48-Hour Book Challenge Final Summary

48-Hour Book Challenge 0

Here I am enjoying the 48-Hour Book Challenge last night:

What a lovely weekend! Though it goes to show that even with a whole weekend set aside for it, I barely make a dent in my piles of books to read and books to review. This weekend, I also made some progress blogging about the upheaval in my life this month. It’s book related, since the main event was losing my job as a librarian, right? Anyway, I also did some blogging on Sonderjourneys, Sonderblessings, and Sonderquotes. Besides posting reviews on this blog, I also posted the reviews on www.sonderbooks.com, my main website where I have links to related books and have all my reviews organized by type of review.

My 48 hours are up. Here are my stats:

Reading: 11 hours, 35 minutes
Listening to an audiobook: 3 hours, 50 minutes
Blogging: 9 hours, 20 minutes
Networking: 1 hour, 55 minutes (I did not count the 3 hours I spent at the DC Kidlit Book Club, though!)

Total: 26 hours, 40 minutes

The key this year was reading The Sky Is Everywhere through the night until I finished it. If I had been as caught up in The Red Pyramid, maybe I could have done it both nights.

I was disappointed that I only finished 3 books. But I did get lots of reading time in, so I can’t really complain. And I always read nonfiction books a chapter at a time, rotating my many piles of books. So any reading time makes progress!

I did review all the books I finished, plus one book from the backlog. I would probably have to spend more time on reviewing to take care of that backlog altogether. But it was nice to finish the weekend without being further behind on books to review.

Here are the books I finished. I was already on page 234 of The Red Pyramid, but the rest I began this weekend:

The Red Pyramid, by Rick Riordan
The Birthday Ball, by Lois Lowry
The Sky Is Everywhere, by Jandy Nelson

The other book I reviewed was a fantastic tribute to librarians:
This Book Is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All, by Marilyn Johnson

The audiobook I’m listening to and totally enjoying is The Princess Plot, by Kirsten Boie

However, even though the total finished is low, here are some other interesting stats:

Pages read: 995
Words written on blogs: 6,356

I read lots and lots of partial books. First, during my daily devotional time, I read a page out of several devotional books:

The Bible
Journey to the Heart, by Melody Beattie
The Book of Common Prayer
Praying God’s Words Day by Day, by Beth Moore
Grace Notes, by Philip Yancey
Meditations to Heal Your Life, by Louise Hay
More Language of Letting Go, by Melody Beattie

The other nonfiction from which I read chapters are:
God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World — and Why Their Differences Matter, by Stephen Prothero
Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Children’s Book, by Anita Silvey
A Thousand Names for Joy, by Byron Katie
Getting Organized in the Google Era, by Douglas C. Merrill
For Better: The Science of a Good Marriage, by Tara Parker-Pope
Won’t Let You Go Until You Bless Me, by Andree Seu
Feel: The Power of Listening to Your Heart, by Matthew Elliott
Embracing the Wide Sky, by Daniel Tammett
Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream, by Tanya Lee Stone

I kept expecting to find one to grab me enough to finish it to the end, but I was impatient and wanted to get to the fiction. Most of these I will finish before too much longer.

It was a wonderful weekend! I want to do this every weekend! Especially with so much turmoil and uncertainty related to my job, it was extra nice to have time to forget about it all and read, and also to reflect on it all and blog and remember to count my blessings.

Thank you, Mother Reader for sponsoring this challenge! What a treat!

Review of The Sky Is Everywhere, by Jandy Nelson

Contemporary, Romance, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Sky Is Everywhere

by Jandy Nelson

Dial Books, 2010. 275 pages.

The beginning of The Sky Is Everywhere gives you all the major issues the book will hold and pulls you right in:

“Gram is worried about me. It’s not just because my sister Bailey died four weeks ago, or because my mother hasn’t contacted me in sixteen years, or even because suddenly all I think about is sex. She is worried about me because one of her houseplants has spots.

“Gram has believed for most of my seventeen years that this particular houseplant, which is of the nondescript variety, reflects my emotional, spiritual, and physical well-being. I’ve grown to believe it too.”

Lennie’s sister Bailey died suddenly, without warning, from a fatal arrhythmia while in rehearsal for a local production of Romeo & Juliet. Lennie says, “It’s as if someone vacuumed up the horizon while we were looking the other way.”

