Review of The Hero and the Crown, by Robin McKinley

Fantasy, Old Favorites, Stand-outs, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 1

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 Fire, by Robin McKinley and Peter Dickinson

Fantasy, Short Stories, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

fire_talesFire

Tales of Elemental Spirits

by Robin McKinley and Peter Dickinson

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2009. 297 pages.
Starred Review

I found it amusing that the two books I was most eager to read as soon as I finished the assigned reading for my Newbery class were both titled Fire. I confess that even though Robin McKinley is one of my very favorite authors, I read Kristin Cashore’s Fire first, because I generally find complete novels more compelling than short stories.

This collection of five tales, with two by Robin McKinley and three by her husband Peter Dickinson, is truly wonderful. The theme is fire, and we have tales of a phoenix, a hellhound, a fireworm, a salamander, and, of course, a dragon.

I think my favorite was Robin McKinley’s story about a girl with a compassion for animals who takes on a scrawny dog even though he his eyes are rimmed with fire. Her compassion is rewarded when the uncanny dog takes on the hosts of hell for her.

None of the stories is weak. In “Phoenix,” by Peter Dickinson, Ellie learns what happens to someone who befriends a phoenix. In “First Flight,” Robin McKinley quickly develops a world where dragons fly through Firespace with their third eye. A boy and his humble Foogit help their brother’s dragon, who has been injured and has only two eyes.

Of course, my only complaint is that I’d enjoy spending more time in each of these worlds and with all of these characters. Each story contains the seed for a delightful book.

For a quick jaunt into five magical worlds, Fire delivers five memorable experiences. Definitely up to the standards of these two outstanding writers.

“I think that it’s the glitter of dragon eyes that’s the origin of all those stories about the beds of jewels that wild dragons are supposed to have made for themselves back in the days when dragons were wild, and used to eat children when they couldn’t find any sheep. Where all those jewels are supposed to have come from was always beyond me; even if you put all the kings and emperors and enchanters (good and evil) together and stripped them of everything they had, I still don’t think you’d get more than about one jewel-bed for one medium-large dragon out of it. But you see the glitter of the eyes and you do think of jewels. Nothing else comes close — not fire, not stars, not anything. Of course I, and most of the other listeners to fairy tales, have never seen more than the mayor’s beryl or topaz or whatever the local badge of office is, but we can all dream. When you see a dragon’s eyes up close — if you’re lucky enough to see a dragon’s eyes up close — you don’t have to dream.”

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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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Review of Hattie Big Sky, by Kirby Larson

Historical, Teen Fiction Review 0

hattie_big_skyHattie Big Sky

by Kirby Larson

Delacorte Press, 2006. 289 pages.
A 2007 Newbery Honor Book.

I actually met Kirby Larson when I went to the 2007 ALA (American Library Association) Annual Conference in Washington, DC, when she saw my SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) bag and commented on it. Imagine my delight to learn that she was there to receive a Newbery Honor Award!

It took me a long time to get around to reading her book, but when I finally did, I thought the award well-deserved.

Hattie Wright has received an inheritance from an uncle she didn’t even know — a homestead claim out in Montana. “All” she has to do is “prove up” by cultivating forty acres and setting four hundred eighty rods of fence and paying the final fees, and she has ten months left in which to do it.

Hattie takes on the giant task, because the challenge appeals to her much more than being the poor orphaned relation with her other aunt and uncle in Iowa. It’s 1917, and World War I is going on, and Hattie writes about her experiences to her childhood friend who is off in the fighting.

Meanwhile, in Montana, Hattie faces all kinds of challenges with weather against her and other disasters. The other homesteaders help, especially Perilee Mueller and her houseful of children. Perilee is married to a man who only speaks German, who isn’t popular during World War I. But Hattie can only see their kind hearts. Another neighbor, handsome but not kind to the Muellers, offers to “help” Hattie by buying her claim. But Montana with its big sky is already in her heart.

Kirby Larson based this book on her own great-grandmother’s story. It’s another pioneer tale, but set in a different time and place than any I’ve read before. An inspiring story of a young woman discovering her own strength to face challenges and the value of true friends.

