Review of Some Assembly Required, by Anne Lamott, with Sam Lamott

Musings, Nonfiction Review, Parenting, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Some Assembly Required

A Journal of My Son’s First Son

by Anne Lamott
with Sam Lamott

Riverhead Books, New York, 2012. 272 pages.
Starred Review

I so love Anne Lamott’s writing! She is honest and writes with humor about the failings and foibles we all have. Along the way, a deep faith shines through and a desire to be compassionate to everyone — though she is not afraid to tell us where she is not compassionate at all.

In many ways, Anne Lamott paves the way for me. She’s a little older than me, and her first son was born a year after mine. However, she has become a grandmother before me. In this book, she looks at the beautiful experience of being a grandmother and all the difficulties of letting her son be a father without undue interference from her.

There are some beautiful passages about Jax, the miraculous and wonderful grandbaby:

After I was sure he was sleeping soundly, I touched the flush of his cheeks in that light brown skin and traced those bold eyebrows. Of course, like all babies, he wakes up with a startle, slightly groping and low-level graspy, but with no sense of a time bomb about to go off. The beauty of the curve of his head — how it rests in the crook of his elbow — almost makes me want to flog myself, out of a desperate, unbearable love. All grandparents I’ve mentioned this to have felt this. He’s a Fibonacci spiral, like a nautilus shell — one of those patterns in mathematical expression with a twisting eternal perfection.

Or when she tells Jax the Secret of Life:

Dear Jax: Yesterday was your first Thanksgiving, and it is time for me to impart to you the secret of life. You will go through your life thinking there was a day in second grade that you must have missed, when the grown-ups came in and explained everything important to the other kids. They said: “Look, you’re human, you’re going to feel isolated and afraid a lot of the time, and have bad self-esteem, and feel uniquely ruined, but here is the magic phrase that will take this feeling away. It will be like a feather that will lift you out of that fear and self-consciousness every single time, all through your life.” And then they told the children who were there that day the magic phrase that everyone else in the world knows about and uses when feeling blue, which only you don’t know, because you were home sick the day the grown-ups told the children the way the whole world works.

But there was not such a day in school. No one got the instructions. That is the secret of life. Everyone is flailing around, winging it most of the time, trying to find the way out, or through, or up, without a map. This lack of instruction manual is how most people develop compassion, and how they figure out to show up, care, help and serve, as the only way of filling up and being free. Otherwise, you grow up to be someone who needs to dominate and shame others, so no one will know that you weren’t there the day the instructions were passed out.

I know exactly one other thing that I hope will be useful: that when electrical things stop working properly, ninety percent of the time you can fix them by unplugging the cord for two or three minutes. I’m sure there is a useful metaphor here.

I love the way Sam talks about his son:

It used to be kind of an accident that he could get his feet to his mouth, but now it’s a tool in his movements. He grabs his feet to shift his weight forward, and to sit or roll. Now it’s a lever, to use. He’ll use his feet as a lever, as handles. He’s discovered, “Wow, they’re attached to me. They have weight to them.” It’s evolutionary, and it caught me by surprise because the foot phone seemed like a phase, but it was evolution — him starting the movement process, of rolling over, and rocking forward inch by inch, like someone with no arms. Now you can’t take your eyes off him for a second. He’ll go from being on his back to being on his stomach, with an arm trapped beneath him, and hurt himself. Now if you look away, he can get hurt.

But my favorite is where Anne Lamott reflects about Jesus:

I would say that my deepest spiritual understanding is that God also sees and forgives my smallest detail, even my flickery, prickly, damaged, jealous, vain self, and sees how I get self-righteous and feel either like trash, often, or superior, and like such a scaredy-cat, and God still understands exactly what that feels like. Because God had the experience of being people, through Jesus.

Jesus had his good days and bad days and stomach viruses. Not to mention that on top of it all, he had a mom who had bad days and good days of her own. She’s like me and Amy, like all of us; she would have been as hormonal, too. And she must have been jealous sometimes of the people Jesus chose to spend time with instead of her. Jealousy is such a toxic virus. “Who are these people? And what do they have that I don’t have?” It’s pretty easy to be deeply selfish when it comes to sharing your child. Even Mary must have been like: “Back off! He’s mine.“

Anne Lamott makes the particular experience of being a grandmother a universal experience that we can all share with her.

riverheadbooks.com

Buy from Amazon.com

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

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

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

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of The Dance, by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Musings, Nonfiction Review 0

The Dance

Moving to the Rhythms of Your True Self

by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

HarperSanFrancisco, 2001. 184 pages.

