Review of Coraline, by Neil Gaiman

Audiobooks, Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy 0

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Coraline

written and performed by Neil Gaiman

with original music by The Gothic Archies

HarperCollins, 2000.  3 hours, 3 compact discs.

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

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

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

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

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

Not for the faint of heart.

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Review of Lionboy: The Truth, by Zizou Corder

Audiobooks, Children's Fiction Review, Science Fiction 0

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Lionboy:  The Truth

Book Three of the Lionboy Trilogy

by Zizou Corder

read by Simon Jones

Highbridge Audio, 2005.  6 hours on 5 compact discs.

The Truth brings the Lionboy trilogy to a most satisfying conclusion.  In the earlier books, Charlie’s parents were kidnapped, and Charlie went after them.  In the third book, Charlie is the one kidnapped.  His parents and the friends he has made along the way come to his rescue, but in the end Charlie’s own ingenuity, courage, and loyalty save the day for far more people and animals than just himself.

There are a few outrageous coincidences in this book, as there were in the earlier books.  However, it’s all in good fun.  This is a rather wild adventure tale set in the near future.  The action takes Charlie across the globe to the very seat of the sinister Corporacy.

Charlie can still talk to cats, and in this book he becomes better acquainted with Ninu, a chameleon who can not only take on the colors around him, but also the languages.  With Ninu’s help, Charlie can talk to any person and any thing.

Like the rest, this makes good listening material, and would be great for a family car trip.  There is plenty of action to keep you diverted, and once again the narrator has a delightful voice (and accent) to listen to.

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Review of How I Learned Geography, by Uri Shulevitz

History, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

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How I Learned Geography

by Uri Shulevitz

Farrar Straus Giroux, New York, 2008.  32 pages.

Starred review.

2009 Caldecott Honor Book.

http://www.fsgkidsbooks.com/

When Uri Shulevitz was a boy, he and his family were refugees from Poland.  This vibrant picture book tells a simple story.  One night, when they were hungry but had little money, Uri’s father went to the market.  Instead of buying bread, he came home with a large map of the world that brightened up one wall of their little room.

Although Uri was angry, and hungry, at first, eventually he pored over the map and was caught under its spell.

“I found strange-sounding names on the map and savored their exotic sounds, making a little rhyme out of them:

“Fukuoka Takaoka Omsk,

Fukuyama Nagayama Tomsk,

Okazaki Miyazaki Pinsk,

Pennsylvania Transylvania Minsk!

“I repeated this rhyme like a magic incantation and was transported far away without ever leaving our room.”

This lovely book presents a simple idea in a beautiful way.

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Review of Mercy Watson Thinks Like a Pig, by Kate DiCamillo

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

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by Kate DiCamillo

illustrated by Chris Van Dusen

Candlewick Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2008.  74 pages.

Here’s another book perfect for a beginning reader who’s ready for chapters.  Mercy Watson Thinks Like a Pig has 15 very short chapters.  The pages are loaded with colorful, hilarious illustrations.

Mercy Watson is a pig, a porcine wonder.  She is treated like a person by Mr. and Mrs. Watson, but sometimes she indeed acts like a pig.  For example, when she smells the flowers her next door neighbors have planted, she can’t resist eating them.  This prompts Eugenia Lincoln to call Animal Control Officer Francine Poulet, who has never dealt with a pig before.

In the hilarious chain of events that ensues, you can be sure that Mr. and Mrs. Watson retain their shining faith in their sweet Mercy, and that there is plenty of buttered toast.

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Review of Down Girl and Sit: Smarter Than Squirrels, by Lucy Nolan

Beginning Chapter Books, Children's Fiction Review 0

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Girl and Sit

Smarter Than Squirrels

by Lucy Nolan

illustrated by Mike Reed

Marshall Cavendish, New York, 2004.  64 pages.

http://www.marshallcavendish.com/

http://www.mikereedillustration.com/

With four chapters, lots of pictures, and lots of implied humor, here’s a book perfect for a child ready to read chapter books on his or her own.

Down Girl, a busy dog, narrates this book.  She and the dog next door, Sit, have an important job. 

Down Girl says,

“It is up to us to keep the world safe.  Sometimes Sit and I wish we had help, but we’ve gotten used to doing the job alone.

“The secret to our success is simple.  We are smarter than squirrels.

I don’t think people realize how many birds and squirrels are out here.  If they did, they’d never leave their houses.

Birds and squirrels steal almost everything in sight.  What they don’t steal, they eat.  They are very clever, but they are not as clever as we are.  Guess where we chase them.  We chase them up trees!

“You never see a dog in a tree, do you?  That’s because dogs are smart.  We know it would hurt to fall out.

“Birds and squirrels never remember this.  It’s easy to keep the world safe from birds and squirrels.”

Down Girl’s master is named Rruff.  It is obvious that Rruff loves Down Girl, since he shouts her name so often.

When a new creature comes to the neighborhood named Here Kitty Kitty, the dogs know their job has gotten more challenging.  Fortunately, Down Girl and Sit cleverly rise to the challenge.

A look at life from a dog’s point of view.  Lots of fun!