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Review of My Fair Godmother, by Janette Rallison

Fairy Tale Variant, Fantasy, Humorous, Teen Fiction Review 0

my_fair_godmotherMy Fairy Fair Godmother

by Janette Rallison

Walker & Company, New York, 2009. 311 pages.

After Savannah gives her brilliant older sister Jane a makeover, Savannah’s boyfriend suddenly sees Jane’s charms and takes up with her. In Savannah’s despair and sorrow, she gets a visit from her fairy godmother, but unfortunately learns that her fairy godmother is only fair at the job.

In fact, she seems a bit hung up on fairy tales. Savannah learns that life as Cinderella or Snow White is not much fun. Then she thinks she makes a wish that can’t be twisted — and ends up stuck in the Middle Ages until a nice guy from school can make himself a prince.

I admit I was thrown a bit at first, because the book started from Jane’s perspective. I was completely delighted to have a handsome, intelligent guy see the light and fall for the plainer, calculus-loving sister for a change! Oops! We weren’t supposed to be happy about that….

Well, several chapters further on, I was able to drum up some sympathy for Savannah. I must admit I’m not sure she didn’t deserve a few weeks as Cinderella, but she got them, and they did their work. Mostly, the author does a grand job making a delightful mess of fairy-tale situations and magic and the meaning of love.

Here’s a passage after Jane and her boyfriend get pulled into the Middle Ages, too:

Then I had to explain to Jane and Hunter how my fairy godmother had misunderstood certain statements I’d made and had sent Tristan back in time to become a prince. He still had two tasks left before he could achieve that goal and return to our time.

“Kill a dragon?” Hunter said as though he both envied and feared for Tristan. “Can you do that?”

“I’ve got to.”

Jane shook her head, disbelief seeping into her tone. “But your leprechaun told us that all you had to do to come home was to ask your fairy godmother.”

“Oh, well, that just means you were duped by a leprechaun,” I said.

Hunter cocked his head and looked at me narrowly. “Your fairy godmother won’t help you at all?”

“My fairy godmother won’t even take my calls. She’s sort of a teenage, airheaded shopping diva who didn’t pay attention very well in fairy school.”

Jane sat down on my bed and rubbed at her forehead wearily. “Well, that figures.”

I followed her with my gaze. “Meaning?”

“They must match fairy godmothers to people by type. You pretty much just described yourself.”

A truly fun tale of a clash between modern high school dating and fairy tales as they would be if you actually had to live in them.

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Review of Rampant, by Diana Peterfreund

Fantasy, Stand-outs, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

rampantRampant

by Diana Peterfreund

HarperTeen (HarperCollins), 2009. 402 pages.
Starred Review
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010: #1 Fantasy Teen Fiction

In Rampant we learn that, contrary to popular current sentimental beliefs, unicorns are not cuddly, cute, sparkly and sweet. No, Astrid’s mother, whom everyone including Astrid believes is crazy, has taught her since she was small that unicorns are truly vicious, man-eating brutes that are almost impossible to kill. Fortunately, their own relation killed the last unicorn centuries ago.

Astrid is making out with her boyfriend behind the house where she’s babysitting when she learns that everything her mother told her is true, except for the important part about unicorns being extinct. A unicorn comes out of the woods and viciously attacks her boyfriend. Astrid sees that he is clearly dying, but fortunately her mother comes with their ancestral gift, a last bit of the Remedy, and he is cured. But he’s convinced Astrid and her mother drugged him and doesn’t buy her rabid goat story for a moment. Her social life is over.

Fortunately, her mother gives her a chance to get far away. Unfortunately, it’s to take her place as an heir to the powerful tradition of unicorn hunting. It seems vicious unicorns are reemerging all over the world, and a group has opened an ancient cloister in Rome to train the hunters.

I want to say that this book stands the traditional view of unicorns on its head, but it actually fits quite well with many of the older unicorn stories. One tradition she definitely keeps is that unicorns are attracted to virgins, well, at least virgins who are descended from Alexander the Great, in the traditional unicorn-hunting families, like Astrid. Such virgins are immune to the poison of alicorns and have a mystical power to fight unicorns. But what can a handful of untrained girls do against such powerful beasts?

