Review of Zombies vs. Unicorns, edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier

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

Zombies vs. Unicorns

edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier

Margaret K. McElderry Books, New York, 2010. 415 pages.
Starred Review

When I met Diana Peterfreund, author of Rampant and Ascendant, at the 2009 Kidlit Bloggers’ Conference, she told me about this upcoming anthology, and I was waiting for it eagerly ever since. The premise is too fun! I will use the beginning of the Introduction to present it:

“Since the dawn of time one question has dominated all others:

“Zombies or Unicorns?

“Well, okay, maybe not since the dawn of time, but definitely since February 2007. That was the day Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier began the heated exchange about the creatures’ relative merits on Justine’s blog. Since then the question has become an unstoppable Internet meme, crowding comment threads and even making it to YouTube.

“Here in the real world Holly and Justine are often called upon to defend, respectively, unicorns and zombies. The whole thing has gotten so out of hand that the only remedy is . . .

“Zombies vs. Unicorns. The anthology.”

Yes, Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier, defenders of the reputations of unicorns and zombies, respectively, have compiled an anthology of stories by stellar authors about unicorns and about zombies. Team Unicorn is represented by Garth Nix, Naomi Novik, Margo Lanagan, Diana Peterfreund, Meg Cabot, and Kathleen Duey. Team Zombie presents stories by Alaya Dawn Johnson, Carrie Ryan, Maureen Johnson, Scott Westerfeld, Cassandra Clare, and Libba Bray.

Now, to be right upfront with you, I am firmly and decidedly on Team Unicorn. My first unpublished and probably never-to-be published children’s novel is about a winged unicorn. I like them. And I don’t like zombies. If this anthology had only included the zombie stories, I would not have been even slightly tempted to pick it up.

However, as it was, I’m am forced to admit that some of the zombie stories were quite good. The one by Maureen Johnson I loved. It reminded me of my favorite vampire story ever with an oppressed wife caring for the adopted vampire children of her abusive husband. In Maureen Johnson’s story an unwitting teenager comes to an isolated house to babysit some toddlers who turn out to be zombies. It probably shouldn’t be read by a teen about to go on her first babysitting job, but I enjoyed it.

The unicorn stories, of course, were brilliant! My favorite was “The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn,” by Diana Peterfreund, which tied in beautifully with her books. You would not have to have read her books to enjoy the story, and I hope it will win her some new readers. My second favorite was “Princess Prettypants,” by Meg Cabot. A girl’s crazy aunt gets her a unicorn for her birthday, and at first she’s horrified at such a baby present, but in the end she finds it quite useful.

I do highly recommend this anthology. Whichever fantastical creature you prefer, you’ll find brilliant stories that look at them in a new and interesting way. The banter between the editors before each story is amusing as well.

Go Team Unicorn!

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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.

Review of Baking Cakes in Kigali, by Gaile Parkin

Cross Cultural, Fiction Review, General, Literary, Starred Review 0

Baking Cakes in Kigali

by Gaile Parkin

Atlantic Books, London, 2009. 361 pages.
Starred Review

This enjoyable yet surprisingly deep book reminded me of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith. Both books are set in Africa, though this one in war-torn Rwanda instead of peaceful Botswana. But in both books, the main character’s profession lets her get to know people from a wide variety of backgrounds and help solve their problems and bring people together. Precious Ramotswe is a detective, but the protagonist of this book, Angel Tungaraza, bakes cakes.

We learn quickly that baking cakes in Kigali is a much more artistic endeavor than baking cakes in America:

“In the same way that a bucket of water reduces a cooking fire to ashes — a few splutters of shocked disbelief, a hiss of anger, and then a chill all the more penetrating for having so abruptly supplanted intense heat — in just that way, the photograph that she now surveyed extinguished all her excitement.

“‘Exactly like this?’ she asked her guest, trying to keep any hint of regret or condemnation out of her voice.

“‘Exactly like that,’ came the reply, and the damp chill of disappointment seeped into her heart….

“‘As you know, Angel,’ the ambassador’s wife was saying, ‘it’s traditional to celebrate a silver wedding anniversary with a cake just like the original wedding cake. Amos and I feel it’s so important to follow our traditions, especially when we’re away from home.’

