| May 19, 2013
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Terry Pratchett’s Weird Tribute to Dickens: Dodger

dodger

Pratchett, Terry. Dodger. New York: Harper, 2012.

When I read a book for review, I’ve got the book in one hand, and a pencil in the other. I underline passages and take notes, lots of notes. My notes tend to be about what happens, and what I think that means. Because ok, I tend to have a really shoddy memory for these things.

As I read Dodger, I found myself taking copious notes, but this time they weren’t so much about what transpires in the novel. No, these notes were more about how the novel said what it did. I was in awe of Pratchett’s use of language, and found myself jotting down phrases, sentences, and single words.

You don’t find words like skint, shonky shop, disembogued, firkytoodle, and hey-ho-rumblelow in every novel now, do you?

You can probably guess that there’s also a lot of literary allusion in the novel, for Dodger is modeled after Charles Dickens’s master thief Jack Dawkins, aka the Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist. Dodger’s elder landlord, Solomon (or “ikey mo”) is modeled after Fagin. In the first few pages of the novel, Dodger is introduced to a writer named “Mister Charlie Dickens.” There’s so much fun when Dodger says or does something, and Mister Charlie whips out his notebook and starts scribbling. (Example: he fears Serendipity will be taken away to some bleak house. Upon uttering that phrase Mister Charlie utters “excuse me,” and goes to his notebook with a fury.)

There’s been much discussion over beers amongst literary friends: Charles Dickens or George Eliot? Earnest social commentary or irony? Confession: I fall in the Dickens campe; Bleak House is one of my favorite novels of all time. And if I’m ever feeling low on ideas, or just low and in need of a good creative jolt, I pull it out, or pop in the amazing BBC adaptation.

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But this is not just a story about Victorian London from the perspective of the Artful Dodger. And it’s not just postmodern pastiche, either. It’s more like a weird tribute to Dickens, and a wild rumpus through Victorian London.

Dodger is a tosher, someone who enters the sewer system in order to find money or other valuables. Out late one night on the tosh, he pops out of a drain only to save a young woman from being beaten to death. Dodger, Mister Charlie and his friend “Ben” Disraeli, the notable politician and writer, are drawn into the mystery of who this mysterious woman is. Dodger feels compelled to protect the beautiful mystery woman (who’s ironically named Simplicity), and mixes it up by donning the clothes of a gentleman and plumbing the depths of street life in order to figure things out.

Even though Dodger is a dirty, sewer-stinking thief who seems to uncontrollably pick the pockets of all and sundry, his fortune changes the day he saves Simplicity. In short, he becomes a hero. In addition to saving the girl, he stops Sweeney Todd (the fictional “demon barber from Fleet Street”) from killing him during a most unfortunate haircut. In doing so, Dodger realizes that terms like “hero” and “villain” are subjective and open to interpretation. “[T]he important thing in all of this was how you seemed and he was learning how to seem. Seem to be a hero, seem to be a clever young man, seem to be trustworthy. That seemed to fool everybody, and the most disconcerting thing about this was that it was doing the same to him, forcing him on like some hidden engine” (194).

The novel is dominated by dirty streets, sewers, and unbelievably poor souls. Pratchett admits Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor, which gave voice to the  untold stories of the beggars, thieves, and prostitutes of Victorian London, as the single biggest influence in the composition of the book. So perhaps it’s not surprising that there’s a lot of moralizing in this novel, which is often spoken by the mouth of none other than Solomon, who has some of the best quotes:  “Money makes people rich; it is a fallacy to think it makes them better, or even that it makes them worse. People are what they do, and what they leave behind” (205).

Ok, one more. Please? Early on the book, Solomon gives Dodger some sage advice: “[T]he game we play are lessons we learn. The assumptions we make, things we ignore, and things we change make us what we become” (47).

If you read this book, you’ll find yourself immensely entertained. Stunned by the innovative use of language, most definitely. You’ll howl with laughter at what the Dickensian world looks when written by the weird pen of Terry Pratchett. And, like Dodger, you’ll probably realize that while truth may be obscured by fog, there’s hope that at least its essence is still somewhere intact. Goodness will out.

 

Category: book reviews | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
| May 15, 2013
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Finding Quiet: A Review of My Father’s Arms Are a Boat by Stein Erik Lunde and Oyvind Torseter

Fathers Arms Boat

Lunde, Stein Erik. My Father’s Arms Are a Boat. Illustrations by Oyvind Torseter. Translated from the Norwegian by Kari Dickson. New York: Enchanted Lion Books, 2013. Ages 3 and up.

