Morris Finalists 2012: The Girl of Fire and Thorns

Yes, I really did read this in between posting about Between Shades of Gray last night and right now, 24 hours later.

The Girl of Fire and Thorns is Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle, soon to be Queen Lucero-Elisa de Vega né Riqueza of Joya d'Arena, and familiarly known as Elisa. We meet her on her wedding day, when she is to be married to King Alejandro de Vega of Joya d'Arena. It's a political match, naturally; she's given in exchange for an alliance and protection from the invading forces of Invierne.

And while the names and titles sound impressive, Elisa is actually the fat, awkward second daughter of the king of Orovalle. But she's also the chosen one of her generation: on her naming day, as a baby, a stream of light from the heavens bestowed on her a Godstone, a blue gem embedded in her navel. A child is chosen in this way every hundred years, destined to complete some great service to his or her people.

So Elisa is an unlikely heroine, about to undertake her heroine's journey in this book. And she is a heroine, though she doesn't always feel it: strong, intelligent, morally and spiritually aware, but not afraid to question. She is a leader of others; a true queen.

I enjoyed both the story and the setting. Author Rae Carson builds a world that is both strange and familiar. It's earthlike, but there is just a bit of magic, and it's made clear that this is not the first world that these people have lived on. There are references to the old world that died before God brought them here. It's also a pre-modern world -- people ride horses and camels and fight (mostly) with swords and arrows and spears.

The story moved along at a good pace and never went quite where I expected it to, especially in terms of romance.

Spirituality is an important part of Elisa's life. Neither she nor anyone else in the story ever questions the existence of God. After all, he put the stone in her belly, right in front of everyone! And she senses God through the stone when she prays or when she is involved in worship. However, Elisa does have questions about God's will and God's purpose for her. She wonders why everyone, both friend and enemy, has a different interpretation of God's will. And she wonders whether all of the killing she and her people have to do is worth it, even if it is done to protect others.

Elisa doesn't resolve these questions. She completes her mission to protect the people of Joya d'Arena and Orovalle, but people do die. And I had other unanswered questions after reading the book -- like where did the people of this world originally come from? Their religious practices do have things in common with Christianity. For instance, Elisa prays something called the Glorifica, which is similar to Mary's Magnificat (and it's entirely fitting for Elisa):

My soul glorifies God; let it rejoice in my Savior

For he has been mindful of his humble servant

Blessed am I among generations

For he lifted me from the dying world...

There's also a ceremony similar to a communion service in which people are pricked with the thorn of a rose instead of receiving communion bread (hence the thorns of the title, I suppose). Aside from these elements (and the priests and monasteries which are also in the story), there are no overt references to Christ or Christianity. So I'm interested in seeing whether anything else will develop in future books (this is apparently the first of at least 3 books).

I'd have to say this one is my favorite of the Morris finalists so far. I've got one more to read -- Under the Mesquite.

Morris Finalists 2012: Between Shades of Gray

Yes, I did read this over my holiday break! But then, well, life got in the way and I never reviewed it. And it had to go back to the library!

But I can tell you that it was well worth reading. Between Shades of Gray is the story (not based on any one true story) of 15-year-old Lina, whose family is taken by pre-KGB Soviet secret police from their home in Lithuania and sent to Siberia. Horrible things happen. The ending is not particularly happy.

This is good storytelling. Author Ruta Sepetys does a good job unfolding the events in a not-totally-predictable manner. I also liked a theme that ran through much of the book: kindness matters. Lina's mother is in the habit of being kind to people, even when they are not kind to her, and it does matter in the end, even though Lina thinks it silly.

However, I did notice that despite the really horrible things that happen in this book, emotionally, it didn't pull me in as deeply as other books have (for instance, The Birchbark House). I couldn't pinpoint exactly why; perhaps just because this story is told fairly starkly.

Between Shades of Gray takes place during World War II (it begins in 1939), but tells a different, little-known part of the war story. It would make a good companion to World War II studies in the classroom. And if you've read Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, this would make a great comparison read.

The Newbery is Coming

It is possible that I have completed my pre-Newbery reading for the season, with sixty books.

Sixty! That's almost as many as I had to read in order to read all the winners in the first place. I have a better-funded library system here, so I was able to read almost twice as many contenders as I was last year. (The two years before that I didn't keep track in the same way.)

Yet still, I have the nagging feeling that I'm missing something. Even though every year I've already read most of the books that get make the podium, and this year I've read so much more. I think there are always the books that don't get attention from any of the attention-makers that the committee has ferreted out. And, of course, sometimes the ways of the committee are mysterious.

