Library Mama

There was a day, about two weeks ago, when I finished a book and had no new library books waiting for me to read. Not one. In a panic, I went to the new fiction shelves at the library and took several youth fantasy books. I paid special attention when reading my journals and blogs and put lots of titles on hold, because I had nothing at home.

I have plenty to read now. Definitely more than I can read before they’re all due. This was one of the ones I pulled off the new shelf, just based on how many times I saw the title come up in the weekly review summary at Charlotte’s Library.

The Humming Room by Ellen Potter
Here’s a book that says straight off that it’s inspired by The Secret Garden, one of my favorites. This made me nervous once I realized it, but it came off well – like a well-done fairy-tale re-telling, close enough to follow the plot, but different enough to have its own unique spin.

Roo Fanshaw is 12 when her drug-addicted, ne’er-do-well father gets himself murdered. Only when she’s being taken to him does she learn that she has an uncle. He lives on Cough Rock, a small island in a river in upstate New York just big enough for his former child tuberculosis sanatorium turned mansion. The part of the housekeeper, Mrs. Medlock, is played by the stylish but strict Ms. Valentine, while cheerful Martha’s role is taken by the friendly, jean-clad 20-year-old Violet. Roo has been moved around often enough to be distrustful and antisocial, but she quickly learns to love the river and is curious enough to explore the large building, even though she’s told which wing to avoid. Outside, she finds a tiny cave by the river bank, just big enough for her. It’s there that she meets a boy who introduces himself as Jack, paddling around the river in his kayak and considered just a legend by most of the native population. Inside, she hears a mysterious humming noise, and traces it to her cousin Phillip, who’s been in poor mental and physical health since the unexplained death of his mother four years earlier. Both children are initially afraid that the noises that they hear from the other are the ghosts of tuberculosis victims, and some time is given to the sad fate of those children. There is, of course, an abandoned garden for Roo to bring to life as well – this one a greenhouse Amazonian jungle. Roo has never gardened before, but, unlike Mary, has always had a habit of listening with her ear to the ground and being able to hear the earth and what it’s saying to itself. The characters, especially Roo and Phillip, feel well-rounded and believable, similar but not identical to their counterparts in the original. Fans of The Secret Garden are of course the natural audience for this, but the modern setting and the slightly enhanced mystical elements give this appeal to those who wouldn’t necessarily go for historical fiction. Like the original, there’s frequent mention of death, but no in-book violence or romance, making this just right for middle grade readers.

Young Fredle by Cynthia Voigt. Read by Wendy Carter. Fredle is a young mouse who lives behind the walls of the kitchen of a farm house, also inhabited by Mr. and Mrs., Baby, two dogs and a cat. He and his more adventurous girl cousin, Axel, enjoy pushing the boundaries of the strict mouse rules, talking while foraging and even foraging outside of the normal times. And then they find something new and delicious – a peppermint patty. They both eat themselves sick. Axel is able to run away to wait to get better, but Fredle is pushed out of the nest onto the pantry floor. From there, Mrs. takes him outside, presumed by all the mice to be a death sentence. Getting to this point of the story took long enough that I was surprised at how many discs were left of the audiobook – but this is really just the beginning. Fredle gets better, has an outside mouse bring him food, and discovers the stars and what he thinks are multiple moons. He must learn very quickly how to find food outside and how to stay safe from the outdoor cats as well as raptors, owls, snakes and racoons. Somehow, he makes friends with Sadie, the flightier of the two dogs, and develops an exploratory friendship with a young woodshed mouse who defies her colony’s rules against talking with house mice. He spends what seems like forever searching the perimeter of the house for a way back in, only to be kidnapped by a band of raccoons, the Rowdy Brothers. And when Fredle finally makes his way back home, he finds that he can no longer just go along with the rules that have always been followed, when he can see that doing things differently could save lives.