“‘That is true, Mrs Ambassador,’ agreed Angel, who was herself away from home. But as she examined the photograph, she was doubtful of the couple’s claim to the traditions that they had embraced when choosing this cake twenty-five years ago. It was not like any traditional wedding cake she had seen in her home town of Bukoba in the west of Tanzania or in Dar es Salaam in the east. No, this cake was traditional to Wazungu, white people. It was completely white: white with white patterns decorating the white. Small white flowers with white leaves encircled the outer edges of the upper surface, and three white pillars on top of the cake held aloft another white cake that was a smaller replica of the one below. It was, quite simply, the most unattractive cake that she had ever seen. Of course, Mr and Mrs Wanyika had married at a time when the style of Wazungu was still thought to be fashionable — prestigious, even. But by now, in the year 2000, surely everybody had come to recognize that Wazungu were not the authorities on style and taste that they were once thought to be? Perhaps if she showed Mrs Wanyika the pictures of the wedding cakes that she had made for other people, she would be able to convince her of the beauty that colours could bring to a cake.”

Angel and her husband are from Tanzania. They lost both their adult children to AIDS, and now must take care of their five grandchildren.

“It’s only that we won’t be able to provide for these children as well as we did for our first children. But we must try by all means to give them a good life. That’s why we decided to leave Tanzania and come here to Rwanda. There’s aid money for the university and they’re paying Pius so much more as a Special Consultant than he was getting at the university in Dar. Okay, Rwanda has suffered a terrible thing. Terrible, Mrs Ambassador; bad, bad, bad. Many of hearts here are filled with pain. Many of the eyes here have seen terrible things. Terrible! But many of those same hearts are now brave enough to hope, and many of those same eyes have begun to look towards the future instead of the past. Life is going on, everyday. And for us the pluses of coming here are many more than the minuses. And my cake business is doing well because there are almost no shops here that sell cakes. A cake business doesn’t do well in a place where people have nothing to celebrate.”

Although Angel herself is dealing with some heavy losses, and so are the people around her, she is able to touch people’s lives — from convincing a mother to give her daughter a better name than Goodenough to providing family for a couple getting married who have lost all of their own families. This is an uplifting book and provides enjoyable and interesting reading.

One fun note: I was watching the DVD series of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, which is filmed in Africa, and the first episode happened to have someone selling cakes. I noticed happily that those cakes were indeed far fancier and more colorful than cakes I’d see in America. So apparently I’ve learned something true about baking cakes in Kigali.

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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.

Review of When the Heart Waits, by Sue Monk Kidd

Christian, Musings, Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Starred Review 0

When the Heart Waits

Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions

by Sue Monk Kidd

HarperSanFrancisco, 1990. 217 pages.
Starred Review

Here’s another book by a woman exploring the deep questions and issues of facing midlife. Those always resonate with me. This one, with the theme of waiting, of slow growth, seemed particularly apt.

She uses the image of spinning a cocoon and having radical transformation from a caterpillar to a butterfly. It takes time. And when the transformation has been made, even unfurling your new wings is difficult.

Here are some passages I especially liked, to give you a taste of the wisdom in this book:

“When it comes to religion today, we tend to be long on butterflies and short on cocoons. Somehow we’re going to have to relearn that the deep things of God don’t come suddenly. It’s as if we imagine that all of our spiritual growth potential is dehydrated contents to which we need only add some holy water to make it instantly and easily appear.

“I received a letter recently from someone who was feeling impatient about taking the long way round. She wrote, ‘Pole vaulting is so much more alluring than crawling.'”

“Most of us Christians don’t know how to wait in pain — at least not in the contemplative, creative way that opens us to newness and growth. We’re told to “turn it over to Jesus” and — presto! — things should be okay.

“But inside things usually aren’t okay. So on top of everything else, we feel guilty because obviously we didn’t really turn our pain over or else it wouldn’t still be with us. Or we decide that God wasn’t listening and can’t be trusted to deliver on divine promises.

“How did we ever get the idea that God would supply us on demand with quick fixes, that God is merely a rescuer and not a midwife?”

“If you want to be impressed, note how often God’s people seem to be waiting….

“I came to the parable Jesus told about the ten maidens waiting for the bridegroom…. I’d always thought that the point of the story was that we should be prepared. But in my reading after the retreat, it seemed to be just as much about waiting. Waiting through the dark night. The idea is that waiting precedes celebration. If you don’t show up prepared to wait, you may miss the transcendent when it happens.

