Review of Gorgeous, by Paul Rudnik

Fairy Tale Variant, Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Gorgeous

by Paul Rudnick

Scholastic Press, New York, 2013. 327 pages.
Starred Review

Here’s a light-hearted and upbeat modern fairy tale, with sly jabs at the fashion industry, celebrity culture, and popularity.

Becky Randle’s mom doesn’t go out much. She weighs almost 400 pounds and seems afraid of life. But Becky loves her fiercely.

However, on Becky’s eighteenth birthday, her mom dies and leaves Becky a phone number. When she calls the number, she’s offered a thousand dollars and a plane ticket to New York.

In New York, she’s offered a bargain from the mysterious and glamorous designer Tom Kelly.

“Let’s talk about you,” he said. “You’re eighteen years old, you’ve finished high school and you couldn’t be more ordinary. Yes, you have the tiniest hint of your mother, but don’t kid yourself. You’re nothing. You’re no one. And you look like – anyone. You don’t exist.”

I knew I should punch him or shoot him or at least disagree but I couldn’t, for one simple reason. He was right.

“So here’s my offer,” he said, sitting up straight, as if he was about to conduct serious business. “I will make you three dresses: one red, one white, and one black. And if you wear these dresses, and if you do everything I say, then you will become the most beautiful woman on earth. You will become, in fact, the most beautiful woman who has ever lived.”

She decides to try his offer. She gets poked and prodded and measured by an entire crew of people, including handmade shoes and custom jewelry. I love the part where they take a blood sample:

“This is couture,” explained Mrs. Chen, depositing the spool in a test tube. “Every garment will be custom made, only for you. You will become a part of each dress.”

When the first dress, a red one, is finally ready, Tom Kelly takes Becky out to a gala.

We passed a large framed poster, under glass, announcing the schedule for upcoming operas and concerts, and I was inches away from the glimmering reflection of a woman who was not only unthinkably beautiful, but at ease with herself and entertained by my gaping. And that was when I first suspected that the reflection, and the woman, and the miracle, might be me.

My instantaneous response was a screaming brainload of panic. I pulled my arm away from Tom and I ran down the nearest available hallway, to the ladies’ room.

Looking in the ladies’ room mirror, she sees her old self. But when someone else walks in, her reflection again shows Rebecca Randle, the most beautiful woman in the world.

And then Tom Kelly adds the kicker, another fairy-tale element:

”By the way,” said Tom Kelly; he was leaning into the room with both hands braced against the door frame, like a warm-hearted Christmas Eve dad, checking that I was tucked in and that sweet dreams were on their way.

“I should mention something. You have one year to fall in love and get married. One year, or all of this, by which I mean Rebecca, all of it disappears forever.”

So, Becky’s adventures begin as the most beautiful woman who’s ever lived. I love her sense of humor about it, as well as her friendship with the down-to-earth Rocher, from back home. She meets the teen heartthrob she’s had a crush on since childhood (Turns out, he’s gay.) and gets to star in a movie with him. She meets royalty and other celebrities. Who is she, really, under that astoundingly beautiful exterior? Is Rebecca Randle, most beautiful woman in the world, a real person at all?

The book has an unexpected but completely satisfying ending. The last paragraph is one of my favorites ever and made me laugh out loud.

Oh, and the author has mastered the art of chapter endings that make you want to keep reading. If you don’t want to spend half the night reading this book, let me give you a hint: stop in the middle of a chapter! I didn’t, and was sorry the next day.

For a modern fairy tale about beauty and identity, with plenty of humor along the way, try Gorgeous, by Paul Rudnick.

thisisteen.com/books
scholastic.com

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

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

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs 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 Out of the Depths, by Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau

Biography, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Out of the Depths

The Story of a Child of Buchenwald Who Returned Home at Last

by Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau

Sterling, New York, 2011. 380 pages.
Starred Review

Israel Meir Lau was one of the youngest survivors of Buchenwald. His older brother was charged by their father to take care of him, and against all odds, he did.