Many of the Amazon reviews talked about how the message was the importance of Freedom. Which is a nice all-American message, but not really the message that I got out of the book. It is some about freedom, of course – but when Fredle was first dumped on the grass outside, he was perfectly free and absolutely in danger of his life, both from the illness and from not knowing his way around. I think the more important lesson that Fredle learned was about flexibility and adaptation. Rules are fine if they’re really helping to keep you alive and safe, but they need to be re-evaluated regularly to make sure they really are still the best way to do things. Unmentioned in those reviews, but going along with it, is Fredle’s learning to appreciate beauty, not just going through the day trying to find enough to eat and then sleeping the rest of the day away. Many Amazon reviewers also found it slow, and aside from the slowish though not uninteresting beginning that I mentioned earlier, we did not find this to be the case. I listen to audio books in the car with my son daily, and rarely does he complain about the suspense of just having to stop wherever we land when we get to school. This time, he was waiting anxiously to find out what would happen to Fredle, especially as we had to turn it off just as Fredle had been spotted by a snake.

This was a runner-up for the annual ALA Odyssey awards for best audio for youth and teens. It was indeed very pleasant listening, though there are also illustrations in the print version that we didn’t see. This is a good choice for elementary-age kids and would make a good fine family read-aloud.

Cross-posted to http://library-mama.dreamwidth.org and http://sapphireone.livejournal.com .

Here’s a series that was mentioned in a recent Books for Boys webinar from Booklist.

Alvin Ho Collection Books 1 & 2: Allergic to Girls, School, and Other Scary Things. Allergic to Camping, Hiking, and Other Natural Disasters. by Lenore Look. Read by Everette Plen. These are fairly short early chapter books of the funny but realistic kids type. Alvin Ho is a second-grade Chinese-American boy, interested in many things (like superheroes and baseball) and afraid of many more, like girls and school. On weekends, Alvin is a gentleman-in-training and Firecracker Man, a fearless superhero, while during the week, he’s too scared even to talk at school. The books are two-disc affairs (two books to a set), mostly episodic adventures around things like Alvin trying to make friends at school, going camping, and what happens when he lets loose on his psychotherapist the Shakespearean cursing that his father loves to use when upset. Alvin is sometimes joined in his adventures by his older brother Calvin, and more often by his five-year-old sister Anibelly. There is a lot to like about these books. There are not so many books with Chinese-American protagonists, and Alvin definitely doesn’t fit the stereotype of the Asian teacher’s pet. Alvin believes that crying makes you feel better, and bursts into tears at times of real or potential stress. And Alvin’s family relationships are loving and believable. I might have enjoyed the books more if they had been read by someone else. Everette Plen (and Mr. & Mrs. Plen, what’s with spelling your son’s name with the feminine ending?) is a child actor who read with decent expression but uniform full-speed-ahead pacing. I wanted to love them more than I did, but they are fine examples of realistic early fiction to appeal to both boys and girls, and the boy and I enjoyed them.

Cross-posted to http://library-mama.dreamwidth.org and http://sapphireone.livejournal.com .

The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling. Book 1 narrated by Flo Gibson. Book 2 narrated by Patrick Tull. It turns out that in a childhood spent reading, somehow I’d only read a couple of stories from the Jungle Book. The only one I remember clearly is Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. Somehow, despite living without a TV and rarely seeing movies as a child, I have a few images from the animated Disney movie stuck in my head, too. The original, as you might guess, is a whole lot less cute and funny than in Disney. Mowgli is still a child raised in the jungle by wolves. There are lots of short stories of his adventures, from his efforts to kill the tiger who was responsible for him coming to the jungle to his being cast out by the wolves, trying to live with humans, and coming back with the jungle to renew the Pack. In between Mowgli stories are others, most also set in India, but some set in the Arctic and other similarly remote places. Each story has an accompanying poem, which these days seems delightfully old-fashioned.

The whole thing is quite violent, mostly of course against animals, but still often horrific, as in the story where a young seal witnesses a group of others his age being clubbed to death, or the unforgettable battle between the mongoose Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and the cobras Nag and Nagina. There is no sex, of course, and hardly any women. The only one I can remember who isn’t a mother is a beautiful girl in white whom Mowgli sees walk by at one point, and that isn’t even a speaking role. Though in many ways I think that Kipling was trying to make his jungle function like a real one, his sexism extends to having the animals most respected in the jungle be the male elephant and his sons. I don’t know whether the matriarchal nature of elephant society was unknown at that point, or whether Kipling was too bound up in his worldview to see it. The supremacy of man to beast and white man to native Indian is of course even worse, both clearly there and balanced against Man being clearly crueler than Beast. But we found, the Boy and I, that these parts were infrequent enough that they didn’t interfere with the stories, which were with just one exception cracking good. We talked over the issues, agreed that the attitudes were outdated, and moved on. Underneath those outdated ideas are some deep truths, and great adventures in the meantime. The Boy very much wishes that there were more Jungle Books, especially more Mowgli stories.