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Review of A Death in Vienna, by Frank Tallis

Fiction Review, Historical, Mystery 0

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A Death in Vienna

by Frank Tallis

Grove Press, New York, 2005.  458 pages. 

Here’s a murder mystery with a fascinating historical setting.  The hero of the book is Max Liebermann, a doctor proficient in the new science of psychoanalysis at the turn of the twentieth century, a friend and colleague of Sigmund Freud.

Liebermann’s friend Oskar Rheinhardt, a police detective, is presented with an especially perplexing case.  A woman is found dead in a locked room, clearly dead by a bullet wound, yet there is no bullet found in her body.  The woman was a practitioner of the occult and a regular leader of seances.  Could she have offended the spirits?

Max Liebermann reads people well, understanding Freudian slips at a time before the general populace knew about them.  His perceptive analysis of people makes him an ideal assistant to his friend the detective.

This book was a perfect break for me in between volumes of the much more emotional Twilight series.  A Death in Vienna appeals on a more cerebral level, with a challenging puzzle and an intriguing historical background, when the practice of treating psychological ailments was far different than it is today.

A big thank you to the library customer who told me about this book!

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Review of Lionboy: The Chase, by Zizou Corder

Audiobooks, Children's Fiction Review, Science Fiction 0

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Lionboy:  The Chase

Book Two in the LionBoy Trilogy

by Zizou Corder

Read by Simon Jones

HighBridge, Minneapolis, 2004.  7.5 hours on 6 compact discs.

This time, instead of stopping in the middle of Charlie Ashanti’s story, as I did the first time I read Lionboy, I made sure I continued on.

I’m finding that when I listen to books on CD, I enjoy very different books than the ones I like to read.  Although I enjoyed the first book of the trilogy the first time I read it, I didn’t find it gripping, the sort of book that keeps me up all night reading.  So I never found myself compelled to pick up the second book in the trilogy.

Listening to the audio version of the book is a different situation.  Because I only live ten minutes from my workplace, I enjoy a diverting, entertaining story.  One that pulls me in, but that I don’t mind stopping after ten minutes.  The audio books I’m enjoying, this one among them, are an entirely different category of books than my usual choices.  Although I loved listening to some print favorites, such as Enna Burning and Fairest, I almost found it annoying that I couldn’t gobble up the story quickly, I liked it so much.  With a lighter book, like Lionboy, or comedies like those by P. G. Wodehouse, the way listening takes so much longer than reading is part of the fun.  I’m finding that listening to the audiobook is the perfect way to get around to reading a book that I couldn’t quite get myself to pick up and read with my eyes.  After all, I’m just entertaining myself while driving!

Most of Lionboy: The Chase took place in Venice — a future Venice where much of the city has finally fallen into the sea.  Still, the parts still standing are the same as they have been for hundreds of years, the same Venice I fell in love with myself, so I enjoyed vicariously spending time there while reading this book.

Charlie has gotten the circus lions away from the circus and away from Paris.  In this book, he needs to get them away from what he thought was their safe haven, a palazzo in Venice.  He still doesn’t know where his parents have been taken, and now there’s a reward offered for finding him and the lions.

The plot in this story did include some unbelievable coincidences, but mostly it was an entertaining adventure yarn to listen to.  How will Charlie, who can talk to cats and lions, save his friends the lions, and himself?  How will he find his parents?  How will he escape Raffi, who continues to go after him?

Charlie grows in this book, faces tough challenges, and overcomes.

I appreciated that this book did not end in the middle of things.  In fact, if they didn’t tell us in the epilogue that things are about to get much worse, I would have thought it was a nice, happy ending.  I like trilogies better when they consist of self-contained books, and this one at least finished the saga of the first two books.

The narrator is excellent, maintaining a nice variety of voices, including distinct voices for lions and cats.  Of course, I’m always a sucker for a British accent, and can listen to such a speaker all day long!

I intend to listen to Book Three while I am still thinking about the story.

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Review of First Daughter: Extreme American Makeover, by Mitali Perkins

Contemporary, Teen Fiction Review 0

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First Daughter

Extreme American Makeover

by Mitali Perkins

Dutton Children’s Books, 2007.  278 pages.

www.penguin.com/youngreaders

http://www.mitaliperkins.com/

http://www.sparrowblog.com/

Sameera Righton’s father is running for President of the United States.  She’s leaving her international high school in Brussels to join him for the last several months of his campaign.

Right from the start, his campaign staff are planning changes for Sameera, starting with her name.  Her family has always called her Sparrow, but the campaign manager thinks that “Sammy” sounds “more American.”  Sparrow was born in Pakistan and adopted when she was three years old, so she doesn’t look like her parents.  Are the American people ready for that?

What’s more, Sparrow, who’s long prided herself in her thoughtful blog posts for a small circle of friends, is now asked to let a supposedly media-savvy campaigner write her official blog.  “SammySez” ends up sounding like a mindless shopping-crazed TV addict.

Sparrow tries to keep a semblance of normal life during the crazy campaign months.  She does her usual summer trip to her grandparents’ farm, and tries to take some of the load off of her recuperating grandma.  At least until the press finds her.  I love her strategy for sneaking out of their Washington, DC, hotel in a salwar kameez.  I think it would work!

