Bookish Thoughts

On January 4th, I realized that there were over two months of winter left. With the holidays behind me and heaps of cold, dreary weather to look forward to, I found myself breathing a sigh of relief. "Always winter, never Christmas" doesn't sound so bad, I thought to myself. And I immediately became curious if it were possible to ascribe a grief narrative to the White Witch. She is, after all, the last surviving person of her entire world. Before I knew it, I had re-read the entirety of The Magician's Nephew . Which, no, isn't the first book in the series according to most. But it has Jadis' backstory, which is what I was interested in. It turns out that there isn't a lot of nuance to Jadis, which isn't the most surprising thing in the world. Narnia is both a children's book and a religious allegory. Sympathetic, nuanced villains don't really fit. Jadis destroyed her world because she was evil. She killed her own sister with the magical equival...

In the third volume of Lumberjanes , the cast gets split up into two different stories. Mal and Molly head out on a picnic while April, Jo, and Ripley stay at camp and try to collect some easy badges. Unfortunately, April's competitive streak makes it difficult for her and her friends to complete any badges. Meanwhile Mal and Molly's picnic is interrupted by another weird adventure, this one involving dinosaurs, inter-dimensional portals, and a stolen pair of glasses. These comics are so much fun, and I'm really excited for my kids to be old enough to start reading them. They deal with all the problems of growing up against a backdrop of scary, supernatural adventures. It's like Buffy for a younger audience. I've fallen way behind on this series, but I'll have to start collecting them again. They make for excellent summer afternoon reads.

I don't know how old I was the first time I read Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry . I'm pretty sure it was a school assignment, but I know I re-read it again and again while I was growing up. I eventually lost my copy somewhere. So when I saw it at the used book sale, I had to buy it, if only to have it on hand for my own kids. But then I had to re-read it, too. This is a powerful book, one that Jaya Sexana calls the perfect counterpoint to To Kill a Mockingbird . It deals with the same issues of race and justice through the eyes of a young girl. But the protagonist of this story, Cassie, is black, and has to face aggressions both macro and micro that Scout only ever heard about (if she was aware of them at all). The book follows Cassie through a year at school as she begins to understand the unjust world that she's growing up in. Cassie's family is better off than most - they own their own land which gives them more security than the sharecroppers. But it also means th...

I suppose you can love an author without necessarily loving all of their books. Even though Radiance  changed my world and Palimpsest  still has me thinking hard. Even though the Fairyland  series will always have a special place in my heart. This book just didn't do it for me. I might have liked it better if I were more familiar with the Brontes and their work. Or maybe my expectations were just too high, or too different from what I got. It's not that this is a bad book. It's just not really the book I was expecting. It follows the four Bronte siblings on an adventure to a magical land. One that they've created while playing with their toys. And it occupies a strange place of being an adventure for children and being chock full of the kind of Bronte trivia that requires some serious study. A series of trips to Wikipedia really only left me with the feeling that I was missing a lot. So. Not my favorite. But there are still plenty of other books by Valente that ca...

The Halloween Tree  was one of my favorite movies as a kid. The VHS tape was bright orange, and we rented it so often that my parents eventually bought it from the rental store. My mom probably picked it up because Leonard Nimoy is the main voice actor. And even though Ray Bradbury himself narrates it, it took me decades to realize that the movie was based on a book. The book follows a group of friends who get side-tracked from trick-or-treating when their friend falls ill. They end up chasing him through time, learning about the origins of Halloween as they hope to catch up with him and save his life. This book is definitely a product of it's time. They made some significant changes to the movie, which were all for the better. But it's still a fun romp through history, as the kids learn about this celebration of death which is really a celebration of life. A way to make our fears smaller so we can deal with them. The book was short enough that I might end up reading it a...

Re-reading the Tiffany Aching books has been a joy. Pratchett is at the height of his game here, and these books are basically perfect. I can't wait to share these books with my kid, and in the meantime I've been pushing them on all the neighborhood kids. Though they're mostly still too young for them, too. (Actually, my proudest moment was when a conservative mom was asking me for book recs for her daughter, and I convinced her to buy a series by beloved anarchist Ursula K LeGuin). Anyway, this is the second of Tiffany Aching's adventures. She's leaving home to spend some time as an apprentice to a witch. She meets some other witches her own age, learns that being a witch is mostly doing things that other people don't want to do, and has to deal with a hiver to boot. The hiver is a collection of sense and memories that takes over bodies, collecting new memories and basically doing whatever it wants. It's attracted to power, so it's attracted to Tiff...

I've been hearing good things about Jacqueline Woodson's memoir in verse since before it came out. It won so many awards that you practically can't see the original cover anymore. I'm so glad I finally got around to reading it. While this book is technically marketed towards children (it's recommended for ages 10 and up), it works incredibly well no matter what age you are. Woodson focuses on her time as a child. She was born in Ohio, but she left when she was barely a year old. She and her siblings lived with their grandparents in South Carolina for several years before her mother moved them all to Brooklyn. But this isn't just about Woodson either. There's an incredible sense of family and history in these pages, and it's clear that this has had a profound effect on Woodson and her sense of place in the world. A lot of the book takes place before she's even born or could possibly have memories, which is a bit unusual for a memoir. She talks abo...