With the importance of virginity to unicorn fighters, sex and whether or not to have it is definitely an issue in this book. I think it’s handled tastefully and realistically, but keep in mind that it deals with these issues head on, and so is not a book for very young unicorn lovers.

My only quibble is the same one I have with some of Stephenie Meyer’s scenes: Where do they find these young men who are able to go so very far and yet not go all the way? Do they really want young women to think that’s realistic? All the same, I think Diana Peterfreund does point out that you can’t take that for granted.

Anyway, sexual issues are by no means the main point of the book. This is an incredibly absorbing story (It ate a chunk out of my day off!) about a girl learning who she is and how to be a warrior. Astrid is definitely a heroine to cheer for.

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Review of Letters from Rapunzel, by Sara Lewis Holmes

Contemporary, Humorous, Teen Fiction Review 0

letters_from_rapunzelLetters from Rapunzel

by Sara Lewis Holmes

Winner of the Ursula Nordstrom First Fiction Contest
HarperCollins, 2007. 184 pages.

Cadence Brogan feels like Rapunzel. Only her tower is Homework Club, and she doesn’t have hair long enough to rescue her.

Cadence is a newly-identified genius who harnesses her creativity working hard to not give her teachers what they want. When she is required to do homework during after-school Homework Club, she keeps busy writing, but she’s writing letters to a mysterious “friend” of her father’s, using the pen name Rapunzel.

Cadence became Rapunzel when her father went away, a victim of the Evil Spell. Her mother calls it C. D., clinical depression, but Rapunzel is poetical, like her father, and thinks of it as the Evil Spell. She found a torn up letter her father was going to write to this mysterious friend. She doesn’t have even a name, but she does have the post office box number. The fragment says,

. . . You are the secret to my success as a poet and a human being. Writing these letters every day has helped me keep my heart open, to be willing to live, to keep the darkness . . .

Maybe if Cadence, as Rapunzel, can write letters to this mysterious benefactor herself, maybe she can draw back the darkness and get her father back from the hospital.

The book, Letters from Rapunzel tells the story of her quest, in the form of the letters she sends to the box, along with copies of her creative alternatives to her teacher’s assignmments. There is plenty of humor in the situations Cadence gets herself into, but plenty of poignancy as well, as she deals with her father’s absence and Evil Spell on top of pressures from school and her Mom. She uncovers things no one wanted to tell her along with some profound truths about herself.

This is definitely a promising first novel. It covers some profound issues with a light touch. Quick reading that will make you smile, but will also make you think.

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Review of Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins

Adventure, Science Fiction, Starred Review, Suspense, Teen Fiction Review 0

catching_fireCatching Fire

by Suzanne Collins

Scholastic Press, New York, 2009. 391 pages.
Starred Review

Wow. The Hunger Games was gripping, heart-wrenching drama, but in this sequel Suzanne Collins has turned things up a notch.

Katniss’ troubles and her family’s troubles should have been over at the end of The Hunger Games, but she challenged the power of the Capitol, and those in power were not pleased with her.

What’s more, Katniss has become a symbol of rebellion. Could that rebellion be spreading? One thing is sure — if it is, it will be brutally squelched. And if Katniss can’t convincingly quiet the uproar she started, she knows her own loved ones will suffer.

This is definitely not light, cheery reading. As if all this weren’t enough, we’re stuck reading about the next year’s Hunger Games, this time a Quarter Quell, for the 75th year of the games, with its own fresh horror.

The story is not complete with this volume. I will definitely be one of the people clamoring for the third book. I do join with my friend Farida to say that it had just better offer some happiness and hope for these people!

Even though the topic is unpleasant — a future repressive and brutal government — the story is transcendent and definitely worth reading. The story has a love triangle, life-and-death drama, and people risking their lives for freedom and justice. The book will keep you reading and then stick with you when you have to put it down.

The only awful thing about this book is how long we’re going to have to wait before we can find out what happens next.

