With the BFG Movie Coming and All

In honor of a very special day, I thought I'd revive this old post about a book I found, um, intriguing, with some interesting asides (see below!).

My first thought as I read this book was Wow! Dahl is on LSD! Which makes sense for a book published in the 80s (is Dahl a child of the 60s/70s?). But no, he wasn't on psychotropic drugs. The book is Freud and Jung with a dash of Platonic forms. That says it all, doesn't it?

Ok, on to at least one real thought: BFG’s fabulous voice of made-up words, rhythm and bizarre syntax that never muddles meaning makes the book vivid and real, and surprisingly easy to read. Logic, however, seems a non-essential factor in this book, and in fantasy for this age in general. Example: the BFG can’t understand the natterbox spiders (he doesn’t know the language), but he can understand the chatbag cattypiddlers. Um. Why? Not that I really care because, hello, natterbox spiders and chatbag cattypiddlers are just too freaking awesome.

Yet I can’t get away from a Freudian reading of this book. Case in point, the giants have these frankfurter lips, right? And we all know what hot dogs represent... And they have this slimy drool, and little Sophie ends up in a giant cucumber-like (phallic much?) vegetable and is then taken into the giant’s mouth ... Yes, yes, I know. A stretch. It’s just creepy to me, like the author is subconsciously working through some latent memories he can't make sense of. Anyway, enough of that. Now for additional disjointed and seemingly random thoughts:

I love how the BFG is so childlike while the giants are rather obviously bullies, though the “message” is a little too heavy-handed for me, and a wee wittle one-sided. There's a line about human beans (yes, beans) being the only ones that kill their own kind, which isn’t true at all. I had enough hamsters as a child to know they often kill one another, and they eat their young (or in the case of Peaches, half of one of her young. The other half she left for me to find). On that note, I was a little annoyed by the social commentary. It seems the book was half parody (jack and the beanstalk references), half fantasy, and half cultural critique (yes, I know my halves don’t add up). Yet even with all the talk of how human beans kill one another, the giants (only doing what comes naturally to themselves, unlike the awful humans) get a pretty severe punishment. 

Moving on: Stephen King wrote somewhere that horror is having people react in expected ways to unexpected events. Here a giant meets real England and a table is made for him of grandfather clocks and a ping pong table. Dahl gives great authenticating details of the butler needing a ladder to set the table, it taking four footmen to carry the clocks, and so on. Such great humor here, and the fart jokes, and by the bellypoppers and portedos. I’m laughing aloud. In public. People are looking at me. 

On the downside, it took to page 118 (Sophie trying to save the school kids) for there to be strong forward motion. The plot was muddled throughout and not tied up too neatly at the end. Maybe because the whole thing is just some Jungian shared dream? It was all Dahl’s dream, obviously, since he is the BFG who, we discover at the end, is writing the story. Obviously, right? RIGHT? 

So although I found the book creepily Freudian/Jungian, and although I did enjoy the wild creativity and fun use of language, I do hope Dahl got himself some good psychotherapy. 

As an aside, I loved the bit about why there are blank pages at the back of an atlas—to draw the places no one has ever been. Isn’t that a metaphor for writing? And for life itself? 

A second aside: Dahl and I share a birthday! Which just so happens to be TODAY! Happy birthday to us!

Third aside: affiliate link up there, yo. 

I'm Dyyyyiiiinnnnngggggg: Or, Why I Love Alice in Wonderland

Below is my second short paper for the Coursera class on Fantasy and Sci-fi taught-ish by Eric Rabkin. But a quick intro. This class operates entirely online, testing a virtual classroom template in which peers evaluate student work. At first I thought this was brilliant.

Awesome! The professor can record lectures in, like, 2009 and teach-ish a course forever! He never has to enter the classroom or grade a single stinky paper! But then I realized something. My peers aren't, uh, so good at this.

Sadly, with this second paper a got a few comments of agreement/disagreement and the rest, "You structure sentence not good done." Ah, well. At least the lectures aren't Peer Recorded.

The Sense of Nonsense

As Martin Gardner writes in The Annotated Alice, "Life viewed rationally and without illusion appears to be a nonsense tale told by an idiot mathematician." But what seems nonsense is the very sense of Alice’s Wonderland journeys, and it is what lends them power to inaugurate the genre of children’s fiction.

Alice’s Adventures are unique in part because they are told from a child’s point of view, yet Carroll also tosses adult expectations down a rabbit hole. He juxtaposes the adult and child worlds and infuses Alice’s plain understanding with a deep subtext of rationality. Everyone Alice meets, in very adult-like fashion, takes themselves and their goings on with utmost seriousness. Rabbit must have his gloves, "Off with her head!" the Queen demands of everyone she meets. The Hatter talks of watches that tell the year. And the Duchess quips, "flamingoes and mustard both bite,” which means, of course, “Birds of a feather flock together.” “Only mustard isn't a bird,” Alice replies.

Throughout Alice observes all this with a curious detachment, at one point thinking, “The Hatter's remark seemed to her to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English.” At last she loses a bit of patience. As she begins to grow during the tart-theft trial, the Dormouse exclaims, "You've no right to grow here.” When Alice replies boldly, “Don't talk nonsense, you know you're growing too,” she proves that she, the child, is the only one in this mixed up world with even one whit of sense. As the Duchess says so blithely, “what a clear way you have of putting things!” Clear, indeed.

In this way Carroll establishes a tradition that future generations will emulate: Rational, commonsensical Alice takes the role of adult, while all around her are mad as Hatters or foolish as Idiot Mathematicians.

Book Slob

No, I mean the book, Slob, by Ellen Potter. Philomel Books, 2009.

