like a trail through a forest which becomes more and more faint and finally seems to diminish to a nothing, traditional psychological theory too soon runs out for the creative, the gifted, the deep woman. Traditional psychology is often spare or entirely silent about deeper issues important to women: the archetypal, the intuitive, the sexual and cyclical, the ages of women, a woman’s way, a woman’s knowing, her creative fire. This is what has driven my work on the Wild Woman archetype for over two decades.
“A woman’s issues of soul cannot be treated by carving her into a more acceptable form as defined by an unconscious culture, nor can she be bent into a more intellectually acceptable shape by those who claim to be the sole bearers of consciousness. No, that is what has already caused millions of women who began as strong and natural powers to become outsiders in their own cultures. Instead, the goal must be the retrieval and succor of women’s beauteous and natural psychic forms.
“Fairy tales, myths, and stories provide understandings which sharpen our sight so that we can pick out and pick up the path left by the wildish nature. The instruction found in story reassures us that the path has not run out, but still leads women deeper, and more deeply still, into their own knowing. The tracks we all are following are those of the wild and innate instinctual Self….
“Stories are medicine. I have been taken with stories since I heard my first. They have such power; they do not require that we do, be, act anything — we need only listen. The remedies for repair or reclamation of any lost psychic drive are contained in stories. Stories engender the excitement, sadness, questions, longings, and understandings that spontaneously bring the archetype, in this case Wild Woman, back to the surface.
“Stories are embedded with instructions which guide us about the complexities of life. Stories enable us to understand the need for and the ways to raise a submerged archetype. The stories on the following pages are the ones, out of hundreds that I’ve worked with and pored over for decades, and that I believe most clearly express the bounty of the Wild Woman archetype….
“This is a book of women’s stories, held out as markers along the path. They are for you to read and contemplate in order to assist you toward your own natural-won freedom, your caring for self, animals, earth, children, sisters, lovers, and men. I’ll tell you right now, the doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.
“The material in this book was chosen to embolden you. The work is offered as a fortification for those on their way, including those who toil in difficult inner landscapes, as well as those who toil in and for the world. We must strive to allow our souls to grow in their natural ways and to their natural depths.”
This book was a perfect choice for me as I was going through divorce and trying to figure out who I am as a single woman, looking at my life and wanting to create something beautiful. This book was exactly the sort of encouragement and wisdom I needed.
As she says, these stories are to read and contemplate. I highly recommend them, and I am sure I am going to come back to this book many times.
I’ll close with some bits of wisdom from its pages:
“Though fairy tales end after ten pages, our lives do not. We are multi-volume sets. In our lives, even though one episode amounts to a crash and burn, there is always another episode awaiting us and then another. There are always more opportunities to get it right, to fashion our lives in the ways we deserve to have them. Don’t waste your time hating a failure. Failure is a greater teacher than success. Listen, learn, go on. That is what we are doing with this tale. We are listening to its ancient message. We are learning about deteriorative patterns so we can go on with the strength of one who can sense the traps and cages and baits before we are upon them or caught in them.”
“A woman must be careful not to allow over-responsibility (or over-respectability) to steal her necessary creative rests, riffs, and raptures. She simply must put her foot down and say no to half of what she believes she “should” be doing. Art is not meant to be created in stolen moments only.”
“There is a time in our lives, usually in mid-life, when a woman has to make a decision — possibly the most important decision of her future life — and that is, whether to be bitter or not. Women often come to this in their late thirties or early forties. They are at the point where they are full up to their ears with everything and they’ve “had it” and “the last straw has broken the camel’s back” and they’re “pissed off and pooped out.” Their dreams of their twenties may be lying in a crumple. There may be broken hearts, broken marriages, broken promises.
“A body who has lived a long time accumulates debris. It cannot be avoided. But if a woman will return to the instinctual nature instead of sinking into bitterness, she will be revivified, reborn. Wolf pups are born each year. Usually they are these little mewling, sleepy-eyed, dark-furred creatures covered in dirt and straw, but they are immediately awake, playful, and loving, wanting to be close and comforted. They want to play, want to grow. The woman who returns to the instinctual and creative nature will come back to life. She will want to play. She will still want to grow, both wide and deep. But first, there has to be a cleansing.”
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/women_who_run_with_the_wolves.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 my own personal copy.