Review of Saving the Griffin, by Kristin Wolden Nitz

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

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Saving the Griffin

by Kristin Wolden Nitz

Peachtree, 2007.  184 pages.

Starred Review

Sonderbooks Stand-out 2008, #1 Children’s Fiction

http://www.peachtree-online.com/

http://www.kwnitz.com/

I’m finally reviewing my friend Kristin’s wonderful book.  Unfortunately, when it first came out, I was in the middle of moving and grad school and lots of things that led to stacks of books I meant to review but didn’t quite get around to.

I freely admit that I am biased about this book.  Kristin is part of my online writers’ critique group, the Sisters of Royaumont, so I saw early versions of this book and contributed some encouragement and suggestions.

However, I’ve gotten lots of feedback from kids that they love this book.  My nephew declared it the best book he’d ever read.  Recently, the Homeschoolers’ Book Group at my library chose Saving the Griffin as their first selection, and every one of them said they liked it a lot.

Kate and her family, with an older brother and a younger brother, are living in Italy for a month.  When a baby griffin interrupts their ball game, at first Kate thinks she must have looked at too many wild statues.  She and Michael try to keep the griffin a secret, while feeding him and helping him learn to fly and even to say a few words.

Their older brother, Stephen, thinks he’s too grown up for their “games,” and doesn’t realize what he’s missing.  But the little griffin gets spotted by a photographer and then gets lost in Siena.  Kate and Michael need to help him find his way home.

One of the things I like about this book is the perfect depiction of the sibling tensions between Kate and her brothers.  Stephen is suddenly acting too grown-up for them, but Kate remembers when he was her companion, and Michael was just a baby.  I also loved the way Kristin, who lived in Italy for a few years, beautifully integrated the Italian setting and words in Italian, giving the flavor of Italy.

The kids in the book group said they especially liked the way the book mixed magic with everyday life.

This book isn’t long, and would be a nice follow-up for kids who enjoy The Spiderwick Chronicles.  I admit I’m biased, but I did like Saving the Griffin better.  It has a more light-hearted feel.  You’re dealing with an adorable baby griffin rather than sinister angry characters.  However, there is still tension in trying to save the little griffin from the dangers of the human world.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on the main site at:

www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/saving_the_griffin.html

Review of Wildwood Dancing, by Juliet Marillier

Fairy Tale Variant, Fantasy, Romance, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

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Wildwood Dancing

by Juliet Marillier

Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2007.  407 pages.

Starred Review

www.randomhouse.com/teens

“I’ve heard it said that girls can’t keep secrets.  That’s wrong: we’d proved it.  We’d kept ours for years and years, ever since we came to live at Piscul Dracului and stumbled on the way into the Other Kingdom.  Nobody knew about it — not Father, not our housekeeper, Florica, or her husband, Petru, not Uncle Nicolae or Aunt Bogdana or their son, Cezar.  We found the portal when Tati was seven and I was six, and we’d been going out and coming in nearly every month since then: nine whole years of Full Moons.  We had plenty of ways to cover our absences, including a bolt on our bedchamber door and the excuse that my sister Paula sometimes walked in her sleep.

“I suppose the secret was not completely ours; Gogu knew.  But even if frogs could talk, Gogu would never have told.  Ever since I’d found him long ago, crouched all by himself in the forest, dazed and hurt, I had known I could trust him more than anyone else in the world.”

So begins a wonderfully intricate tale loosely based on “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” but with many intricate plot threads woven through the tale.

Jenica and her four sisters spend the night of every Full Moon dancing in the Wildwood, in the Other Kingdom.  They have rules to keep themselves safe, like no eating and drinking while there, no wandering into the forest.

But things in the Other Kingdom begin to change when the Night People show up.  Rumors about them in the mountains of Transylvania are dark and sinister.  One of them shows a particular interest in Tati, Jena’s oldest sister.

At the same time, everyday life is getting out of control.  For the sake of his health, their father must spend the winter in the city, and he leaves them in charge.  But Cezar, their interfering cousin, quickly makes it clear that he doesn’t think women capable of that responsibility, and he begins “helping” them by taking over.  They don’t hear from their father and cannot stop Cezar.  Meanwhile, Cezar has a grudge against the folk of the Other Kingdom and vows to destroy the Wildwood.

This tale is beautifully written.  Jena is resourceful.  She loves her sisters and loves her friend the frog.  She glories in her friends from the Other Kingdom.  She tries to protect them, and herself, from Cezar’s manipulations.

This wonderful and rich storytelling quickly captivated me.  It gives the flavor of Transylvania, going beyond the stereotypes to deeper myths.  A haunting tale of wonder and cleverness and sacrifice and true love.

