Just made J: Jeremy's Decision

Today is Reading on the Beach's A-Z Wednesday, with J the starring letter. Every week bloggers are invited to spotlight a book starting with the letter of the week. You show the cover, tell the title, give a synopsis, and post a link. Usually, I like to actually read (sometimes just finish) the book on that day, so I include my little review. This week I'm still recovering from my library avalanche, so I'm grabbing a favorite picture book instead.

Jeremy's Decision is one of the books I got through Brighter Vision, a children's book club type company which would send us a box each month with a book, workbook, a craft, some stickers, and a music CD or cassette, based around some theme. Unfortunately my eldest never had any interest in doing the workbooks, but I loved them, so we kept it up. It turned out that they only have one set of everything, so I discontinued when my second grew up to where the first started, because who needs two sets of the same book, and the X only ever did a few pages of the workbook. Anyway, it was a fun little box, and it's a pity that it looks like the company has disappeared. We still have some of the workbooks, and I use them for N's homework sometimes. Copying letters is much more fun when you RIP the page out of the book before or after you do it.

So, one month was music, and this was the book. We enjoyed it, and I kept it during several weedings of our picture books. Jeremy's dad is a orchestra conductor, and when the family goes to watch him perform, everyone asks Jeremy if he's going to grow up to do the same thing. Finally Jeremy speaks up with his real ambition (paleontology). What I really like is that the young kids go to the concert and enjoy it. (Jeremy reads his dinosaur book through the music, and keeps setting the dinos to the music -- the sad part is the mass extinction.) I like that his sister ends up being the conductor, even though no one ever bugged her with the question. The illustrator is Michael Martchenko, who is better known for his work with Robert Munsch. And the author is Ardyth Brott, who a little googling tells me is married to a conductor, so maybe this book is based on her family. So a cute little book, with good memories of my kids being young.

PS. I skipped for two weeks, drowning in reading and bad internet, but the I book should have been Irreligion, by John Allen Paulos, and the H book was Chad Orzel's How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. I hope to review those soon.

Today is Reading on the Beach's A-Z Wednesday, with G the starring letter. Every week bloggers are invited to spotlight a book starting with the letter of the week. You show the cover, tell the title, give a synopsis, and post a link. Just to be annoying, I like to actually read (sometimes just finish) the book on that day, so I include my little review. Makes things more interesting. Then I sign up on her page to see what everyone else came up with.

This week is I lucked out, with one of the books due tomorrow starting with the letter "G." How foresightful of me. Alma Alexander's Gift of the Unmage is a YA fantasy about a world where almost everyone has magic, except Thea, our hero. Although a seventh child, she has no magic at all and gets shipped off to the special school for non-magical types (my kids liked the idea of a reverse-Harry Potter when I told them about this). Of course, she has some powers of her own, as well as a special threat from some of the other creatures allied with the humans. A solid blossoming into adulthood story, with some attention paid to what happens under the surface. B

Friends and Enemies: Free Fire (F Day!)

Today is Reading on the Beach's A-Z Wednesday, with F the starring letter. Every week bloggers are invited to spotlight a book starting with the letter of the week. You show the cover, tell the title, give a synopsis, and post a link. Just to be annoying, I like to actually read (sometimes just finish) the book on that day, so I include my little review. Makes things more interesting. Then I sign up on her page to see what everyone else came up with.

Last week I missed posting about my E book, because my internet started dying whenever I walked near with a book. I read Enemy Spy, a Shredderman series book by Wendelin Van Draanen. I know you were worried about it.