The Sky Is Everywhere is a love story. But the story plays out with the background of Lennie’s grief at the loss of her sister.

Bailey was Lennie’s best friend, and Lennie felt like the stable pony to Bailey’s thoroughbred. Now she’s coming out from her sister’s shadow, but she certainly didn’t want it to be like this.

And the only one who seems to truly understand how much she misses Bailey is Toby, Bailey’s boyfriend. But then with all that understanding, a physical attraction springs up between them that Lennie can’t seem to resist, but that makes her feel terrible.

A new trumpet player named Joe has come to town while Lennie was home, grieving. His playing is amazing. Or, as Lennie’s friend says, unfreakingbelievable. He seems interested in Lennie, and she can’t figure out why. And how can she stand to be happy, when Bailey isn’t here?

Meanwhile, Lennie is writing poetry, poetry on found objects (like a take-out cup) and burying them or casting them to the wind. They’re mostly about memories with Bailey.

For teens who like romance, this one’s a tear-jerker. I’m afraid it kept reminding me of New Moon, simply because Lennie’s favorite book is Wuthering Heights, and she’s read it 23 times. Again we have true-love-as-destiny.

There’s a bit more talk about sex than I find romantic, but otherwise the love story is beautiful, almost too beautiful. However, Lennie’s grief over Bailey is handled so delicately and feels so true, it keeps the book from going over the edge into sentimentality.

Lennie’s Gram and Uncle Big are so quirky and interesting, they come to life for the reader. Lennie’s dealing with grief, identity, passion, true love, and so many other things. This book is a well-crafted story that deals with such strong emotions it almost crosses the line into manipulative. But not quite.

I was reading this at night during Mother Reader‘s 48-Hour Book Challenge. I decided there was no better time to let a book keep me reading until the early hours of the morning, so I actually kept going until 5:00 AM. Crying when I’m that tired is all the more draining, but I did enjoy the book. And I like the way that, even though the book deals with grief, the overwhelming emotion you’re left with at the end is joy.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/sky_is_everywhere.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 The Birthday Ball, by Lois Lowry

Beginning Chapter Books, Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy 0

The Birthday Ball

by Lois Lowry
illustrations by Jules Feiffer

Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2010. 186 pages.

Princess Patricia Priscilla is bored. When she gets to talking with the seventeenth chambermaid and hears how much the girl loved school, she gets an idea. She’ll wear the chambermaid’s clothes and go to the village school.

The village school has a new schoolmaster, who is trying to learn to look stern, as a schoolmaster should. He is kind to his new pupil and tells her she would make a good teacher, after she takes in hand a little orphan girl.

But Patricia Priscilla can only enjoy this illicit pleasure for one week. For at the end of the week is her sixteenth birthday and the Birthday Ball, at which time she will have to choose a noble suitor.

The suitors who plan to attend are all over-the-top awful. Duke Desmond of Dyspepsia has the face of a warthog and huge, crooked, brown-spotted teeth. He is so ugly that looking glasses, mirrors, and any shiny object that might cast a reflection have been abolished from his domain. He travels with a band of splashers, so that no lake or body of water will be still enough when he passes by to reflect his face.

Prince Percival of Pustula, on the other hand, travels with a team of mirror-carriers, so that he can look at himself instead of at the scenery. He dresses entirely in black and keeps his hair and mustache dyed jet black and well oiled. A servant walks behind him with a brush, ready to brush off his abundant dandruff.

But Lois Lowry’s inventive genius truly stands out in the third and fourth suitors — Counts Colin and Cuthbert the Conjoint. I have to admit this is the first fairy-tale type story I’ve ever read with conjoined twins. They are joined at the middle, but unfortunately, they don’t get along at all. They constantly fight, at least when they aren’t exchanging belches or rude bathroom jokes.

Jules Feiffer’s illustrations perfectly match the book. The people in the book are caricatures, so his caricatures make just the right illustrations. The plot is quite simple, but the fun is in the silly ways all the elements come together to bring us to the outcome we’re looking for of the princess getting to choose the most worthy man at the ball.