It’s difficult to find picture books that embody quiet in both their narrative and visual presentation. Or picture books that don’t tell you everything, but show you just enough so that wonder what exactly is going on. It’s obvious that, in My Father’s Arms Are a Boat, there is more going on than meets the eye.

A young boy and his father live in a remote house. It’s the middle of a Scandinavian winter, but neither of them can sleep. The father send the boy to bed, but instructs him to leave the door ajar, “So that your dreams can come out to me.”

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Nevertheless, the boy can’t sleep. “It’s quieter now than it’s ever been,” he notes. To match this creeping quietness, there’s lots of “empty” white and black space on this page.

What is quiet? For this boy, it seems as if quiet is the scary time of day when he’s all alone. He curls up on his bed, cold, but doesn’t keep his blankets on.

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On the next page, the father is shown sitting by the fire. His body is hunched over, the expression on his face forlorn.

The boy leaves his quiet room and goes back out to his father. “He puts both his arms tight under my knees. My body is curled up like a ball. I rest my head against his shoulder.”

The sentences here are short and tight, and evoke the love each feel for each other.

The boy pours out his worries: what if the bread he left on the tree stump is eaten by the fox? What if the birds wake up and there’s no food? What then?

“Then they come back again. They fly back and forth, until there is no bread left on the stone. Granny says the red birds are dead people.”

Of course; the boy is not just worried about little red birds going hungry. Astute readers will notice the sad expressions, the fear of quiet, the sleeplessness, and the slumped postures in this book and realize that this is a book about grief.

“Is Mommy asleep?” I ask. “Mommy’s asleep,” says Daddy. “She’ll never wake up again?” I ask. “No, not where she is now.”

In the dark of night, the two go outside. The fox has taken the bread, but when the boy sees a shooting star, he makes a wish. Tired, the father carries the boy home. The father looks back to a dark, human-like shape in the woods. What is that?

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For me, this is the darkest, but ironically, most hopeful illustrations of the book. It’s as if the illustrator has personified the grief that haunts each character. It’s faceless and dark. The father turns his head, but his body is pointed straight for his house.

Back in the house, the two watch the fire for a long time, unable to sleep. “Everything will be all right,” says Daddy. “Are you sure?” “I’m sure.”

And you know what? It is. In the morning, the red birds have bread waiting for them on the stump.

Oyvind Torseter’s illustrations are some of the most unusual I’ve ever seen in a picture book. They seem to be three-dimensional, made from paper and cardboard, but there’s also digital elements here as well. Black, gray, and white predominate in this book, with bits of red (the fox, birds, and fire) popping for emphasis.

My Father’s Arms Are a Boat was awarded the Norwegian Ministry’s Culture Prize for the Best Book for Children and Youth, and was nominated for the 2011 German Children’s Literature Award.

 

Category: book reviews | Tags: , , , , , , ,
| May 13, 2013
14 comments

Nonfiction Monday, May 13, 2013

girl in library

Perhaps if you’re here, you’re one of those people who love nonfiction. Perhaps you’re the type of person who, when settling down to read a good book, reaches for a biography, a history, or something scientific.

Well, good for you.

I’m the type of person who can subsist entirely on a diet of fiction; I find that it’s difficult for me to focus my attention while reading a nonfiction work (I always say reading nonfiction makes me feel ADD), unless it’s got a substantial narrative thread running through it that makes it feel like fiction. Crossover nonfiction works are particularly interesting; Steve Sheinkin’s Bomb: The Race to Build – and Steal – the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon held me in rapturous attention. I never even entered the nonfiction part of the library as a child because, well, I just wasn’t interested.

“That’s the boring part,” I’d tell myself. I’d only go there if I absolutely had to. I preferred to read about things like hobbits, tesseracts, or talking lions. Stuff that can absolutely, positively never exist.

It wasn’t until I had a child that I appreciated the beauty of nonfiction literature written for children. I had a child (a boy) who appreciated narrative, but was drawn to nonfiction. He’d study books that had detailed cross-section drawings of engines. He’d ponder over visual dictionaries and encyclopedias, soaking it all in.

In fact, his whole approach to literature was different from mine. He seemed to need books to teach him real things, to answer specific questions, and he studied in them with an intensity that surprised me.

