Another Take on Princesses

Princess Academy by Shannon Hale. Bloomsbury, 2005.

A lovely, character-driven plot with lots of twist and surprises. I haven’t read a Newbery fantasy like this since The Blue Sword/Hero and the Crown. There’s a strong (contemporary) emphasis on justice and diplomacy, but I found it odd that the prince did not marry a mountain girl. I suppose that’d be a whole different story, but for all the societal attitudes against mountain people, the solution of sneaking a non-mountain girl into the Princess Academy seemed to only prove that yes, the snooty city folk are right, a mountain girl never could be queen.

• The writing is delicious and poetic. Some distance between the narrator (she’s not very poetic), but less than in Midwife’s Apprentice. It works.
• I would have liked more setting. It’s cloudy and indistinct to me. I see Linder, but the houses and the peoples’ daily lives ... they’re so organized yet so naive. Uneducated yet peaceful, and wise enough to be open to new ideas. It’s just too Utopian to be believed.
• The subplot of the protagonist feeling useless is stated but never shown in a truly convincing way.

Like Sitting on a Cloud and Flying

Little Bear by Else Holmelund Minarik. 1957.

Four easy-to-read chapters with engaging pen and ink illustrations (Sendak). Each story uses carefully controlled and repeated vocabulary; many have surprise twists at the end. And as with most books, this one engages the child’s world with tenderness and respect. The importance of a child’s birthday, the tenderness of the mother-child relationship. Adventures are kept small and non-threatening (a very little tree on a little hill), within reach without fear. And the final chapter reviews all the stories to aid in retention and reader participation.

Aside: I didn’t care for Mother telling Little Bear that his wishes were unattainable, but who am I? Just a mom of three getting a graduate degree, which is only a little like sitting on a cloud and flying.

A Happy Little Book about Death

Bodies From the Ash: Life and Death in Ancient Pompeii by James M. Deem. Houghton Mifflin, 2005.

Details must make sense and matter to the story. Does it matter that eighty-one loaves of bread were baking? I’m not sure. Regardless, more notes:

• I’ve noticed that the writing style is not very different between books for YA and MG. There’s no obvious attempt to limit vocabulary between this and, say, the book on Marian Anderson, The Voice that Challenged a Nation. 
• nteresting how despite being a vision into ancient times there are abundant details. Especially science integration on how the flows worked and how the heat seared flesh from bone, boiled blood, etc. Vivid and creepy—perfect for nine-year-old St. Nick who swiped this book and now has it squirreled away in his room.

I'm Leaving On a Jet Plane

Heading for Hamline University - my flight takes off at 10am - for their MFA in writing for children and young adults. Ten days of lectures and workshops and notes and campus dining hall food. It'll be like walking back in time ten years to those stressful blissful college days, but with WiFi.

More later. Must eat breakfast.

Timeless Girl Survival Story

Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George. 1972.

One of the first books I read in my 6th grade accelerated reading program, I reread it in college and read it again for this program. My first time through I fell in love with the wolves and the adventure-story elements of the book. My second time through I realized Julie was married! Oh my word! And ran away because her husband tried to rape her! My third time through, I noted much more:

• Plotting: George starts us off after much of the story’s action has taken place. Julie has run away, is lost, is starving, desperately needs these wolves. Although there are brief hints of the trouble Julie fled, there are no sustained flashbacks until deep into the book (in Part II). 
• Setting: The amount of research that went into this book is amazing. Wolf-speak, Julie’s dialect, culturally specific attitudes and views. George is not native Eskimo, but if you told me she was, I wouldn’t doubt it for an instant. 
• A conflict between showing and telling. Often Julie’s fears are told outright. Fear runs up her spine, she questions things internally. But the larger themes of the book are shown. She notices the gussak decorations of her father’s woman; he says he owns a plane. The author never connects her father’s plane with Amaroq’s death because it’s unnecessary. Or is it? The ending was a confusing muddle to me the first time I read this book. She found her father? But left him? Huh? Why? An adult reader will connect the dots in the beautifully laid gestalt, but a young reader might not. 
• The final line bugs me as much as The Giver’s does: so does Miyax point her boots toward Kapugen her father or Kapugen her wolf? And does “point her boots” mean that’s where she’s headed? The age of the Eskimo is over, she’s giving up, she’s returning to her wolf-murdering, sold-out father? This is horrifying to me, as horrifying as the thought that the boy in The Giver stumbles upon “an echo” of civilization and freezes to death in the wilderness. What did the author intend? How can an author end a book well, leave room for interpretation, yet satisfy readers? Or is this particular reader especially thick? Could be.

Absolutely Nothing To Say

I'm typing this on a little wee mini computer (netbook, technically). Mostly to see if the clickly computer keys are going to start sending shockwaves of pain up through my fingertips. So what should I type while I try to figure out if my fingers will explode? Hmmm. I don't know.

unrelated, but pretty

We got rid of our dog. He was insane. No, seriously, he was. See, way back last Christmas we went off to church and came home to poor Fisher barking away in the office. I went in to see that he'd knocked over a bookshelf and torn up the carpet. Yes, a little doggie remodeling. Well, since then we had a flood and got the carpet replaced, so that was nice enough. But imagine my horror when, after leaving the dog for half hour after supper (forgetting to let him out - my bad) I came home to find Lake Pisser on the boy's newly-carpeted bedroom floor? We'd already had the carpet cleaners out to clean up an, ahem, accident on that floor, and now we had them out again. $100. JOY! Another brief without-dog outing and we returned to find Fish's favorite (new) stuffed toy chewed to bits; and another Maggie's met the same sad fate. And then we started tying crazy dog when we left home. Until he ate through the leash.

portrait of our x-dog's soul - sort of Dorian Gray

Now all of this could be considered funny in a Marley and Me sort of way. But Fisher was also growing more bizarre. Skittery, fearful. Not so unusual - he's a skittery, fearful dog (of everything from toy cars to wicker baskets). He no longer greeted Dr. D with happy doggie wag, rather he'd slink up to him, bowing and fawning. This did not go over well with anyone, particularly Dr. D, who doesn't appreciate fawning and bowing. At all. Especially in a dog big enough to rip his arms off.

So, Fisher is gone. Interestingly, when we asked the kids what they'd feel if we got rid of Fisher, they all said, "Yeah! Get rid of Fisher!" Hmmm. That should be telling me something, shouldn't it.

Hmm. And my thumb hurts a little from clicking the space bar, but is this going to be a problem? Is it any harder of a punch than my regular computer? It's not at all like the desktop with the keyboard of death that felt like my fingertips were pounding burning spikes. Or maybe the problem is not so much with the keyboard as it is with my fingers. That sounds ... painful, and expensive to fix.

But will I be able to type reliably on this little bugger? Will this be able to replace my glorious ThinkPad for writing tasks? Oy. I am too nervous about my upcoming trip to decide. And what's with the lack of spellcheck anyway?