My ideal Newbery results are when I have read everything on the podium except one book; it gives me a good feeling of satisfaction, but I still have something exciting to read. (Last year it was Moon Over Manifest, which I did have out of the library to read next; it hadn't escaped my notice. In 2010 it was Homer P. Figg, which I admit I still haven't read because the cover is so wildly unappealing to me. In 2009 I hadn't read The Graveyard Book, because we didn't think it was eligible, or The Surrender Tree, which would have been my own frontrunner if I'd read it.)

I don't feel invested in the results this year. There are so many books that are considered frontrunners that I don't think are good enough that none of them even particularly stand out as "ANYTHING BUT THAT". There are a lot of books that I think are pretty good. Most of all, I think the theme of this year for me is the number of books that I really enjoyed but don't think will win. They're books for readers, regardless of award podiums. Books like One Day and One Amazing Morning

on Orange Street, and Jefferson's Sons, and The Great Wall of Lucy Wu, and Akata Witch, and Icefall.

You can see my list of everything I read that has been mentioned as a possibility for the Newbery somewhere here. (You'll see only 57 books. I count 60, but I didn't include any of the three Mo Willems books that have been suggested as possibilities. I can't bring myself to believe that these books' Newbery chances are anything but manufactured by the blogosphere.)

And the Goodreads poll for Newbery winners always makes for interesting reading. I've read 50 of the 69 listed there as of today.

There are still a few books I would like to read--Wildwood, Blizzard of Glass, The Freedom Maze, Eddie's War--but looking at the hold list, I'm unlikely to get to read them before the ALA Youth Media Awards on January 23.

As soon as they're over, I'm going to read NOTHING but adult non-fiction for a solid month.

Morris Finalists 2012: Paper Covers Rock

Alex is a junior at a boys' boarding school in North Carolina. He and three friends decide to drink some vodka and jump off of a rock into the French Broad River. One of them dies. This book is about the aftermath. Will the school find out that the boys were drinking? Will Alex and his friend Glenn get kicked out? Or is there something more going on?

Alex is also a talented writer who has a crush on his fresh-from-Princeton female English teacher. The book is told from his point of view, as a journal/novel he's been writing.

I kept hoping the novel would turn into something better, but it pretty much stayed the same throughout: annoyingly angsty. I also kept wondering why the book was set in 1982. It didn't seem relevant to the story. Pop culture references were few and unnecessary. There were no 1980s fashion references. There were no news stories from that time involved. I didn't feel like I was being immersed in 1982 in any significant way. The only thing I could think of is that there are some issues around homosexuality in the story, and I suppose it was more of a taboo to be gay in 1982 than it is now.

There were two parts that really struck me. One is when then English teacher, Miss Dovecott, really gets the boys talking about Emily Dickinson's "There's been a Death, in the Opposite House." Alex brings God into it, suggesting that the minister in the poem represents God, who in the poem owns "all the mourners...And little boys. Dickinson is saying he owns all of us." And his friend Glenn promptly shuts down the discussion, saying that "God does not own any of us." And no one has anything to say after that. I could relate to the frustration of that moment. "One of these students...wants desperately to come back to her world -- her heavenly, wide-open world -- but it is roped off now, like an unsafe balcony."

The other is another God-moment. One of the teachers substitutes in chapel and preaches a sermon.

"There is God in all of us," he says. "God is programmed into our DNA, so He's there under our skin, biologically there, to connect us to a force larger than ourselves. It's what makes me feel not so alone in this world, as if inside of me is a seed, and if I nurture that seed, I can become my best far-reaching self." This is the first time that God has made sense to me, and I am writing it down so I won't forget it.

This is followed by:

The other guys do not see what Miss Dovecott is doing for us. They do not see how she is working by degrees to get us back to a time when our inds were freer, more connected to the world around us. More connected to what was programmed inside our DNA, just like Mr. Parkes said.

Things get even weirder after the sermon. I had a really hard time with the ending, and I'm going to hash it out here, so if you don't want to know, don't read any further.

--SPOILERS BELOW--

Okay, so all through the book, Glenn has been trying to convince Alex that Miss Dovecott suspects they were drinking and is trying to get them to reveal it. And Glenn has a plan to harass Miss Dovecott, possibly going as far as to get her to leave or be kicked out of the school.

Alex doesn't want to follow the plan, although much of the time he ends up doing it anyway -- because, as he says at one point, the real honor code at a boys' school is between friends -- you protect your friends and you never, ever turn them in.

I didn't think he'd really end up getting Miss Dovecott kicked out, though, but he does. And that bothered me.