The story is light and fluffy and fun. This would be a good choice for girls who like princess stories (or maybe the Rainbow Magic Fairies) and are ready to read a longer book with many chapters, but also large print and plenty of illustrations. It also would make a nice read-aloud with plenty of places for laughter. There are nice silly touches, like the princess speaking to her cat Delicious with words that rhyme with his name, and the queen being quite deaf and always misunderstanding what people say to her.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/birthday_ball.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 This Book Is Overdue! by Marilyn Johnson

Current Issues, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

This Book Is Overdue!

How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All

by Marilyn Johnson

Harper, 2010. 272 pages.
Starred Review

Two and a half weeks ago, I got laid off from the job I love so much as Youth Services Manager at a busy public library. Since last Fall, we knew serious budget cuts were being threatened. In the campaign to convince the community and particularly the Board of Supervisors that public libraries are essential services, not luxuries, I became more and more proud to be a librarian.

We were not successful, and I’m very sad to leave the job I love, and very sad for the community. The people who will be particularly hurt by the budget cuts are students who don’t have internet access, people out of work looking for jobs, people who need to learn English, homeless people who want somewhere to stay and learn during the day, young moms who want to get their children comfortable around books, and so many others.

This book is indeed overdue! I wished so much that I could afford to send a copy to each member of the county Board of Supervisors! Marilyn Johnson looks at many different aspects of librarianship and explains why we need librarians more than ever in the information age, as well as in a recession. This book also made me proud to be a librarian.

Here are some quotations I enjoyed:

“Good librarians are natural intelligence operatives. They possess all of the skills and characteristics required for that work: curiosity, wide-ranging knowledge, good memories, organizational and analytical aptitude, and discretion.”

“The profession that had once been the quiet gatekeeper to discreet palaces of knowledge is now wrestling a raucous, multiheaded, madly multiplying beast of exploding information and information delivery systems. Who can we trust? In a world where information itself is a free-for-all, with traditional news sources going bankrupt and publishers in trouble, we need librarians more than ever.”

“Librarians’ values are as sound as Girl Scouts’: truth, free speech, and universal literacy. And, like Scouts, they possess a quality that I think makes librarians invaluable and indispensable: they want to help. They want to help us. They want to be of service. And they’re not trying to sell us anything. But as one librarian put it, ‘The wolf is always at the door.’ In tight economic times, with libraries sliding farther and farther down the list of priorities, we risk the loss of their ideals, intelligence, and knowledge, not to mention their commitment to access for all — librarians consider free access to information the foundation of democracy, and they’re right. Librarians are essential players in the information revolution because they level that field. They enable those without money or education to read and learn the same things as the billionaire and the Ph.D. In prosperous libraries, they loan out laptops; in strapped ones, they dole out half hours of computer time. They are little ‘d’ democrats of the computer age who keep the rest of us wired.

“In tough times, a librarian is a terrible thing to waste.”

This book explores many different aspects of librarianship. They weren’t surprising to me, having plunged into this world twelve years ago and found it home. But some of the chapters will be surprising to the general public. Marilyn Johnson’s giving away some of our secrets — like the Book Cart Drill Team Championships at ALA National Conference. She talks about librarians taking a stand for freedom of speech, librarians blogging, librarians interested in archiving all sorts of obscure topics.

I like the way she finishes the book:

“It didn’t matter who I was, or what I did, or where I paid taxes, or how long I stayed. I’m sure it didn’t matter if the book had RFID tags or a checkout card with a ladder of scrawled names, though tags were neat. I knew the librarians would help me figure out anything I needed to know later — This town is hurting economically, right? How many parking spaces in your lot? What do you call sign-making skills (wayfinding)? And which of your librarians likes figs?

“I was under the librarians’ protection. Civil servants and servants of civility, they had my back. They would be whatever they needed to be that day: information professionals, teachers, police, community organizers, computer technicians, historians, confidantes, clerks, social workers, storytellers, or, in this case, guardians of my peace.

“They were the authors of this opportunity — diversion from the economy and distraction from snow, protectors of the bubble of concentration I’d found in the maddening world. And I knew they wouldn’t disturb me until closing time.”

Buy from Amazon.com

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

48-Hour Book Challenge 24-Hour Update

48-Hour Book Challenge, General 0

I’m just about halfway through my 48 hours of reading and blogging. Why do I feel I’ve gotten so little done? I suppose it’s because 48 hours sounds like soooooo much longer than it ends up actually being.

