Review of Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice

Award Winners, Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

Claudette Colvin

Twice Toward Justice

by Philip Hoose

Melanie Kroupa Books (Farrar Straus Giroux), New York, 2009. 133 pages.
2009 National Book Award Winner
2010 Newbery Honor Book
2010 Sibert Honor Book
2010 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Honor Book
Starred Review
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010: #1 Children’s Nonfiction

I always thought that Rosa Parks was the first black woman to refuse to give up her seat on segregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama. However, nine months earlier, a high school junior named Claudette Colvin “had been arrested, dragged backwards off the bus by police, handcuffed, and jailed for refusing to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger.”

Philip Hoose did extensive research, and had many interviews with Claudette Colvin herself. Here she describes what it was like:

“One of them said to the driver in a very angry tone, ‘Who is it?’ The motorman pointed at me. I heard him say, ‘That’s nothing new . . . I’ve had trouble with that “thing” before.’ He called me a ‘thing.’ They came to me and stood over me and one said, ‘Aren’t you going to get up?’ I said, ‘No, sir.’ He shouted ‘Get up’ again. I started crying, but I felt even more defiant. I kept saying over and over, in my high-pitched voice, ‘It’s my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. I paid my fare, it’s my constitutional right!’ I knew I was talking back to a white policeman, but I had had enough.

“One cop grabbed one of my hands and his partner grabbed the other and they pulled me straight up out of my seat. My books went flying everywhere. I went limp as a baby — I was too smart to fight back. They started dragging me backwards off the bus. One of them kicked me. I might have scratched one of them because I had long nails, but I sure didn’t fight back. I kept screaming over and over, ‘It’s my constitutional right!’ I wasn’t shouting anything profance — I never swore, not then, not ever. I was shouting out my rights.

“It just killed me to leave the bus. I hated to give that white woman my seat when so many black people were standing. I was crying hard. The cops put me in the back of a police car and shut the door. They stood outside and talked to each other for a minute, and then one came back and told me to stick my hands out the open window. He handcuffed me and then pulled the door open and jumped in the backseat with me. I put my knees together and crossed my hands over my lap and started praying.”

After the incident, reactions were mixed:
“Opinion at Booker T. Washington was sharply divided between those who admired Claudette’s courage and those who thought she got what she deserved for making things harder for everyone. Some said it was about time someone stood up. Others told her that if she didn’t like the way things were in the South, she should go up North. Still others couldn’t make up their minds: no one they knew had ever done anything like this before.

“‘A few of the teachers like Miss Nesbitt embraced me,’ Claudette recalls. ‘They kept saying, “You were so brave.” But other teachers seemed uncomfortable. Some parents seemed uncomfortable, too. I think they knew they should have done what I did long before. They were embarrassed that it took a teenager to do it.'”

After Claudette was convicted of violating the segregation law, disturbing the peace, and ‘assaulting’ the policemen, things got even worse. She says,

“Now I was a criminal. Now I would have a police record whenever I went to get a job, or when I tried to go to college. Yes, I was free on probation, but I would have to watch my step everywhere I went for at least a year. Anyone who didn’t like me could get me in trouble. On top of that I hadn’t done anything wrong. Not everyone knew the bus rule that said they couldn’t make you get up and stand if there was no seat available for you to go to — but I did. When the driver told me to go back, there was no other seat. I hadn’t broken the law. And assaulting a police officer? I probably wouldn’t have lived for very long if I had assaulted those officers.

“When I got back to school, more and more students seemed to turn against me. Everywhere I went people pointed at me and whispered. Some kids would snicker when they saw me coming down the hall. ‘It’s my constitutional right! It’s my constitutional right!’ I had taken a stand for my people. I had stood up for our rights. I hadn’t expected to become a hero, but I sure didn’t expect this.

“I cried a lot, and people saw me cry. They kept saying I was ’emotional.’ Well, who wouldn’t be emotional after something like that? Tell me, who wouldn’t cry?”

Not long after, Claudette met an older man who seemed to be a friend, but took advantage of her vulnerability. She got pregnant out of wedlock. So she wasn’t seen as a suitable role model for the movement to stop segregation. Seven months later, another teenager, Mary Louise Smith was also arrested for refusing to give up her seat, but she, too, was not seen as someone who could serve as the public face of a mass bus protest.

Eventually, they did find a suitable person in Rosa Parks. The bus boycott started. The boycott did not end until the case Browder vs. Gale, where four black women sued the city of Montgomery and the state of Alabama, saying that bus segregation was unconstitutional. One of those plaintiffs in the suit was Claudette Colvin, and her testimony was key in getting a positive verdict. Not until the verdict was upheld in the Supreme Court did the segregation on the buses end.