This book is definitely on the New Agey side, but it does offer some wisdom and inspiration. I like thinking of life as a Dance, and that’s the image used throughout the book.

I think I’ll simply give you some examples of quotations from the book that touched me. If these sound uplifting to you, you’ll find more encouragement where these came from.

First, here’s a quotation that’s also on the cover:

The question is not why are we so infrequently the people we really want to be. The question is why do we so infrequently want to be the people we really are.

Some other quotations from different parts of the book:

Finding and voicing our soul’s longing is not enough. Our ability to live in a way that is consistent with our longing — our ability to dance — is dependent upon what we believe we must do. If our intention is to change who we essentially are, we will fail. If our intention is to become who we essentially are, we cannot help but live true to the deepest longings of our soul.

Despite the fact that endless trying isn’t working, it’s what I know. It’s hard to believe that I can be enough as I am. I want to be more — more compassionate, more present, more conscious and aware, more loved and loving, more intimate with myself and the world. I want to know how to be different — better — than I am. Even though I have failed to consistently live my deepest desires and am exhausted by the endless effort to become who I think I will have to be to live these desires, I resist letting go of the trying. I trust my ability to work hard. I have no experience with or faith in my ability to simply be.

As compassionate beings, we have the ability to hold all aspects of ourselves and the world in our hearts, including those aspects that are annoying, dangerous, malicious, and just downright unlikable. But we have to be willing to do the work of finding out how to do this, honestly observing our own internal and external actions and reactions and learning from each instance how to expand our ability to live the compassion we are.

Think of all the places where you separate yourself from others, distinguishing between “us” and “them.” The minute we do this we are building our sense of self, not on what we truly are, but on trying to feel better than others because we fear we are not enough. I watch myself do this all the time. And if I watch with honesty and compassion, I find a way to make being right an unnecessary prerequisite for being happy.

Lately, when I do my daily practice I find myself praying to live gracefully. I have a very particular feeling in my body when I remember or imagine a graceful day. It is a day without rush, a day where I am not suffering over things not being any differenct than they are, a day when I take a breath and accept those things I cannot change, like long lineups in the bank or traffic jams or the weather. It’s a day when I rest easy in a mysterious knowing that there is enough — enough time and money and energy and heart in the world and in my life, a day when I know that I am enough. It is a day when I am simply present with myself and all that is around me. It is a day of being truly happy, of feeling graceful — comfortable in my own skin and life. . . .

To dance, to move gracefully, to receive the grace-filled moments everyday, we have to know that we are worthy not because of our hard work or our suffering or our eagerness to be other than we are; we are worthy by our very nature — the same nature that creates and sustains all that is. When we know this we are able to answer the question “Are you willing to be happy?” with a quiet but confident, “Yes.”

A life where there is love is often messy. Life without love is neater, but neatness is really preferable only in bathrooms and written reports. Dancing alone is often easier and certainly less complicated than dancing with someone else, but there is nothing quite so satisfying as creating even one moment of real beauty moving gracefully with another. Perhaps to find this beauty more often, these moments of moving in exquisite alignment with each other and with the music that guides us, we need to let go of our ideas of what the dance should look like and let the messiness of love guide us.

It is life that teaches us about our incredible capacity to be compassionate, to be with what is, to love ourselves and each other and the world. And for most of us, most of the time it does not happen in the grand causes and revolutionary changes. It happens in the small things, in our human struggles in relationship. As we learn to trust our essentially compassionate nature and our capacity to love, we do not have to guard against this love; we know we can keep the boundaries that help us live side by side, and we know that we truly never stop loving, however silently, those we once loved out loud. And we are renewed by the wonder of how love carries us beyond where we thought we could go.

Sometimes I think there are only two instructions we need to follow to develop and deepen our spiritual life: slow down and let go.