Alex thinks that Glenn thinks Miss Dovecott is onto them about the drinking. But when Alex finally confesses to Miss Dovecott, she's not so worried about that. What she thinks she saw was Glenn possibly suffocating Thomas (who may or may not have been already dead) while Alex ran for help. She doesn't know why, but Alex knows that if Glenn had done it, it might have been to hide his own (Glenn's) homosexuality -- because Thomas had seen Glenn and another boy coming out of the same shower stall.

But NOBODY, besides Glenn, knows whether Glenn is really gay, or whether he tried to kill Thomas. Glenn says neither is true, and swears on the Bible that he was only checking to see whether Thomas was breathing.

And then, after Glenn swears on the Bible, Alex goes through with the plan, invites Miss Dovecott to go for a walk, and kisses her in front of a waiting Glenn. Glenn reports this to the school authorities, and voila, no more Miss Dovecott. And she doesn't report anything at all on her way out.

Alex's final actions don't make any sense to me, except in the context of the honor code between friends -- Alex decides in the end that his friendship with Glenn is more important than the teacher he respects and thinks he loves? Alex decides that this action really is in his own self-interest? I don't like either of those motivations.

Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe there's supposed to be some deeper meaning here. I'm purposely not reading any other reviews until I publish this, because I want to be honest about how I saw it. But for me, this ending doesn't work. It's painful, and leaves me not liking Alex. And I mostly didn't like Alex anyway -- he seems like a stereotypical angsty, intelligent teenager.

So while this was an interesting book in many ways, it's really not for me, and I'm not sure it's original enough to be award-worthy.

Morris Finalists 2012: Where Things Come Back

I've decided to read the finalists for the 2012 William A. Morris YA Debut Award! If you're new to the Morris, it "honors a debut book published by a first-time author writing for teens" and celebrates "impressive new voices in young adult literature." I've requested the five finalists from the library and am hoping they all come in while I'm on winter break.

My first read is Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley. This book was a bit of a mystery to me after reading the inside of the jacket. The jacket copy talks about lighthearted tales of adolescent love, the disappearance of a little brother, an extinct woodpecker, zombies and talking birds, without weaving any of those items into any kind of plot summary.

So I have to tell you that there are no real zombies. Real inside of the book, I mean. They're imaginary, both outside and inside the story. If you're looking for a good zombie story, this isn't it.

But it's definitely worth reading anyway. Here's what really happens: Cullen Witter's younger (and not so little) brother disappears around the same time that a college professor arrives in his small Arkansas town to search for signs of a rare woodpecker that is believed to be extinct. The whole town goes gaga over the possibility of the woodpecker being found there, and while they do care about the Witters and search for Gabriel (the brother), Cullen often feels like the stupid and probably non-existent woodpecker is getting too much attention.

Meanwhile, in alternate chapters, we hear about failed teenage missionary Benton Sage, and his college roommate Cabot Searcy. This is confusing, because there is NO explanation in the beginning for how this fits in with the Cullen Witter story. Rest assured, it does tie in eventually.

The story as a whole seems a bit haphazard at first, but things are revealed at a good pace, which frequently had me thinking "What the HECK?!" (in a good way). And at a couple of points, "OMG, I'm going to be sick." Again, in a good way.

The Cullen Witter portions of the book are told in first person, while the other portions are in third person. I enjoyed Cullen both as a character and as a voice; he seemed like an authentic teenager. Whaley has him simultaneously dealing with his brother's disappearance and dating and worrying about girls and sex, which sounds ridiculous, but it works.

Overall, this is a well-written and engaging novel. It's complex enough to be interesting, but easy enough to read in a day or so. I look forward to seeing more from John Corey Whaley.

Reading Broadly

I keep a list on Goodreads of "award possibilities" each year. It's mostly Newbery; this year it's pretty much all Newbery. (I did not love them all. They're just part of the discussion.) Here are the titles on my list with authors and/or protagonists who I know to be people of color, plus a few that are still on my shelf, waiting to be read.

Hidden, Helen Frost
Drawing From Memory, Allen Say
Can I See Your ID? True Stories of False Identities, Chris Barton (some stories)
Jefferson's Sons, Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
The Grand Plan to Fix Everything, Uma Krishnaswami
Lunch-Box Dream, Tony Abbott
Akata Witch, Nnedi Okorafor
Trapped, Marc Aronson
The Great Wall of Lucy Wu, Wendy Shang
Words in the Dust, Trent Reedy
Inside Out and Back Again, Thanhha Lai
The Queen of Water, Laura Resau / Maria Virginia Farinango
Heart and Soul, Kadir Nelson
Bird in a Box, Andrea Davis Pinkney
Never Forgotten, Patricia McKissack

Close to Famous, Joan Bauer


and a shoutout for Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys, about a cultural minority.