Today I finished Free Fire, a Joe Pickett book by C.J. Box. This seems to be a mystery series about a game warden up near Yellowstone (actually in Yellowstone for this book), and I picked it as part of my personal goal to read a book off every shelf in the local library. Which has just become the 2nd closest library, so I may restart this challenge closer to home. Anyway, so far I'm really enjoying the books I'm finding this way, especially the ones I wouldn't have ordinarily come across. Box builds the suspense slowly with the story of the small town lawyer who noticed that a quirk of law made a small section of the park a legal free zone, where no laws could apply. Not even murder. Meanwhile Pickett struggles with his new life since his dismissal from the state park service, until he gets a strange offer back in. The danger mounts but attention is also paid to family, new and old, and friendship. Betrayals and injustice sneak in from above and below the law, while true friendship and courage really shine. I'll probably try to pick up some more of these, although I seem to have started with the seventh so I'm not sure whether to go forward or back. B+

Duelling Dragons: Dragon Spear on D Day

Today is Reading on the Beach's A-Z Wednesday, with D the starring letter. Every week bloggers are invited to spotlight a book starting with the letter of the week. You show the cover, tell the title, give a synopsis, and post a link. Just to be annoying, I like to actually read (sometimes just finish) the book on that day, so I include my little review. Makes things more interesting. Then I sign up on her page to see what everyone else came up with.

This week is complicated by my need to read the stuff due tomorrow, but I found Dragon Spear, a children's book already started, as the perfect filler. It was good timing because some of my other books were about to get very depressing.

Dragon Spear is the third book in Jessica Day George's dragon setting, and it fits nicely with the others. Creel is the spunky seamstress who befriends the dragons; she alternates working on her wedding dress with helping the dragons deal with kidnapping and empire building from a splinter group of runty dragons. She occasionally does something silly (stops to tie her shoe while on a secret mission, and gets separate from her raiding party) but generally manages to get herself out of her fixes. There's no deep after glow, but a pleasant adventure story, garnished with some sewing challenges that get as much respect as any other subplot. It's fun to have a hero who doesn't start off by condemning sewing as boring. And I like the idea of somebody named George writing books about friendly dragons. B

Cute and Sad: The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen

Today is Reading on the Beach's A-Z Wednesday, with C the starring letter. Every week bloggers are invited to spotlight a book starting with the letter of the week. You show the cover, tell the title, give a synopsis, and post a link. Just to be annoying, I like to actually read (sometimes just finish) the book on that day, so I include my little review. Makes things more interesting. Then I sign up on her page to see what everyone else came up with.

This is a special week for me, because I think I started with the letter C. So I've come full circle. My kids are also now starting to play along, although sometimes they forget. So X has nothing this week, but P and I frantically rampaged around our picture books after piano lessons and came up with precious little. We only had fifteen minutes to read (P also believes in reading the text) so our options were limited. We looked at A Child's Garden of Verses, but only had time to read a couple (which P found much less painful than expected). But we also found Curious George's Are You Curious, an abridged board book featuring some scenes from the life of the monkey. P's review: Boring, but fast to read. The rhymes are lame.

My book was chosen because it's been out from the library the longest, and it is also short. M.T. Anderson writes edgy YA books which I keep meaning to read and also has a wacky middle school series floating along. X checked out

The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen, the second in a series involving kid superheroes and Lily, a would-be regular kid. The series satirises mystery series such as Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and the Boxcar Children, featuring a Tom Swift like boy inventor and a zombie fighting girl, along with regular kid Lily. They stumble into an old-fashioned luxury inn with wacky characters, including many other heroes of books series. There are Lemony Snicket like asides and authorial comments, but what I found most interesting were the occasional dips into real pathos. Kate, the zombie fighter, wrestles with a desire for a real life, which become more poignant later when the real fate of action heroes is revealed. She's trapped forever (or for the duration of her books' success) at her current age. In between the slapstick gags, that's a real tragedy. B (X liked this one a lot, but I didn't ask him if he also found it sad between the jokes.)

Bonded for Life: Black Angels

Today is Reading on the Beach's A-Z Wednesday, with B the starring letter. Every week bloggers are invited to spotlight a book starting with the letter of the week. You show the cover, tell the title, give a synopsis, and post a link. Just to be annoying, I like to actually read (sometimes just finish) the book on that day, so I include my little review. Makes things more interesting. Sadly, none of the library books that are due tomorrow begin with a B, so I kept trying to read two books at once. But I finished one. Now I'll sign up on her page to see what everyone else came up with.