Letting go necessitates being with the fear that comes when we become aware that all that we love in the world — our very life itself — is impermanent. It can bring tremendous relief and rest to let go where we are trying to hold on, trying to keep the same those things which by their very nature are constantly changing. This does not mean loving life and the world any less fiercely. Loving well and living fully are not the same as holding on.

And finally:

You cannot speed up your efforts to create a life that is slower paced any more than you can successfully fight for peace.

With a book like this, much depends on if you read it when you most need it. Reading it didn’t rock my world, but it did warmly bless my life.

oriahmountaindreamer.com
harpercollins.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/dance.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 personal copy of the book.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Sonderling Sunday – Drachenreiter

Sonderling Sunday 0

It’s time for Sonderling Sunday! Where I play with language by looking at the German translations of children’s books.

Only tonight, I’m going to go with the opposite approach, looking at the English translation of a German children’s book.

Cornelia Funke is popular in many countries, and tonight I’ll look at her book Drachenreiter, which is a pretty simple translation into English as Dragon Rider. Now, I discovered when I looked at the lengths of the books I own in English and German, this is the only one where the German edition is shorter (448 pages) than the English edition (536 pages). In Momo, the difference wasn’t as extreme as in others, particularly The Order of Odd-Fish. My theory is that it’s easier to be less wordy when you’re actually writing and thinking in German than you have to be when you’re trying to explain rather bizarre English concepts in German.

I need to keep it short tonight, because today I spent 7 hours on the road, taking my son back to college, came home and took a nap, and now am trying to do a little bit before I go back to sleep to get me good and sleepy. So let’s dip into Drachenreiter

Oo! The first thing I learn on the title page is that the German edition is Mit Illustrationen der Autorin, “with illustrations by the author.” The English edition gives no such credit, except on the copyright page for the “inside illustrations,” and doesn’t seem to include all of them. The English edition lists two other Cornelia Funke books published by Scholastic. The German edition lists 23, so there are surely many translations to go.

Chapter 1 is SCHLECHTE NACHRICHTEN, which is translated straightforwardly as “Bad News.”

I’ll continue my method of listing phrases that catch my eye. Since the original is German, I’ll list that first.

zwitscherten zaghaft = “twittered uncertainly”

Ah! Germans have a shorter concept for “fell head over heels”:
Sie überschlug sich = “fell head over heels” (translated more literally “she tripped over herself”)

“moss-covered rocks” = vermoosten Felsen

“Snuffling” = Schnuppernd

This sentence doesn’t quite say the same thing, it seems to me:
“It was so dark under the fir trees that you could scarcely see the gaping crevice in the mountainside that swallowed up the mist.”
That’s translated from:
Unter den Tannen war es dunkel, so dunkel, dass man den Spalt kaum sah, der in der Bergflanke klaffte. Wie ein Schlund schluckte er den Nebel.
(More literally translated: Under the fir trees was it dark, so dark, that you could scarcely see the gap, that in the side of the mountain gaped. Like a gullet it gulped the mist.” Okay, overall it means the same thing, but I like Wie ein Schlund schluckte, and there’s no direct translation of that.)

This rant by a rat is more fun to say in German:
“They know absolutely nothing about the world. Not the least little thing.”
Sie wissen gar nichts von der Welt. Nichts, überhaupt nichts.

“brownie hairs” = Koboldhaaren

“Sorrel” = Schwefelfell

Here’s a nice insult in German:
du hohlköpfige Pilzfresserin! = “you brainless mushroom-muncher!” (It’s really more “you cave-headed mushroom-muncher,” but this works.)

Longer in English:
mit geflecktem Fell = “with a spotted sulfur-yellow coat” (The sulfur-yellow part must be found somewhere else?)

“furry faces” = Pelzgesichter (There! Aren’t you glad to know that word?)

Here’s a much less interesting name:
“Firedrake” = Lung

The translator got more creative with this exclamation:
Pfui, Schimmelpilz = “Oh, festering fungus!” (It’s a good translation. More direct is something like “Phooey, mold!”)

Shorter in German:
Sein langer, gezackter Schwanz = “his long tail with its spiny crest” (gezackter translates alone as “serrated”)

Another handy expression:
“in a rather hoarse voice” = Seine stimme war ein bisschen rau. (“His voice was a bit raw.”)