What have I left off?

Newbery Watch

I had an extraordinary reading experience at Elliott Bay Books today. I went there to read some of the easy readers that are being talked up on Heavy Medal. This is going to make me sound like a mooch--I REALLY DO spend money at bookstores usually--but I also went to finish Wonderstruck, which I'd gotten halfway through when I was waiting there for Laurie once. I'm on hold for it at the library, but I'm never, ever going to get it. I was loving Wonderstruck when I stopped. I almost bought it, but it is not an inexpensive book, and I seldom buy books I haven't read, so I am waiting. If I buy it, I promise to buy it from Elliott Bay. If I don't buy it, I promise to buy whatever I do buy from Elliott Bay, EVEN THOUGH I get triple points on my online bookstore-linked credit card if I buy books THERE. I have approximately 72 nieces and one nephew, so I buy a lotta books.

I read three Elephant and Piggie books. I was not impressed with them as Newbery Hopefuls. In a way, the discussion about them (and especially the reading experience) reminded me of how sometimes people tell me things like "you're such a good nurse, you should be a doctor!" I don't want to be a doctor. I'm happy being a nurse, which was pretty much always my dream. I try to be the best nurse I can be. The Elephant and Piggie books are great at what they are: marriages of text and illustration. Why try to shoehorn them into an award that's primarily for writing? I think it almost devalues the foundation of what makes these books good. Let them win the Geisel and let it go.

Secretly (oops) I don't think the Elephant and Piggie books are THAT great. I didn't think any of the three from this year were as good as We Are In a Book (also read for the first time tonight) or I Will Surprise My Friend (which I read with surprise and delight during my first year of ALA-awards-fandom), but none of them strike me as great literature. But that MAY have been influenced, tonight, by the fact that I reread Where the Wild Things Are first. In a recent discussion on Heavy Medal, I suggested delicately that it is not the text that makes WTWTA a perennially best-loved classic. I still feel that way (see "marriage is the foundation of our society" or whatever it was I was talking about above), and I think most adults remember the pictures and not the text. But the text is GREAT. I read it three times in a row. I was blown away. That is good stuff. The Elephant and Piggie books paled in comparison. Especially the ice cream one, which seemed overly didactic, and very like the filmstrips we used to watch in first grade that were supposed to teach us social skills but clearly had no effect on most of my generation. (I read a blog post or an article or something recently about those film strips and the theme song I've never forgotten, "The most important person in the whole wide world is you!" The author pointed out that this is not something first graders need to be taught.)

I also picked up No Passengers Beyond This Point by Gennifer Choldenko, which is one of my personal Newbery picks. I read it long ago so haven't been able to defend it well. I flipped through the first chapter and was immediately sucked in. The first chapter alone SCREAMS Newbery quality to me. It is everything that we want all these other novels we're discussing to be.

But I still have not gotten to the extraordinary reading experience.

I picked up Wonderstruck, and also happened to see Drawing From Memory by Allen Say, a book I have seen mentioned in passing as an unlikely Newbery contender because of too much dependence on illustrations. I hadn't bothered putting a hold on it because it wasn't getting any airtime. (Why is it accepted that we can toss away books for older kids because the illustrations are too important, but if we imply this about easy readers and picture books, we are being closed-minded? Hmm?)

After a few pages of Drawing From Memory, I gasped. After I finished half the book, I stopped and texted my brother-in-law and told him to put it on hold immediately. By the end, I'd held back tears twice.

I got up and returned Wonderstruck to the shelf, unread, and went home, so that nothing would interfere with thinking about Drawing From Memory, hopefully ever again.

This is a book that will be enjoyed equally by my seven-year-old niece and her father (they are both Japanophiles; the book takes place in Japan) and my mother. Think of that, three generations of moved, delighted readers at once.

Extraordinary.

Mock Newbery in Oregon

I just came across this in my local newspaper -- a group of kids at Boones Ferry Primary in Wilsonville, OR (near Portland), have chosen Out of My Mind as their Mock Newbery winner. There's also a nice picture in which they're all holding up books (presumably their individual favorites?).

I haven't read Out of My Mind. What say you?

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia

This is the fourth of Kathleen's reviews of the 2010 National Book Award finalists in Young People's Literature.

As you may have heard, One Crazy Summer is the story of three sisters who are sent to spend a month with their mother, in Oakland, California, in 1968. Their mother doesn't seem to particularly want them there, so she has them spend their days at a Black Panther day camp. In day camp, the children learn "Power to the people"-style slogans, make "Free Huey" posters, and post flyers for a big Black Panther rally, which is the climax of the book.