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Find this review on the main site at:

www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/wildwood_dancing.html

Review of Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow, by Jessica Day George

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

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Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow

by Jessica Day George

Bloomsbury, New York, 2008.  328 pages.

Starred Review

http://www.bloomsburyusa.com/

“Long ago and far away in the land of ice and snow, there came a time when it seemed that winter would never end.  The months when summer should have given the land respite were cold and damp, and the winter months were snow filled and colder still.  The people said the cold had lasted a hundred years, and feared that it would last a hundred more.  It was not a natural winter, and no one knew what witch or troll had caused the winds to howl so fiercely.”

Here’s a beautiful retelling of the fairy tale, “East of the Sun, West of the Moon.”

When a ninth child is born to a poor woodcutter in the far north, the mother is so disappointed the baby is a girl, she doesn’t even give the baby a name.  However, this lass is destined to change the family’s fortunes.

Jessica Day George beautifully fleshes out the story, putting us firmly on the side of this brave lass who cares about her loved ones enough to defy the powerful queen of the trolls.

The only thing that hurt my enjoyment of this story was that I already have read a much-loved retelling of this same fairy tale, East ( www.sonderbooks.com/YAFiction/east.html ).  It’s been a long time since I read that version, but it feels somehow disloyal to that book to like this new version so much.  These are both books I will want to reread, but I will have to alternate which one I read, in order to keep from comparing them.  Both are beautifully done, each with their own take on the story.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on the main site at:

www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/sun_and_moon_ice_and_snow.html

Review of Princess Academy, by Shannon Hale (Audiobook)

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

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Princess Academy

by Shannon Hale

Read by Laura Credidio and The Full Cast Family

Full Cast Audio, 2007.  8 compact discs.  7 hours, 21 minutes.

Starred Review.

Winner of a 2006 Newbery Honor Award.

http://www.fullcastaudio.com/

http://www.squeetus.com/

I read and reviewed this book in the print version when it first came out.  ( http://www.sonderbooks.com/YAFiction/princessacademy.html )

At the time, I wasn’t quite as enchanted with the book as with Shannon Hale’s other books.  I think it suffered just a little because my expectations were so tremendously high.  This time, listening to Full Cast Audio’s fabulous production (complete with songs sung in between the chapters), the book was even better than I remembered it.

I think the problem before may have been that I read the book too quickly.  There are some issues at the beginning where I wasn’t quite tracking with Miri.  She felt like her obviously loving Pa was ashamed of her.  She was prejudiced against lowlanders.  And she was trying to get out of going to the Academy even when it would get her family in trouble.

However, all of those issues are resolved, and as the story goes, it gets better and better.  I like the way Miri discovers the magic of the mountain and all the village girls learn to use it together.  I like the way friendships are formed, and Miri becomes proud of her heritage.  There’s danger and cleverness, and even a sprinkle of romance.

Full Cast Audio’s production, as always, enhances the book beautifully.  They truly use a full cast of different voices for different characters.  This production made an already wonderful book even better.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on the main site at:

www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/princess_academy_audio.html

Review of The Wizard Test, by Hilari Bell

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy 0

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The Wizard Test

by Hilari Bell

eos (HarperCollins), 2005.  166 pages.

http://www.harpercollischildrens.com/

www.sfwa.org/members/bell

I’ve definitely become a fan of Hilari Bell’s writing.  Like The Prophecy, The Wizard Test is a fantasy for middle grade readers that takes a classic idea and digs deeper.

Dayven does not want to pass the Wizard Test.  He does not want to have the powers of wizards and be taken as an apprentice.  Everyone knows that wizards can’t be trusted.  His grandmother, who may have passed her wizard talents on to him, was a traitor to her people.

No, Dayven wants to be a Guardian like his father.

But what if the Guardians ask him to go ahead and apprentice to the wizards?  After all, they need someone to find out what the wizards are up to.  The only trouble is that Dayven finds things a little more complicated than he had been led to believe.

This is another excellent story.  I didn’t find myself as absorbed in it as I was in The Prophecy.  My personal theory is that Dayven didn’t pass the Not Whining Test.  Where Perryndon of The Prophecy accepted difficult circumstances with pluck, Dayven grumbles and complains.  However, this book was written earlier than The Prophecy, so I think it goes to show that Hilari Bell went from very good writing on to greatness.  I’m looking forward to reading more of her work.

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Find this review on the main site at:

www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/wizard_test.html

Review of Chalice, by Robin McKinley

Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

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Chalice

by Robin McKinley

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2008.  263 pages.