“bristling” = sträubte

Another insult (The rat and the brownie don’t like each other.):
pelzigen Dummheiten = “fur-brained fancies”

The translator likes alliteration almost as much as I do:
Bleichstieliger Schüpperling! = “Oh, putrid puffballs!” (I’ve got to go with the translator on this one.)

winzige Sternschnuppen = “tiny shooting stars”

Here’s a choice word:
Drumherumgerede Google translates it “Trappings talk” or “all around talk.” The translator embedded it in a sentence, “The way that rat carries on is enough to drive anyone crazy.”

Why are the insults the most fun?
du blätterwühlender, pilzfressender, zottelköpfiger Kobold = “you leaf-burrowing, mushroom-munching, shaggy-haired brownie” (zottelköpfiger literally means “rat’s-tail-headed.” Seems like an odd insult from a rat, but otherwise a handy thing to know.)

mit beleidigter Miene = “looking offended”

And with that, fully tired now, I need to get to bed. What about you? Know any good insults in another language? How would you translate zottelköpfiger Kobold into Spanish? Korean? Anyone?

Review of Starry River of the Sky, by Grace Lin

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

Starry River of the Sky

by Grace Lin

Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2012. 288 pages.
Starred Review

Grace Lin has surpassed herself! Her companion novel, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, also wove Chinese fairy tales into the larger narrative, and it deservedly won a Newbery Honor. I think Starry River of the Sky is even better. You do not at all need to have read the earlier book to appreciate this one. A few characters appear in both, but each story is completely self-contained.

The first paragraph sets the stage, with the Moon missing, and Rendi stowing away in a cart.

Rendi was not sure how long the moon had been missing. He knew only that for weeks, the wind seemed to be whimpering as if the sky were suffering. At first, he had thought the moans were his own because his whole body ached from hiding in the merchant’s moving cart. However, it was when the cart had stopped for the evening, when the bumping and knocking had ended, that the groans began.

Rendi is caught stowing away, but the innkeeper at the Inn of Clear Sky lets him stay on as an errand boy. He doesn’t feel grateful, but he sees no way to move on. Then a beautiful woman comes to the inn. She talks to old, slow-witted Mr. Shan and she begins to tell stories to Rendi and Peiyi, the innkeeper’s daughter. But she won’t continue to share stories unless Rendi will tell a story himself.

Through the stories, and through events, we see Rendi begin to change. And problems are solved. But what is a boy to such overwhelming problems as a missing moon, parched and drying land, Peiyi’s missing brother, and Rendi’s own identity. Many people in this book are angry, and Grace Lin weaves a tale where we want them to find peace, and we come to believe they can do what it takes to put their anger aside.

Grace Lin is also an artist, so each chapter has a drawing at the start of each chapter, and there are gorgeous full color pictures every few chapters. The stories told within the chapters get their own font as well as small colored pictures on each side of the story’s name. The book is a delight to hold and look at.

Although this isn’t exactly a beginning chapter book, the language is simple and the concepts are all well within the grasp of an elementary age child. This would be a wonderful choice for reading to a classroom or reading to children at bedtime.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/starry_river_of_the_sky.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 purchased at KidLitCon and had signed by the author.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of The Ruins of Gorlan, by John Flanagan

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

The Ruins of Gorlan

by John Flanagan
performed by John Keating

Recorded Books, 2006.

One of my co-workers told me she enjoyed listening to this series, and I’d meant to read it ever since it had been a Summer Reading Program selection at our library back in 2008. When it made Betsy Bird’s Top 100 Chapter Books List and I was also looking for my next audiobook to listen to, I finally tackled it.

Now, I found the plot a little predictable and a little stereotypical, but I still enjoyed it. And since the series stretches on and on, I am sure it will go beyond the coming-of-age story in this first volume.

Will has grown up in a castle as a ward of the lord of the castle. All he knows about his father was that he was a hero, and Will imagines him a mighty knight. All his life, he has dreamed of going to battle school.

But Will is too small for battle school. When the mysterious Ranger picks Will out as his apprentice, Will is less than thrilled. But then he learns skills that show him sometimes those with size and brute strength are not the most powerful.