So, as any good parent does, she encourages what her child loves best. So now, when I go to the library, I inhabit the nonfiction section. My child and I set up camp in the midst of books about Star Wars spacecraft cross sections, the Apollo missions to the moon, the immune system, and penguins.

And I’ve realized that my child has taught me a a few lessons about reading and nonfiction that I wouldn’t have learned otherwise. Here goes:

1. People come to literature with different purposes. Some seek narrative, while others seek unmitigated facts. And that is ok.

2. Some children have an intense interest in a subject matter, and turn to nonfiction to answer their questions about that interest. In my case, there were times when we checked out every single book our library owned about fire trucks, the Apollo space missions, and various bridge designs.

3. There is a wide range in what’s considered nonfiction. It’s not just “boring” facts written with dictionary-like prose. There’s room for a ton of creativity here. There are beautiful photoessays about animals in nature. There are detailed renderings of engines and vehicles, which exist in reality or in the imaginations of science fiction. There are black holes that speak with cartoon bubbles, prompting us to think further. There are biographies with unusual illustrations or historical nuances.

4. Nonfiction is here to stay. Jonathan Hunt wrote a thought-provoking article about nonfiction, “The Amorphous Genre” in the May/June 2013 Horn Book, in which he discusses how the Common Core State Standards will emphasize nonfiction over fiction as a child progresses through the public education system. “[B]y the fourth grade, students will read a balanced ration of fifty percent fiction and fifty percent nonfiction for school reading assignments. As students age, this ration gradually begins to favor nonfiction until, by twelfth grade, they will be expected to read seventy percent nonfiction and thirty percent fiction” (31).

What have you learned about nonfiction literature for children? Or the differences in how we approach writing or reading nonfiction? I’d love to know!

All right, Julie. Enough postulating. Let’s get to the books, already! If you’ve blogged or written about nonfiction, click on here to enter a link to your blog post about nonfiction. I’ll post them on Tuesday!

If for some reason, this form does not work for you, feel free to leave a comment or send me mail at: instantlyinterruptible(at sign)yahoo.com

Non-Fiction-Monday

last train

Tara at A Teaching Life writes about teaching literary essay forms to sixth graders, and which teacher’s aids have helped give her refreshing ideas for the task. Also there is a discussion of a beautiful story of a family of Hungarian Jews during the Nazi Holocaust, The Last Train: A Holocaust Story (2013) by Rona Arato.

temple grandin

Laura at Laura Salas: Writing the World for Kids shares Sy Montgomery’s biography of the scientist and autism advocate, Temple Grandin: How the Girl Who Loved Cows Embraced Autism and Changed the World (2012). Laura says that after reading it, she really felt that she knew Temple Grandin personally. An added bonus: Laura will giveaway her autographed copy of the book to one lucky winner.

no backbone

At Books4Learning, you will find a fun discussion of the No Backbone: Marine Invertebrates Series by Natalie Lunis (Bearport, 2007). Books in this series cover marine invertebrates such as squids, crabs, and jellyfish and feature large, vivid pictures.

Annos Journey

You might know author/illustrator Mitsumasa Anno for his math books, but Myra at Gathering Books introduces us to two other gems: Journey and Medieval World. With great attention to detail, Myra looks at both, musing: “His books are structured like little puzzles with hidden codes that the reader is encouraged to uncover as one gets to analyze its threaded, multi-varied connections.”

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Andromeda at A Wrung Sponge features a review and giveaway of Mary Holland’s Ferdinand Fox’s First Summer (Sylvan Dell, 2013). With eye-catching photographs, children can follow this cute fox kit, the runt of his litter, through his first summer.

youve got spirit

Ms. Yingling at Ms. Yingling Reads pairs a novel about cheerleading  (OMG: The Glitter Trap by Barbara Brauner and James Iver Mattson, illus. Abigail Halpin) with You’ve Got Spirit: Cheers, Chants, Tips, and Tricks Every Cheerleader Needs to Know by Sarah R. Hunt, illus. Lisa Perrett (Millbrook, 2013), a practical nonfiction book that gives tips and how-tos on all things cheerleading. Because after all, you may not be a cheerleader, but as a reader, you’re a cheer-reader!

albers

Janet at All About the Books with Janet Squires introduces An Eye for Color: The Story of Josef Albers by Natasha Wing, illus. Julia Breckenreid (Holt, 2009). Albers was part of the German Bauhaus movement in the 1920s; his studies and experiments with color continue to impact artists and designers today.