“Most stunning to me was the picture I began to get of God waiting. The parable of the prodigal son would be more aptly named the parable of the waiting father. It tells us much more about God than anything else — a God who watches and waits with a full heart for us to make our homecoming.”

“Shifting from a self-centered focus to a more God-centered focus is terribly hard. I think we’ve gone wrong by assuming that such a radical movement can be achieved simply by setting our jaw and saying one or two prayers of relinquishment.

“Letting go isn’t one step but many. It’s a winding, spiraling process that happens on deep levels. And we must begin at the beginning: by confronting our ambivalence.”

“Looking back, I’m aware of several experiences that sifted together to bring me quietly to the place of letting go. They had the effect of slowly and gently uncurling my grip, finger by finger.”

She takes us through her midlife journey, including many painful moments. But then comes the time of unfurling the new wings:

“When the time is right, the cocooned soul begins to emerge. Waiting turns golden. Newness unfurls. It’s a time of pure, unmitigated wonder. Yet as we enter the passage of emergence, we need to remember that new life comes slowly, awkwardly, on wobbly wings.

“I waited many long months before I felt newness begin to form, and many more before it began to unfold in my life. Gradually — oh, so gradually — my waiting season came to an end. The pain began to diminish bit by bit, as if it had peaked and now was giving way to something new. Many of the questions I’d lived with began to sprout little seeds of insight. Light trickled in. A new vision and way of life began to take shape not only in my head but in my heart and soul as well. It was as if I’d discovered a new room inside myself — a wider, more expansive place than I’d known before, but a room that had been there all along.”

This book will uplift and encourage anyone going through a similar journey. She offers us Hope:

“Hope for you and me and the journeys we undertake. Hope that we would trust our waiting hearts enough to risk entering them, that we would listen for the Voice that bids us come to the edge, and that we would welcome the gentle push of God, who is both our wings and the wind that bears them up.”

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/when_the_heart_waits.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.

Review of Art and Max, by David Wiesner

Animal Characters, Art, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Art & Max

by David Wiesner

Clarion Books (Houghton Mifflin), Boston, 2010. 40 pages.
Starred Review

Three-time Caldecott Medal winner David Wiesner has another stunner here. Art & Max reminds me of The Three Pigs, because it’s also a meta-book, a book about how books are made. Or at least meta-art, art about art.

The story takes place in the desert with various desert reptiles. (I won’t attempt to specify which species.) Arthur is a big horny critter who is also an artist, and obviously very pleased with himself. When little Max comes along and wants to paint, he asks Art (Arthur) what he should paint.

When Art says, “You can paint me,” Max takes him literally. That’s when the fun begins.

Art ends up covered with paint. When the other critters try to fix him, he goes through several different manifestations — created in different art styles. Most catastrophic is when he’s a watercolor and drinks a glass of water — and then becomes a line drawing. Then when he walks away with Max holding his tail — he unravels completely.

Don’t worry, Max does recreate Art, in a whole new style.

I would like to share this with children. Probably old enough that they wouldn’t worry about being unravelled! Though I think kids will understand the playful spirit and that these things could only happen in a world where all the characters are made of paint in the first place.

This book has lots to talk about or just enjoy, and is captivating on many levels.

It wouldn’t have surprised me if this book had earned David Wiesner a fourth Caldecott Medal, since the art is so innovative and stunning. For me personally, the story didn’t have as much heart as his winners, but it’s still a playful and creative look at what you can do with art.

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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.

Review of Star Crossed, by Elizabeth C. Bunce

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

Star Crossed

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

Arthur A. Levine Books (Scholastic), 2010. 359 pages.
Starred Review
2010 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #8 Teen Fantasy Fiction

I so enjoyed Elizabeth Bunce’s first book, A Curse Dark as Gold, when my library didn’t order a copy of Star Crossed as soon as it came out (They do have several copies now.), I ordered myself a copy. I was glad I did, because I’m sure I will read it again, especially since it turns out to be the first book of a series.

The fantasy world of Star Crossed is complicated and complex, but Elizabeth Bunce doesn’t lose the reader or blast us with a data dump. She feeds the information to us gradually and skilfully, stringing us along, making us want to know more. By the time the book is done, you look back at an intricate web of history, magic, relationships, betrayals and loyalties, just wanting to find out what happens next.

The book begins with Digger, a skilled thief, escaping from a heist that has gone bad, trying to escape the Greenmen. Her partner, the man she loves, was captured. Now she needs to get out of the city.