We listened to both volumes of the Jungle Books. The first of these was narrated by Flo Gibson, whom Wikipedia says was a pioneer in recording classics for children, and whose voice is low and cracked enough that I heard age before I heard gender. The second was narrated by Patrick Tull, also possessed of a gravelly British voice, and who is best known for recording the vast majority of Patrick O’Brian’s Maturin-Aubrey series. Both narrators sounded more like a grandparent reading a story aloud than like some of the modern narrators who do convincing, distinct voices for each character. There are several other recordings out there, and I would be curious to know if any of my readers have listened to them. But in general: heartily recommended, within your and your child’s tolerance especially for violence.

Now this is the Law of the Jungle - as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk the Law runneth forward and back -
For the strength of Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
"The Law of the Jungle" in The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling

Originally posted at http://library-mama.dreamwidth.org .

Polly and the Pirates by Ted Naifeh Our story opens with the young Polly Pringle at boarding school. She is regarded by her peers as sweet but much too willing to abide by the rules. That very night, her bed is hoisted out of her bedroom onto a pirate ship. She refuses to believe the awful truth at first: she is the only daughter of the famous Pirate Queen, taken as her crew’s last chance to find the Pirate Queen’s Hoard. The Pirate Prince, a handsome and untrustworthy-looking young man, is also after the treasure, and the Navy is after the lot of them. Polly rises to the occasion in a glorious way, proving in a manner quite unsettling to herself that she has inherited large amounts of her mother’s talent at nefarious business. Naifeh’s whimsical art, where the ships look like buildings, suits the story perfectly and is quite different from the moody shaded work he produced for Holly Black’s The Good Neighbors. This is rated for 7 and up, and I think it could go even younger if the child in question can sit still for an exciting story. The book says “Volume 1”, but I regret to say that my visit to Ted Naifeh’s web site failed to turn up any signs of a sequel in the works. Still, there’s a lot to be said for a one-shot story, and this one is highly entertaining.

Originally posted at http://library-mama.dreamwidth.org .

The Birthday Ball by Lois Lowry. Illustrations by Jules Feiffer. This is a sweet little book from heavy hitter and Newbury-award winning author Lowry. The Princess Patricia Priscilla is about to turn 16 and is bored with everything. Bored with her life, bored with the idea of the ball in honor of her birthday, bored with the thought of having to choose a husband. After talking with her maid, she decides to borrow her maid’s clothes and attend the local village school just for something fun to do. There, she gets educated in what life is like for the peasantry and falls for the handsome young school teacher. Breaks from this story introduce the princess’s would-be suitors, all odious men from places with names like Dyspepsia. It’s a light tale for younger chapter book readers, with modern elements mixed into the setting adding to this feel, as well – one of the suitors, for example dresses in spandex, and the maid, trapped in the princess’s suite waiting for the return of her dress, reads Alice in Wonderland. The scribbly illustrations are by Jules Feiffer, whose work I recognized from my childhood reading of The Phantom Tollbooth. Will Patricia find a way out of having to choose from the odious suitors? I would have found this book just a bit better if the choice weren’t quite so clear, but it’s still a fun story for princess-obsessed girls. Pair it with The Ordinary Princess by M.M. Kaye or Patricia Wrede’s slightly meatier Dealing with Dragons.

Many thanks to my love for discovering this book, which Lightning Bolt and I listened to in the car.