TurtleSummerSmall

Amy at Amy O. Quinn has a review and giveaway of Turtle Summer: A Journal for My Daughter by Mary Alice Monroe (Sylvan Dell, 2007). This “delightful” scrapbook-style journal features lots of photographs, and interesting tidbits about loggerhead sea turtles. Readers will be curious to know that the journal is that of the young mother in Monroe’s novel, Swimming Lessons, but it can stand on its own as an informative nonfiction title!

zombiemakers

Loree at A Life in Books reviews the creepy-but-fascinating Zombie Makers: True Stories of Nature’s Undead by Rebecca L. Johnson (Millbrook, 2013). Reading into the wee hours, Loree couldn’t put this one down! Really: Did you know there are “… things … that can take over the bodies and brains of innocent creatures? Turn them into senseless slaves? Force them to create new zombies so the zombie makers can spread?”

Diego

Lynn and Cindy at Bookends review Diego Rivera: An Artist for the People by Susan Goldman Rubin (Abrams, 2013). From this comprehensive review, it sounds as if Rubin’s biography deftly presents this controversial artist’s political and aesthetic contribution to the world in a visually stunning way.

extreme earth

Jeff at NC Teacher Stuff reviews Seymour Simon’s Extreme Earth Records (Chronicle, 2012). Readers can step beyond their mundane lives and find out what life is like in different, more extreme places. In his book, Simon discusses what it’s like to live on remote places such as Antarctica, the island of Trisan da Cunha, and the Atacama Desert in Chile.

python

Jennifer at Jean Little Library reviews a fascinating picture book about python snakes, Python by Christopher Cheng and Mark Jackson (Candlewick, 2012). Jennifer thinks this would be the perfect book for a kindergarten or first grade class in a snake-themed unit.

Charles Dickens

Jennie at Biblio File reviews Charles Dickens and the Street Children of London by Andrea Warren (Houghton Mifflin, 2011), an official nominee for the 2013 YALSA Award for Excellence in nonfiction for Young Adults. Jennie discusses how Warren ties the author’s life to elements of his fiction, and the historical descriptions of life in Victorian England, including debtor’s prisons and workhouses.

Miracle Mud

Ami at A Mom’s Spare Time reviews Miracle Mud: Lena Blackburne and the Secret Mud that Changed Baseball by David A. Kelly and Oliver Dominguez (Millbrook, 2013). This book will be fascinating for the baseball aficionado, but this true story will also appeal to anybody.

digital.medAnastasia at Booktalking introduces a new nonfiction book that she’s authored. Targeted towards young adults, Internship and Volunteer Opportunities for People Who Love All Things Digital (Rosen, 2013) will guide high school students through the internship and volunteer process in order to find meaningful career paths.

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It’s true–most middle class American kids live lazy, indulged lives in which they’re not responsible for much. Catherine at Mrs. Little got great pleasure in reading …If you Lived in Colonial Times by satirist Ann McGovern. Kids today will be surprised to hear how their counterparts lived centuries ago. No ipones or ipads?! Impossible!

urban garden

Tammy at Apples with Many Seeds reviews Potatoes on Rooftops: Farming in the City by Hadley Dyer (Annick, 2012). Now that spring has finally sprung, our thoughts turn towards spending more time outdoors. This book will inspire urban children to garden, and will give practical advice for how to accomplish productive gardens within the bustle of a city.

pluto

Lisa at Shelf-employed reviewed Pluto’s Secret by Margaret and DeVorkin Weitekamp (Abrams, 2013). In this book, poor ousted ex-planet Pluto gets the chance to speak for himself. Find out how he was discovered, and how he feels about being relegated to dwarf planet status!

Thanks to everybody who contributed a blog post to this weekly roundup! I can’t wait to dig in to these new books.

Category: book reviews, Literacy and Reading, nonfiction Monday | Tags: , , , , ,
| May 10, 2013
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Retooling my blog

Hi readers,

It’s been fun blogging about books and parenting for the past two-plus years. (Has it really been that long?) I’m in the process of switching over to WordPress for blogging in the hopes that it will give me greater creative freedom, and more fun features. So if things look a bit different around here, that’s why!

As always, thanks for reading. You’re the best.

–Julie

Category: Uncategorized |
| May 6, 2013
One comment

Review of Hoop Genius: How a Desperate Teacher and a Rowdy Gym Class Invented Basketball



Coy, John. Hoop Genius: How a Desperate Teacher and a Rowdy Gym Class Invented Basketball. Illustrations by Joe Morse. Minneapolis: Carolrhoda Books, 2013. Ages 4 and up.

