Review of Oh, No! by Candace Fleming and Eric Rohmann

Animal Characters, Picture Book Review, Readalouds, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

Oh, No!

Words by Candace Fleming
Pictures by Eric Rohmann

Schwartz & Wade Books (Random House), New York, 2012. 36 pages.
Starred Review
2012 Sonderbooks Stand-out #9 Picture Books

This book charmed me from the moment I saw it. I simply had to read it aloud. The story can be sung to the tune of “Froggie Went a-Courtin’,” with a few adjustments. In place of “Uh-huh,” you’ve got a refrain of “Oh No!” in very appropriate spots at the end of each verse, and other fun sound effects earlier in the verses.

The story is simple: Several animals fall into a hole, and can’t get out, and it looks like Tiger will eat them. When each animal falls in, we have appropriate sound effects: “Ribbit-oops!” for frog; “Pippa-eek!” for mouse; “Soo-slooow!” for loris; “Grab on!” for sun bear (bending down a branch); and “Wheee-haaaa!” for monkey. When tiger comes to taunt them, anticipating his dinner, it’s “Slop-slurp!”

But someone bigger than Tiger comes along to help, the tables are turned, and no one gets eaten. Will the animals help Tiger out of the trap? “Oh, no!”

Caldecott winner Eric Rohmann has outdone himself with the beauty of these illustrations. The book has so many elements great for a storytime picture book: A catchy tune or rhythm (if you don’t want to sing it), fun sounds, repetitive and progressive story line with nice twists, animals they might not have known, and a turn-about story that will appeal to their sense of justice.

Now, there are some places where the exact tune has to be adjusted a bit. Personally, I found I was not capable of reading it straight, without putting it to the tune. Others may have better luck! But either way, this book begs to be read or sung aloud, and you will definitely want to share it with a child.

candacefleming.com
ericrohmann.com
randomhouse.com/kids

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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.

Review of Balloons Over Broadway, by Melissa Sweet

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Balloons Over Broadway

The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade

by Melissa Sweet

Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2011. 36 pages.
Starred Review
2012 Sibert Medal Winner
2012 Sonderbooks Stand-out #4 Children’s Nonfiction

Balloons Over Broadway is the true story of an artist written by an artist, and it shows. To create the art for the book, Melissa Sweet began by making toys and puppets — just like Tony Sarg did.

The story tells about how Tony Sarg liked to figure out how things worked even as a child, and how he conceived of the Macy’s Parade balloons as a kind of marionette with controls underneath instead of above.

Throughout the book, there is variety and fascinating detail in the illustrations. And she captures some of Tony Sarg’s thought processes in making the parade balloons.

Ultimately, this is a true story of creativity and overcoming challenges. And like all great picture books, you really must see it yourself to appreciate it fully. This one’s worth reading for adults, but is simple enough and interesting enough for young elementary age readers. I hope kids find it in the Biography section, because what we have is a great story.

melissasweet.net
hmhbooks.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/balloons_over_broadway.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.

I’m posting this tonight in honor of Nonfiction Monday, hosted today at 100 Scope Notes.

Review of So Good They Can’t Ignore You, by Cal Newport

Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Starred Review 0

So Good They Can’t Ignore You

Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love

by Cal Newport

Business Plus, New York, 2012. 273 pages.
Starred Review
2012 Sonderbooks Stand-out #2 Other Nonfiction

It only took a few chapters of this book to convince me it would make a good Christmas present for both of my young adult sons (and by that I mean adults who are young, not high school students). So I will wait to post this review until after Christmas. Having just finished the book myself, I keep thinking about the ideas and about how they apply to my own career.

All my life, I believed the key to a happy work like was Finding Your Passion. I read books like Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow, and thought I’d found directions for a happy life. Now, in my second career — or really my first career, since teaching college math was just a job — I think I’m happy because I found a job that fits my passion. So why do Cal Newport’s words ring so true?

His subtitle explains what he’s talking about: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love. He begins by saying that advice I’d believed in so long — “Follow your passion.” — is dangerous advice.

So, I thought I was following my passion, but why did I feel a certain criticism for others I saw not working, looking for the perfect job? I do think a certain amount of affinity is needed, but maybe that’s just another word for skills? As an example, after I got my Master’s degree in Math, I taught college Mathematics for ten years.

I love math. I even enjoy grading papers. Getting up in front of a class and teaching it? Not so much. I’m an introvert, and when I eventually began working in a library, I found the one-on-one interaction infinitely more to my liking. Even running library children’s programs feels much more individualized and personal than getting up in front of a college classroom and having to test people on what they get from my teaching.