The story is told through the older sister, Delphine, who is the only one old enough to remember their mother at all (she was four or five when her mother left them). She's eleven in the book.

It was a quick read for me; I think it's well-paced for middle grade children. The period details are good, but not overwhelming -- the focus is really on the story, and the mother and children finally coming to terms with each other. Delphine's voice is well done; she's an eleven-year-old who's had to grow up too quickly and help take care of her sisters, but she still has the emotional maturity of an eleven-year-old.

I also thought the development of Cecile/Nzila was well done. She's totally off-putting at first. I wondered what in the world their father was thinking, sending them out there. And she doesn't change that much during the book. But there are little things along the way. She starts accommodating the children in small ways: giving them a radio, letting Fern into the kitchen to cook, and getting a stool for Fern to sit on in the kitchen. And more. It's subtle, and gradual, and she's not a completely different person at the end of the book. But she has made a little bit of room for the children in her heart, and (one hopes) in her life.

I've noticed elsewhere that people have nitpicked on the geographical details. I've lived in Oakland, and felt like the atmosphere described in the book fit. The geographical details are fairly vague (or renamed, or made up; I'm not sure), and this was well before I lived there, so I never placed the story in any particular location in my head.

Overall: excellent story and writing. I can see why it's in the award-watch category.

Lockdown by Walter Dean Myers

This is the third of Kathleen's reviews of the 2010 National Book Award finalists in Young People's Literature.

I had never read anything by Walter Dean Myers before, despite his award-winning status, so I really had no idea what to expect from Lockdown.

This book took me into another world, but not a fantasy, sci-fi, or dystopian post-apocalyptic world. It's the world of a juvenile detention center, and a world where violence, drug use and drug-dealing are common. And yes, it is also a world of mostly non-white people.

The blurb says "Lockdown explores an unlikely friendship between fourteen-year-old Progress inmate Reese and a man he meets through his work program at a local senior citizens’ home. " However, this is only part of the story. Myers shows us the violence inside the detention center, the cluelessness, cynicism, and cruelty of several adults there, and the cycle that keeps so many detainees coming back into the prison system.

Reese matures in this book, but at a reasonable pace. He starts figuring out what he needs to do to stay straight on the outside, but he doesn't have it all together by the end of the book. And he makes plenty of mistakes throughout.

Interestingly, the adults in the book grow, too. Mr. Hooft at the senior citizens' home at first fears Reese, because he is African American and an inmate, but learns to accept him and perhaps call him friend. Mr. Pugh, a guard, is a bully at first, but becomes friendlier later. And other adults who seem to think there's no hope for Reese begin to come around, too. I think this adds a lot to the book.

Lockdown is rich with detail and action. When I finished reading it, I actually went straight back to the beginning and read the first few chapters over again, because I felt like I hadn't gotten everything out of them the first time. If I didn't have several more books to read, I might have read it straight through again!

I think this book might be a keeper -- I'd like to read it again and get to know it better. Definitely award-worthy.

Read This Now: Lips Touch: Three Times

I was going to write this whole post about "When is a book too old for the Newbery?". I still might, because I think that's an interesting and often misunderstood question. But this book has been living in me so thoroughly over the last few days that it's asking for a post of its own. You know how occasionally you can love a book so much that you feel lonely for it after you're done reading? It's almost like being homesick.

There is a certain kind of girl the goblins crave. You could walk across a high school campus and point them out: not her, not her, her. The pert, lovely ones with butterfly tattoos in secret places, sitting on their boyfriends' laps? No, not them. The girls watching the lovely ones sitting on their boyfriends' laps? Yes.

Them.

The goblins want girls who dream so hard about being pretty their yearning leaves a palpable trail, a scent goblins can follow like sharks on a soft bloom of blood. The girls with hungry eyes who pray each night to wake up as someone else. Urgent, unkissed, wishful girls.

Are you aching with the wonderfulness of that? Shivers went down my spine the first time I read it. Shivers went down my spine just now, retyping it.

Lips Touch: Three Times is a made up of three novellas, all of which involve a fateful kiss of some kind. I think it's being classified as fantasy, and I was about to say "it's so not", but then I thought over the characters in the stories: goblins. Demons. Immortal shapeshifters. Okay, I accept that this is fantasy, but to me it didn't feel like such; the characters (the main characters are basically mortal) are so very real, and while there are some fantasy elements to the settings, they're pretty much in the real world, too. While I was reading the book everything seemed perfectly plausible, even natural.

"Goblin Market" is the story quoted above, and it's about a modern teenager. It's one of those "if Twilight was actually good" kinds of stories. "Spicy Little Curses Such as These" is set in colonial India, like if Frances Hodgson Burnett had written fantasy, or if LM Montgomery had written fantasy AND stories set in colonial India. "Hatchling" is set in modern London and medieval eastern Europe (and I haven't yet found the right "it's like" for it).

