A Winner: Heart of a Shepherd

A great place to get kidlit recommendations from is the Cybils, a kidlit blogger book award program. That's where I heard about Graceling and Boy Toy and other powerful books. I'm slowing working through this year's list of winners and finalists, and that's how I read Heart of a Shepherd, by Rosanne Parry, which I loved.

Brother works on a cattle ranch somewhere in Oregon. His family has a strong service tradition, and his father's reserve unit is sent to Iraq at the beginning of the book. All of his older brothers are away, either in the army or at college or at the boarding high school his small town sends their children too, so he's left home with the grandparents to help run the ranch. I love books about lives so different from my own, from the ranching life to the deep but mostly unspoken religious faiths of the family (Brother, real name Ignatius, is Catholic like his grandmother, but his grandfather is a Quaker), to the lives of a small town where the entire volunteer fire department is in the same deployed reserve group. We see all this through the eyes of a twelve year old to whom it all seems as natural as the lives of the farm animals.

Which sometimes die, so natural doesn't always mean accepted.

I'm going to press this upon my fifth grader, and maybe onto anyone else who gets in my way. A.

Spring Break Status

Well, my first mini-goal is accomplished -- all my library books fit in the library shelf; there is no precarious extra stack teetering on top. Only a few books come due each week. I may actually start reading books from my TBR book case, which is also overflowing and surrounded by piles of books.

I'm staying up late reading a few books, but that's because they are from my kid's school, and therefor due tomorrow. Probably

would have been a good idea to read them over spring break.

This weekend I didn't really finish anything, but I did spend a lot of time skimming through Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan books. I had pulled one out for X to bring along on his spring break, but he forgot it, so I read a bit, and this reminded me of this other bit in this other book, which sent me around to see how that theme was reinforced in two other books, and so a weekend was enjoyably lost. Bujold is like that. This is a deeply satisfying series. And somewhere in reading about all these competent honorable people, I did my taxes.

Open books:

• Scorpia, Anthony Horowitz (due tomorrow). Alex Rider joins the bad guys!
• Hanging Out With Cici, Francine Pascal, for a challenge
• Your Inner Fish, Neil Shubin. Paleontologist looks at what fossils say about you. Well, about me.
• Smart But Scattered, Peg Dawson. Actually, I like this enough that I'm returning my borrowed copy and getting my own so my kids and I can write all over the exercises. I think we all need some executive function boosts.
• And Falling, Fly, Skyler White. Paranormal by a friend of a friend; looks good.
• The Prisoner, Carlos Cortez. They got out of the sewers, thank goodness. I was getting squeamish.
• How To Teach Physics To Your Dog, Chad Orzel. My cat thinks the dog is a doofus. Why chase a rabbit when canned food comes to you?
• Pioneer Woman Cooks, Ree Drummand. I'll read this slowly in the hopes of cooking some recipes.
• Enchanted Glass, Diana Wynne Jones. The postman hid this at my side door, so I didn't find it for days after delivery. Humph!

Two of those books aren't even library books!

One last list: Books I Have Finished This Week.

• Kris Longknife: Undaunted. Mike Shepherd. These books may be taking themselves too seriously, which would be a mistake.
• When You Reach Me, Rebecca Stead. Nice little book that won the Newbery.
• Nasty Stinky Sneakers, Eve Bunting. Worst contest ever! Funny book.
• Son of the Mob: Hollywood Hustle, Gordon Korman. Cute, but the concept doesn't really stretch to two books.
• Echo in the Bone, Diane Gabaldon. I'm not so invested in the characters anymore, which is good because most of the plots are left hanging. Smooth read.
• NurtureShock, Po Bronson & um. Freakonomics for parents.
• Chameleon, Charles R. Smith. Raunchier and rawer boy coming into puberty book.
• Eagle Strike, Anthony Horowitz. Alex Rider on his own.
• Muslim Child, Rukhsana Khan. Short stories showing each of Islam's pillar through the lives of Muslim children.

So, five kidlit, a YA, a paranormal fantasy, one SF, and a pop science book. A good spring break blend.