I found Linda Beatrice Brown's Black Angels in my library pile, so I promoted it to the top (there was at least one other, but I had no hope of finishing it in a day, seeing as I'm also reading 65% of Kingsolver's Lacuna today). Set in the middle of the American Civil War, it follows three orphans about the age of my children as they stumble across each other and try to survive. I suddenly find myself trying to substitute in my kids in children's books I read, both as a sanity test for the books and to see how my kids are doing compared to these fictional types.

Luke, the twelve year old (in the book, not my house) escapes from slavery because he wants to join the Union army. He misses the meeting and heads north on his own, finding Daylily, nine (hmm, right about my youngest's age) who didn't so much escape as find herself adrift after unspecified soldiers attack her home. And the youngest, Caswell, matches up with my nephew at seven. Caswell is white, lost in the woods after union soldiers burn his house and all the neighbors. The children come together because the dark is too big for any of them, although it takes a while for Caswell to fit in. They find various refuges, from caves that shelter them for an evening to generous adults who try to add them to a family.

Interestingly, the last third of the book splits them up. They promise to reunite in ten years; Luke joins the army as a messenger, Daylily and Caswell are adopted by a black family until Caswell's father finally finds him and, horrified, yanks him out of the hands of the despised ex-slaves. Brown skims over the children's lives for the next decade, watching Daylily become a teacher, Luke working for true freedom and fairness, and Caswell refusing to accept his father's racism and deciding to enter a seminary. The last chapter finds them all making their rendezvous, relieved to find their family ties still strong.

The first part of the book is the strongest, as the children battle for survival, forge their friendship, and confront challenges that stretch them to their limits. But seeing the last section as an extended epilogue kept me happy -- it was interesting to see how their lives were shaped, and for a kids book, I appreciated the author grounding the book in what was possible and what was happening. I'll offer it to my kids, although the cover is a bit different than their usual fair; the children are paused, waiting for action, instead of leaping about doing something, preferably with dragons.

Queen Nerd and the Cripple: Are You Alone on Purpose?

Today is Reading on the Beach's A-Z Wednesday, with A the starring letter. We're starting over! Although I didn't start with A, so it wasn't a complete cycle. Every week bloggers are invited to spotlight a book starting with the letter of the week. You show the cover, tell the title, give a synopsis, and post a link. Just to be annoying, I like to actually read (sometimes just finish) the book on that day, so I include my little review. I pretend it makes things more interesting. It often makes my day more hectic, and I frantically read while walking through halls or while waiting for automatic doors to open or any other spare seconds I find. Then I sign up on her page to see what everyone else came up with.

This week I challenged my kids to play along. Their selections and comments were:

• Astronaut Handbook, Megan McCarthy. If you were planning to use it to actually train to be an astronaut, you should give it to your worst enemy. It doesn't really give much information on astronaution. It might be good for second graders. (P)
• Asterix Omnibus 1, Rene Goscinny & Albert Uderzo. It's a good graphic novel but the speech seems a bit misplaced. It is very funny. I recommend it for people of all ages. (X)

My book was Nancy Werlin's Are You Alone on Purpose?, a YA issue book. Alison has a problem -- her twin brother Adam has autism,

and somehow she has been relegated to the family role of Normal, Successful daughter, something she finds stifling. Harry also has a problem. At first his problem is that he's a bullying jerk mourning the death of his mother, but soon his bigger problem is that an accident left him paralyzed from the waist down. The two come together and help each other deal with their problems. It's a solid, well put together story, but never breaks free of the constraints of the young YA issue book. Alison is a finely drawn intellectual girl, but looking back it is hard to see what she values in Harry; his development is mostly interior and his outward behavior doesn't deserve that much loyalty. Oh well, one of the points is that emotions are complicated. Still, Werlin has written better books; I'm guessing it was an earlier effort (yes, from 1994). B-

Centering Without a Center: Zen In the Art of Archery

Today is Reading on the Beach's A-Z Wednesday, with Z the starring letter. Every week bloggers are invited to spotlight a book starting with the letter of the week. You show the cover, tell the title, give a synopsis, and post a link. Just to be annoying, I like to actually read (sometimes just finish) the book on that day, so I include my little review. Makes things more interesting. Then I sign up on her page to see what everyone else came up with.