Besides covering the beginning of Will’s training, this book takes us through his first involvement in a conflict with the evil that is building up to attack the kingdom. I can see why so many kids are avidly following this series. This very first one is still popular, but we also get people for looking for the newest volume, and every book along the way. I suspect I will become one of them.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/ruins_of_gorlan.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 audiobook from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Writing Reviews, Posting Reviews

Animal Characters, Bedtime stories, Children's Nonfiction Review, Folk Tales, Picture Book Review, Science 0

I have a problem. It’s a good problem. I am way behind on reviews I have written but haven’t posted. Right now there are 97 of them.

Partly, this problem came from the solution to an earlier problem: I was way behind on books I’d read but hadn’t reviewed. I decided to solve that problem by spending 30 minutes per day writing reviews. Some time ago, I’d tried and succeeded — for an entire year — to write 30 minutes a day on my book. For now, I’m putting my book-writing on hold. I went to the William Morris Seminar in January to learn about ALSC’s Book Evaluation Committees. It’s seen as conflict of interest to have a book being published when you are evaluating books for a committee (like the Newbery), so I decided I haven’t gotten published in all this time, why not wait a little longer and see if I can get on a committee first? Surely I can write in the meantime — just not try to find a publisher. Well, I decided that, and then got more and more lazy about my 30 minutes per day goal. When I saw how behind I was on books to be reviewed, I decided to let myself spend that time on review writing. And I’ve caught up!

Or, I’ve sort of caught up. There’s a problem. If I write one review per day but don’t post one review per day, I will never catch up. The fact is, I need to be much, much more choosy about which books I review. Right now I’ve got four books sitting here that I liked very much and want to recommend, but I think I will discipline myself and not review them.

Or, how about this: I’ll give a mini-review here and now, but won’t make a full-on page with links on my main site.

Here are four excellent books. First two picture books.

Rabbit’s Snow Dance, as told by James and Joseph Bruchac, illustrated by Jeff Newman, tells a folk tale about how rabbit got his short tail. The book would make a wonderful read-aloud, with chants like “I will make it snow, AZIKANAPO!” and a longer chant in a circle that begs for the listeners to act out. Rabbit has a nice comeuppance at the end, or, well, comedownance, and that’s how he loses his long tail. Joseph and James Bruchac are storytellers, and this story definitely wants to be told.

Sleep Like a Tiger, by Mary Logue, illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski, is one I got fresh appreciation for when I heard people talk about it at Capitol Choices. This is a deceptively simple bedtime story. A little girl is not sleepy at bedtime, and her parents tell her she doesn’t have to go to sleep, but she does have to put on her pajamas… and so on. Along the way, they talk about how different animals sleep. The pictures show the animals, like a tiger, in their habitat, while in alternate spreads the little girl settles into her bed with her stuffed animals and toys. In the end, she settles down like the animals do. This is a cozy and lovely bedtime book.

Then, two books of children’s nonfiction, both about birds:

Alex the Parrot: No Ordinary Bird, by Stephanie Spinner, illustrated by Meilo So, is another picture book, but tells a true story. It includes short chapters, but there is no table of contents and this is definitely suitable for younger kids. The story is about an African Grey Parrot and his owner, Irene Pepperberg. She used Alex to show that parrots possess true intelligence. The book talks about Alex’s progress and how he was tested and matched three-year-old children.

Moonbird: A Year on the Wind with the Great Survivor B95, by Phillip Hoose, is much longer. It covers science, nature, the environment and what you can do to help. Moonbird tells the story of a rufa red knot banded with the number B95 in the year 1995 who has been spotted since. These birds are some of the greatest distance travelers on earth, and B95 is the oldest known such bird. The book goes into detail about what physiological changes and athletic feats go into his journey. The author interviewed many scientists all interested in helping the red knots and other shorebirds continue to survive.

So there you have it — Four more excellent books. Some day, I will catch up…. Meanwhile, keep reading!

Review of Vessel, by Sarah Beth Durst

Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Vessel

by Sarah Beth Durst

Margaret K. McElderry Books (Simon & Schuster), 2012. 424 pages.
Starred Review

This book has a striking beginning:

On the day she was to die, Liyana walked out of her family’s tent to see the dawn.