Leaving a Library

Our local city library has enlisted in the ranks of our ginormous county library, so I'm now a regular patron of only one library system (with an occasional jaunt into the Seattle proper system). I'm a bit sad about this, but the pleasant news is that soon my hold shelf will be in the library within five minutes of my house, on the way to school, not the one fifteen minutes away not on the way to anything but a nice Thai restaurant and a pet shop that sells my finicky cat's expensive cuisine. They spent this week merging the computer system, so starting now all my holds can go to the beautiful library on a river, and this is my last regular stop at Fairwood, my usual haunt.

Fairwood is a beautiful library, with a generous although not enclosed children's section, complete with nifty toys on the wall and a handy series book section, as well as a well stocked YA area and a dangerous staff picks wall near the exit. The worst thing about it, however, is their vending machines, which are magnets for several of my shorter companions. It seems sacrilegious to come into a library speaking only of your choice between mini-oreos and gummi worms, and to actually sit and consume your snack in the LIBRARY WHERE ALL THE BOOKS are grates on my nerves. Since this was our last visit, I let the kids go wild, which meant we had very little time for browsing actual library materials, but did keep me from getting too sentimental. Next week -- downtown!

I checked out almost nothing, since I'm still in recovery. Two of them were re-loots, books that got triaged during the panic of last week:

• How to Teach Physics To Your Dog. Chad Orzel. Which I was enjoying before the library demanded it back. I may recommend it to my book club, some of whom have dogs who may need remedial physics lessons.
• Wild Life, Molly Gloss. All Jo Walton's fault (from tor.com). Another reloot.
• Space Viking, H. Beam Piper. Also Jo Walton's fault, although it was Scalzi's news that made me remember that she recommended it.

N was the only kid who remembered to pick out music for me, and he chose more piano pieces. I'm down now to 58 total things, all of them mine, although I'm a bit worried that some books aren't listed on my online page because of the merge. I may start trying to count the number of books I actually plan to read, or maybe I'll make one of the kids check out all the music from now on. One picture book seems to have gone AWOL...

Tesser Well: When You Reach Me

The latest Newbery winner is When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead. This is a book about New York, about kids who understand time travel and kids who don't, about friendship and about winning game show strategies. It has many short chapters with intriguing titles, and feels like a very cosy read most of the time, with small worries and small puzzles, although the final confrontation ratchets up the adrenaline a bit. I really enjoyed it, although I'm not sure all kids would. The aftertaste was refreshing and clear.

I do think it is interesting that the protagonist isn't the brightest kid on the block, although she is friends with the kids who are. And she loves a book (a book I also endorse -- L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time) but she doesn't love reading. But I forgive her. A-

Hitting Puberty Hard: Chameleon

I recently had a discussion with other moms about our kids hitting puberty, and I mentioned the possibility of leaving Judy Blume's Then Again Maybe I Won't around if I thought my son was in need of information he no longer wanted to get from his mom. Well, now I've found a book that covers the same information, but in a much rawer form. Charles R. Smith Jr.'s Chameleon follows a boy in the summer before he starts high school, as he hangs with his friends and ramps up the puberty slope.

Shawn has different issues as well; he's choosing between a high school in a rough section of town near his mom's work, which means dealing with gangs and drugs but also includes his close friends and the girl he has a crush on, or the school near his home, which is smaller and safer and probably stronger. His budding sexuality is much more aggressive than the boy in Blume's story; Shawn is an ass-man, and his close attention to butts and bodies makes this book read much older -- it's definitely a YA rather than kidlit. But the "what's happening to my body" theme is much the same -- from wet dreams to erection worries. I felt the ending was choppy; it ends the week before Shawn decides which school to attend, but I liked the characterization of Shawn and his friends and found the depiction of black male friendship powerful, from the basketball games through the organized insults to the recognition of the fear their mere existence causes in people who see four boys standing together and immediately think "gang." B+

Foolish Flirt

Laurell K. Hamilton's latest Anita book is Flirt, which the library delivered to me last week. It's a quick read, with an essay at the end describing how the book came about. I found that fascinating.

Hamilton was out for lunch with some friends, and they flirted a bit with the waiter, and then started talking about how they could use the incident in their writing. Hamilton pointed out that she twists everything towards the dark and sexy, so that's what would happen. Her friend is more humorous, and they even include the comic her friend wrote about the same incident, which does seem to appear (a bit modified) in the start of Flirt: Anita goes out to lunch a few of her gorgeous lovers, they flirt with the waiter, and even Anita tries a bit of flirting and is startled to discover that the waiter responds.