This book was especially good to read after reading The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, since it also dealt with race relations in the South at that time. Philip Hoose researched the events so well, and presents clearly all the drama of the situation, along with the emotions of the people involved. How wonderful that people can finally hear the story of a teenage girl who stood up — no, sat down — for what’s right.

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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 The Lion and the Mouse, by Jerry Pinkney

Animal Characters, Award Winners, Folk Tales, Picture Book Review, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

The Lion and the Mouse

by Jerry Pinkney

Little, Brown and Company Books for Young Readers, New York, 2009. 36 pages.
Starred Review
2010 Caldecott Medal Winner
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010: #6 Picture Books

This stunning picture book is my pick for the 2010 Caldecott Medal. The amazingly detailed paintings tell the story of the well-known fable without words, the only text being animal sounds as part of the pictures.

Without words, I was surprised at what a success this book was at Storytime. The big, beautiful pictures captured the children’s attention, and there was lots for them to talk about on each page. The expressions on the faces of the characters show emotion beautifully. There’s lots of variety in the format, from close-ups to wide angle shots. It would take many readings before you had noticed all the detail in the backgrounds.

I got to hear Jerry Pinkney talk about writing this book at the National Book Festival. He clearly loves animals, and that comes across in this magnificent book.

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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 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 Marcelo in the Real World, by Francisco X. Stork

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Stand-outs, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

marceloMarcelo in the Real World

by Francisco X. Stork

read by Lincoln Hoppe

Random House, 2009. 10 hours, 8 minutes on 8 compact discs.
Starred Review
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010: #1 Other Teen Fiction

Marcelo Sandoval is looking forward to the summer before his senior year of high school. He’s going to be in charge of the ponies at Patterson, the special education school he’s gone to all his life. Marcelo has something similar to Asperger’s Syndrome. He sees the world differently than most people, and hears music in his head that no one else can hear.

Marcelo’s father has other ideas for him. He wants Marcelo to get a taste of “the real world,” and to learn to cope. His father is a partner in a law firm, and he wants Marcelo to work there for the summer. If he can successfully complete the assigned tasks, Marcelo can go back to Patterson, but otherwise his father wants Marcelo to go to the public high school.

The law firm has many challenges for Marcelo. The girl in charge of the mailroom, where he is assigned, had hoped for a different assistant for the summer. The other partner’s son is home from law school, and he has plans for how Marcelo can be useful to him. Then Marcelo comes up against some ethical questions and a picture that haunts him. Why does he feel so compelled by the picture? And what should he do about it?

Marcelo in the Real World is a powerful and gripping story. Listening to the audiobook, I felt like Marcelo was talking to me, telling his story in a way that made perfect sense. He explains his way of looking at the world thoroughly, and the listener gets quickly caught up in his viewpoint, wondering, along with Marcelo, what he should do next and how the people around him will react, and what it all means.

Marcelo has a “special interest” in religion, and the book tackles some major spiritual questions, as well as ethical ones. All in the context of the lives of people you come to care about. A truly wonderful book.

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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 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 Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred D. Taylor

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

roll_of_thunderRoll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

by Mildred D. Taylor

Puffin Books, 1997. First published in 1976. 276 pages.
Newbery Medal Winner 1977
Starred Review
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010: #3 Other Children’s Fiction

I’ve been taking a class offered by ALSC, the Association for Library Service to Children, called The Newbery Medal: Past, Present and Future. It’s a wonderful class, and one of the assignments was to read a Medal-winning book from each decade that the award was offered. For my 1970s selection, I chose Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, because that’s on the Fairfax County Public Schools list for 7th-8th graders, and is checked out frequently.

The book is truly warm and wonderful. I’m going to list it as children’s fiction, because the characters are children, the oldest of whom is twelve. But the book is on the long side and the subject matter is serious, so I do think the schools are right to recommend it to middle schoolers or upper elementary.

Cassie and her three brothers live in Mississippi in 1933. Their family owns its farm, and has since their Grandpa bought the land in 1887. But times are hard, and their Papa had to go work on the railroad in Louisiana in order to pay the taxes on the land.

The book opens as the Logan family makes the long walk to school, with Little Man especially proud of his new school clothes. When the bus for the white children passes, they have to run down the bank, getting all covered with red dust, just the beginning of a series of encounters with that bus, over which the Logans eventually get a delightful revenge.

The book is about prejudice, but the story is told with humor and dignity. There’s a scene at the beginning with old textbooks that reminds me strongly of a similar scene in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

Eventually, the stakes get much higher than a school bus getting them dirty or Cassie having to apologize to a white girl she bumped.

This is a wonderful story that teaches history along the way and gives you lots of food for thought.

As Mama says to Cassie:
“Baby, we have no choice of what color we’re born or who our parents are or whether we’re rich or poor. What we do have is some choice over what we make of our lives once we’re here.”

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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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