These are gorgeous stories, pulse-beatingly romantic at times, just a little terrifying at other times. Sleeping Beauty curses, children's lives bargained for in hell, ghosts walking clockwise around people for protection, one-eyed birds spying for the immortal queen--I think all the mythology in this book has its basis in real mythology and religion, which is probably what gives one the shock of recognition while reading it; but it's used in new, creative, delicious ways.

Each story has several pages of illustration at the beginning, done by the author's husband. They illustrate events that happen before the story starts; events sketched out within the story. The art is, I would say, sort of a Pre-Raphaelite-meets-manga style, but I don't really know what I'm talking about there. I think the illustrations are going to be very, very appealing to most teenagers, but I think they will make many adults think this isn't the book for them. I'm going to assure you now that it IS.

My interest in this book was piqued by discussion on the Heavy Medal blog--I hadn't considered reading it before, because I thought it would be too high-fantasy for me. It was discussed there in the context of whether it was suitable for the Newbery or too mature. Packaged differently, this would totally be a Newbery contender, and we aren't supposed to look at packaging. But. More on that to come later, probably.

A Season of Gifts and Racism: one more round

There's been tons and tons and tons of discussion about whether Richard Peck's newest book, A Season of Gifts, is racially insensitive. (I know many of you have heard a lot about this, but since I've discovered that a lot of my readers are not regularly blog people and -- gasp! -- don't know about every blog controversy that comes along, a summary: this book takes place in the 1950s; there's a new Methodist preacher in town who's having trouble getting people to come to his church; to drum up publicity, his neighbor Grandma Dowdel pretends to have found the skeleton of an "Indian princess" in her garden and gets the preacher to stage a Christian burial with accompanying media frenzy.)

Let's get one thing straight: yeah, the bones are fake. There's no doubt about it. Only a "but the bones are fake!" defense doesn't wash with me. I'm also not going to say it doesn't make a difference that the bones were fake. The difference is just that it would be WORSE if the bones were real.

Yes, Jonathan Hunt et al, I get that Richard Peck was making fun of white people and their obsession with all things "Native American". But digging up American Indian bones and re-burying them in white Christian cemeteries?

Dude. That's not something to joke about*. It's disrespectful to use something like that as a way to make this mild sort of point, especially in a book that is not ALL about the white obsession with Indian mysticism, because come on, it's not like the white people don't come out on top in this book. They're a little silly in their reaction to the "Kickapoo princess", but they're also down-home good people.

Okay, but what surprises me: in all of the discussions of this book I've read, I can't remember anyone mentioning the part where Richard Peck makes an effort to show that he knows this might come off as being disrespectful. Because the sermon the minister gives is all about how great the Indians who used to live on that land were. Yes, Debbie Reese, I'm using "used to" and "were" on purpose, because that's how they're presented here. "The stewards of this land that now we till" and "How lightly her people lived here/In the seasons' ebb and flow;/May we leave this land as lovely/When it's our own time to go."

He tries, Richard Peck does. He knows that American Indians are more than mascots and "princesses" and headdresses. But this sermon--it's nice. It could be worse. The insensitivity of the book would be worse if it were left out altogether. But what it does is make the people of the town, and the Caucasian reader, feel good. It's okay that the local Indians are gone; they lived a good life and now it's our turn. It was their "time to go".

When, you know, it actually wasn't.

Now, when I first heard about this issue on Roger Sutton's blog, I commented "oops, there goes A Season of Gifts's Newbery nod". But now that I've read it, I don't think this book is Newbery-quality, anyway. It's well-written stylistically, because Richard Peck is a writing master, but the plot and characters are most thin. I don't think it's distinguished or that it adds anything special either to this trilogy (the first two books are excellent; one is a Newbery Honor and the other a Newbery) or to children's literature.

*Always allowing that I could find a joke about this really, really funny if it were done well and made an important point.

Newbery Watch: When You Reach Me

Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me is possibly the most buzzed-about book so far this year other than Catching Fire. It's so buzzed-about, and so honestly good, that it seems sure-fire for the Newbery--but I wonder, do the books with the most buzz ever really win? I haven't been following this long enough to know. Have there been years when everybody was pretty sure something would win the Newbery, and then it did?

When You Reach Me is the story of Miranda, a sixth-grader, who has enough to do sorting out her own life (remember the sixth grade, with its mysteriously shifting friendships and alliances?) without adding a mystery. But life becomes even more complicated when she begins receiving desperate notes from the future.