The weight of history and the pride of his heritage rings through these pages. Here he talks about his brother:

Naphtali recalled his last conversation with Father, in which Father had counted thirty-seven generations of rabbis on both his and my mother’s sides of the family. He did this in order to demonstrate the great responsibility of whoever would be saved from the horror to continue the chain of our heritage. Father read verses from Jeremiah: There is hope for your future, the word of God, and your children will return home. He emphasized that if we escaped this inferno safely, we would know how to find our home, which was not this home or any other on this enemy land. “Your home will be in Eretz Israel [the Land of Israel], even if you have to acquire it through suffering,” he said, and Naphtali and Father cried on each other’s necks. After embracing each other tightly, Naphtali returned to his job in the ghetto. Father’s words echoed in his ears. Father had believed that I, the youngest son of the Lau family, would escape the inferno safely and pass along the heritage that the Nazis were attempting to destroy.

Israel (“Lulek”) did indeed survive, though his parents did not. He was only eight years old at the end of the war, but his brother managed to keep him safe in the camps. He and his brother made it to the land of Israel, and Lulek went on to become Chief Rabbi of Israel.

This is his story, a story of God’s protection and a story of great service back to God.

The beginning of the book, describing the war years, is the most gripping. After he gets to Israel, he doesn’t organize the material in chronological order, so the book was a little harder to follow. But throughout the book, a powerful story is told of a man who clearly has the hand of God upon his life.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/out_of_the_depths.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 Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs 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 Imperial Purple, by Gillian Bradshaw

Fiction Review, Historical, Old Favorites, Starred Review 0

Imperial Purple

by Gillian Bradshaw

Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1988. 324 pages.
Starred Review

Imperial Purple is the first Gillian Bradshaw book I ever read, a gift from my sister Becky many, many years ago. The book is wonderful, and is the one that started me on one of my favorite authors.

Gillian Bradshaw is fabulous at Historical Fiction. She studied classics at Cambridge and must have done vast amounts of research. Imperial Purple is set in the fifth century A.D. Demetrias is a skilled weaver in Tyre, and her husband Symeon is a purple-fisher. There in Tyre they make purple cloth that only royalty can wear.

And then Demetrias is called to the procurator and given an assignment for a purple cloak with two tapestry panels. But it is specified to be the wrong length for the emperor. And she is told to do it in complete secrecy. She knows someone is plotting treason. But what can she do about it? She is a slave of the state, and so is her husband. The prefect is clearly in on the plot. If anyone in power finds out, they won’t hesitate to torture Demetrias to find out what she knows.

Demetrias plans to finish as quickly as possible and get rid of the thing. Her husband Symeon wants to find someone powerful to entrust with the secret. But when their fears are realized, they end up thrust on their own resources.

Woven into the political intrigue and the fascinating historical details is a beautiful love story between a husband and a wife. They both face a long journey and great danger, and you will delight in the twists and turns of the tale. I love the way Gillian Bradshaw’s Author’s Note at the end explains that these events actually could have taken place. Not much is known about the time, but the main historical figures mentioned all existed and went in and out of power as in the story.

I think this is about the third time I’ve read Imperial Purple, and I fondly hope it won’t be the last.

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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 my own copy, a gift from my sister Becky.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs 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 Wolves of Willoughby Chase, by Joan Aiken, read by Lizza Aiken

Alternate History, Audiobooks, Children's Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase

by Joan Aiken
read by Lizza Aiken

Listening Library, 2012. The book was written in 1962. 5 hours on 4 compact discs.
Starred Review

Why had I never read The Wolves of Willoughby Chase before? I remember seeing it as a child, and I think I may have even checked it out once, but it looked far too dark for me. (I never have really liked dark books.) This time reading it, I was completely enchanted. Yes, the girls triumph over adversity, but I wouldn’t even call this book “dark” now that I’m an adult. I guess the Edward Gorey illustrations were too much for me.

And this 50th anniversary production is especially delightful in that it’s read by the author’s daughter. And she talks at the beginning about the writing of the book and the adversity her mother faced in her own life. Her mother had a gap of ten years in writing, and read the chapters to her children when she finally took it up again. For me, this inside information made me enjoy the story all the more.