I’ve finished only two books, but the first was the very long (516 pages) The Red Pyramid, by Rick Riordan. The second was shorter, Lois Lowry’s The Birthday Ball. I’ve only gotten the first of those reviewed, but I have done a total of 8 posts, counting posts on Sonderjourneys, Sonderquotes, and Sonderblessings.

Here’s how my time has broken down:
Reading: 6 hours and 45 minutes
Blogging: 4 hours and 20 minutes
Listening to an audiobook: 1 hour, 40 minutes
Networking: 50 minutes

For a grand total of 13 hours and 35 minutes! Woo-hoo!

I wish I thought I could get this much time in during the second half.

I should point out that in my reading, I like to read nonfiction a little bit at a time. I have a stack of devotional books out of which I read a page a day. Then my other nonfiction, I read a chapter at a time. So in that 6 hours and 45 minutes, I may have finished only two books, but I have read parts of 15 books.

I am going to do some networking now — visit the blogs of others who are doing the 48-Hour Book Challenge. But then I really want to get some more reviews written. I don’t want to end the weekend more behind on reviews than I was when I started, after all!

Review of The Red Pyramid, by Rick Riordan

Adventure, Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy 0

The Red Pyramid

The Kane Chronicles

by Rick Riordan

Disney Hyperion Books, New York, 2010. 516 pages.

Here is Rick Riordan’s eagerly awaited start to a new series, this one based on the gods of ancient Egypt rather than the gods of ancient Greece. I’m going to happily encourage the fans of the Percy Jackson series to snap this one up, as it’s very like that first series — kids with superhuman powers, finding out the ancient myths are true, the world in danger of destruction, and action-packed adventure and narrow escapes.

The chapters in the book switch between the narration of a brother and sister, Carter and Sadie Kane. They hardly know one another, because since their mother’s death, Sadie has lived with their grandparents in London, and Carter has roamed around the world, homeschooled by their archaeologist father. Sadie gets visitation with her father two days a year, and the book opens as one of those days begins.

Carter starts out the book. He says, “I guess it started in London, the night our dad blew up the British Museum.”

The beginning of the book reminded me annoyingly of the first book, written by Rick Riordan, of The 39 Clues. We’ve got a brother and sister who learn they are part of a family with ancient power. They go all over the world, chased by enemies, looking for things to help them. Come on, I heard it before.

However, The Red Pyramid does grow more compelling and more fully fleshed out as it goes on. The power of the Kanes comes from their uniting two ancient bloodlines tracing back to the Pharaohs. Their father’s attempt at the start of the book to “make things right” ends up unleashing five Egyptian gods and encasing their father in a golden tomb with the spirit of Osiris.

Their uncle Amos takes them in, to a powerful and magical mansion in New York City. But all too soon, Egyptian monsters come after them and burn down the mansion. The two start having strange spirit journeys in the night and discover strange new powers.

They go to Egypt and meet magicians from the House of Life. They learn that their father broke ancient rules of the House of Life by releasing the gods. They learn that the god Set is building a giant pyramid under Camelback Mountain in Phoenix and wants to unleash chaos onto the world. But in their attempt to learn to use their new powers and find a way to stop him, the House of Life stands opposed to them.

It’s all well-written, with narrow escape after narrow escape. Sadie has an attitude that if you tell her to do something, she’ll do the opposite — which ends up serving her well. I like the chapter titles — Things like “I Face the Killer Turkey,” “Muffin Plays with Knives,” “Leroy Meets the Locker of Doom,” and “Our Family is Vaporized.” Rick Riordan manages to keep the tone of modern kids and a bickering brother and sister, who learn to work together and deal with their amazing new powers and responsibility for the fate of the world.

You get to feeling for the Kane kids, too. It turns out that their mother’s death had something to do with Egyptian magic, too. And now their father is captured by Set. People around them keep getting harmed. Will they be able to cope?

After reading this book, my reaction is only slightly different from my reaction after reading the first of The 39 Clues: not so much, “I love this book!” as, “I bet kids will love this book!”

I also understand why that little girl in the library yesterday asked for books about hieroglyphics! I have a feeling those books, and any others we have about ancient Egypt, are suddenly going to get checked out much more often!