This week things looked grim. Nothing from the library started with Z. I searched through my kidlit to-read shelf, but came up empty. I searched the fiction shelf -- nothing. I searched the highbrow shelf -- zilch. I searched the piles of books around the bookcase -- zippo. Finally, after reading something else (due tomorrow) I poked through the non-fiction shelf, which I had ignored because I figured they were all too thick to finish anyway. And I hit treasure! And I read it! Zen in the Art of Archery, by Eugen Herrigel.

This thin volume helped popularize Eastern philosophy in the west, probably because of its unassuming tone and welcoming prose. Herrigel was a German philosophy professor who passionately wanted to understand mystical experiences, but he realized that by definition it was something to experience rather than study. When he spent six years teaching in Japan, he and his wife seized the opportunity. Told that the best way to learn to be without doing was to study an art, he chose archery and his wife took flower arranging (although they also studied with each other). He spends the next sixty pages detailing his slow unlearning and gradual learning until he came closer and closer to understanding the practice and art of Zen. It was a chewy read; one that had me stopping to gaze into space every few pages. I enjoyed it, and I'll leave it around for my kids to stumble over in a few years. A.

Y Read? Y Not: You Had Me At Goodbye

Today is Reading on the Beach's A-Z Wednesday, with Y the starring letter. Every week bloggers are invited to spotlight a book starting with the letter of the week. You show the cover, tell the title, give a synopsis, and post a link. Just to be annoying, I like to actually read (sometimes just finish) the book on that day, so I include my little review. Makes things more interesting. Then I sign up on her page to see what everyone else came up with.

Last week I read an X book, but never got around to posting. That comment challenge is eating up all my internet time. Hey, I can count the comment when I register this book! I should have thought of that last week. Anyway, this week's book is You Had Me At Goodbye, by Jane Blackwood, a fun romance about a couple hiding out in a refuge in Martha's Vineyard for a summer. Both were promised the same cottage for the summer, so after trying to kick each other out, they end up sharing. Luckily the "cottage" is three stories tall, so there is plenty of room.

They fairly quickly become friends and enjoy bantering together, but then find that their joking relationship makes it hard to be understood. One of their first jokes is him offering to have a summer fling with her, so when he (and she) really want that fling, neither can take the other seriously. It's a nice twist on the basic misunderstanding idea -- there is a reason they can't just talk, and it's because they've defined their friendship against taking that talk as sincere.

Nothing is all that deep, but the characters are interesting. Kat's escape is from her ex-fiance and the loss of her business; Larry (Lawrence, to everyone but Kat) needs to write a new book but finds he has nothing to say. They have lots to tease each other about, and it was fun to watch. There was also enough extra information in their backgrounds to keep things interesting, and I like the pace of the viewpoint changes from Kat to Lawrence and back. The rich visiting friends were kind of silly, but I don't expect much from tertiary characters. B.

I found this book as part of a personal library challenge -- I'm trying to read a book from each shelf of my library. I'm in no rush -- I'm aiming at a bookcase a month, so 3-5 books, depending on where in the library I'm at. In case you are wondering, I'm on B in the fiction section, where I started. I'm trying to pick from a variety of genres, to stretch myself a little.