Liyana’s dreamwalk has shown that she is to be a vessel, a vessel for the goddess Bayla to come among her people, the Goat Clan, and restore their oases and keep them alive.

Liyana has kept her body ready for Bayla, and she’s ready to dance and let the goddess take her body and send her own soul to the Dreaming. She thinks she does everything right. She dances all night. But Bayla does not come.

The tribal elders decide Liyana must be unworthy. They must travel on and leave her behind. If somehow they are wrong, Bayla will find her body and join them.

So Liyana stays in the desert and tries to survive a sandstorm on her own. Then a young man walks to her through the sand. He claims to be Korbyn, the trickster god. He was summoned five nights ago, and has come to find her.

“Me? But . . .” All calmness fled, and her voice squeaked. “Your clan! Your clan needs you!”

“All the clans need me,” he said. “And I need you.”

She understood the words he was saying, but the order of them made no sense. “You left your clan to find me?”

“Deities are missing. Five in total. They were summoned from the Dreaming, but their souls never filled their clans’ vessels.”

Liyana felt as if she had been dropped back inside the sandstorm. “Bayla . . .”

“I believe their souls were stolen. And I intend for us to steal them back.”

So begins a quest, a quest to find all the other vessels and then find who stole the gods.

I confess, I read this book in one stretch on a Sunday afternoon. I think I might enjoyed it more if I had spread it out and treasured the details more. We’ve got many clans of desert people living beside a great empire. The desert has many fantastical dangers, such as sand wolves and sandworms. And every hundred years or so, the gods choose vessels and come from the Dreaming to visit their people.

I don’t think I was completely happy with the ending, but I’m not sure I could have figured out any other satisfying way to end it. The world is wonderfully built, and I think I should have lingered longer.

sarahbethdurst.com
TEEN.SimonandSchuster.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/vessel.html

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

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

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of The Drowned Cities, by Paolo Bacigalupi

Adventure, Science Fiction, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Drowned Cities

by Paolo Bacigalupi

Little, Brown and Company, 2012. 437 pages.

The Drowned Cities is set in the same world as Ship Breaker, but you definitely don’t need to read Ship Breaker first. The Drowned Cities is an even bleaker vision of the future than the first book. There’s still action and survival, but no love story and few glimpses that anyone in the world has it better than the characters in our story — so can they really hope for escape?

It took me awhile to realize that “The Drowned Cities” got their name as a new meaning for the initials “DC.” This book is set in a future world where global warming has raised sea level and turned the DC suburbs, now that things don’t freeze in the winter, into kudzu-covered jungle and swampland.

Mahlia and her friend mouse live with Doctor Mahfouz in a village in the jungle. It’s also a war zone, fought over by various warlords’ factions.

Doctor Mahfouz liked to say that everyone wanted to be good. They just sometimes needed help finding their way to it. That was when he’d first taken her and Mouse in. He’d said it even as he was sprinkling sulfa powder over Mahlia’s bloody stump of a hand, like he couldn’t see what was happening right in front of him. The Drowned Cities were busy tearing themselves apart once again, but here the doctor was still talking about how people wanted to be kind and good.

Mahlia and Mouse had just looked at each other, and didn’t say anything. If the doctor was fool enough to let them stay, he could babble whatever crazy talk he wanted.

In a nice touch of irony, the author has made Mahlia a daughter of a Chinese peacekeeper and a local woman. And Mahlia and her mother were left behind when the peacekeepers left.

These days, their hospital was wherever Doctor Mahfouz set his medical bag, all that was left of the wonderful hospital that the Chinese had donated, except for a few rehydration packets still stamped with the words WITH WISHES FOR PEACE AND WELL-BEING FROM THE PEOPLE OF BEIJING.

Mahlia could imagine all those Chinese people in their far-off country donating to the war victims of the Drowned Cities. All of them rich enough to send things like rice and clothes and rehydration packets all the way over the pole on fast-sailing clipper ships. All of them rich enough to meddle where they didn’t belong.