I do like the way Rick Riordan calms the worries of parents who might not like their children reading about false gods. Toward the beginning, Carter and Sadie have a scene with their uncle:

“‘You’re telling me our parents secretly worshipped animal-headed gods?’ I asked.

“‘Not worshipped,’ Amos corrected. ‘By the end of the ancient times, Egyptians had learned that their gods were not to be worshipped. They are powerful beings, primeval forces, but they are not divine in the sense one might think of God. They are created entities, like mortals, only much more powerful. We can respect them, fear them, use their power, or even fight them to keep them under control –‘

“‘Fight gods?’ Sadie interrupted.

“‘Constantly,’ Amos assured her. ‘But we don’t worship them. Thoth taught us that.'”

The book was too long for me — made it that much harder to sustain my interest. But by the end, I was thoroughly engaged, and I did finish up the book completely satisfied at having spent the time with it. I’m sure its length will please the kids who are fans. More time to spend in the adventure!

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/red_pyramid.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.

2010 48-Hour Book Challenge

48-Hour Book Challenge, General 3

Hip Hip Hooray! It’s time for Mother Reader‘s annual 48-Hour Book Challenge! The time when the guilt is totally reversed — You get to feel guilty if you’re NOT reading! 🙂 Woo-hoo!

This has been a crazy and insane week. I’ll blog about that later. Let’s simply say that I am totally ready to forget about all that and READ. I also have a stack of 10 books I’d like to review, so I will want to review the books I get read as well as clear the backlog.

I am not so dedicated that I won’t take some time off to sleep. And I confess I’m not planning to set my alarm on Saturday. And I will go to church on Sunday and I hope also to the local Kidlit Book Club. I will listen to an audiobook in the car on the way!

For the first book, I am halfway through Rick Riordan’s The Red Pyramid, so I will see if I can stay awake long enough to finish that tonight. Mother Reader does request that we read books intended for fifth grade and up, but I confess that this year I’ve been eyeing some of the shorter books. And a lot of my backlog of books to review are picture books. She didn’t put any restriction on what you blog about, so I think it will be okay to get some of those reviews written.

Last year, I completed a total of 23 hours and 30 minutes. But a lot of that time was spent upgrading my blog because it had quit working about a week before. Last year, I finished 5 books and reviewed 5 books and read parts of 6 books, for a total of 1120 pages. I’m hoping I can top all those totals this year. We’ll see!

Anyway, enough rambling on! Woo-hoo! I NEED to read!

Review of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, by Alan Bradley

Award Winners, Fiction Review, Mystery, Starred Review 1

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

by Alan Bradley

Delacorte Press, 2009. 373 pages.
2007 Debut Dagger Award
2009 Agatha Award for Best First Novel
Starred Review

This wonderfully clever and intriguing mystery published for adults stars an 11-year-old sleuth, Flavia DeLuce. It makes me wonder why the book was not published for children or teens. Though I am sure of this: Parents would not want their children emulating Flavia! Although this qualifies as a “cozy” mystery, which made it eligible for the Agatha Award it won, it is not watered-down or tame, and there’s nothing to keep adults from liking it.

Flavia is one of those brilliant children with a special passion for one subject. Her interest is in chemistry, with a particular focus on poisons. Flavia and her two older sisters have a turbulent relationship — the book begins with Flavia escaping from being tied up in a closet, and we learn that it was her sisters who put her there. Her reprisal is quite brilliant, but not very nice.

The mystery begins when a dead bird appears on their doorstep at Buckshaw with a postage stamp impaled on its beak. Then later, she hears her father arguing with someone, talking about a death, and what sounds like blackmail from the other person. She’s pulled away from listening at the keyhole, but that night she gets up in the early hours of the morning, notices a piece of Mrs. Mullet’s awful custard pie missing, and goes out into the garden.

There she finds a stranger lying in the cucumber patch. He says something mysterious and promptly dies. Flavia reflects:

“I wish I could say my heart was stricken, but it wasn’t. I wish I could say my instinct was to run away, but that would not be true. Instead, I watched in awe, savoring every detail: the fluttering fingers, the almost imperceptible bronze metallic cloudiness that appeared on the skin, as if, before my very eyes, it were being breathed upon by death.