PS: Last week's book was Christopher Bennett's X-Men: Watchers on the Walls. It's very sad that I kept this X book around for weeks and weeks, read it last Wednesday, and then fell asleep

without posting it. It was interesting to me because I don't know much about the X-Men besides the movies, and these seem more based on the comics (with one funny reference to the movies, postulating some crazy world where Wolverine was tall). However, I disliked the plot contortions necessary to drive the correct moral lessons home -- the people with the silliest moral positions turn out to be right in all respects. Humph. Only recommended for dedicated X-Men fans. C.

Wacky Wednesday: Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

Today is Reading on the Beach's A-Z Wednesday, with W the starring letter. Every week bloggers are invited to spotlight a book starting with the letter of the week. You show the cover, tell the title, give a synopsis, and post a link. Just to be annoying, I like to actually read (sometimes just finish) the book on that day, so I include my little review. Makes things more interesting. Then I sign up on her page to see what everyone else came up with.

I really wanted to pick a library book, because I am extremely over-extended. I'm tired of having my reading dictated by what is due tomorrow. To express my frustration, I went by the library the other day to drop something off and accidentally picked up six more books. So I'm ignoring the mountains of books I own and concentrating on the library. Luckily I had a few books I've happy to drop everything and devour. For example, Ellen Emerson White's Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

I'm a huge fan of E.E. White, having been hooked on her President's Daughter books. She writes about families that are sarcastic and high achieving, and I am sarcastic and admire people who achieve. So I've been chasing down all her other books, and only recently found she had written two Dear America books. This is my first, the diary of Molly Mackenzie Flaherty, a high school junior in 1967 whose brother just shipped off to Vietnam. (I'm getting his diary next.)

Molly wants to understand what is going on in Vietnam -- she supports her brother but isn't sure she supports the politicians. She pushes against the restrictions of her school, which has limitations on what girls are supposed to do. She lives in Boston, and has a good view of the Beautiful People (hippies) and other protesters in the Commons. And she wants to do something, anything, and ends up volunteering in a V.A. hospital and helping out in a ward full of young amputees. And the letters from her brother keep her worried about what is happening on the other side of the world.

I liked this historical book -- as I read it, I forgot that it was supposed to be an educational trip through the sixties; things seemed to happen because they were part of Molly's life (as a contrast to the Civil War book I just read), not just because I had to know something else about the period. And I had a strong feeling that White's other books have hooks back here -- I'm pretty sure Molly shows up in All Emergencies, Ring Super. I love tracing back those kind of connections. B+

Vile Village: Wednesday is Double V

Today is Reading on the Beach's A-Z Wednesday, with V the starring letter. I meant to read Vanished, by Kat Richardson, the fourth book in the Greywalker series, but life intervened. As I was chivvying the boys into bed, I realized I was on page 50 and doomed, so I jumped ship onto Lemony Snicket's seventh book, The Vile Village.

By the way, the challenge isn't actually to read the book in a day; that's my own goofy implementation. It's just to highlight a book, show the picture and give a synopsis. But that's not hard enough for me...

Fans of the series know what to expect -- doom, gloom, and a lot of vocabulary asides. The three orphans find themselves the wards of a village of nasty crow-lovers, who want the kids to do all the chores so they have more time to torch rule-breakers. Count Olaf lurks in the background, and the two lost triplets are crying out for help.

I knew which way things were going before every twist, but the story isn't about the route, it's about the scenery along the way. And don't think that the characters don't mature and grow -- Sunny especially makes great strides in this book. I can't read two of these too closely together, so I'll continue my slow progress through the series. B

Uncle Boris in the Yukon: Unusual U Day

Technically it is now Thursday, but my internet went out last night when I tried to post this. It's was A-Z Wednesday (from Reading on the Beach), so I'm highlighting a Daniel Pinkwater book, Uncle Boris in the Yukon.

It took me a while to realize that this was a memoir, not another Pinkwater story of a quirky family. And since I've heard Pinkwater on the radio, I heard the stories in his rich, ironic tone, which only added to their strength. His history of his life with dogs, from childhood with his horrid family through raising sled dogs with his wife, is funny throughout and touching frequently. His awful parents make sense of the many strange adults that people his children's books, and the cheerful way he approaches his life is echoed by many of his protagonists. I recommend this book to all dog lovers and Pinkwater fans.