This was easily my least favorite of the series. I wonder how much of that is because this one was written first, when the author didn't have quite as clear an idea about the world. But a good chunk of it was the first person, which really bothered me in the beginning. I eventually got used to it, but it felt like such a weird departure, and I don't know that it helped with the story. It was also weird to know so much more than the main character, who is deliberately and infuriatingly being kept in the dark. There are magical mumbo-jumbo reasons for this. But it was weird to watch him stumble through this adventure knowing everything that would happen and why. But the characters remained endearing (except for Suz who quickly got on my nerves). The fire witch was fantastic, and I loved how much she and Daystar grew to rely on and trust each other. Overall, this series was short and sweet. The first and third books will remain my favorite (not coincidentally, Cimorene and M...

I'd been hoping that this book, the third in the series, would be narrated by Morwen, and I was so excited when that turned out to be the case. That alone might be enough to solidify this one as my favorite of The Enchanted Forest Chronicles . Morwen is as practical as Cimorene, but with more hands on experience. And tons of cats. These books are the tiniest bit forumlaic in that each plot basically hinges on the wizards finding a new way to steal magic and the heroes finding new ways to thwart them. But both the books and the series are so short that I wasn't really bothered by that. It was fun to see more of the Enchanted Forest, to meet some new characters and learn about new magic. I really liked that one of the main villains in this book was obsessed with tradition. It's not the the main characters are against all tradition. But they're practical, forward thinking people. Tradition for the sake of it isn't so great. And I was even more pleased when the book...

In the second book of The Enchanted Forest Chronicles , Kazul, king of the dragons, has been kidnapped by the evil wizards who have a new scheme to steal magic. It's up to Cimorene, Morwen, and a few new friends to rescue her and thwart the wizards' latest plan. For some reason I was expecting this whole series to about Cimorene, but this one's told from the point of view of Mendenbar, who she eventually marries. In the beginning I was a little sad about this perspective switch. But it doesn't take long for Mendenbar to seek out Morwen who sends him to Cimorene. This is a fairly short children's book, after all. There isn't that much time to waste. Mandenbar and Cimorene become fast friends. They're both practical and curious, and I was glad that the book made a note of all the long, wandering conversations they had on their quest. Especially because it was obvious pretty early on that these two were going to fall in love and get married. And if that fal...

Dealing with Dragons  is the first book in The Enchanted Forest Chronicles , though not the first book written. Patricia Wrede wrote the last book first, then came back to write a prequel, and eventually it turned into a series of four books. I never encountered it as a child, though now I wish I had. Cimorene is a princess who'd rather not be. She's the seventh daughter, and she'd much rather do practical things like cooking and fencing than learn about etiquette and dancing. When her parents arrange her engagement to an arrogant and boring prince, she runs away from home. Cimorene lives in a world that is very aware of fairy tale tropes. People expect stories and know how to spot the sign posts. It's not unheard of for a dragon to kidnap a princess and a prince or knight to then rescue her, winning her hand in marriage along the way. Indeed, Cimorene meets three other princesses living in the dragon caves with her. But she's the first to volunteer for this lif...

The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home  is a nearly perfect ending to a nearly perfect book. I have a small quibble about September's age, which seems terribly inconsistent. But then again time passes differently in Fairyland and even moreso when you get aged up and back down. And the story resonated a bit better with her being older. But it never quite felt fully explained. The rest of the book is so good, though, that I can't be too mad. It does a great job of bringing back all the characters and places we've fallen in love with over the series. September ends the book firmly in adulthood, having taken her destiny into her own hands. She's not the queen, but where she ends up is even better. And of course this book has all the lovely narration of the previous books. It's paced a bit better than them, too. And it was nice to actually spend time with September's friends in the beginning before the adventure kicked off. And then during the adventure, t...

The fourth book in Valente's Fairyland series is a bit of a departure from the series so far. It follows a whole new cast of characters, and in some ways it acts as a mirror to the first book. This one is about Hawthorn, a troll who's plucked from his crib by a wind and taken to our world as a changeling. He has a difficult childhood. It's hard for him to figure out the rules of our world, and it's hard for his parents to relate to the new, changed him. But eventually he meets another changeling and finds his way back to Fairyland, where we start to understand the scope of the problems that September is at the root of. The beginning of the book is a lot of fun, filled with callbacks to the beginning of the first book. Hawthorn's journey to our world isn't so different than September's first journey to Fairyland. And the meddlesome winds all seem to be reading from the same script. Then again, the beginning of the book is heartbreaking. We're not follow...