If you have children or if you’re a teacher, then you’re familiar with the desperation that can descend on a very cold or hot day, when you run out of things to do and are stuck indoors. Perhaps sensing your agitation or boredom, the kids become rowdy and unmanageable. In desperation you wonder: What can these cooped up, too-energetic kids do today?

Hoop Genius: How a Desperate Teacher and a Rowdy Gym Class Invented Basketball tells the story to which all teachers and parents can relate. After two teachers walked off the job, Jim Naismith takes on the notoriously rowdy gym class in December 1891. These rough-and-tumble boys are full of energy (sound familiar?). They injure themselves and others as they try to play indoor football, soccer, and lacrosse. In any sport they try, the boys prefer force to precision and more injuries result.

Staying up late one night, Naismith remembers a game he played as a child, where he knocked an opponent’s fist-sized stone off of a larger rock by throwing another stone at it. This got him thinking: what game will focus a player’s energy on accuracy rather than force? What will get their bodies moving without requiring tackling?

Grabbing a soccer ball and two round baskets used for peach picking,basketball was born. Naismith tacked the rules of the game to the gym wall, and the game began. At first, players fouled each other a lot, but soon learned that if they played by the rules, they could stay in the game. After Naismith blew the whistle after that first day’s game, nobody wanted to leave the gym. They were hooked.

As Naismith’s students left boarding school for winter break, they took the game home with them, and soon others began playing. The game gained popularity and, well, you pretty much know the rest!

Joe Morse’s illustrations are highly original; there’s something reminiscent of cubist painting in his work. There’s a lot of deep shades of aubergine, blue, and grey in the book. Faces are angular and expressive; eyes rarely make contact with the reader, and remain focused on some distant ball.  The limbs are lanky and tangled, while the size of certain body parts, like hands, seem exaggerated for effect.  

The endpapers in Hoop Genius  reproduce Naismith’s first draft of the rules of the game. An additional author’s note provides greater detail about Naismith’s life. Readers may be interested to know that Naismith was raised by an uncle, and dropped out of school at age 15, only to return to education at a later point in his life.

Category: book reviews |
| April 23, 2013
2 comments

Another Great Book for Little Builders: Iggy Peck, Architect


Beaty, Andrea. Iggy Peck, Architect. Illustrations by David Roberts. New York: Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2008. Ages 3 and up.

If you’ve been following my blog, you know I’ve got a little builder at home. This child spends his time constructing vehicles from Legos, and drawing pictures of them with crayons. On his birthday, he came home from kindergarten with a beautiful “all about me” poster in which his teacher transcribed him saying: “when I grow up, I want to design bridges.”

Not a ninja. Not Anakin Skywalker. A bridge designer.

If you have a future engineer or architect at home, you must read Iggy Peck, Architect. Since he was but a wee thing in diapers, Iggy has been fascinated with buildings, and has been creative about his use of materials:

Young Iggy Peck is an architect
and has been since he was two,
when he built a great tower–in only an hour–
with nothing but diapers and glue.

Iggy builds things from sand, fruit, and even constructs his version of the St. Louis arch from pancakes. Does he remind you of someone you know?

Iggy is still fascinated with buildings by the time he gets to school. The only problem is that his teacher forbids it in favor of other (read: boring) things. The image below shows a classroom setting in which Iggy sits off to the side, constructing an elaborate castle from chalk. The other students listen docilely to the teacher.

The message here is clear: Iggy’s love of architecture makes him a bit of an outsider. When the teacher throws all of the architecture books in the trash can, we’ve a full blown conflict. when Iggy stops building, he just sits morosely at his desk. The life has gone out of him.

Parents of bright, creative children will relish this book, as they will likely identify with the conflict between a child’s intensity and creativity and the demands of the educational system. The question remains: How can Iggy do what he loves and enjoy school?

The prospects for a resolution to this problem seem bleak until the class goes on a picnic to a nearby island. The rickety bridge breaks when the children cross, leaving them stranded. The teacher promptly faints away, but don’t worry. Iggy saves the day. Using shoestring, tree branches, and a few other things, he constructs his own bridge to get the kids safely across the water:

Boots, tree roots and strings, fruit roll-ups and things
(some of which one should not mention)
were stretched ridge to ridge in a glorious bridge
dangling from shoestring suspension.