Starred Review.

http://www.robinmckinley.com/

www.penguin.com/youngreaders/

Chalice is a new Robin McKinley book in the tradition of Hero and the Crown and Beauty.

As always, Robin McKinley is a consummate world-weaver.  The magic in the world of Chalice isn’t quite like any fantasy world I’ve read about before, but is presented smoothly and beautifully, through story rather than explanation.  In this land, demesnes are held by a Circle, composed of the Master, the Chalice, the Grand Seneschal, and nine others.

Willowlands lost both Master and Chalice in one disaster, and Mirasol, chosen as the new Chalice is woefully ill-prepared, but perhaps more prepared than the new Master.

Their new Master was coming home: the Master thought lost or irrecoverable.  The Master who, as younger brother of the previous Master, had been sent off to the priests of Fire, to get rid of him…. 

The priests of Fire said they would see what they could do, but they promised nothing.  The younger brother of the old Master had just crossed into the third level, and by the third level Elemental priests can no longer live among ordinary humans.

But six weeks ago the Grand Seneschal had received another message from the priests of Fire:  that the Master of Willowlands was coming home.  It would not be an easy Mastership, and the priests were not sure it was even posible, but the Master himself felt the responsibility to his demesne, and he was determined to try.

Mirasol was a beekeeper long before she was Chalice.  She holds her Chalice in honey, the first Chalice to do so, rather than the usual water or wine.  Her bees become unusually responsive to her as she learns her role.  She hears the earthlines and mends the rifts in the land of the demesne, trying to recover after seven years that the new Master’s older brother abused it.

Can Mirasol, inexperienced and unapprenticed, learn what she needs through books?  Enough to help the land adjust to a Master who was so far along in the Fire Priesthood that he burns her hand when he brushes against it to take the Welcome Cup?

As in some of her other books, the main weakness is that the action is mostly internal.  Several important incidents are told through flashbacks, losing some immediacy.  Even as the action was reaching a climax, we read, Many years later her memory of the week before the faenorn was that — till the very last night — she had no sleep at all, except in those moments between blink and blink when you are so tired that you fall asleep standing up with your eyes open and wake again by finding yourself staring at the thing in your hands that you had been staring at just a moment ago.  That sentence gives away that Mirasol will live through the events at the end of this week and makes the reader feel like she is looking back on the events, rather than currently experiencing them.

What’s more, like Aerin of The Hero and the Crown, like Jake of Dragonhaven, most of Mirasol’s work is done alone, and there are many things she must figure out on her own.  So instead of scenes with dialogue, these moments end up being long passages telling about Mirasol’s thoughts or solitary actions.

Mind you, no one tells someone’s thoughts more lyrically than Robin McKinley!  Chalice is truly a wonderful book that catches you up into another world.  I would love for her to write a sequel.  And I will never look at bees or honey quite the same way again.

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Find this review on the main site at:

www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/chalice.html

Review of Breaking Dawn, by Stephenie Meyer

Fantasy, Romance, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

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Breaking Dawn

by Stephenie Meyer

Megan Tingley Books (Little, Brown), 2008.  756 pages.

Starred Review

I admit it:  There is no need for a review of Breaking Dawn.  You should NOT read it unless you have read the three books that come before it:  Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse.  Once you’ve read Twilight, you will know if you want to keep reading.  If you do, then nothing I can say will stop you!

However, I can’t resist the opportunity to offer my opinion.

I liked Breaking Dawn.  I loved the way she pulled off a happy ending, almost too happy, but still leaving me smiling.

Okay, she threw in a completely bizarre plot twist.  But I did like the way so many vampires came together, and I like the way this time Bella provided an important contribution to the final conflict.

There were a couple of places where I laughed aloud.  The first was her description of Edward’s eyes on his wedding day.  It was even more over the top than a spoof I had read before the book came out:  “His eyes were a buttery, burning gold.”

Come on, buttery?!!

When I read the resolution of the love triangle, though, I laughed so loudly, I woke up my son, who was asleep on the other bed in the hotel room.  Still, it did resolve things….

I’d better not say any more!

These books may not be great literature, but they are absorbing reading, escapist romance, and a whole lot of fun.

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Find this review on the main site at:

www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/breaking_dawn.html

Review of Stardust, by Neil Gaiman

Fantasy, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

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Stardust

by Neil Gaiman

Harper Perennial, New York, 2006.  First published in 1999.  250 pages.

Starred review.  (Stardusted review?)

My son was right.  I should have read the book before I saw the movie.

The fact is, I loved the movie.  One of my favorite movies ever.  A delightful experience to watch.

Yes, the book is wonderful.  A fairy tale story that’s truly diverting.  But can it be?  I liked the movie better.