However, to be fair, Cal Newport doesn’t just go with a simple “Don’t follow your passion.” He looks deeper at what things do go into a fulfilling career. The research shows that three key components of fulfilling work are:

Autonomy: the feeling that you have control over your day, and that your actions are important.

Competence: the feeling that you are good at what you do

Relatedness: the feeling of connection to other people

If “Follow your passion” is dangerous advice, what should you do? He contrasts “the passion mindset” with “the craftsman mindset.” The craftsman mindset is summed up in the Steve Martin quote he used for the title of the book: “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” And that means working hard toward mastery.

The contrast is summed up this way:

Whereas the craftsman mindset focuses on what you can offer the world, the passion mindset focuses instead on what the world can offer you. This mindset is how most people approach their working lives.

There are two reasons why I dislike the passion mindset (that is, two reasons beyond the fact that, as I argued in Rule #1, it’s based on a false premise). First, when you focus only on what your work offers you, it makes you hyperaware of what you don’t like about it, leading to chronic unhappiness. This is especially true for entry-level positions, which, by definition, are not going to be filled with challenging projects and autonomy — these come later. When you enter the working world with the passion mindset, the annoying tasks you’re assigned or the frustrations of corporate bureaucracy can become too much to handle.

Second, and more serious, the deep questions driving the passion mindset — “Who am I?” and “What do I truly love?” — are essentially impossible to confirm. “Is this who I really am?” and “Do I love this?” rarely reduce to clear yes-or-no responses. In other words, the passion mindset is almost guaranteed to keep you perpetually unhappy and confused, which probably explains why Bronson admits, not long into his career-seeker epic What Should I Do With My Life? that “the one feeling everyone in this book has experienced is of missing out on life.”

It fascinated me that Cal Newport brought up Po Bronson’s book. I reviewed What Should I Do With My Life? in 2003, and discussed the ideas at length — what does it mean to find your calling? At the time, it was the review that generated by far the most discussion among those who read it.

Now, I still think there’s something in the idea of finding your calling. But I did like the way Cal Newport made the case that a meaningful mission comes after you’ve built up some career capital. It takes time. It’s not about deciding ahead of time and then pursuing that calling, but more often builds out of achieving mastery and then finding how to make it meaningful.

Cal Newport argues, “you adopt the craftsman mindset first and then the passion follows.”

He presents research and case studies and excellent arguments and then gives us “The Career Capital Theory of Great Work”:

The traits that define great work are rare and valuable.

Supply and demand says that if you want these traits you need rare and valuable skills to offer in return. Think of these rare and valuable skills you can offer as your career capital.

The craftsman mindset, with its relentless focus on becoming “so good they can’t ignore you,” is a strategy well suited for acquiring career capital. This is why it trumps the passion mindset if your goal is to create work you love.

He goes on to talk about how best to do that. He again looks at examples of people with satisfying, meaningful careers. He shows us the importance of deliberate practice in increasing your skills. He makes some interesting claims:

Even with the craftsman mindset, however, becoming “so good they can’t ignore you” is not trivial. To help these efforts I introduced the well-studied concept of deliberate practice, an approach to work where you deliberately stretch your abilities beyond where you’re comfortable and then receive ruthless feedback on your performance. Musicians, athletes, and chess players know all about deliberate practice. Knowledge workers, however, do not. This is great news for knowledge workers: If you can introduce this strategy into your working life you can vault past your peers in your acquisition of career capital.

He goes on to talk about what constitutes a great job. One aspect is control. But there are two Control Traps. The first one is that you need career capital to acquire sustainable control in your job. The second control trap is that by the time you have enough career capital, you’re going to be so valuable to your employer, they will resist your making the change.

He does offer some good tests to navigate those control traps and figure out if you really have the career capital to make a change. The “law of financial viability” is nice and practical: Are people willing to pay for your new pursuit?

And then he talks about building a Mission. Here’s where passion comes in — later in your career. He argues again that you need career capital for this step. And if you want a mission that makes a difference, you should look at the cutting edge of your career field. So when you’re new to the field and lacking in career capital, it’s not yet time to devise a mission.

Once you do get an idea of where you’d like to go, he suggests the strategy of “little bets” — small steps that generate concrete feedback. “Then use this feedback, be it good or bad, to help figure out what to try next. This systematic exploration can help you uncover an exceptional way forward that you might have never otherwise noticed.”

Another strategy he noticed in the people he studied was “the law of remarkability”:

This law says that for a project to transform a mission into a success, it should be remarkable in two ways. First, it must literally compel people to remark about it. Second, it must be launched in a venue conducive to such remarking.