Someone Named Eva: Sinister Nazis Steal Sisters

Today is Reading on the Beaches' A-Z Wednesday, and the letter is S.

Wait, hold the presses. Today is (was) Thursday. Yesterday was Wednesday. I missed it! Ack!

But, looky-there, the book I accidentally reviewed yesterday matched. I am the luckiest woman alive. Hey, so did Tuesday's. This much be S week over here. S for SuhWEET.

Today, to celebrate missing the challenge day and landing on my feet, I seem to have read another "S" book, Someone Named Eva, by Joan M. Wolf. I got this from my son's Scholastic catalog because I remember devouring WWII literature in my youth, and I'm still intrigued. Wolf's book is a new angle on the war; Malada is a blond Czech girl sent to be reprogrammed with Aryan propaganda and adopted by a German family. The Nazis razed her entire village in retaliation for the assassination of a German officer, separating the men and women, pulling out children who passed the racial guidelines, and shipping the rejects to camp.

Malada, renamed Eva, unwillingly learns German and history and proper Nazi behavior. She tries to keep the memory of her family alive, helped by her grandmother's pin, but the frightening circumstances and her youth (the book starts with her eleventh birthday) strip most of her past from her. I found the difference between her attitude and that of similar books with Jewish protagonists interesting; Malada has no sense of thwarting the Nazis by surviving; her secret is not as explosive. She hasn't completely forgotten her past, she knows that Nazis lie, and she knows that she inwardly rejects most of their teachings. But her life isn't constantly in jeopardy; no one wants to kill her for existing.

I was a bit disappointed when the mean, motherless disliked girl who also passed the racial tests turned into a committed Nazi. I prefer the trope where the despised classmate actually has some redeeming characteristics. As a mom, I was also interested in the adoptive mother's reactions -- she was a committed Nazi, but also sincerely believed that Eva was an orphan, and loved her as her own daughter. Mutter's abject sorrow when the Red Cross reclaimed Eva/Malada moved me, although Eva walked away without looking back, and the refugee workers, who had presumably also spent a lot of time at the concentration camp up the road, had no sympathy for the Nazi lady either.

I was confused for part of the book because I had misread an early sentence -- I read "I had been glad that no one I knew was Jewish" as "I had been glad that no one knew I was Jewish" and for a while I assumed her family had recently converted, so their lack of fear seemed odd, but eventually I went back to check and realized my mistake. That did focus my attention on the difference between this story and how the story would have read with a Jewish protagonist.

Although the characters are fictional, Wolf based the story on real events -- Malada's village was the one razed by Nazis, with all the men shot, and select children sent off for adoption. Many of the children were returned after the war, which was very unusual. B

Rampaging Rover Boys Rile Me

Today is R day on Reading on the Beach's A-Z Wednesday. Finding a R book is child's play after last week's Q day, so I went with a child's book. The Rover Boys series is one of the Stratemeyer productions, written to specifications and churned out by the gross. My aunt had a shelf full of them at her summer house, and I read through that glorious reading room in her attic in the weeks we visited them. All the plots run together -- three brothers, Dick, Tom, and Sam, go to boarding school and travel about the world having adventures.

Somehow I acquired The Rover Boys On the Ocean, or a Chase For a Fortune, the second book in the series. I can't remember if I've read it before, but it doesn't really matter. My copy looks fairly original -- very beat up and dated 1899.