Tristan Thorn grew up in the village of Wall, on the border of Faerie.  There’s a story about his birth that some of the older folks in Wall know about.

Tristan is trying to win the heart of his true love, when they see a star fall over in Faerie.  Tristan promises to get it for her, not realizing that in Faerie, stars are beautiful women, daughters of the Moon.  When Tristan finds the Star, she’s not happy about Tristan dragging her off to show his girl.

Other, more sinister forces, are also after the Star, whose name is Yvaine.  Tristan and Yvaine end up traveling a journey together with many perils.

I’m afraid I found the original story less satisfying than the story in the movie.  For the movie, there was a big climactic scene with a big showdown with everyone who is after Yvaine, and Tristan must defeat them.  In the book, they seem to escape from most perils by virtue of simple luck.

But the movie does show the same story — cleaned up a little.  (The book is for adults, and contains a few “mature” details, which are cleaned up in the movie along with the more unified plot.)  That story is truly delightful, in both its forms.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on the main site at:

www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/stardust.html

Review of Eclipse, by Stephenie Meyer

Fantasy, Romance, Teen Fiction Review 0

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Eclipse

by Stephenie Meyer

Megan Tingley Books (Little, Brown), 2007.  629 pages.

http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/

http://www.lb-teens.com/

This was my favorite book of the Twilight quartet, which is phenomenally popular now with teenage girls.  I read it at the same time as a co-worker, just in time to read the fourth book of the series, and we had a lot of fun discussing it.

If you haven’t read any books of the series, you definitely need to start with Twilight.  Once you’ve read that one, you will know if you want to keep reading or not.

Yes, they are vampire novels.  But these are not typical vampire books at all.  These books are for lovers of romance who don’t mind a little over-the-top plot situations.

Edward is not the typical vampire, dark and evil.  He and his “family” do not drink human blood, instead hunting large game animals.  (Having read Barbara Kingsolver, I think that they would run out of wildlife on the top of the food chain in a very short time.  But let’s not bring quibbles about reality into the story….)  These vampires stay out of sunshine not because it would harm them but because they are too dazzlingly beautiful for sunlight.  They are also super strong and super fast.  With this group not drinking human blood, where’s the drawback?

Eclipse explores more of the backstory of the vampires.  We learn more about their history and motivations.  Bella and Edward actually share some thoughts instead of just restrained passion.  We learn why Bella doesn’t want to be a teen bride and why Edward is reluctant to let Bella become a vampire.

They also explore more of Bella’s relationship with Jacob, her friend the werewolf.  I like the way the way the werewolves and the vampires end up needing to work together.

Here’s another fast-moving plot with plenty of tension, romantic and otherwise.  This story was more unified than the other books.  Instead of a crisis tacked on at the end, this one has a unified theme.  Some young vampires are terrorizing Seattle, and it appears that, as usual, Bella is in danger.  The entire book builds up to dealing with that danger, in a satisfying way.

I still believe that a lot of the intense romance of these books is built into the restraint.  Bella and Edward’s relationship is chaste, since to consummate it might kill her, but loaded with tension.  I hope teen girls don’t read this and think there are boys out there who’d be able to sleep with them every night and have Edward’s self-control.  But what a romantic dream — a strong, incredibly handsome, self-controlled, powerful protector whose love is for Bella alone.  Throw in vampires and werewolves, and you’ve got a tremendous hit!

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on the main site at:

www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/eclipse.html

Review of Coraline, by Neil Gaiman

Audiobooks, Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy 0

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Coraline

written and performed by Neil Gaiman

with original music by The Gothic Archies

HarperCollins, 2000.  3 hours, 3 compact discs.

Coraline is an exceedingly creepy story, in a delicious, shivery sort of way.  (I recently read an author interview where he said that parents find the book more disturbing than kids do.  I’m not surprised.)

There is a door in Coraline’s apartment that leads to a brick wall.  Once it led to another flat, but when the house was split into apartments, the door was bricked up.  However, one day Coraline follows a shadow through that door.  She finds there a woman who says she is Coraline’s other mother.  She wants Coraline to stay with her forever, and has some wonderful inducements.  But they turn out to be less and less wonderful.

Everyone on the other side has black buttons where their eyes should be.  Things look normal, but turn out to be seriously disturbing.

And leaving the other flat is not as easy as entering.

Neil Gaiman’s performance of this story is wonderful, enhanced by the incredibly creepy songs of The Gothic Archies.  I chose this book to listen to on our trip to Florida because I thought my 14-year-old son would enjoy it, too.  I do think I found the story creepier than he did.  But tremendously well-written and well performed.

Not for the faint of heart.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on the main site at:

www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/coraline.html