Mahlia and Mouse find a genetically engineered half-man out in the swamp who just wrestled an alligator and survived. First, Mahlia’s bargaining with him — Mouse’s life for medical supplies, and then she’s dealing with the war band that is on his trail. In a clever twist, Mahlia manages to get away from them, but her whole village pays the price. And when Mouse gets conscripted, Mahlia will do anything to save him — even if it means relying on the half-man. But even with his help, is there any escape from the Drowned Cities?

This book is far grittier than I usually read for pleasure. It’s a horribly bleak vision of the future, though from his Printz speech, I think Paolo Bacigalupi writes it as a warning. And several things are all too plausible. The factions include the Army of God and the United Patriotic Front and other groups that are like present-day groups taken to the extreme.

I think the fact that I live where the book is set (though many years before) makes it seem all the more real. I have to admit that the day I finished the book, I was driving home from work on the freeway, and thought it’s all way too built up and there’s too much concrete to become jungle for at least a thousand years. However, the following Sunday, I drove the opposite direction to church, and just that much further out in the suburbs, it’s actually easy to imagine jungle taking over. And Paolo Bacigalupi never does say how far out from the Capital they are. It takes awhile to travel to the city, and after all, they’re called “The Drowned Cities,” not “The Drowned City,” so I’m thinking the villages in the jungle may be further out from the Beltway than where I live.

The book does have some redeeming themes. There’s no romantic love, as in Ship Breaker, but there’s strong love and loyalty between Mahlia and Mouse, and they get help from the half-man, Tool, for reasons of his own. It does manage to give a hopeful ending, at least for those who survive to the end. And if you want reasons to think war is not a good thing and it’s better not to vilify other groups, because look where it could end up — This book has plenty of that.

This book might be good for those who love The Hunger Games and don’t mind some grit and gore in their adventure stories, and also don’t mind if there’s no romance. Definitely well-written, but also definitely not pleasant.

www.lb-teens.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/drowned_cities.html

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

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

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Penny and Her Doll, by Kevin Henkes

Animal Characters, Beginning Chapter Books, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Penny and Her Doll

by Kevin Henkes

Greenwillow Books, 2012. 32 pages.
Starred Review

I love that Kevin Henkes is writing beginning readers, and I love that he’s brought out another book about Penny. The only thing I don’t like? Now that two are both published in 2012, they can’t both win the Geisel Award.

When I heard Kevin Henkes speak at ALA Midwinter Meeting, he said that the Penny books were designed to be a progression, and indeed Penny and Her Doll has three chapters, where Penny and Her Song had only two. It’s a slightly — very slightly — more complicated story and one that comes around back to the beginning.

Penny is out in the garden with her mother as the book opens. Her mother is weeding, and Penny is smelling flowers.

“The roses are my favorites,” said Penny.
“I do not have a favorite weed,” said Mama.

While they are in the garden, the mailman comes with a package for Penny from Gram. It is a doll, and Penny loves the doll as soon as she sees it.

But the doll needs a name. Everyone in their family has a name, and the doll needs one. So Penny spends the rest of the book looking for a name for her new doll. Adults will not be the least surprised at the name Penny chooses, but children will be delighted to guess before Penny comes up with it.

It was the first book that made me completely fall in love with Penny, since I definitely have a soft spot for a little girl who sings around her house. But this one keeps that love going. And I love Penny’s parents, so understanding and helpful and supportive. They suggest, but they don’t solve Penny’s problems for her.

And I love the way Kevin Henkes supports beginning readers with his repetitive structure, which seems entirely natural and adds to the story. For example:

“What if I can’t think of a name?”
said Penny.

“You will,”
said Mama.

“You will,”
said Papa.

Penny tried and tried
to think of a name for her doll.

And I should add that the first time Mama and Papa each say “You will,” there’s a small picture of them next to their words. Simply every detail in this book builds toward a child’s success in reading.

I’m definitely looking forward to the third planned book about Penny, Penny and Her Marble.