(Many thanks to Monica Edinger's class for sending me an extra ARC. The book comes out July 14.)

I've read so many good reviews of When You Reach Me that it feels redundant to write one of my own; they've got it covered. But I'll try, anyway.

Many have compared this to my favorite Newbery, The Westing Game, but it reminded me much more of a dearly-loved, semi-obscure Lois Lowry novel: The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline. And not just because they both take place in New York City around the same time, and feature single mothers and lower-middle-class girls with rich friends, and both are mysteries. As in Caroline, When You Reach Me is populated with both children and adults who are real people. Characters make mistakes and you cringe, but know that you, yourself, would probably have done the same thing in that situation. It makes the book astonishingly real, so that it seems like it really happened, thirty years ago when the world was different.

I'm guessing there's probably been discussion about how the book is set in the late seventies, making it historical fiction. Bloggers and reviewers often say that books shouldn't be set in the past unless there's a real reason for it, and I wonder if some find this book to lack a reason. I've never been so picky about that, but I did feel subtly absorbed into a different era. It felt right to me. I will be interested to hear what others have to say, about this aspect and any other--ARE there any negative reviews of this book out there? Point me to them; they'll help me clarify why this book is so good.

Two Books I Loved This Month

I'd wanted to read Jennifer Bradbury's Shift for a long time; lots of people recommended it to me, sometimes without even having read it, because they know I'm into cycling. My longest trip so far has been three days/150 miles--nothing even close to the two months/multiple thousand miles covered by Chris and Win in Shift--but it was enough to give me a taste; enough to be able to assure you that Shift is brimming with authenticity. The never-know-what's-going-to-happen excitement, the shifts between wanting to ride together and feeling like it's too much trouble, and most of all, the instant awesome-cred you get when people find out that you're on a bike trip--Bradbury captures it all, with a fresh and easy tone that never makes the book feel like it's a thinly-veiled recap of her own (significant) bike adventures.

Shift is a bike trip story, a college story, a mystery. Why did Win abandon Chris just a short ride from the end of their journey, and where is he now? I had some theories, but I wasn't ever exactly sure. Bradbury mentions Chris McCandless early on (that's the Into the Wild guy), which pleased me, because of course someone like Win would know all about Chris McCandless and spend a lot of time thinking about him. Mentioning McCandless might be a little bit risky, because readers might have said "just a riff on Into the Wild", but instead I think the name-drop makes the world of Chris and Win seem more real, more like the one I live in. (Except that McCandless was not found frozen solid, as a character states--it was midsummer--but I accepted that because the character wasn't an expert, like Win was.)

In an interview, Bradbury said this was about friendship in general, not specific to boys. I was surprised, because one of the elements I loved best was that this seemed to me a really accurate portrayal of boy best friendships. I don't know how Bradbury did it, but this is one of my favorite male voices since Rats Saw God. And I would never believe a story that unfolded the way this one did if it had been about two girls.

Shadowed Summer by Saundra Mitchell is just a few months old, and is creating big excitement. I'm afraid to say much of anything for fear of spoilers. Eventually, I'm sure, this book IS going to be spoiled; read it now before you know too much. You don't even want to know what the general themes and plot elements are.

People are definitely agreeing that Shadowed Summer has a terrible cover. We complained because The Underneath had a cover that looked cozy on a book that was sad and hard-hitting; the cover of Shadowed Summer is worse, because it has a cover that looks like it belongs on a bad book on a good book.

It was already on my to-read list(here's the review that made me want to read it originally), but a review from my friend Claire made me hop on a bike in the rain and ride ten miles round-trip in the rain to pick up a copy immediately. (Seriously, no hyperbole.) Claire didn't even say anything--just rated it five stars and marked it "love-love-love". I had to know right away what it was about this ordinary-looking book that made her praise it so highly. A few hours later, I knew.

Shadowed Summer--in which three young teens try to solve an old mystery in their town--has a lovely Southern voice and a dreamy quality that's not overdone. The mystery isn't obvious; there are scary moments. Up until close to the end, I was thinking that it was a good mild suspense story. Then something surprising is revealed, but it's the kind of surprising that hits you because it makes total sense--and it also turns the book into something much bigger and more important than you'd ever have thought.

Read this book now, then pass it around to middle schoolers of your acquaintance. It's possible we'll be hearing more about this one come awards season.

If I Stay: A Review in Three Parts

An unusual review follows.

My sister, my brother-in-law and I all read the new book If I Stay by Gayle Forman (Dutton, April 2009), and I thought it would be interesting if we all reviewed it from our distinct points of view. Laurie, Matthew and I are all Oregon natives (like the characters in the book); we're all around the same age, just a few years younger than the parents, which means we were teenagers at the height of grunge. Laurie is a middle school librarian; Matthew is a writer with a rock band past; I'm a registered nurse.