While she’s walking by the river, trying to figure out how to get on a boat and leave the city, she gets a lift with a group of young noblemen and women on a pleasure boat. She pretends to be a lady herself, Celyn Contrare, fleeing from the convent school of the Daughters of Celys.

They take pity on her and get her out of the city. She becomes Merista’s lady’s maid and they go to Meri’s family’s castle to get ready for her kernja-velde. Digger does not have magic herself, but she does have the unusual ability to sense magic, and magic is strong on Meri.

Many guests come to the family’s castle, ending up getting snowed in for the winter. One of them recognizes Digger for the thief she is. He won’t turn her in — as long as she does some stealing for him. Digger gets more and more fond of Meri and her family, but is trapped into spying on them. Can she keep them from getting in trouble? What are they plotting? She finds out more and more secrets that she does not want to reveal.

The intrigue in this book has many layers. There was a historic battle years ago where one side was defeated because of a traitor. There is a missing prince who is out of favor with those in power. There are the Greenmen, vigilant in looking for the forbidden use of magic. There are some surprises in Digger’s background. She gets drawn further and further into the plots until it all erupts into a dramatic, exciting, and satisfying showdown. I found myself immediately rereading the last several chapters, simply to enjoy them again and make sure I saw all the threads weaving beautifully into place.

The best part of the book may have been on the last page: “Digger will return in Liar’s Moon.” I hope I don’t have to wait long!

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/starcrossed.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 book I ordered from Amazon.com.

Review of The Dreamer, by Pam Munoz Ryan

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

The Dreamer

by Pam Munoz Ryan

drawings by Peter Sis

Scholastic Press, New York, 2010. 372 pages.
Starred Review
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010: #5 Children’s Fiction
2011 Pura Belpre Author Award
2010 Boston Globe-Horn Book Fiction Honor Book

I loved this book. I had hoped it would be a Newbery Honor Book, but can’t really complain because of the other awards it won. One thing I like about the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award is that they select based on the entire book, words and illustrations together and give the award to both the author and the illustrator, if both contributed to the complete book. In this book, the drawings work beautifully with the text to present a wonderfully poetical story.

This book is a novelization of the childhood of Pablo Neruda, who ended up being a great poet. Pablo Neruda was not his birth name, and we start out the book with a boy named Neftali, whose father thinks he daydreams far too much.

“On a continent of many songs, in a country shaped like the arm of a tall guitarrista, the rain drummed down on the town of Temuco.

“Neftali Reyes sat in his bed, propped up by pillows, and stared at the schoolwork in front of him. His teacher called it simple addition, but it was never simple for him. How he wished the numbers would disappear! He squeezed his eyes closed and then opened them.

“The twos and threes lifted from the page and waved for the others to join them. The fives and sevens sprang upward, and finally, after much prodding, the fours, ones, and sixes came along. But the nines and zeros would not budge, so the others left them. They held hands in a long procession of tiny figures, flew across the room, and escaped through the window crack. Neftali closed the book and smiled.

“He certainly could not be expected to finish his homework with only the lazy zeros and nines lolling on the page.”

Neftali is weak and shy. He stutters. His father is demanding and believes its shameful to spend your time daydreaming or writing.

The style of this book suits the subject. The language is poetical, and inserts some lines from actual poems by Pablo Neruda (with several complete poems at the back). When telling about his daydreams, the text may take on a shape or there may be an imaginative drawing from Peter Sis.

There is a plot, as Neftali learns to be the poet he was born to be, despite his father. But I think daydreamers will most enjoy the languid beauty of this book. It gives a leisurely and lovely look at the imaginative life of a child who notices things. Like me, readers will certainly want to read more of Pablo Neruda’s poetry.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/dreamer.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 copy I got at ALA Annual Conference.

Review of Casting Spells, by Barbara Bretton

Chick Lit, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Mystery, Romance, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

Casting Spells

by Barbara Bretton

Berkley Books, New York, 2008. 308 pages.
Starred Review
2010 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #6 Fiction

Happy Valentine’s Day! Today I’m appropriately posting the review of a romance, but this one is a paranormal knitting mystery romance! The combination is delightfully original and a whole lot of fun.