Now, I have some questions about that. What if you aren’t going for “remarkable” success? What if you’re just going for happiness? Looking back at the traits of people happy with their jobs, I’m not sure remarkability is important. But I do like the idea of testing out which way to go — that’s all part of the strategy of building rare and valuable traits, being excellent at what you do.

Now this book, like Po Bronson’s book, didn’t even come close to talking about lifestyle choices like setting aside a career to raise children. But now that my children are grown, I like thinking about and wondering how all the different skills I’ve built in my life can combine into valuable career capital. How can I use deliberate practice and little bets to become a better librarian? And what aspects of my work do I want to deliberately practice? Reviewing? Readers’ advisory? Early literacy? Self-directed learning?

Part of the excellence of this book is that it has things to think about for people at every stage of their careers — for my son who’s just started college, my son looking for a job, for me having found a job I love, and even for someone years into their career thinking about what their mission should be or if they are ready for a change. There’s plenty in this book to get you thinking for a long time to come.

calnewport.com
bizplusbooks.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.

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!

Review of The False Prince, by Jennifer A. Nielsen

Adventure, Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

The False Prince

by Jennifer A. Nielsen

Scholastic Press, New York, 2012. 342 pages.
Starred Review
2012 Sonderbooks Stand-out #1 Fantasy and Science Fiction for Children

So, funny thing. I read this book earlier in the year, as an Advance Reader Copy, and although I enjoyed it, I decided there were too many flaws, and I didn’t want to review it. I read it afresh at the end of 2012, as part of my reading for the Cybils, and this time I loved it.

What was the difference? I believe that both times I read it in one sitting, into the small hours of the morning, so I certainly found it a page turner both times.

I think the first time, it reminded me so much of The Thief, by Megan Whalen Turner, I couldn’t help but be disappointed. That’s an unfair comparison for almost any book, so when I figured out the big reveal fairly easily, I held it against the author and thought she should have done the revealing differently. The second time I read it, I knew what I knew (and some other reviewers thought she intended us to figure it out), so I didn’t worry about that. I firmly did not compare it to The Thief, and this time I loved it.

The book opens with an orphan named Sage stealing a roast for the orphanage and then being captured and bought by a nobleman. Conner, the nobleman, gets three other orphan boys and tells them one of them is going to replace the prince who’s been missing for four years. The rest of the royal family is dead, and the country will find out in two weeks’ time. If one of the boys can get everything right in two weeks, he will be the new king and live in luxury the rest of his life. Of course, it’s pretty clear that whichever boys are not chosen will need to be killed to keep the secret.

Sage isn’t one to capitulate to Conner’s power, and he clearly has plans of his own. How it all gets worked out is wonderful tale. If the big twists and turns don’t take you by surprise, there are still some little details that will slip through. The book is hard to put down, and the action keeps going. I do have to say that, like Megan Whalen Turner’s books, you do spot more details when you reread the book that you won’t have realized were significant the first time around.

The best thing about this book? It’s “Book One of the Ascendance Trilogy.” The book does stand alone beautifully, and tells a complete story. But I’m definitely looking forward to finding out what happens next.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/false_prince.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 This Is Not My Hat, by Jon Klassen

Animal Characters, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

This Is Not My Hat

by Jon Klassen

Candlewick Press, 2012. 36 pages.
Starred Review
2012 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #4 Picture Books

What is it with Jon Klassen and stealing hats? This Is Not My Hat is remarkably similar to his last year’s book, I Want My Hat Back (which was also my #4 Picture Books Stand-out), while having completely different characters, a completely different setting, and even a very different hat! But as in the earlier book, justice is dramatic, swift and sure while at the same time off stage and mysterious, but highly satisfying. (Alas! Perhaps I’m more bloodthirsty than I realized.) And in both the occasion of said justice — stealing a hat — is a wonderful child-sized problem perfect for discussion.

Here are some ways the two books are similar:

1. A hat is stolen.
2. The victim of the hat theft is outraged and angry (as evidenced by their wide eyes).
3. The thief is much smaller than the one they stole from.
4. The thief is doing some lying, whether to others or merely to himself.
4. The illustrations are fabulous, with deadpan expressions and highly expressive eyes.
5. Both leave a delightful amount of room for children to draw their own conclusions, but I can let you in on a spoiler: The thief gets eaten. (That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.)

In this one, the book begins with the thief fleeing the scene of the crime. He admits he stole the hat, but the big fish he stole it from was asleep and probably won’t wake up for a long time or even notice that it’s gone. As he says this, we see pictures of the big fish waking up and then noticing the hat is gone. The little fish has a plan — to go where the plants grow big and tall and close together where nobody will ever find him. Well, he does get there, with the big fish right behind. You definitely can’t see what happens inside those plants — but let’s just say it doesn’t look good for the little fish.