I'm going to be honest: this isn't what you'd call a glowing review. That isn't what I want you to take away, though. The point is that we were all intrigued enough with If I Stay to want to delve deeply into it.

Wendy:
If I Stay is a puzzle to me. Despite all the things that annoyed me about this book... it's moving, humbling, and, odd as it might seem for such a melancholy book, a pleasure to read.

I thought the writing in If I Stay was extraordinarily passive. Almost everything is "told, rather than shown"--and yet bizarrely, even while I was reading it and being annoyed by it and knowing that isn't how good writing is supposed to be, I couldn't help understanding that the tone and method of storytelling are exactly right for the character and situations. Anything else would be untrue or manipulative.

I'm a nurse, and I found the hospital scenes had a lot of jarring inaccuracies--always allowing for different hospital policies in different places, there were things that didn't ring true. I've never heard a nurse referred to as "Nurse Ramirez" anywhere but on TV, and the entire overlong sequence about who gets to visit Mia struck me as overdramatic and unlikely, all the way through where the family friend exerts her influence because she was once a student nurse (?!) in the hospital. But other touches in the hospital had great resonance; I was struck by a paragraph in which Mia talks about the disregard doctors have for their patients' eyelids. I don't know whether that paragraph might seem odd or unnecessary to some readers, but this, to me, is exactly what someone in Mia's situation would be thinking about.

Sure, there's a really odd sex scene, and Mia didn't change much from age 10 to age 17, and there are other flaws one could pick out. It really doesn't matter that much. If I Stay is a fascinating exploration of relationships, life, and death.

Matthew:
I didn't always pay attention in college, but occasionally I'd hear something outrageous enough to lodge in my mind permanently. Like the day my neighbor across the hall, a cello player, remarked that his cello bow had cost $5000. Even a mediocre bow costs several hundred dollars, he explained, and they are very fragile. He did not allow his friends anywhere near his bow, let alone the cello itself.

My point here is that a cello bow is very unlikely to be used as a sex toy. That is count one against If I Stay, although I guess that's no way to talk anyone out of reading it.

Next: Mia was reluctant to join the family jam session on the basis that the cello would not sound good with the rock guitars. This doesn't make any sense. There are dozens if not hundreds of good rock songs with cello in them, and Mia's dad would know that and would have been playing them since the day his daughter said the word "cello". (Here is one of my favorites.) I mean, she might still be bashful about playing with the family, but not for that reason. "And even though you wouldn't think it, the cello didn't sound half bad with all those guitars. In fact, it sounded pretty amazing." Well, duh. No instrument sounds more like the human voice than the cello. It goes with everything.

Next: I could see the end of this book coming like, you know, an inevitable car crash. I knew it would be sappy and uplifting and I would feel jerked around. I was right, and I was mad, but I was only mad because the book up to that point (aside from the cello bow part) was so unsentimental, which is hard to be when you're a book about a family tragedy. The writing is spare and quiet and forceful. The dad is as cool as I'd like to be someday. I wanted the good writing and the cool dad to support a story that would surprise me and make me think and make me not want to hit my head against something when it was over.

It didn't work out that way. But I'm definitely intrigued enough to check out Gayle Forman's next book and see if she can manage it there.

Laurie:
I expected it to be Adam: the effortlessly cool, very smart, and very perceptive guy in a rock band--just the kind of boyfriend I wished for when I was in high school. Or Dad, who transformed from rock musician to responsible-but-still-hip father and English teacher--and who is, of course, really the one whose age group I'm closest to. But when I thought hard about If I Stay, I realized that the character I most loved was Gramps. I love my grandfathers dearly, just as Mia does Gramps. My own grandfathers, and my father, are like Gramps. They don't say much, but every now and then, what they say is the most important thing in the world. The moment when Gramps tells Mia, "It's okay. If you want to go." Even though he wants her to stay so much that his heart is breaking. That's what this book is all about.

Almost every page of If I Stay came with a flash of recognition for me, usually for a person, because each character is a real person who reminded me of someone I know; and sometimes for a place, a Thai restaurant in Portland, or a rock band playing at the X-Ray Cafe. The lives lived in this book are familiar, making Mia's loss feel very personal to me. I don't know if this will resonate in the same way with teenage readers. It's a reflective and quiet book. The couple of students who have read If I Stay responded, quietly, that it was OK. (Granted, that's the most common response I hear, except for a select few titles.) While this is a book about love and death and rock and roll, it's mainly a book about a happy family. For some readers that will be enough.