The story is wonderful. As they point out in the introduction, we’ve got orphan girls with everyone set against them. They must figure out a way to escape and somehow set things to rights, and they do so on their own power. The sinister wolves add atmosphere and drama and probably too much darkness for the little girl I once was. But this audio production would make marvelous family listening. (If it gets too scary, you can comfort any little ones listening.)

The story is old-fashioned and melodramatic, but there’s so much to love. This classic was #57 in Betsy Bird’s Top 100 Children’s Novels Poll. I’m so glad I’ve finally read it.

listeninglibrary.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 audiobook from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs 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 Doll Bones, by Holly Black

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

Doll Bones

by Holly Black

Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2013. 244 pages.
Starred Review

Wow! Holly Black has surpassed herself with Doll Bones. It’s a kids-going-on-an-adventure novel, a ghost story, a growing-up tale, a story of friendships changing, and a story of coming to terms with parental expectation. And it’s all carried out beautifully.

Zach and his friends Alice and Poppy have an incredibly detailed imaginative world going. In a episode that reminded me of the ship scene in Momo, Zach leads his action figure William the Blade on a pirate ship adventure, attacked by Poppy’s mermaids and assisted by Alice’s Lady Jaye.

But Zach is twelve years old, and it’s not only other kids who think he’s too old to play with action figures. When Zach comes home from basketball practice, his Dad has thrown all of them away, saying it’s time for Zach to grow up. Zach doesn’t want to tell the girls.

That anger curdled inside his belly and crawled up his throat until it felt like it might choke him. Until he was sure that there was no way he could ever tell anyone what had happened without all of his anger spilling out and engulfing everything.

And the only way not to tell anyone was to end the game.

Not surprisingly, the girls don’t take kindly to that. Poppy tries to entice Zach back into the game by taking the creepy doll her mother owns, the doll they call The Queen, out of its glass cabinet. But when she does so, that night she has a vivid dream.

“It wasn’t like a regular dream,” Poppy said, her fingers smoothing back the Queen’s curls and her voice changing, going soft and chill as the night air…. “It wasn’t like dreaming at all. She was sitting on the end of my bed. Her hair was blond, like the doll’s, but it was tangled and dirty. She was wearing a nightdress smeared with mud. She told me I had to bury her. She said she couldn’t rest until her bones were in her own grave, and if I didn’t help her, she would make me sorry.”…

“Her bones?” he finally echoed.

“Did you know that bone china has real bones in it?” Poppy said, tapping a porcelain cheek. “Her clay was made from human bones. Little-girl bones. That hair threaded through the scalp is the little girl’s hair. And the body of the doll is filled with her leftover ashes….

“Each night she told me a little more of her story.” Illuminated by the flashlight, Poppy’s face had become strange. “She’s not going to rest until we bury her. And she’s not going to let us rest either. She promised to make us miserable unless we help her.”

So the three kids set out. Zach and Alice aren’t sure Poppy’s not making it up, until more strange things happen. Their plan is to take a bus to the gravesite up the river in East Liverpool, Ohio. But a crazy man on the bus spooks them, and they get off the bus too soon, and then must escape the attention of officials.

I’ve said in other reviews that I don’t normally enjoy creepy stories. But this one is done beautifully. I should say that there’s a lot more scary dread than anything that actually happens to the kids. But I think it’s fair. The doll gets upset when they get sidetracked from their mission, but she has no reason to be upset as they near the goal.

Readers also might fault it for how nicely all the emotional threads tie up in the end. But I loved it. The different emotional threads are woven into the story with a delicate touch, and even though they tie up nicely, it never feels too good to be true.

This book is excellent on so many levels. The friendship between the kids changing on the cusp of adolescence feels real, with all the touchiness inherent in those changes. The quest is in the classic tradition of The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. The kids aren’t well-prepared, and they argue along the way, but they follow their quest to a tremendously satisfying conclusion.

blackholly.com
KIDS.SimonandSchuster.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/doll_bones.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 Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs 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 Eleanor & Park, by Rainbow Rowell

Audiobooks, Award Winners, Historical, Romance, Starred Review 0

Eleanor & Park

by Rainbow Rowell

read by Rebecca Lowman and Sunil Malhotra

Listening Library, 2013. 9 hours on 7 compact discs.
Starred Review
2013 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Winner

Sigh. I didn’t want this book to end. I hated going to work today, having to stop in the middle of the last CD. When I got home, I didn’t even think for a moment of leaving the CD in the car. (And I’d done the same thing on CD 5, finishing it in the house.)