I love the page with the thief’s rationalization (What a way to discuss Rationalization with children!):

I know it’s wrong to steal a hat.
I know it does not belong to me.
But I am going to keep it.
It was too small for him anyway.
It fits me just right.

And you know what? He’s right! The hat does fit him just right, and is way too small with the big fish. But I still think this would make a great pairing with The Book of Bad Ideas! And what a fabulous way to discuss Right and Wrong with kids. Or, just to read a tremendously fun story, where drama and art and plot are all beautifully balanced with a delightful result. I guess there’s a little kid who enjoys justice inside all of us. Or at least a person who enjoys a good story.

candlewick.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Picture_Books/this_is_not_my_hat.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 Titanic: Voices from the Disaster, by Deborah Hopkinson

Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Stand-outs, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Titanic

Voices from the Disaster

by Deborah Hopkinson

Scholastic Press, New York, 2012. 289 pages.
Starred Review
2012 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #3 Children’s Nonfiction

Normally, I never ever read disaster stories. It’s too easy to imagine it happening. I didn’t even ever go see the Titanic movie. I mean, come on, I know how it ends! The only reason I read this book was because it is under consideration by Capitol Choices.

That said, the book tells a compelling story. Though the author does stress the horrible loss of life, some of the impact of the disaster is softened because she focuses on the stories of survivors. Throughout the book, she uses quotations from the survivors, earning the book its subtitle Voices from the Disaster.

The book is also filled with photographs and written in an episodic way that makes you want to keep on reading and browsing. You’ll find out you don’t actually know what happened next, and you want to find out. In the back matter, Deborah Hopkinson even points to websites and still unresolved questions for those who want to explore further. This book is also an excellent look at how historians think.

In her Foreword, Deborah Hopkinson says it well:

Maybe the Titanic makes us all historians. We can’t help being curious: What happened? Why? Who said what and when? What did it mean? And, of course, what if?

deborahhopkinson.com
scholastic.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/titanic.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 We’ve Got a Job, by Cynthia Levinson

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

We’ve Got a Job

The 1963 Birmingham Children’s March

by Cynthia Levinson

Peachtree Publishers, 2012. 176 pages.
Starred Review
2012 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #5 Children’s Nonfiction

I read this book because it was nominated for Capitol Choices for consideration as one of the 100 best children’s books of the year, and I was so glad I did read it. I thought I knew quite a bit about the Civil Rights Movement, but this book looked at a part I’d never heard about before, when children got involved.

The author makes the information interesting and accessible to young readers by highlighting the stories of four individual children from different walks of life who all participated in the movement. She tells how each child got involved, whether from noble motives or not-so-noble, what each one experienced, and interviews them today. I like the way she takes a big topic and breaks it down to show us how children actually got to participate and make a difference. The book has plenty of black-and-white photographs and weaves together the four storylines in a natural way that make the overall complex topic more clear.

The author tells at the end why she chose this story to tell:

Like Wash, James, and Arnetta…, I was a teenager in 1963, living in Ohio. Although I read newspaper articles about the marches, hoses, and dogs, it wasn’t until I was an adult, writing about music in the civil rights period for Cobblestone magazine, that I learned the heart of the story: all of the protesters assaulted and jailed that May were children.

How could I not have known? I had even taught American history to junior-high and high school students! My ignorance embarrassed me.

Many people, I realized, needed to know how a Children’s March changed American history. So, I set out to learn what happened.

The book she has written is a wonderful way to find out more.

cynthialevinson.com
peachtree-online.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/weve_got_a_job.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 Help Thanks Wow, by Anne Lamott

Christian, Musings, Nonfiction Review, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

Help
Thanks
Wow

The Three Essential Prayers

by Anne Lamott

Riverhead Books (Penguin), 2012. 102 pages.
Starred Review
2012 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #1 Other Nonfiction

I’ve always loved Anne Lamott’s down-to-earth spirit, and this book’s title says it all. If you think about it, isn’t it true: Help. Thanks. Wow. Those are indeed the three essential prayers.

She has a chapter for each prayer, with funny and insightful observations. Then there’s a chapter at the end titled “Amen.” Her observations move me, inspire me, make me laugh, and encourage me to pray.

I’ll include some bits from her “Prelude” chapter:

Some of us have cavernous vibrations inside us when we communicate with God. Others are more rational and less messy in our spiritual sense of reality, in our petitions and gratitude and expressions of pain or anger or desolation or praise. Prayer means that, in some unique way, we believe we’re invited into a relationship with someone who hears us when we speak in silence.