This book is fun reading, and perfect for this summer before the election.  Mitali Perkins has posted a real blog for Sparrow at http://www.sparrowblog.com/.  On it, she keeps track of news stories about the children of the real-life presidential hopefuls.  I wonder how much their experiences are similar to Sparrow’s.

I do like the way Mitali Perkins weaves in some tasteful discussions about faith into her work.  I met her nine years ago at a writer’s conference in Paris, and she mentioned that her faith was an important part of her writing.  Her characters express that faith is important, but don’t claim to have all the answers.

I also liked the international flavor to the book.  Sameera grew up overseas, as her parents were an ambassador to NATO and a human-rights activist.  Having met Mitali in Paris when she was living in Asia, I wasn’t surprised to read that she was born in India and lived in many different countries growing up.  The part of the book dealing with international relations definitely had an authentic ring.

This is a good book about a teenager thrust into the limelight, and it also gets the reader thinking.  What makes a person American?

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Review of I Will Surprise My Friend! by Mo Willems

Animal Characters, Delightfully Silly, Picture Book Review 0

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I Will Surprise My Friend!

by Mo Willems

Hyperion Books for Children, New York, 2008.  57 pages.

Oh, I do love Mo Willems’ books!  I Will Surprise My Friend! is another easy reader about two friends, Elephant (named Gerald) and Piggie.  As with the Pigeon books, Mo Willems manages to convey all kinds of emotions with simple line drawings.  Adding a raised eyebrow here and a pointed toe there tell the readers exactly what the characters are feeling.

I’d like to try this book in a storytime, but it’s particularly suited for a child learning to read.  There are a few words on each page, and the pictures will give the child delight at deciphering exactly what is happening, and they will find it tremendous fun.

To start out, Gerald and Piggie see a squirrel hide behind a rock and surprise his friend.  The two squirrels are delighted.  This gives Gerald a great idea — they can surprise each other at the big rock.

Gerald and Piggie are both fully engaged in the fun of the planned surprise.  But when two people are both hiding, who’s around to get surprised?  There’s plenty of visual humor in this story, and of course the fun of seeing behind the scenes when both friends get surprised in a way they didn’t expect.

Hmm.  Describing it takes more words than are in the book!  I want to find a beginning reader to read this story to me.

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Review of Flirting with Pride and Prejudice

Austenalia, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

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Flirting with Pride & Prejudice

Fresh Perspectives on the Original Chick-Lit Masterpiece

edited by Jennifer Crusie

Benbella Books, Dallas, Texas, 2005.  230 pages.

Starred Review.

Ah, tremendous fun!  This book talks about Pride and Prejudice, plays with Pride and Prejudice, and reveals that other people have their little foibles and weaknesses about Pride and Prejudice, just as I do.  (And what an amazing number of people have a crush on Colin Firth!)

The authors who contributed cover a wide range, with Chick Lit writers particularly well-represented.  Some of the essays are even written by men!  (Well, two.)

I recently bought and viewed Becoming Jane, and my sister-in-law gave me the Collector’s Edition of Pride and Prejudice (with Colin Firth) and I found myself quite taken in by the accompanying book of behind the scenes stories of making the movie.  So I was definitely in the mood for this book.

Of course, I have my own stories about my love of Jane Austen.  I did my Sophomore English Literature paper on her and ended up using the time to read every one of her books — and then wrote the paper staying up all night the night before.

I confess that I regularly reread her books.  I was recently captivated by a photo-illustrated edition of Pride and Prejudice put out by Dorling Kindersley, which I found in the library and couldn’t resist.  I’m planning to watch Becoming Jane all over again, with commentary, which isn’t something I normally do.

So — I definitely enjoyed reading other people’s musings on the subject of Jane Austen and her immortal characters.  What is it about Mr. Darcy that enchants us?  How about Elizabeth?  And do we think that Charlotte Lucas was a sell-out, or just practical-minded?

There are a wide variety of offerings here, from discussions to confessions to playful rewritings to new stories.  I liked the story Mercedes Lackey wrote about what might have happened if one of her own characters had gone to a party at Pemberley hosted by Elizabeth Darcy.  Jennifer Coburn compared Pride and Prejudice with Fiddler on the Roof.  Several discussed the implications of capturing the book on film.  I enjoyed Laura Resnick’s essay on Bollywood’s wonderful musical Bride and Prejudice, and what things translated well and what things didn’t.  Of course, there were several discussions of Mr. Darcy.  Teresa Medeiros’ title said it well:  “My Darling Mr. Darcy:  Why is the Unattainable so Irresistible?”  I also enjoyed Jill Winters’ take on the passionate secret life Mary Bennett was living behind the scenes.

I don’t need to say any more.  Those who are as enchanted with all things Austen as I am will want to read it just as soon as they find out the book exists.  Enjoy!

Thinner thighs and darker chocolate may not always be within our grasp, but thanks to Jane Austen, a brooding Englishman with an inscrutable gaze and good teeth will always remain just at our fingertips. — Teresa Medeiros

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