I’ve always liked slow-burn romance, romance that shows the characters, slowly, realistically, falling in love over time, rather than just looking at someone and suddenly falling for them. This book is a realistic, slow, beautiful, exquisite love story.

I loved listening to the story. I liked the way you’d hear what one character was thinking, and then it would jump to the other character’s viewpoint. However, now that I’m writing the review, I wish I had the print book to share good bits with you.

I did *not* like the ending. However, considering that the Eleanor & Park were studying Romeo & Juliet in school (Eleanor being contemptuous that it’s called tragedy), and considering the parallel nature of the title, and that this was also a teenage love story between teens from very different backgrounds — well, it could have ended much worse. I was afraid all along this would end as badly as Romeo & Juliet. This isn’t too big a spoiler: Nobody dies.

But I hated the ambiguity of the very end. And there are many secondary characters whose fates I really want to know about. The author gave us so much detail along the way, is it too much to ask for a little bit of detail at the end? (Apparently it is.) I want to know more!

So you’ve been warned about the ending. But the journey is totally worth it. It starts toward the beginning of the school year when a new girl — Eleanor — gets on the school bus, and no one will let her have a seat. Park finally scoots over and gives her half of his seat, but they don’t even speak to one another for weeks. The back-and-forth narration shows us each one starting to wonder about the silent person on the bus. Then Eleanor starts reading Park’s comics over his shoulder. They still don’t speak.

Meanwhile Eleanor’s dealing with bullying in gym class and an awful situation at home, with four little brothers and sisters to worry about as well. Park’s problems are more along the lines of his Dad making him learn to drive a stick before he’ll let him get his license. As things progress, Eleanor cannot let her family find out about Park.

There were so many little things that rang so true. I liked the way neither would admit they were boyfriend and girlfriend until well after Park had gotten in a fight over something said to Eleanor.

The audio was wonderful and had me driving to and from work almost in a trance. It’s not family listening, though. It’s a love story, and their feelings do grow in passion, which could be quite embarrassing for younger listeners. (I love the way they each marvel separately over how amazing it feels to hold hands. Things do progress from there, but this doesn’t jump straight to making out without giving the small steps along the way their due.) I was listening in the car by myself, so I didn’t have to worry about embarrassment, but the descriptions struck just the right note of wonder and passion, without feeling trite.

If you’re ever in the mood for a love story, I highly recommend this one.

listeninglibrary.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/eleanor_and_park.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 Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs 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 Golem and the Jinni, by Helene Wecker

Fantasy, Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

The Golem and the Jinni

by Helene Wecker

Harper, 2013. 486 pages.
Starred Review

I had brought this book back to the library, figuring I’d never get around to reading it, so I should give other people a chance. I made the mistake of looking inside to get the flavor of it — and was instantly hooked. I brought it back home and bypassed all of my plans and made it the next novel I read.

Here’s the first paragraph:

The Golem’s life began in the hold of a steamship. The year was 1899; the ship was the Baltika, crossing from Danzig to New York. The Golem’s master, a man named Otto Rotfeld, had smuggled her aboard in a crate and hidden her among the luggage.

The beginning talks about how Rotfeld decided he wanted a wife and turned to Schaalman, a disgraced rabbi who dabbled in the Kabbalistic arts. Here’s a warning Schaalman gives to Rotfeld:

“The results may not be as precise as you might wish. One can only do so much with clay.” Then his face darkened. “But remember this. A creature can only be altered so far from its basic nature. She’ll still be a golem. She’ll have the strength of a dozen men. She’ll protect you without thinking, and she’ll harm others to do it. No golem has ever existed that did not eventually run amok. You must be prepared to destroy her.”

But Rotfeld dies during the passage to America, shortly after waking the Golem. With no master, she hears the desires and wishes of everyone around her. Terribly distracted in New York City, she meets a rabbi who knows what she is and helps her pass for human.