In making the bridge, Iggy saves the day and makes a special place for himself. The teacher allows him to teach the class about architecture, and the little boy thrives at school.

I love this book because it emphasizes a lesson that wise parents and teachers know and practice daily: find and build upon a child’s strengths. The pressures to conform seem insurmountable, but if you know a kid like Iggy, treasure his (or her) gift. It will be the spark that makes him who he is.

Category: book reviews |
| April 21, 2013
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Powerful Graphic Novel Brings the Unexpected: Raina Telgemeier’s Drama



Telgemeier, Raina. Drama. New York: Scholastic/ GRAPHIX, 2012. Ages 11 and up.

I love graphic novels written for children. Librarians and teachers may hold the graphic novel in contempt, as sub-par literature that will corrupt the minds of otherwise bright kids, but I believe that some of the most interesting stuff in literature today is being done in graphic form. (Anyone read The Adventures of Beanboy?)

Take Raina Telgemeier’s Drama, a powerful and original graphic novel written for middle school-aged readers.  In Drama, a seventh grade girl named Callie eagerly joins the stage crew for the production of a middle school musical.

Who would expect that Callie herself would get sucked into her own drama? Set design is Callie’s passion, and she exudes an unvarnished love for all things theater. Through Callie’s friendships with the fraternal twins Justin and Jesse, this novel has much to say about friendship and accepting people as they are.

Justin tries out for Moon over Mississippi, and Jesse works with Callie on the stage crew. Even though Jesse can sing like hell, he’s shy and is unsure his father would approve of his acting because he “wants me to be an engineer someday.” There’s a tension in Jesse that builds and builds: he’s artistic but also a science and math geek; his father wants him to be one thing, while he clearly enjoys something else.

But there’s more. Oh, so much more.

I remember being blown away when, as an undergraduate, I learned that many of Shakespeare’s sonnets were written about other men. “I’m a good reader. How could I have missed that?,” I thought. Homosexual desire was present, but in “coded” form. In short, readers could identify homosexual desire if they knew what to look for. Drama is full of unexpressable desires: some of which are homosexual or, in the very least, ambiguous in their sexual orientation.

Callie hangs out with Justin and Jesse more and more, and a unique friendship develops between her and the two boys. Shortly after befriending Callie, Justin, the more extroverted actor and singer, confides to Callie that he is gay. Callie accepts her friend’s confession in stride, but is obviously relieved to hear that Justin’s brother, Jesse, is not gay:
“Is he gay, too??”
“No…”
“Good to know.”
“Uh-huh.”

Predictably, Callie and Jesse grow closer as friends, and readers start to expect a romance to develop. (Callie’s “good to know” is one of the big tip offs that she’s falling for Jesse.) But (spoiler alert!), there’s no romance in the conventional sense, because as it turns out, Jesse might be gay too. When Bonnie, the leading lady of the show throws a mongo tantrum during intermission because the leading man, West Redding, breaks up with her, Jesse saves the day by putting on a dress, and jumping on stage. This gifted stagehand has memorized all the songs and moves from backstage, and eagerly fills the missing role, much to the delight and dismay of everyone:


Seeing Jesse in a dress might be funny at first, but readers know what’s coming. There’s a stage kiss on the script! What will happen? Surely they won’t kiss. But kiss they do. Readers will rationalize that it happens because that is written into the script. You can see the audience’s shock below:

When I got to this part of the book, I have to admit it, I was both shocked and thrilled at the fact that Jesse and West kissed. In visually showing this romantic stage kiss between two guys, the novel really pushes at the limits of social convention and what’s deemed “acceptable” in children’s literature. As it turns out, Callie’s beloved Jesse may also be gay. (West might be gay, too.) But he’s not sure, and readers get a good feeling of the agony he’s going through precisely because he doesn’t know.

There’s a lot of online talk by parents who are concerned about giving this book to their children. Because Telgemeier’s previous graphic novel, Smile, was perfectly suitable for an elementary school-aged audience, parents automatically assumed the same was true of Drama, later to realize the book took on such heady issues. Some parents even regretted giving the book to their children, or flat-out disagreed with the topic itself. In my opinion, this book is probably not for the elementary aged reader, but would be a great addition to any middle schooler’s library.

For its courageous presentation of the GLBT experience, Drama received a Stonewall Book Award Honor and is one of YALSA’s (The American Library Association’s Young Adult division) top ten graphic novels for teens.