What shocked me is how awful the boys are. Not how awful the book is; it's about what I expected, with a straight plot and silly adventures adorning some chapters and the author sure that the Rover boys are just the dandiest thing ever. But I found them rather repulsive -- their practical jokes are humorless and cruel, their casual assumption of superiority just as abrasive as the smarmy ways of their enemies, and their limitless greed seems misplaced in a heroic children's tale. The chase for a fortune? The robbers had also kidnapped Dick's girlfriend as part of a dastardly scheme. But apparently the cash from the vault takes priority over a mere female. In an early chapter, Tom tricks a performing bear into eating pepper, going mad, and almost devouring a group of tourists. Ha ha! Dick thinks nothing of teaching a bully not to hit smaller boys by ganging up with his brothers to pound the snot out of the bad kid. Sam is just around to get hurt and whine.

Is this what the youth of 1899 looked up to? I guess it was OK because the Rover boys were rich and had powerful friends, such as Frank, who never lets a conversation go by without mentioning his dad the SENATOR (state senator -- not all that impressive boys, sorry). As a window into the old days, it was revealing, but I don't think I'll be offering it to my kids. The casual racial slurs only cement that choice (the sexism I take for granted in this kind of book). C-

Queens of the World

Michael Cunningham and George Alexander work together to produce the photographs and text of Queens: Portraits of Black Women and Their Fabulous Hair. The pictures are wonderful, ranging from candid shots of women at all stages of life through models in hair contests I had never dreamed existed.

Before reading this book I was vaguely aware that the hair of black girls needed different techniques and care than mine, but since I have always tended to ignore my own hair I didn't pay much attention. I knew bits from what our neighborhood friends drop, but never put anything together. So in addition to appreciating the gorgeous women and their hair I got glimpses into a world I barely knew existed (straightening, braiding, natural, etc.). I still liked the photos best because of their elegant black and white style, but the short vignettes by each woman fascinated me. Now I have a better sense of what I don't know. I rarely look at coffee table type books, but I think I'll use our library to check some more out, maybe starting with Cunningham's Crowns.

This is a bit of a cheat for me, because I read it a few weeks ago but just got around to writing the review, but I can't find any unread Q books! I think I will reread Queen of Attolia today, because that is also a wonderful book. But still, this is my official entry for the A-Z Wednesday, Q edition.

Passive Prince in Princess and the Hound

Another A-Z Wednesday has come, hosted by Reading on the Beach. Although most people just pick a book from their shelves that start with the week's letter, I insist on reading the book that day. If I'm lucky, I can grab something from my currently reading pile, so I don't start from scratch. Or I find a kids book. Or I panic. I'm good at that.

Today I grabbed a YA book from my currently reading table, with a bookmark almost halfway through. And luckily for me, that's about when the plot of The Princess and the Hound, by Mette Ivie Harrison, really takes off. I found myself impatient with Prince George, the main character, who spends most of the book being restrained and inhibited. But after he meets the princess arranged to be his bride, he finds himself grappling with his emotions and preparing to take actions for himself. The princess was a bit too perfect, but I really appreciated how much slower she was to trust him than his feelings for her.

The back cover claims that it's a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, but only if you squint sideways and are kinda drunk. But it does have a fairy tale flavor, and if you have a lot of patience for slow character building, it's a rewarding book. I finished it while waiting for my brine to cool enough to put the turkey in, so I'll give thanks that it was a good read, because on Wednesdays there is no turning back. B

O! Scots for the Blessed Mother! Outlaws of Ravenhurst

Today, Wednesday, is Reading on the Beach's A-Z Wednesday, which compels me to inflict another book upon y'all. I had several choices and I went with the one I've been carrying around the longest: Outlaws of Ravenhurst, by Sister M. Imelda Wallace, S.L. I'm a bit concerned by the lack of an imprimatur, but I have to believe the Catholic Authors Press wouldn't be selling anything that doesn't deserve one.