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Review of Forest Born, by Shannon Hale

Fantasy, Stand-outs, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

forest_bornForest Born

by Shannon Hale

Bloomsbury, New York, 2009. 389 pages.
Starred Review
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010: #3 Fantasy Teen Fiction

It’s always a momentous event when a new Shannon Hale book comes out, and Forest Born adds another story to the Books of Bayern series. I eagerly pre-ordered this and when it arrived on its publication date, I snapped it up and didn’t stop until I’d finished. I will have to read it again in a week or two to savor its goodness more thoroughly!

I like the way Forest Born explores themes that came up back in the first book, The Goose Girl. Naturally, if you have read the other three Books of Bayern, you won’t need my urging to read this one. If you haven’t, I recommend that you start with The Goose Girl, a retelling of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale.

In the first book, Shannon Hale takes an idea loosely hinted at in the fairy tale, and has her heroine Isi learn the language of some animals, and the language of the wind. She learns the story that she repeats in Forest Born:

“When the creator made the world, everything had its own language, and all could communicate freely — tree to wind, rock to snail, flower to honeybee. Last of all, the creator made people, and they strode over the land, speaking strong words and taking control. They broke the balance, and one by one knowledge of the languages was lost, leaving creatures deaf to any but their own.

“But as moons rose and fell and days and nights did a spinning dance, different sorts of people were born in the crannies of the mountains and wilderness. Born with a first word on their tongues, they could hear and learn new languages. As they found one another and taught one another, three gifts were named — nature-speaking, animal-speaking, and people-speaking. Though rare, now there were people again who could understand the language of fire and wind, of bird and horse, and of people, too. The last, however, proved the most dangerous.”

In Enna Burning, Isi’s friend Enna learns the language of fire, and uses it to deadly effect in the war with Tira. But both friends learn that they need balance — that knowing only one language will overwhelm them.

In River Secrets, they are trying to establish peace with Tira after the war, and encounter and make friends with a water-speaker. Once again, there needs to be balance. Razo’s sister Rin calls those three women “the Fire Sisters.” They are truly powerful.

Now it is Rin’s turn. She has been able to listen to trees and hear their calm peace all her life. But after she does something she’s ashamed of, all she can hear from the trees is loathing and fear. She goes to the palace to get away, finds work tending the little prince, and gets caught up in a plot against the royal family. Another fire speaker tries to harm the king, so it is natural for the Fire Sisters to set out to deal with them.

Rin follows and ends up learning much about her own gifts. I like the way Rin’s abilities are essential to averting disaster, even with such powerful companions.

I like the way Forest Born brings the plot full circle, echoing issues that came up in the first book, The Goose Girl. I like the way the new abilities work, and especially the new aspects of some old abilities already seen. It all seems so right.

I like the way Rin sees that Isi is truly a queen indeed. She felt so inadequate back in the first book, but we can see how she has grown to fill the role she was born to fill. Along the way, Rin makes plenty of discoveries about her own place in life, and along with an exciting plot, terrible danger, women with awesome powers, and the company of much-loved friends, Forest Born is truly a wonderful book.

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Review of The Patron Saint of Butterflies, by Cecilia Galante

Contemporary, Teen Fiction Review 0

patron_saint_of_butterfliesThe Patron Saint of Butterflies

by Cecilia Galante

Bloomsbury, 2008. 292 pages.

Agnes and Honey have lived all their lives at Mount Blessing. They have always been friends, always done things together.

But now that Agnes is past twelve and was given a copy of The Saints’ Way by their blessed leader, Emmanuel, she would like to be a saint. Perhaps it will take fasting, or punishing herself if she does something wrong, but she wants to live a holy life.

Honey, on the other hand, would rather push the boundaries. Her mother left her at Mount Blessing when she was a baby. When Honey’s caught kissing a boy, she’s labelled a harlot — in red marker, next to the welts on her back from her whipping.

When Agnes’ grandmother Nana Pete finds out, she wants to rescue the girls and Agnes’ brother Benny from the commune for good. But there are some secrets in their pasts that need to be cleared up, and Nana Pete’s health is precarious, and Agnes does not want to leave her parents or her home. And she certainly doesn’t want to give up the call to the life of a saint. Certainly Emmanuel can’t do anything wrong, can he?

This powerful and thought-provoking novel pulls you in and lets you see both girls’ perspective at once. Will they be able to break free?

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