Nearby, in the neighborhood of Lower Manhattan called Little Syria, a tinsmith is working to repair an old flask and releases a jinni. The Jinni doesn’t remember the last several hundred years. Last he knew, he was in the Syrian desert, paying more attention to humans than other jinn said was good for him.

The Jinni, too, must pass for human in New York City. He works for the tinsmith who released him. Made of fire, he can heat and mold metal with his bare hands. But he’s not willing to merely stay in the shop.

Both the Golem and the Jinni become restless, since, after all, they don’t have to spend their nights sleeping like the humans around them. They both can instantly see that the other is not the human they are pretending to be.

Even though it’s a very different story, this book reminded me of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, with a world so much like ours, but with these magical deviations. As in that book, the characters are deeply explored and all the implications of the world built are lived out.

The Golem lives among Jews and the Jinni among Syrians, but they find each other and change each other’s lives and outlook. Eventually, they discover a surprising connection between them, a connection that could mean their destruction.

This book captivated me all the way along. It explores what it means to be human, as we look at these two creatures passing as human: one made of clay, and one made of fire.

harpercollins.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/golem_and_the_jinni.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 Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs 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 Cup and the Crown, by Diane Stanley

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

The Cup and the Crown

by Diane Stanley

Harper, 2012. 344 pages.
Starred Review

Molly’s back! The Molly who saved the kingdom in The Silver Bowl with the help of her strange powers, seeing visions in a silver bowl, has now been made a Lady. But the king has a commission for her. She is to go find a Loving Cup, made by her grandfather, with the power to bind two people together. He needs it for an important alliance. And since Molly has been having nightly visions about such a cup, she agrees to go.

In this volume, we find out much more about the source of Molly’s magic and her family history. I think you could read it without having read the first book, but I almost want to say you shouldn’t read it without reading whatever’s coming next. I’ll simply say about the ending that it annoyed me. I’m hoping Diane Stanley can write a third book that will reconcile me to those events.

But right up until the annoying ending (and that may be a personal quirk that I didn’t like it), I thoroughly enjoyed this journey. I was a little disappointed to discover Molly has noble blood — it was refreshing to have a character in a medieval fantasy who was a commoner — but I don’t think that’s a flaw. And it did emphasize her strong magical gift.

I like the slowly blooming romance between Molly and Tobias, and what they were willing to do for each other. Yet we still have a certain amount of doubt that they will really end up together (because of that annoying ending. I’ll say no more).

What started with a very unusual magical world — with magical visions in a silver bowl — has become unusual in other ways, including a secret kingdom where magic is revered. Only can Molly and Tobias ever get out again?

dianestanley.com
harpercollinschildrens.com

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

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

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs 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 A Corner of White, by Jaclyn Moriarty

Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

A Corner of White

The Colors of Madeleine, Book One

by Jaclyn Moriarty

Arthur A. Levine Books (Scholastic), 2013. 373 pages.
Starred Review
2013 Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Award Winner for Fiction

A Corner of White doesn’t fit neatly into categories. Yes, it’s fantasy, because half of the story is set in a fantasy world. But the other half is set in modern-day Cambridge. In both worlds, we follow a teen with some big concerns. The two teens happen upon a crack between worlds — a crack just big enough to send letters through.

Madeleine, in Cambridge, just turned fourteen. She used to be rich, living a jet-setting lifestyle. But when she ran away the last time (She made a habit of that.), her mother came, too. Now they live in an attic in historic Cambridge, and her mother mends clothing to get them by.

Elliot lives in the Kingdom of Cello. He’s fifteen, and his father has been missing for months. Elliot’s theory is that the same attacking Purple that killed his uncle Jon carried off his father along with the missing physics teacher, Mischka Taylor. He wants to find the Purple’s lair and locate his father.

But events conspire to keep him at home this time.

I can’t begin to summarize all that goes on in this book. Madeleine is being homeschooled in a cooperative along with Jack and Belle. They’re studying great people who lived at Cambridge before them. Jack and Belle aren’t sure what to make of her stories of when she was rich. She’s not sure what to make of them, with Jack obsessed with horoscopes and Belle reading people’s auras. But she never reads Madeleine’s. Madeleine’s mother is acting strangely, and when Madeleine writes to her father, hoping he will come get them, she doesn’t get an answer in a hurry.