Sexuality aside, there’s lots of fun for theater-loving readers. Yours truly was a “theater geek” in her time; reading this brought back many memories of working closely with actors, choreographers, and stagehands. Telgemeier represents the hard work that kids and their dedicated teachers put into musical theater productions. The author digs deep to show you Callie’s desire to build a cannon that actually fires onstage, and her friend Liz’s enthusiasm for costume design. Each character is so genuine and sincere. It’s a fine argument for the good that music, drama, and art programs bring to children.

Go, Raina!

Category: book reviews |
| April 12, 2013
2 comments

What’s the Best Novel You’ve Read So Far This Year?


Andrews, Jesse. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. New York: Abrams, 2012. Teen.

Jesse Andrews’s Me and Earl and the Dying Girl won the 2012 CYBILS award (Children’s and Young Adult Blogger’s Literary Awards) for best young adult novel. As a judge in the easy reader/ short chapter book category, I was curious about what book won for “big kid lit,” and borrowed the book from my local library.

 Boy am I glad that I did, because so far, it’s the best piece of fiction I’ve read all year.

I approached Andrews’s book with a fair dose of skepticism. Not another book about a young person dying of cancer. In 2011, John Greene wrote the super-slick-six-starred-reviewed The Fault in Our Stars. I prepared myself for what I thought would come in Andrews’s: agonizing chemotherapy, lots of peppy talk about how all you need to fight cancer is a “positive attitude,” a meaningful catharsis with a loved one, and a realization about Life and what it’s all about. Add a few touching heart-to-heart discussions a  la Tuesdays with Morrie, and a wrenching goodbye, and bam! Someone else’s death might make you a better person.

But that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? When a book about someone else’s death becomes part of a project to give the living person meaningful realizations about The Big Picture of Life, then I’ve got to put the book down. It just seems too contrived.

Jesse Andrews’s Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is about a high school girl dying of cancer, but it’s not the book you think it is. Greg, a self-hating high school senior, just wants to get out of high
school without being noticed.In the first chapter, Greg writes: “[H]igh school is where we are first introduced to the basic existential question of life: How is it possible to exist in a place that sucks so bad?”

In order to exist, Greg is friends with everybody
and nobody. The only friend he does have is Earl, whose family struggles with poverty, neglect, and alcoholism. Even though Greg is too self-absorbed to realize the extent of Earl’s hardships, the two love obscure movies, and film remakes of their favorites for fun.

Greg’s well-meaning mother pushes him to hang out with Rachel, a girl he used to know in Hebrew school, because she’s been diagnosed with leukemia, and needs a friend. Problem is, Greg doesn’t really think of Rachel–or anyone else–as a friend.

Greg admits: this is not your standard book about death. He writes: “So if this were a normal book about a girl with leukemia, I would probably talk a shitload about all the meaningful things Rachel had to say as she got sicker and sicker, and also probably we would fall in love and have some incredibly fulfilling romantic thing and she would die in my arms. But I don’t feel like lying to you. She didn’t have meaningful things to say, and we definitely didn’t fall in love.”

Wait…How can that be? How can she not have meaningful things to say? Aren’t books supposed to be full of people saying and thinking “meaningful things?” 

I don’t know how Jesse Andrews did it, but he wrote a hilarious, nihilistic book about high school, friendship, and death. Sure, the narrator may be irreverent and crude, but he asks important questions, like: What if those touchy-feely things don’t
happen? When our experiences don’t match what’s prescribed, how do we process and give value to that experience? What if
instead of feeling something, you feel nothing? What if you realize something important and it’s too late? What if you never realize it?

These are questions the novel ponders over and over again. That’s pretty weighty stuff for a YA novel.

Some readers will think that Greg is an awful person because he doesn’t learn anything from Rachel’s death. Instead, he obsesses about making a movie for her, and then gets upset when his best friend Earl gives Rachel some of the films that the two of them made. This could be a trap, though. In rejecting the narrator, we may adopt a “holier-than-thou” attitude and miss the whole point of this book.

Andrews is a master of narrative voice. Greg’s honest teenager voice sucks you in. He’d rather be making films and lapses into screenplay mode from time time as he composes a book about Rachel, which he repeatedly tells you is so awful that you should stop reading. “I can’t believe you’re still reading this. You should smack yourself in the face a couple of times right now, just to complete the outstandingly stupid experience that is this book.”

But let’s be honest. You won’t stop reading this book, because it’s clever and witty behind belief. What’s more, the novel is genuinely funny. I mean fall off the couch, and laugh so hard you cry funny.