Here’s how we meet Chloe Hobbs:

“By the way, I’m Chloe Hobbs, owner of Sticks & Strings, voted the number one knit shop in New England two years running. I don’t know exactly who did the voting, but I owe each of those wonderful knitters some quiviut and a margarita. Blog posts about the magical store in northern Vermont where your yarn never tangles, your sleeves always come out the same length, and you always, always get gauge were popping up on a daily basis, raising both my profile and my bottom line.”

Chloe’s store seems magical because it is. She’s the daughter of a sorceress who fell in love with a human. But her father died in a car crash when she was six years old, and her mother chose to leave this world to be with the man she loved. Chloe inherited several things from her mother including a basket of roving that remained full to overflowing no matter how many hours she spends spinning it into yarn. But she also inherited a responsibility to the town.

“Over three hundred years ago one of my sorcerer ancestors cast a protective charm over the town designed to shield Sugar Maple from harm for as long as one of her line walked the earth and — well, you guessed it. I’m the last descendant of Aerynn, and if you thought your family was on your case to marry and produce offspring, try having an entire town mixing potions, casting runes, and weaving spells designed to hook you up with Mr. Right.”

Unfortunately, the protective spell seems to be weakening. And there’s more than just protection from accidents and crime at stake. Because Sugar Maple “wasn’t the picture-postcard New England town our Chamber of Commerce would have you believe, but a village of vampires, werewolves, elves, faeries, and everything else your parents told you didn’t really exist.” However, Chloe’s mother really came into her powers when she fell in love, so maybe that’s all that Chloe needs.

But then a visiting beautiful stranger dies. The first tourist or nonvillager ever to die within town limits. Aerynn’s spell is definitely waning, because that’s not supposed to happen.

Sugar Maple doesn’t have any police force, since it doesn’t have any crime. So a policeman from Boston, who knew the deceased, goes up to the scene of the crime to investigate.

What follows is funny and quirky and full of surprises. Can the whole town hide the truth from him? And what will happen to the town if the spell fails? What will happen to Chloe?

I must admit, the romance is not exactly subtle. As Chloe begins to have magick, it basically throws her into the guy’s arms. But it is humorous to read about her trying to explain it!

This book is a light-hearted romp through a most imaginative situation. Definitely the best paranormal-romance-knitting-mystery I’ve ever read! And there are knitting tips at the back! How can you go wrong?

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/casting_spells.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.

Review of Feel, by Matthew Elliott

Christian, Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

Feel

The Power of Listening to Your Heart

by Matthew Elliott

Tyndale House Publishers, 2008. 266 pages.
Starred Review
2010 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #3 Other Nonfiction

My home Bible study group leader picked out this book for our group to study for several weeks, and I thought it had some beautifully revolutionary things to say.

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard it preached: “Love is not a feeling. Love is a choice.” Or I’ve heard sermons about the Fact-Faith-Feeling train — that “Feeling” is supposed to be the caboose in our Christian lives. Matthew Elliott says that such teaching is missing out on a full and rich Christian life. God wants us to feel.

Here’s what he says in the first chapter:

“The second thing that has gone terribly wrong is that we have become indoctrinated in the belief that emotions are unreliable, dangerous, and bad. Philosophy, psychology, our scientific culture, and the church have taught us that logic and reason must reign supreme, while feelings are trivialized and seen as something to be suppressed or ignored. Many successful contemporary writers have brainwashed us into believing that we must stifle what we feel in favor of what we think.

“The messages I have read recently in popular inspirational books include the ideas that emotions leave us in a fog and cloud our thinking; the notion that in order to live a godly life, we must control our emotions; and the belief that following our emotions often leads us to sin.

“I’ve heard nationally known speakers assert that anger, sorrow, and jealousy are signs of spiritual weakness; that our feelings cannot be trusted; and that God cares about what we believe, not what we feel.

“These are all myths. None of them are true; none of them hold up to good science; and none of them are from the Bible….

“I have come to believe that our emotions were given to us by God to drive us to our best.

“I have come to believe that emotions are among the most logical and dependable things in our lives.

“I have come to believe that emotions give us a window to see truth like nothing else.

“I have come to believe that the true health of our spiritual lives is measured by how we feel.”

Those surprising assertions (Emotions? Among the most logical and dependable things in our lives? Really?) are all supported convincingly in the pages that follow. I came away with completely new ideas about what constitutes a growing Christian life.