I have finally collected all five books in this series, which means I can read it straight through. I've been wanting to revisit the early ones for a while, and it's nice to finally have all my ducks in a roll. Back when Gavin was first born, I attempted to read the first book to him, but I could never get through more than a paragraph or two at a time, which got frustrating. So I've adapted and am now using the series as my bedtime book. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making  was everything I remembered and more. It's a lovely story about beginning to grow up and all the choices you make as you start to navigate that scary path of adolescence. It's about making new friends and figuring out who you are and starting to see and accept the darkness of the world. I hadn't remembered how dark this book gets at the end, and it was a nice counterbalance to all the sweetness that came before it. It grounds the book and makes it more than...

This collection of Japanese Fairy Tales that Kevin got me for Christmas was world better than the collection of Hawaiian myths. The stories had actual plots and mostly sensible characters. As sensible as any fairy tale characters are anyway. It helped immensely that this collection was written by a Japanese woman who was deeply familiar with both the stories and the English language. The collection wasn't perfect. I enjoyed reading it, but I still struggled a lot. That said, I'm more willing to attribute those struggles to my lack of familiarity with the culture rather than the authors. Every now and then a turn of phrase or a plot point would catch me completely off guard. It made reading a bit difficult, but the good kind of difficult. My favorite stories were the ones that involved the Dragon King of the Sea. He pops up every now and then to aid good people, punish evil people, or just lead them astray. But he's so completely alien that he was a lot of fun to read ab...

On re-read, I enjoyed The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents  much more than when I initially read it. I'm not sure why exactly this is. Whether I'm better acquainted with children's literature in general now or with Pratchett's children's literature in particular and have a better understanding of what it tries to and can accomplish. Or whether it's because I read it along with Mark Oshiro, who loved it and pointed out all the wonderful nuance that I wasn't as attuned to my first time through. Regardless, I really enjoyed this book this time around. So much so that I'm seriously considering using it to introduce Gavin to the Discworld in a few years. (Let's be real, it was either going to be this or Tiffany Aching, and this one is geared towards slightly younger children than that sub-series). But it pulls of the neat trick of dealing with really big questions and refusing to provide easy answers. And in a kid's book, too. The rats in ...

This book felt like something of a bait and switch. It purports to be about Anne's children. In fact, it's mostly about the neighboring children, who recently moved in with their widowed father, the new minister in Ingleside. It makes sense. Anne and Gilbert have been established as basically perfect, so there would be very little conflict in a book about their children, who are also likely to be perfect. Or at least perfectly supported and encouraged. The book would be unbearably saccharine and preachy, much like Anne of Windy Poplars  was. Still, it would have been nice to get some indication of that in the cover art or book blurb or something. Rainbow Valley  was fun. A bit of a return to the first book in the series, with the younger characters. At this point, it's all feeling a bit formulaic. I'm picking up on the smallest hints, and I know exactly what's going to happen all the way through. There's one book left. A lot of people have said that it's...

The Redwall  series was one of my favorites when I was younger. I basically inhaled these books in middle school, trading them back and forth with my best friend and reading them sprawled in chairs at my house or hers. We were completely captivated by this world and the rodents and small mammals, both noble and treacherous, who inhabited it. There was always another fight between the forces of good and evil, another quest to go on, another new friend to make. I'm pleased to say that this book basically holds up to my memory of it. It's a bit simplistic, things are a bit easier for Matthias than I was expecting, but that's alright. This is a book for children. It's a classic hero's journey. The good guys are all stalwart and true. The bad guys are easily identified. Everyone lives happily ever after. You have to believe in the lie when you're a kid. And it was fun to revisit it as an adult. My favorite part of this book was the extended quest with riddles tha...

Anne's House of Dreams  was a million times better than Anne of Windy Poplars . I think the latter suffered from a whole lot of nostalgia and a poor balancing of ideas. But this book gets back to what I loved about Anne in the first place. She and Gilbert get married and move into their first home together. They meet their new neighbors and begin to make a life for themselves. This book felt like an actual novel rather than a series of vignettes. It let Anne be human again. A wonderful, irrepressible human who charms everyone she meets and finds ways to solve every problem she comes up against. But it let her be wrong. It let her be disliked (temporarily). It let her experience tragedy and come through the other side. More importantly, this book introduced Miss Cornelia Bryant, who is officially one of my favorite literary characters ever. A spinster who never has a nice word to say about a man or a mean word to say about a woman. She spends all of her free time sewing clothes ...

This was a fun collection of short stories for kids, from the very beginning of Terry Pratchett's career. He was still a teen-aged journalist when he wrote these stories for the paper he was working for. The collection was something of a mixed bag. I really liked some of the stories. Others never quite came together for me. Part of that is because I can't help but judge Pratchett's work against his later stuff. Comparing where he was in the beginning of his career to the heights to which he would eventually soar isn't fair, but I can't quite help it. On it's own, this is a wonderful collection of stories that I'll be thrilled to read to my kid in a few years. You can see the seeds of ideas and themes that Pratchett would go on to wrestle with later in life. The stories are cute and funny and often manage to subvert expectations. It'd be nice if there were more girls, but that's something Pratchett eventually got a lot better about.