So that’s the best novel I’ve read so far this year. Now what about you?

(A note to my Pittsburgh readers: you’ll be interested to learn that Andrews graduated from the now defunct Schenley High School. The novel is full of Pittsburgh neighborhoods, references to Pitt, CMU, and the public parks.)

Category: book reviews, CYBILS |
| March 29, 2013
8 comments

Is Easter Bunny the New Santa Claus?

Good Friday, Readers!

On this blog,I’ve complained about the commercialization of Christmas, but perhaps that’s to be expected. But I’ve noticed lately that Easter has become more commercialized as well.

As a parent who has purchased toys from Toys R Us, I get the sporadic email blast from the toy company that advertizes sales and promotions. But this past week I’ve received emails every single day. Today, the email instructed me to “hop on in and save!”

A cute, fuscia bunny adorns the ad, making the point very clear. Parents: buy your children toys for Easter. I was out the other night looking for candy for my children’s baskets, and I stopped by Toys R Us. Thankfully, the “Easter” section was at the front of the store but it was empty except for an Egg dying kit that made your eggs look like molten lava.

“Where’s the Easter stuff?” I asked the clerk behind the customer service desk.
“Oh,” she mumbled. “That’s all we have left.” My paranoid self thought I saw her snicker.
“Yeah, that’s right,” I thought. “I am a procrastinator.” Surely there’s other busy parents who haven’t purchased Easter candy yet.

So, I thought, for what are consumers supposed to “hop” into the store? Clearly there is nothing specifically appropriate for Easter available.

What the toy retailer wants is for parents to buy their children a real toy. You know, something that costs more than five dollars. Otherwise, they would have had that candy and cheap toy section stocked. Target and other retailers certainly did.

As we were looking for our Easter baskets the other day, my kindergarten-aged son told me that he wanted a new Lego Star Wars kit for Easter. Then he specifically asked for a set by name: Anakin’s Jedi Starfighter. For kicks, I looked up the set online,and discovered it costs $80! He didn’t get the idea from the capitalist thought police. There was a print ad from–you guessed it–Toys R U s in the mail that week, which included pictures of expensive Lego kits. And fuscia bunnies.

If you have more than one child, you can imagine how this can all spiral out of control, to the point where you are spending hundreds of dollars on more stuff for Easter. So just as some parents finish paying for their holiday credit card bills, they can get hit with another doozy. Has the Easter Bunny become the new Santa Claus?

Readers, what do you think about this trend? Am I the only one who’s disturbed by the commercialization of everything? What kind of message does this send to children? And how do mindful parents cope with these pressures?

Category: Mothering |
| March 22, 2013
3 comments

Got a Little Builder?


Hale,Christy. Dreaming Up: A Celebration of Building. New York: Lee & Low Books, 2012. Ages 3 and up.

Do you have a little builder at home? If you do, boy do I have a fun book for you!

“If they can dream it, they can build it.” So reads the epigraph to Christy Hale’s fun picture book, Dreaming Up. In this idea-inspiring book, Hale juxtaposes two kinds of images: One of a child playing and another of an actual building.  For example, a child placing stackable donut-shapes on a wooden peg is likened to the Guggenheim museum. A cardboard box is compared to a state-of-the art cabin in the Colorado mountains. Young readers will have lots of fun comparing the similarities between the two images. Here’s an example from the book:

There’s so much to look at and notice in each page. At first, readers will probably have fun comparing the child’s play with the architectural marvels on the opposing pages. Yet subsequent readings can also pay attention to what the author does textually. The text is written as a shape poem (also called concrete poetry), where the placement of words on the page resembles the shape of the thing it describes. A girl builds something with blocks that resembles Fallingwater, and the text is stacked on top of rows that jut out this way and that.

This book is perfect for any little
builder. Got a Lego-obsessed kid at home? He or she will be excited to learn that the architect of
a Montreal apartment building got the idea for his design from LEGO bricks. Yes, Legos! The final
product is a fun, geometrical building composed of modular units that stack
on top of each other.

Dreaming Up nurtures the creative spirit all children possess, and reminds us adults to keep having fun. The book’s endpapers identify each building, its architect, and discusses a little behind the design idea. There’s no end to the fun applications of this book. Read it with your child (or a classroom of children), and then get out blocks, Legos, cardboard tubes, and some yarn, and let the building begin!

Category: book reviews |
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