The author spoke from the same kind of Christian background I’d grown up in, teaching that love in the Bible is not really a feeling, but more of a duty. He points out:

“There is no special category for ‘Christian love,’ that agape kind our Christian leaders like to talk about — intellectualizing an emotion into a philosophical ideal. Love, hope, joy — and even hatred — in the Bible are not lofty ideas and concepts; they are feelings and emotions, just as we know them in our own lives and talk about them with our families and friends….

“It occurred to me that our spirituality is all about how we are feeling — whether we are feeling life or are numb to it. If we are not feeling as we should, something is really wrong with our relationship with God.

“Paul takes no time to explain what he means by love and joy and hope and hate and sorrow. He doesn’t try to tell us that joy is not a feeling or that love is just a choice. He speaks in plain language and assumes that emotions are simply recording our feelings — the stuff of life that God has given us. Paul assumes we will know what joy and love feel like, and he exhorts that if we live by God’s standards, there are certain kinds of feelings that will fill our lives.”

There’s so much that’s so good in this book. Most of it, I had not thought of before, but how it rings true! I like this part about obedience and duty:

“One of the things we sometimes get confused is the difference between being duty driven and obedient. God calls us to obedience, but somehow we make that into a rote thing. It’s as if we don’t consider it real obedience unless it feels hard and tough and bad….

“Having positive emotion for doing what we’ve been asked to do makes all the difference in how we obey the command. When we see the reason for it, when we enjoy doing it, or when we want to please the one giving the instruction, we are much more likely to obey, and to obey with energy and enthusiasm….

“As we grow in our faith, we will be driven more and more to obey God’s commands, not because they are things we should do, but because they are what we want to do, and we desire in our deep places to do them. As we learn how good they are for us and those we love, we will see how it is a joy to obey. As we grow closer to God and know more of his great love for us, our desire to please him will grow deeper and wider and all-consuming in us….

“Not only will it be easier to obey, but we will obey more fully with greater passion and results.”

Another thing Matthew Elliott points out which I’d never thought of that way is that, far from being irrational and illogical, our emotions are often ahead of our thoughts in judging a situation correctly.

“Emotions are a complex judgment or evaluation of someone or something in light of the past, present, or future. Hope, for example, is the expectation that something good is going to happen in the future to something or someone we love; whereas joy is felt when something good has happened in the past or the present.

“Emotions can do what a wise counselor does, what a veteran mentor does, or what a spiritual advisor does — help you make right decisions from complex information. Emotions carry truth and wisdom, just as a good friend does….

“To say that emotions are connected to thinking does not mean they always come from conscious, intentional thoughts. Rather, emotions have a wisdom all their own, which is naturally informed by our circumstances, situations, and relationships. They speak to us about truth that we cannot always know rationally or even think thoughts about….

“It’s not uncommon for people to feel fear when they enter their house while it is being robbed, even when they have no direct knowledge that someone else is in the house. They step inside, and all of a sudden they’re afraid. They know something is wrong. This feeling has saved many a person from harm, as they have acted on that fear…. That is the realm in which emotions operate, which can make it difficult to figure out exactly why we are feeling what we feel.

“Our tendency when emotions surface is to decide that we shouldn’t feel them, so we dismiss them, ditching them in the first mental trash can we can find. But our emotions often tell us things that our rational processes cannot get to, things we desperately need to hear.”

I don’t want to write out every great point the author makes in this book. I hope this review has given you a taste of all the rich and revolutionary thoughts found in its pages. Here’s a paragraph that sums up some of the ideas:

“God wants us to be emotionally mature with emotionally full lives. Becoming emotionally mature is not, as many teach, about becoming emotionally controlled. It is about becoming emotionally adept, emotionally wise, and emotionally skilled. It is about having lives that are chock-full of wonder and feeling — and then having the ability and practiced skill to live well and wisely in a richly emotional world.”

I’ll close the review with a line I just love:

“God wants you to soar. He wants a ‘you’ more full of vitality and spirit than you’ve ever imagined.”

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/feel.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 my own copy of the book.

Review of A True Princess, by Diane Zahler

Children's Fiction Review, Fairy Tale Variant, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

A True Princess

by Diane Zahler

HarperCollins Children’s Books, 2011. 182 pages.
Starred Review

Today I’ll be posting my second-ever Blog Tour Author Interview on my blog, where I interview Diane Zahler about this book, which has just come out. I did not agree to do the interview until I’d read the book, so I was happy that I enjoyed it very much! I wasn’t surprised, because some of my very favorite books are retellings of fairy tales, but I was happy about it, and happy as well to spread the word about such a good book.