“And then the utter stillness.

“I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”

That all happens in the first two chapters. When, before long, Flavia’s father is taken into custody for the murder, Flavia decides to confess herself. For some reason, the authorities don’t take her seriously. So she feels compelled to find out more about the man who died in their garden, his history with her father, and the death of a teacher so many years ago.

Armed with her bike, which she’s named Gladys, Flavia is a resourceful and persistent sleuth. Definitely not an obedient and retiring young lady. Definitely not someone I’d want as my younger sister.

The “About the Author” section at the end of the book says that this is the first of a planned series about Flavia DeLuce. Hooray! If he can keep later books half as inventive and keep Flavia’s spark of mischief a fraction as fiery, that series will be one I’ll snap up just as soon as each volume is published. I can’t wait for more!

Hooray! As soon as I wrote that, I checked Amazon, and the next book is already out! — The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag. I think I’ll be making a purchase….

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/sweetness_at_the_bottom_of_the_pie.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 Oh, Daddy! by Bob Shea

Delightfully Silly, Picture Book Review, Readalouds, Starred Review 0

Oh, Daddy!

by Bob Shea

Balzer & Bray (HarperCollinsPublishers), 2010. 32 pages.
Starred Review

Just in time for Father’s Day comes this book about a boy (hippo?) and his dad that I would love to read to toddlers any time of year. Alas! I am losing my job, so will not be doing any toddler storytimes any time soon, so I have to settle for urging others to try it. Of course, the very best pair for this book would be a father and child, acting it out as they read, especially the hug at the end.

The book opens up with the boy telling us, “I may be little, but I’m as smart as two eight-year-olds! I’m so smart, I even show my dad how to do things — and he’s a grown-up!”

Then he gives examples. When he’s getting dressed, Daddy asks him “Is this how you get dressed?” with underwear on his head, oven mitts on his hands, and a pail and a boot on his feet. The smart boy then shows him how it should be done.

Silly Daddy can’t seem to get anything right! Any toddler will enjoy Daddy’s completely silly attempts.

But there’s another level to the book for the adult reader, and probably for the child as he gets older and wiser. In each successive episode, the boy isn’t exactly on task. But when Daddy asks his silly questions, like asking if you should get in the car by climbing through the window, the boy quickly focuses to show Daddy how it’s done.

The progression is delightful and playful, including an example where the boy teases Daddy back. And it all ends up with Daddy’s multiple gyrations in the attempt to give himself a big hug — where he definitely needs his son’s help.

This book reminds me of William Steig’s Pete’s a Pizza, because like that book, it begs to be acted out by a loving parent-child pair. However, I do think it would work well in a toddler storytime, where you could encourage the toddlers to shout “No!” at Daddy’s silly attempts. I would like to try this on a child to see at what age they catch on to Daddy’s cleverness in motivating his son.

Great fun and delightfully silly!

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Picture_Books/oh_daddy.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 Ice, by Sarah Beth Durst

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

Ice

by Sarah Beth Durst

Margaret K. McElderry Books (Simon & Schuster), New York, 2009. 308 pages.
Starred Review

When Cassie was small, when her Dad was away from the station, Gram would tell her a fairy tale:

“Once upon a time, the North Wind said to the Polar Bear King, ‘Steal me a daughter, and when she grows, she will be your bride.’…

“And so, the Polar Bear King kidnapped a human child and brought her to the North Wind, and she was raised with the North Wind as her father and the West, South, and East Winds as her uncles….

“When the Polar Bear King came to claim his bride, she refused him. Her heart, she said belonged to another….

“Knowing the power of a magic promise, the North Wind’s daughter sought to counter it with her own bargain. ‘Then I will make a promise to you,’ the North Wind’s daughter replied. ‘Bring me to my love and hide us from my father, and when I have a daughter, she will be your bride.’ And so, the Bear carried the North Wind’s daughter to her human husband and hid them in the ice and snow….

“In time, the woman had a child. Passing by, the West Wind heard the birth and hurried to tell the North Wind where his daughter could be found. With the strength of a thousand blizzards, the North Wind swooped down onto the house that held his daughter, her husband, and their newborn baby. He would have torn the house to shreds, but the woman ran outside. ‘Take me,’ she cried, ‘but leave my loved ones alone!’