Larklight by Phillip Reeve. Read by Greg Steinbruner. Larklight is set in an alternate Victorian world, where the British Empire spans the solar system. Our narrator, Art Mumby (eleven or so, I’d guess), and his proper teen-aged sister Myrtle live in an ancient and remote manor house, Larklight, that orbits the earth past the moon. When their home is attacked by giant white spiders, Art and Myrtle escape to the moon, where they are rescued from the fearsome wildlife there by the young pirate Jack Havock. Art, Myrtle, Jack Havock and his crew of aliens then embark on a quest to save the solar system. I found a whole lot to like about this book. There is the wonderful Victorian-flavored prose, with both the floweriness and schoolboy slang. As part of this, the wooden ether ships are powered by the alchemical wedding which naturally occurs not in an engine room but in a wedding chamber. Many of the characters are archetypes twisted just enough to be self-aware – the Plucky British Schoolboy, the Very Proper Young Lady in Search of Love, and the Pirate with the Heart of Gold. Despite the unreality of wildlife that can survive in the ether and on the moon, the vast distances of the solar system seem much more accurately represented here than in much of sci-fi: Mars is the farthest regular British outpost. There are aliens and a few humans on the moons of Jupiter, but Saturn is farther than humans have ever managed to go. I really enjoyed Steinbruner’s reading of the text, his British accents as Art appropriately youthful and plucky, but the print book is also lovingly illustrated, so you can take your pick. My library has this shelved in teen, but I can’t see why – it seems more appropriate for children’s fiction. If you love this (and why wouldn’t you?) there are two more books in the series.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. Read by the author. I’m guessing that most of my readers don’t need me to tell them to read Neil Gaiman. That, and this book winning both the Newbery and a Hugo… but there it is. I read it and it was cool and now I feel like writing about it. The tale of Nobody Owens, raised by ghosts in a graveyard after the murder of the rest of his family, is still too dark for me to share with Lightning Bolt. However, Gaiman handled the opening murder scene delicately enough that a slightly older child probably would be ok with it. I liked the way he used characters that experienced fantasy readers would probably recognize without ever using the standard label. For example, Bod’s guardian, Silas, who is neither quite alive nor dead, is seen only by dark, doesn’t eat the same kind of food as Bod, and has unusually strong powers of persuasion. I loved the way the stories of isolated incidents at various points of Bod’s childhood built up stealthily into a plot. I appreciated that Gaiman didn’t settle for the easy resolution to the story. And I was smitten by his narration. I have heard some authors read their books quite badly, others passably. Gaiman ranks up there with some of the best professional narrators I’ve heard. Neil Gaiman rocks. But then, we knew that already.

The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron The most recent Newbery award winner apparently got pulled from a number of libraries (mostly school, I think) because it includes the shocking word “scrotum” on the first page. As overheard by our heroine. It is not mentioned again until the last chapter. Anyway, being the curious type, I thought I would investigate on behalf of you, my loyal readers.

10-year-old Lucky is more or less an orphan, with a father who left at the news she was coming and a dead mother. She’s being cared for by her father’s first wife, Brigitte, who flew over from France to take care of Lucky. They live in three adjoining trailers in the desert in tiny Hard Pan, California. Lucky's after school job is cleaning up after all the various Anonymous meetings. Listening in on them provides her both with stories even as she tries to follow the twelve steps herself. Lucky is still dealing with the death of her mother two years ago, as well as worrying that Brigitte, only a guardian, will go back to France. Her struggle is echoed in literary fashion by a little five-year-old boy who follows Lucky around everywhere, asking her to read Are You My Mother?, when Lucky would rather be working on scientific exploration and finding her Higher Power. Despite the grim premise, Lucky is an endearing and plucky character, and the story is funny and adventurous as well as touching.

Jack Plank Tells Tales by Natalie Babbitt Long-time favorite Natalie Babbitt (Tuck Everlasting) returns with this delightful collection, sure to be a hit. Cutting the microphone, Jack Plank is a retired pirate, looking for a new career. Every day, he heads out with his landlady’s daughter to try to find a job. Every night, he returns unsuccessfully, but with a tale to tell of why that particular career could never work for him. He couldn’t possibly do work that involved crossing a bridge, for example, because of the experience that a shipmate had with something closely resembling a troll in Nova Scotia, and another shipmate had an experience that put him off wigs forever. Jack Plank does find a job in the end, of course, but by that time, all we want is more stories. The stories belong to that wonderful variety, which are entertaining for an adult without being too scary for the beginning chapter book reader.