A True Princess is a loose retelling of “The Princess and the Pea.” One thing I like in a fairy tale retelling is when they plausibly explain odd details in the original fairy tale. Like Ella Enchanted explains why Cinderella was such a doormat to her stepsisters, while still being spunky. A True Princess by the end of the book reveals why in the world a queen would use a pea below a pile of mattresses in order to test whether a candidate was a true princess.

But I do like it that the author didn’t adhere slavishly to the fairy tale and gave a more modernized ending, with some true love involved in the prince’s choice.

This book is a feel-good story, which I also enjoy. All the fully human characters are kind, except Lilia’s stepmother, and she’s only at the beginning. She’s not actually even Lilia’s stepmother, since Lilia was a foundling, taken in by kind man when she was a toddler. Lilia explains how she got there:

“I was about two years old when Jorgen, out fishing in the river, grabbed a strange, rough basket as it floated past. He found me inside, sound asleep. The river came down from the mountain glaciers and was ice cold. If the basket had tipped in the swift current or leaked, I would have perished from the freezing water. But I was perfectly dry, and when I opened my eyes — the color of spring violets in this land of the blue-eyed — Jorgen was overcome with astonishment and could not leave me to the river. He carried me home to his new wife and two motherless children — his son Kai, who was close to my age, or so they guessed, and his daughter Karina, who was five years older. I had stayed with them ever since, but I certainly was not part of the family, and Ylva never let me forget that. I helped Kai with the shepherding and Karina and Ylva with the household chores, and I slept on a pallet in the barn with the sheep. Ylva did not even let me eat at the table with the others.”

The book begins as Lilia overhears Ylva telling her husband that they must hire Lilia out to the miller, whose wife needs a serving girl. The miller is a cruel man, even to his own children, and Lilia decides to run away, to head north and see if she can find answers about her origins.

Lilia is rarely truly alone in this book — which makes it all the more of a feel-good book to read. For the next day, Kai and Karina, and the dog Ove, catch up with her. They tell Lilia that they are coming with her. Ylva was so angry when Lilia left, she threatened to betrothe Karina to the miller’s son. So the story is more of friends going on an adventure than of a lonely quest.

But the friends do face an adventure. At an inn, they meet some kind (and handsome) lords who are also traveling. They warn the three travelers about the Bitra Forest, where the Elf-King lives, who steals children and poses great danger to travelers.

Despite the warnings, they are attacked by bandits in the forest and go off the path. They encounter the Elf-King and his people, and his daughter decides she likes Kai. She enchants him and decides to keep him.

So the quest to find Lilia’s origins ends up being a quest to rescue Kai. Lilia bravely stands up to the Elf-King and negotiates with him. If Lilia will bring back Odin’s own cloak clasp, dropped on his Hunt, and now in a palace not far away, Kai will be released. But she is only given a fortnight in which to do it.

So there is real danger and tension, but because of Lilia’s support from Karina, and others she meets along the way, things never get truly dark.

This is a good yarn and with its feel-good nature is suitable for a middle grade student’s first fairy tale retelling. But it also has plenty to offer for people like me, who have loved fairy tale retellings for years.

And you’ll finally understand why the princess was bothered by that pesky pea!

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Source: This review is based on an advance review copy sent to me by the author.

Review of Enchanted Ivy, by Sarah Beth Durst

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

Enchanted Ivy

by Sarah Beth Durst

Margaret K. McElderry Books (Simon & Schuster), New York, 2010. 310 pages.
Starred Review
2010 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #7 Teen Fantasy Fiction

I wonder if admission applications will increase for Princeton now that this book has been published. If I were reading it in high school, I would definitely have put Princeton at the top of my college wish list as a result. I love the author’s statement at the start of the acknowledgements:

“Yes, I went to Princeton. I went because of the trees. Junior year of high school, I walked onto campus, saw the arch of elm trees, saw the massive oaks, and I was sold. Perhaps not the best way to choose a college, but that’s the way it happened. Anyway, that moment changed my life and inspired this book.”

I love the whole premise of an enchantment with a door to a parallel magical world at Princeton. After all, who hasn’t looked at gargoyles and wondered about their secret lives?

The book begins as Lily’s Grandpa is driving her and her mom to Princeton University.