Prayer is talking to something or anything with which we seek union, even if we are bitter or insane or broken. (In fact, these are probably the best possible conditions under which to pray.) Prayer is taking a chance that against all odds and past history, we are loved and chosen, and do not have to get it together before we show up. The opposite may be true. We may not be able to get it together until after we show up in such miserable shape.

I’ll post more from this book on Sonderquotes, because it’s full of nuggets that uplift and inspire me.

Why am I saying so much? Put simply, my reaction when I finish a book by Anne Lamott is: Wow.

riverheadbooks.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/help_thanks_wow.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 Sleeping Beauty, by Mercedes Lackey

Fairy Tale Variant, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

Sleeping Beauty

by Mercedes Lackey

Luna, 2010. 345 pages.
Starred Review
2012 Sonderbooks Standout: #3 Fantasy Fiction

I do so love Mercedes Lackey’s Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms! They are fairy tale variants, but for once they are written for grown-ups. They appeal to the reader’s intelligence, and a vast storehouse of Tradition powers the magic in the tales. It’s so much fun the way she looks at the way the Tradition would affect real people’s lives.

Take the princesses that get awakened from sleep by a prince’s kiss, for example. There’s Snow White. There’s Sleeping Beauty. And who knew, the Siegfried saga involves him waking a sleeping shieldmaiden who’s actually his aunt surrounded by a ring of flaming roses.

Chapter One of The Sleeping Beauty opens with Princess Rosamund fleeing from a Huntsman and mourning her situation.

It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair. Why did her mother die? She had been so good; she’d never done anything to deserve to die!

But of course, the part of her mind that was always calculating, always thinking, the part she could never make just stop, said and if it hadn’t been that, it would have been something else. You just turned sixteen. You know what that means in the Tradition.

Oh, she knew. Sixteen was bad enough for ordinary girls. For the noble, the wealthy, The Tradition ruthlessly decreed what sort of birthday you would have — if you were pretty, it was the celebration of a lifetime. If you were plain, everyone, literally everyone, would forget it was even your birthday, and you would spend the day miserable and alone. Traditional Paths went from there, decreeing, unless you fought it, just what the rest of your life would be like based on that birthday. For a Princess, it was worse. For the only child who was also a Princess, worse still. Curses or blessings, which might be curses in disguise, descended. Parents died or fell deathly ill. You were taken by a dragon. Evil Knights demanded your hand. Evil Sorcerers kidnapped you to marry you — or worse.

Fortunately, Rosamund’s kingdom, Eltaria, has a powerful fairy godmother who is trying to divert all the magic swirling around Eltaria into less harmful channels. But her task isn’t easy.

To add to the fun, Siegfried wanders into the kingdom. I love the summing up Mercedes Lackey gives of Siegfried’s story. When he drank dragon’s blood as a boy and learned the language of beasts, he picked up a bird as a traveling companion who warned him about The Tradition and the fate planned for him.

At ten years old, Siegfried of Drachenthal learned that he had been a game piece all of his life in the metaphorical hands of The Tradition. That he was supposed to go and wake up a sleeping woman, that they would fall in love, and that this was going to lead to an awful lot of unpleasant things. And that if he didn’t somehow find a way around it, he was Doomed.

At ten, Doom didn’t seem quite as horrid a fate to try to avoid as a Girl was. But it seemed that by avoiding that one particular Girl, in those particular circumstances, who would be the first woman he had ever seen who was not an aunt, he would also avoid the Doom. So he did. He got away from Drachenthal, had the bird scout on ahead so that the first woman he ever saw was not his aunt but someone’s lively old granny, and began searching for a way to have a Happy, rather than Tragically Heroic, ending.

At twenty, the idea of a Girl all his own seemed rather nice, but Doom was definitely to be avoided. He had begun to think about this, rather than just merely avoiding all sleeping women in fire circles wearing armor. Other Heroes ended up with Princesses, castles, happy endings, dozens of beautiful children. Why couldn’t he?

The bird had been of the opinion that he ought to be able to, if he could trick The Tradition into confusing his fate with some other sort of Hero’s. That sounded good to Siegfried. . . .

“So in order to hoodwink The Tradition, all I have to find is someone blond, asleep in a ring of fire and flowers, who is not a Shieldmaiden demigoddess, and wake her up?” he was asking the bird, as he hacked his way through the underbrush with his eversharp, unbreakable sword.

It’s an easy to get an idea where this is going, but you will only get an inkling of how much fun and humor is to be found along the way.

Another thoroughly enjoyable offering from Mercedes Lackey.

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