KevinHenkes.com
harpercollinschildrens.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Picture_Books/penny_and_her_doll.html

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

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

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Sonderling Sunday – Chapter 11 – Sefino’s Scandalous Speeches

Der Orden der Seltsamen Sonderlinge, Sonderling Sunday 0

It’s Sonderling Sunday! That time of the week when I play with language by looking at the German translation of children’s books. Today, I’m back to the book that started this mad passion — Der Orden der Seltsamen Sonderlinge, The Order of Odd-Fish, by James Kennedy. I fondly hope that you do not have to understand German or have read the book in order to enjoy this series. I simply use the book to find utterly bizarre phrases to translate. Please see if you can find ways to use these phrases, as James Kennedy has so deftly done! Or perhaps you can give readers insight as to interesting ways they might be translated into yet another language? There are many possibilities.

Last time I was in Der Orden der Seltsamen Sonderlinge, I left off on page 128 in English, which is Seite 164 auf Deutsch. Let’s look for some interesting sentences. Here’s one that is fun to say:

“These gossip-mongers have gone too far!” = Diese Klatschmäuler sind einfach zu weit gegangen! (“These gossip-mouths are simply too far gone!”)

“a reckless disregard” = eine rücksichtslose Missachtung (“a hindsight-less mis-attention”)

“Chatterbox” = Plaudertasche

“headline” = Schlagzeile (“hitting line”)

Oh! They did a marvelous job of translating the alliterative headlines. Let me write out them all for our enjoyment:

“SIMPERING SEFINO SUNK IN SKY-HIGH SKIRMISH” = SCHLUCHZENDER SEFINO STÜRTZT IN SCHARMÜTZEL SCHLUNDWÄRTS (Never mind that it would never fit in a headline, it’s alliterative! It translates, roughly, as “Sobbing Sefino crashes in skirmish gullet-ward.”)

“KORSAKOV’S COWARDLY COCKROACH CALLOWLY CRINGES, CRIES, IN CATASTROPHIC COMBAT” becomes:
KORSAKOVS KLÄGLICHE KAKERLAKE
KRÜMMT KÖRPER KECKERND,
KREISCHT KATASTROPHALEM KAMPF
This translates back to something like: “Korsakov’s pathetic cockroach curves body brazenly, yells in catastrophic war.” (I guess it was harder to keep it alliterative.)

And finally:
“INFAMOUS INSECT INDIGNANTLY IRKED IN INSIPID IMBROGLIO”
This becomes:
INFAMES INSEKT IRRITIERT INDISPONIERT IN INFERNALISCHEM INTERMEZZO
That means pretty much what it sounds like (“Infamous insect irritated indisposed in infernal intermezzo”), but hey, they found “I” words that were also German words.

Oh, this paragraph is good! I’ll take it in bits:
“ceaseless slanderous scribblings” = unaufhörlichen schmutzigen Schmierereien

“mischievous muckrakers” = schändlichen Schlammwühler (Oh, that is just too fun to say! I may not be correct, but it comes out phonetically (in English phonetics) something like “schendlischen schlahmvooler.”)

“ruthless rabble” = rücksichtlosen Rabauken

“no libel… too licentious” = keine Schmähung zu schimpflich

All that great alliteration, then they kind of fall flat with this one:
“no hearsay too hurtful” = kein Gerücht zu vage

And this doesn’t quite match the original either:
“to perniciously print in their poppycock periodicals” = um nicht derberweise in ihren dümmlichen Druckerzeugnissen dargestellt zu werden

With this one, they don’t even try:
“sneaking slander” = frechen Verleumdungen

This one’s pretty good:
“ink-inebriated idlers” = Tinte trunkenen Taugenichtse (“ink-drunken rascals”)

I have to say, I wouldn’t like to try to translate this stuff. (And I’m curious — Anyone know how to translate this into Spanish? French? Italian? Japanese?)
“a billion-headed beast of babblement” = die milliarden köpfige Bestie der Plappereien

Here we’ve got a useful word:
“slain” = neidergemetzelt (“massacred”)

And here’s one of the longest words yet:
“constitutional” = Gesundheitsspaziergänge (“health-pleasure-walk”) (23 letters)

Well, that’s it for tonight. I didn’t get far, but I did finish a section, and there’s only one section left in chapter 11. I hope this week I won’t encounter any schändlichen Schlammwühler, but if I do, at least I know what to call them!

Next week, I’ll be driving my son back to the dorm on Sunday, so I’m not sure I’ll get around to Sonderling Sunday, but meanwhile have a herrlich holiday!