In the hilarious next chapter, Anita later goes back for a solo lunch at the same restaurant and again flirts with the waiter, who takes it more seriously since she is alone. She panics when he asks for her phone number, and decides the only way to tell him that she was just flirting is to ask for HIS number, but then never call. Whew! So far we are still on the theme of flirting.

Then some bad guys show up, threaten to assassinate the boyfriends, and kidnap Anita. Sex and violence ensue. Except that nothing else in the story has anything at all to do with flirting -- the bad guys could have shown up anytime, no one flirts with anyone, there is no return to the theme at all. So I don't agree that Hamilton's imagination turns everything to the dark side, because the innocent descriptions of Anita's insanely stupid flirting attempts have no connection whatsoever with the rest of the plot. Better luck next time!

PS. Even I know that if you need to communicate lack of seriousness to a flirt, try name-dropping your boyfriends before asking for phone numbers. Just saying.

Well, the library emergency is pretty much over. I returned a few books unread, two of which I had wanted to read, one of which is on hold again. Now I just have to keep from celebrating by checking out a dozen more... I still have to jump a bit because some books are new and not renewable, but I'm hoping to manage my hold stream better. Yeah.

I'm still reading 90% library books, but I'm looking at some of my home library as well. Which is good, because the piles of books in my bedroom are getting a bit hazardous to my health. I started clearing them up, which helped me locate the lost library book, just in time to notice that I've lost two picture books. Hmm.

So, I have many of my own books with bookmarks, but they all still doomed to the bottom shelf while I scurry about with due dates. I am actively reading:

• Eagle Strike, Anthony Horowitz. My son has already finished this series, so I'd better hurry up here.
• NurtureShock, Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman. One of the non-renewables. I'm enjoying this kind of freakonomics for parenting book.
• The Prisoner, Carlos J Cortes. I think Jo Walton recommended this on tor.com. Although I don't think she's read it -- I think it was from an award list. Pretty good so far, but also all action.
• An Echo In the Bone, Diana Gabaldon. A chunkster that I shouldn't have checked out yet. Good airport reading while I waited for my sons' plane to take off.
• Chameleon, Charles R. Smith, Jr. YA book about Black boys that I've just started.
• And Falling, Fly, Skyler White. Written by a friend of a friend, so I hope I like it.
• Kris Longknife: Undaunted, Mike Shepherd. The Longknife books are getting a bit creaky, but I still enjoy them. This is MY book.

I'm currently on spring break, so I hope I get a lot of reading in. I have no idea how long it's been since I last updated, so here are some books I've finished in living memory:

• Blaze of Memory, by Nalini Singh. I didn't buy the relationship, and I found the plotting silly.
• Alex and Me, Irene M. Pepperberg. A woman and her parrot --for SCIENCE. Well, not really science. Science is icky.
• Spellbent, Lucy A. Snyder. Fairly fun.
• Wintergirls, Laurie Halse Anderson. Famous book. Depressing. Silly paranormal twist.
• The Year of the Bomb, Ronald Kidd. Strong sense of place, with a protagonist I found unconvincingly sensitive.
• The Mark of the Demon, Diane Rowland. Second in the series, decent read.
• Irreligion, by John Paulos. Short defense of the rational approach to the supernatural.
• Enigma, C.F. Bentley. Second in a series, but I never read the first. Interesting space story.
• Banana Heart Summer, Merlinda Bobis. Philippian story of growing up. I find books with abusive mothers very hard to read, but the writing was delicious.
• Don't Hurt Laurie, Willo Davis Roberts. See above, but without the tasty writing.
• Into the Tangle of Friendship, Beth Kephart. Engrossing memoir about relationships and parenting.
• Dazzle of Day, Molly Gloss. Quakers in SPAAAAACE.
• Flirt, Laurell K. Hamilton. Silly story, pasted onto a silly anecdote. Not as much about flirting as Hamilton seems to think.

Well, that's a few weeks worth. I shall try to take better care of my blog. And my fish. And my cat.