Meanwhile, the Kingdom of Cello has problems besides the disappearance of Elliot’s father. Elliot lives in the Farms, and crops have been failing. But when the Butterfly Child shows up, everybody says she will help. So why is she sleeping all the time? Then there are the touring Princess Sisters, the sheriff’s deputy who’s so good at finding missing persons, and the couple from Olde Quainte who are renting his father’s shop, with their daughter who never speaks.

During all of this, Madeleine and Elliot exchange letters. Of course, Madeleine thinks he’s making it all up. The Colour Attacks sound like nonsense. She thinks he’s a budding writer who’s invented a fantasy kingdom. But along the way, they both give each other good advice.

For at least half of the book, I was distracted by how completely impossible the Kingdom of Cello’s existence is. They have generally random seasons, lasting a few hours to a few weeks. I’m with Madeleine in thinking the Colour Attacks don’t make a whole lot of sense. In fact, I had to laugh at the Acknowledgments at the end, where the author says, “Adam Gatenby talked to me about farming life and Alistair Baillie talked about physics, and I am thankful to them both. (Here I should note that Adam considers farming in shifting seasons to be impossible, and that Alistair has similar doubts about colors taking on corporeal form.)” I want to add that I don’t understand how the seasons could shift. Ours are caused by the earth’s revolution around the sun. It’s clear they have a sun. How could the seasons shift so randomly?

However, by the end of the book, I was finally won over. I like the story and the characters so much, I was willing to forgive. It took longer than most fantasy tales, but in the end, okay, with small reservations. And I loved the plot twist at the end. It does lead into the rest of the series, but the story in this book still came to a satisfying conclusion.

And I love these characters. They’re not perfect. They’re trying to figure out life, each with their own obstacles to overcome. The plot was well-worked out. That’s what I don’t want to say too much about, for fear of giving something away. But it says a lot that I’m willing to forgive the unlikeliness of the alternate world in order to spend time with these people. And I very much want to know what happens next.

thisisteen.com/books
arthuralevinebooks.com
scholastic.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/corner_of_white.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 Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs 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 Spirit Seeker, by Gary Golio

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

Spirit Seeker

John Coltrane’s Musical Journey

by Gary Golio
paintings by Rudy Gutierrez

Clarion Books, 2012. 42 pages.
Starred Review

I admit, I was hoping I’d see this book mentioned in the Coretta Scott King awards, if not the Caldecott.

This picture book biography is written for elementary school readers. The story of John Coltrane’s life talks about how his love of music combined with his spiritual quest to produce something beautiful. His grandfather was a preacher and his father was a musician. Both those men died when John was still a boy, and he lived the rest of his childhood in poverty. But he’d already gotten a foundation of music and of faith.

The book doesn’t flinch from some side trips that Coltrane took. Here’s the text on one of the double-page spreads:

Moving back to Mama’s house in Philadelphia, John saw his world come to a sudden stop. His body was sick, and his pockets were empty.
Now he had to choose, between the dead end of drugs or a life rich with music.
Waking one morning, John remembered his grandfather’s words — the promise of Spirit, and of healing. He asked Mama and Naima for help.
With nothing to eat and only water to drink, he stayed alone in his room, resting and praying, as the drugs slowly left his body. It was painful, but John felt that he was being cleansed — made new again.
When he came out, a few days later, he was free.

But I haven’t talked yet about the paintings!

The illustrations here are what transform this from an excellent, serviceable biography and good story into a stunning work of art.

Much of the text talks about spirituality and music, and the expressionistic paintings put that on the page. The mood of each page matches the text, and you can almost hear the music. The pages give us a wide variety of colors and scenes, but all express a feeling.

But it’s hard to talk about pictures, when you can check out this book and in a few moments grasp the power of these paintings to make you feel what the words are telling. This one’s worth taking a look at.

I’m posting this review today in honor of Nonfiction Monday, hosted today at Shelf-employed.

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

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