“Normally, Mom avoided car rides altogether, but this wasn’t a normal weekend. It was Princeton Reunions Weekend. Reunions weekend! Lily couldn’t believe Grandpa had offered to take them. He always attended, even in off years like his forty-ninth reunion. It was his “thing,” his once-a-year break from mothering both Lily and Mom. But this year, he’d said that Lily should see her future alma mater.

“Not that she’d even applied yet. She was a junior, three weeks away from her final exams, but Grandpa claimed this place was her destiny. No pressure, though. Yeah, right.”

Grandpa takes her to the Vineyard Club, the most exclusive eating club at Princeton. Grandpa had been a member fifty years ago. The members of the Vineyard Club have been expecting her. They ask her if she’s ready for the Test. If she passes, she is guaranteed admission to Princeton.

“One of the perfect-posture women said, ‘If you fail, you are free to apply with the rest of the applicants. This test is outside the purview of the admissions committee. But if you fail here, you should not expect an invitation to join Vineyard Club. Indeed, you would not be welcome.’

“Success meant her dream come true; failure meant exclusion from this (admittedly nice) clubhouse but still a shot at her dream come true. Yeah, she could totally live with that. No wonder Grandpa was smiling so widely he looked like he might burst. She felt the same expressions spreading across her face. She was smiling so hard that her cheeks ached. She felt as if a hundred birthday presents, including the pony she’d wanted in third grade and the lime green Volkswagen she wanted now, had landed right in front of her. ‘What’s the Ivy Key?’ she asked. ‘What does it look like? What does it open? What do I do to find it? How do I start?’

“At her flood of questions, Mr. Mayfair and several others smiled indulgently.

“‘That’s the test, my dear,’ the man with the book said.”

Lily decides to take a campus tour to get her bearings and maybe learn something about what could be the key, when a boy with orange and black hair (Princeton’s colors) named Tye joins her and says he’s her guard. Then she sees a gargoyle wave at him, and she’s sure it’s rigged. She is NOT going crazy, like her mother. The gargoyle drops a clue.

And after she makes a trip to the library where she discovers something interesting about her father, a monkeylike creature attacks her, but Tye — and some ivy vines — saves her.

I like the scene where she talks to another gargoyle:

“She bent sideways to look underneath the gargoyle for a microphone and speaker. She didn’t see anything. ‘Mr. Ape,’ Lily said in an even voice, ‘are you talking?’ She wasn’t going to let the Old Boys rattle her this time. They’d rigged another gargoyle somehow.

“‘Professor Ape, if you please,’ the gargoyle said in the same soft-as-sand voice. ‘I have tenure.’ He chuckled as if he’d made a joke.

“‘Nice to meet you, Professor Ape,’ she said. ‘So am I talking through a microphone to someone in Vineyard Club, or is this a recording? Are you interactive?’

“The gargoyle sighed. ‘I would appreciate it if we could dispense with all the “you’re joking” and “this can’t be true” and “I must be dreaming” nonsense. Can we simply agree that I’m a magical being from a parallel world and pronounce this lesson done?'”

As Lily’s quest for the key continues, there turns out to be far, far more at stake than just her admission to Princeton. The fate of thousands of people, perhaps the world, is at risk. And she has questions about her father’s death and her mother’s mental problems. Something isn’t right, and it may get much, much worse.

I enjoyed every moment of reading this book, which sadly didn’t last too long, since I kept reading until I finished in the wee hours of the morning. Perhaps it was because I love stories where things that seem magical turn out to truly be magical, where there end up being doors to a parallel, enchanted world. Oh, and I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that a were-tiger boyfriend sounds so much cuddlier than a cold, hard vampire. I mean, if you’re going for a paranormal romance, I don’t think you could do much better than a were-tiger.

I’m afraid there was one small error that glared at me, though not everyone would notice. The clue the gargoyle drops is a library call number — but it’s wrong. Not that it’s the wrong Dewey Decimal number, but college and university libraries rarely use Dewey Decimal numbers. They use LC (Library of Congress) numbers, an entirely different classification system. Of course I noticed right away that it was a call number, but I also noticed right away that it would never work to find a book in a Princeton library. I checked online today and sure enough, Princeton University Library uses the LC classification system. But this was a very small error in a fantastic book.

Now let’s see if I can talk my son into applying to Princeton.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/enchanted_ivy.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 book sent to me by the author.