“The North Wind blew her as far as he could — as far as the castle beyond the ends of the world. There, she fell to the ground and was captured by trolls.” Cassie heard the bed creak as Gram stood. Her rich voice was softer now. “It is said that when the wind howls from the north, it is for his lost daughter.”

Cassie blinked her eyes open. “And Mommy is still there?”

Gram was a shadow in the doorway. “Yes.”

After this surprising prologue, the book opens the day before Cassie’s eighteenth birthday. Cassie remembers Gram’s story when she tracks down the biggest polar bear she’s ever seen. She smiles to think that if the Polar Bear King existed, this is what he’d look like. She loads her tranquilizer gun so she can tag and measure him.

And then he disappears.

She stays out late trying to figure out how she missed his trail, and is ready for a scolding from her father, back at the Arctic research station. What she isn’t prepared for is his reaction to her story of the giant disappearing polar bear. He tells her she must leave the station right away, fly to Fairbanks to stay with her grandmother. He says the station can no longer be her home.

When she wakes at three a.m. to the sound of the plane that’s come to take her away, she realizes how serious her father is. Gram is on the plane and she tells Cassie the fairy tale was Gram’s way of telling Cassie the truth. Her mother was the daughter of the North Wind. She bargained with the Polar Bear King, and now, on her eighteenth birthday, he’s coming for Cassie.

Cassie is incredulous, but also feels hurt and betrayed that either her father or her grandmother didn’t tell her the truth. She doesn’t want to leave her home. When Gram gives her time to get ready for the flight, Cassie goes outside and calls the Polar Bear King. He comes.

Now Cassie makes a bargain with the Polar Bear King. If he frees her mother from the trolls, she will marry him.

So begins this striking and original retelling of “East of the Sun, West of the Moon.” I’ve already read two novelized versions that I loved: East, by Edith Pattou, and Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow, by Jessica Day George. This one is very different, because it sets the story in the modern day.

I loved the way every chapter begins with Cassie’s GPS readings. They go haywire when the Polar Bear King brings her to his castle a mile north of the North Pole.

Bear is a munaqsri with the task of transferring and transporting the souls of polar bears who die into polar bears who are born. His heart breaks when he is not fast enough to be present at a polar bear birth, and the baby is stillborn.

I was delighted that Cassie comes up with a job, a way she can help, using data from the research station. This is not a heroine who is happy to sit alone in a magical castle! She finds a way to work side by side with Bear.

But what I loved most about the book was how it showed Cassie falling in love with Bear. She teases him and cares about him and sees his love for the polar bears. We can see her love for him blossoming on the page.

As in the fairy tale, he comes to her in the shape of a man at night, and on the first night, Cassie swings an ax at him! But as she comes to care about him, she allows him to sleep in the room, and then later she kisses him. Finally, she gives him a wedding night.

And my paragraph there is just about as explicit as the book gets. It’s beautifully romantic without having to go into detail. As in the fairy tale, though, her husband only comes to her in the shape of a man at night, and doesn’t want her to see his face.

When she breaks that taboo, tragedy strikes.

Cassie has grown up on the Arctic research station, so we believe that she is capable of surviving when she sets out to rescue her husband from the troll castle east of the sun and west of the moon.

This is another book I’d like to get into the hands of teens who love the romance in Twilight, because here, too, we have a story of One True Love. We have a heroine who is devastated by the loss of her beloved and is willing to do anything to bring them back together.

Back when the Harry Potter books were at the height of their popularity, my husband had the insight to say that he believed it was so popular because of the aspect of the chosen child. Everyone would like to be told: Here is your destiny. This is what you were born to do.

I think Twilight‘s popularity is similar. We wish that True Love were as simple as the “imprinting” Stephenie Meyer’s werewolves experience. I think that girls, at least, long to experience love that they feel is their destiny, to find their One True Love. And, take it from me, there’s a real satisfaction to calling the rival who steals away their husband, the Troll Queen!

I admit that I always love novelizations of fairy tales. I honestly thought that I’d read too many versions of “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” to be impressed by another, but I loved this. Beautiful writing and a beautiful story. A wonderfully romantic tale of True Love you would go past the ends of the earth for.

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