This book was a delight. The purple prose that the first sentence promised cheered me tremendously. ("Night lay on the long swelling waves of the Chesapeake Bay: no wind, no star, a murky darkness." Not too much, but just enough.) Our hero, George, finds that he is really the lost Scot Earl Gordon, not merely a poor American frontier lad. This is no happy Fauntleroy tale, however. Gordon's evil uncle has embraced PROTESTANTISM and is horrified by Gordon's devotion to the true church. It is the reign of Charles I, and Roman Catholics are hotly persecuted in Scotland. Will Gordon's faith be strong? Has his mother really forgotten him in a whirl of parties, or has the uncle locked her in a dungeon while forging those frothy letters? Shall we stop the narrative right after the confrontation between uncle and boy so we can read along with Gordon in his sixty page book of family devotions? Yes, yes we should.

There is a good amount of action and skulduggery, and also a lot of Catholic propaganda (hint, if a character isn't R.C., DON'T TRUST HIM). A bit of history as well; if I got my kids to read it they'd know something about the English Civil War, Scotland, and the founding of the American colony of Maryland. They'd also know a bit about Catholic traditions. Sadly, they are Greek Orthodox, not Roman Catholic, so I'm not getting a nibble, although P thought the idea of a book within a book very funny (especially the part where a character in the inner book told a long story). I know I would have loved this book as a kid. B+

PS. There is also a study guide, but I don't have that.

Best Sister Award: Noonday Friends

This Wednesday I went back to my kidlit piles for A-Z Wednesday, the weekly challenge hosted by Reading on the Beach to spotlight books starting with each week's letter. I was hoping to find a kidlit N book about soldiers in some form, but that proved too specific a request for my disorganized piles. So I grabbed Noonday Friends, a Newbery Honor that I either completely forgot or somehow missed reading (it's copyright 1965). My cover is older looking; I prefer it.

Mary Stolz mostly writes family stories about children growing up in the city. In this case, Franny's family is poor and teetering on the edge of worse, with a well-meaning dad who loves to paint but isn't that good at holding a regular job. Her twin brother Jimmy cares for his family but doesn't really know how to show it. Her little brother idolizes her and doesn't really understand the problems his family faces. Franny worries about her father's health, her family's instabilities, and her friendship with girls in her class. It's an excellent mix of big and little problems, with Franny child's eye view rating them according to their emotional impact, not any exterior scale. I'll put it out for my boys, but it's probably not plot driven enough for them. B

L Is for Liar

Today is another A-Z Wednesday, as hosted by Reading at the Beach. I grabbed one of my library books because I am drastically overextended and need to pare down the stack. Liar by Justine Larbalestier is a new Young Adult book about a girl who compulsively lies about just about anything. Her whole family lies. But what should she do, when the truth is unspeakable and impossible?

The book starts with the news that her boyfriend has mysteriously died. What happened is the mystery, and the book is about not just figuring out what happened, but about what the first person narrator believes, how much of what she is telling us is true, and how much is a delusion or a wish or just plain wrong. I've finished the book pretty late, so right now I'm not sure what I believe. The style is a jigsaw puzzle, with many tiny pieces that the reader begins to assemble, then to reassemble, and the final result is like one of the puzzles where each piece is a tiny picture but when you step back the whole thing makes a complete scene. Or maybe when you step farther back it's one of those 3-D images where you squint to see something in all the wavy lines. It's very interesting; I'll decide in a few days whether I liked it.

K for Kringle, OK?

Today is K Day on Reading at the Beach's A-Z Wednesday, so I tossed through my unread book pile until I found Kringle, by Tony Abbott (he's the Secrets of Droon guy). It's a retelling of the legend of Santa Clause, with Kringle as the boy chosen one who fights goblins with the aid of shoe-fixing elves, a Christian hermit, and reindeer that are the avatars of his dead parents. It's an interesting mishmash of ideas that mostly works, but occasionally I found myself out in the cold wondering if I had wandered into an allegory. Kringle has boyish adventures like battling goblins with his stick as well as mystical adventures involving a vision quest inside a frozen crevice. The book kept me turning the pages (it was fairly easy to read this even in a moderately busy day), but some of the strangeness was jarring.

I'll leave it out for my kids, but they probably won't pick it up until the holiday season, if then. B-.