Award Winner: Parrot in the Oven

Well, I've officially fallen behind in my summer goal; I decided to get to sleep at a reasonable time and then I spent a day driving and didn't finish my assigned book.

I did read some library books that were falling due, but that doesn't count. Phooey. I still hope to catch up this week, and then we'll keep trying.  Today I finished Parrot in the Oven by Victor Martinez, a novel in short stories about a boy growing up in a Mexican American family, struggling with academic ambitions that are left unsupported by his school and peers, an alcoholic father and a generally abusive family, a peer group that values fighting and theft, and the general prejudice of whites against anyone brown or black.

BarockSchloss CC License

Martinez's stories have a delicate flavor to them, wrapping the feelings and senses of the moment carefully up and then leaving quietly so the reader is left alone with the emotions. It was a powerful book that I didn't manage to read quickly enough on the drive home.

Sea Magic: The Changeling Sea

Patricia McKillip's books always deliver a combination of magic and emotional truth. This means that I'm not always in the mood to pick them up, since emotions are heavy things, and occasionally she doesn't get the balance just right. The cover of The Changeling Sea also deterred me; it looked like a book about a child and her mentor, and I just never had the urge to start that story. So although I clearly bought this book back in California (it's a discard from the San Mateo County Library, one of a half-dozen libraries I frequented when I lived near San Francisco), I hadn't read it until today.

BarockSchloss CC License

I also took a bit of a chance, leaving this book until the end of the day so that I read it straight through, instead of putting it down when things got tough, my usual cowardly approach. But it paid off; the story wove magic and love and loss together in a lovely enchantment, much as the sea turned Peri's angry hexes into webs of moonlight and beauty. Despite the cover, the protagonist was a young woman, not a child, who starts off struggling with multiple losses, including a mother who retreats from the sadness of the world. As Peri emerges from her grief we also enter into a world of magic and loss and longing, and she encounters love and friendship and greed and danger.

And, just as in McKinley's The Hero and the Crown, she doesn't insist on limiting herself to a single lover; life has tides and changes, and your heart can weather them. It's a wonderful read, although not the one promised by the cover on my copy. (The cover shown isn't the one I got; it's actually a lot more representative.)

I'll leave this around for the boys, although it doesn't really hit any of their obvious buttons.

Interesting History: Dragonwings

Dragonwings is another book that I might have read as a kid, but I'm glad to have it on my shelves. It's also possible that I just read about it, since the plot seemed familiar but I didn't recognize the tone. Laurence Yep's book imagines what it might have been like to be a Chinese immigrant building an airplane in the early 1900's in San Francisco.

The story is told through the memories of Moon Shadow, a young boy sent out to live with his father, the aviator. Although Yep admits in the author note at the back that he made up most of the story, the core element is probably true, and mainly he succeeds in his attempt to make the lives of the Chinese community into a vibrant story. I really liked the voice of the narrator and found all the characters sturdy and believable, from Uncle to Mrs. Whitlaw.

BarockSchloss CC License

It also gave a vivid depiction of the San Francisco earthquake and its aftermath, which I liked and which will help me keep the details straight. I do like getting my history from historical fiction, especially when I trust the author to keep the details straight while placing his believable characters into realistic situations.

I'll leave this around for the boys, although it doesn't really hit any of their obvious buttons.

Fun: I Was a Rat!

Philip Pullman's books for YA readers leave me a bit cold; I never quite trust Pullman to give me a happy ending, which I'm a bit addicted to. I do trust him to give me a true ending, which is even more important, but I'm not always in the mood for the harsher kinds of true.

So I've always kind of avoided his younger books as well, and this summer I'm finding out that I've been depriving myself of some really fun reads. I Was a Rat! has been hanging around my house for years and years, and I've always avoided it because I thought it was a sociological look at poor orphans or something, when really it's a glance at what happens after Cinderella's ball, if one of the transformed rats misses the return trip and stays stuck as a boy.

BarockSchloss CC License

And yes, Pullman lets all sorts of rotten things happen to the boy, but he also provides him with a family, so we know that somehow everything will turn out all right. I had a lot of fun with the book, and now I hope I've buried some more of his works on my TBR shelf to be discovered this summer. And I've handed the book over to my sons with a recommendation; maybe we'll make it a book club book.

Short Take: Freddy and the Baseball Team

Ugh -- my mouse is misbehaving, and just now it selected most of the post and deleted it. I had just written about why Walter R. Brooks' Freddy and the Baseball Team From Mars didn't work for me.
Now I'll just say that it didn't and mostly leave it at that, with the last three sentences that justify my call:

But somehow it just didn't click for me. I found the mystery too obvious and the jokes too telegraphed, and I guess I was just generally too cynical to appreciate it. Thirty years ago would have been a better time to pick this up.

BarockSchloss CC License

Kids and Parents: Moonlight Man

Somehow I ended up today with another Paula Fox book. It's funny how I went years without reading any of her books, and this week I reread one and tried out a new one, The Moonlight Man. I've owned if for years and years (decades?) but the topic of a teenage girl learning to deal with her divorced and possibly alcoholic father didn't encourage me to pick it up, maybe because my parents divorced and then so did I, and I shy away from obvious bibliotherapy books.

BarockSchloss CC License

It's just as well I waited; I don't think I would have enjoyed it at an age it would have aimed at me. Fox writes a slow investigation of Catherine's growing maturity and understanding of her father; this is the summer that she actual starts to understand him, but she is also learning about herself. Some things do happen, as her father alternately charms her with his refreshing and challenging outlook on life and repels her with his dips into binge drinking, but mostly the book is spent inside Catherine's head, watching as she makes connections and learns about people and their complex emotions, including her own.

I'll leave it out, but I can't honestly say I think my thirteen year old would like this. He does surprise me sometimes, though.

Super Short: Meet Samantha

I knew I was going to spend most of today driving around in my car, which meant precious little time for reading, so I carefully saved a skinny little book from my shelves for this day. The American Girl series of books sound like an awful idea -- there is an expensive doll designed, complete with expensive accessories, clothes, and whatnot, and each doll gets a series of books about that girl's life.

However, the books are actually quite decent early readers. Meet Samantha by Susan S. Adler follows the story of a rich orphan living with her grandmother and a bunch of servants. She's friends with the cook, the seamstress, and the naughty boy next door, and struggles to live up to her grandmother's standards of behavior and proficiency in womanly arts like sewing and music. See how we've just learned what family life was like among the elite in the early 1900's? Samantha then befriends the young girl working next door, so we find out what life was like for the less wealthy, and then she sneaks out to visit her seamstress at home, so we also find out how things were different for African Americans.

BarockSchloss CC License

Although the writing clearly follows a plan, the words themselves are friendly and flow easily, without condescension or an overly didactic feel. As an adult, I do have a constant sense of "I see what you've done here" but I bet kids would enjoy it as a read aloud or an easy chapter book.