I snagged this book from the library almost entirely by random. I spotted a blue "Mystery" sticker on the spine, saw it was published within the past few years, and tossed it in the Home bag. See, I'm doing research on Middle Grade mysteries, so what better way to shop than the wonderful little blue "Mystery" sticker?

Except Slob is not really a mystery. And it's not really Middle Grade. What it is: the fabulous story of Owen Birnbaum and his struggle to make it through seventh grade faced with obesity, personal tragedy, and bullying. This kid has everything stacked against him. He's the fattest kid in school, his PE teacher hates him, and his one solace - his daily allotment of Oreo cookies - is being stolen. A bit of mystery comes in as Owen tries to smoke out the thief, but he's also hoping his new invention, Nemesis, can act as a visual time machine and show him who murdered his parents.

Yet both of these fascinating mysteries are secondary to Owen's personal struggles. He doesn't fit in, and he's still suffering from the loss of his parents. There's no strong emphasis on finding the Oreo thief or on the murder, rather the driving forces in the story are the Evil PE Teacher and the diabolical, scar-faced Mason Ragg. Will Owen be humiliated beyond endurance (the first chapter had me in tears when Mr. Wooly, the PE teacher, put Owen in a dog harness and made him flop around the mat like a beached whale)? Will Mason break out the switchblade he's rumored to carry in his sock?

The sophistication of the problems: switchblades, murder, abuse/cruelty made this book feel older than middle grade, as did the clarity with which these problems were shown. I had a hard time imagining St. Nick (5th grade) reading it, for example, and not finding it emotionally overwhelming. Goodness, even I found it overwhelming at times. Poignant, gripping, moving ... and overwhelming.

In short, for the mature middle grade reader, or teen/adult, this book is a treasure. The characters ring with authenticity, the plot moves swiftly and directly, and the outcome is fully satisfying. I wanted to adopt sweet Owen and his independent little sister (Jeremy) too. Did reading it push my understanding of MG mystery? Not really, but it made me a better, more thoughtful person, which I think is a superior outcome, don't you?

PS. I will pass it on to St. Nick, and see what happens.

Review Unwritten—Katherine Paterson’s Bread and Roses, Too

Just after putting down this latest Paterson book, I had idea after idea about what to say. That was a month ago (at least) and the details have now faded. All my brilliant points of critique, all my Deep Thoughts. Oddly, details of the story itself are not lost, nor are one or two things I’d thought when I first read it. This is probably for the best—the things that remain will be the most important.

I’m reading a printed collection of Katherine Paterson’s lectures, The Invisible Child. The first is titled, “In Search of Wonder,” and in it she writes,

“If knowledge without a sense of reverence is dangerous, morality divorced from wonder leads either to chilling legalism or priggish sentimentality. I am always nervous when some well-meaning critic applauds my work for the values and lessons it teaches children, and I’m almost rude when someone asks me what moral I am trying to teach in a given book. When I write a book I am not setting out to teach virtue, I am trying to tell a story, I am trying to draw my reader into the mystery of human life in this world. I am trying to share my own sense of wonder that although I have not always been in this world and will not continue in it for too many more years, I am here now, sharing in the mystery of the universe, thinking, feeling, tasting, smelling, seeing, hearing, shouting, singing, speaking, laughing, crying, living, and dying.”

As she has in the past, Paterson accomplished this in Bread and Roses, Too.

Through careful research she effortlessly transports us back in time. Effortlessly, we hear the distinct accents of the Italian ladies, and the Polish ladies, and the Lithuanian ladies. Effortlessly, we fall into the lives of daughter of Italian-immigrants, Rosa and US-born, Jake. And as Paterson has done in many of her novels, she succeeds in her treatment of difficult subject matter.

Paterson is well aware of her tendency toward taking on challenging topics. From the essay, "Creativity Limited," reprinted in The Invisible Child, but dating back to The Writer in 1980, she writes,

“Let me offer a brief and brutal survey of my already published novels for children and young adults. In the first, the hero is a bastard, and the chief female character ends up in a brothel. In the second, the heroine has an illicit love affair, her mother dies in a plague, and most of her companions commit suicide. In the third, which is full of riots in the streets, the hero’s best friend is permanently maimed. In the fourth, the central child character dies in an accident. In the fifth, turning away from the mayhem in the first four, I wrote what I refer to as my “funny book.” In it the heroine merely fights, lies, steals, cusses, bullies an emotionally disturbed child, and acts out her racial bigotry in a particularly vicious manner.”

This is just her first five books. In Bread and Roses, Too, Paterson confronts head-on alcoholism, abuse, and again bigotry, without glossing over or authorial judgment.

Paterson writes her world as it exists for her characters. In the same lecture, she writes,

“Yet, somehow, when a story is coming to life, I’m not judging it as appropriate or inappropriate, I’m living through it. In The Sign of the Chrysanthemum Akiko ended up in a brothel not because I wanted to scandalize my readers, not because I’m advocating legal prostitution, but because in twelfth-century Japan, a beautiful thirteen-year-old-girl with no protector would have ended up in a brothel.”

Likewise, when Jake is cleaned up by a young priest after being beaten bloody by his drunken father, the priest shudders, but does not run out and call Child Protective, or vow to stop the monster who did this. No, he clothes Jake and sends him back out on the street. Other issues are dealt with similar deftness. Rosa’s devout Catholicism, the harsh effects of life in the mills are but two more examples.

Yet with all this praise, Bread and Roses, Too is not my favorite Paterson work. I have two reasons and both have to do with characterization. First, I found Rosa’s continual negativity tiresome and it kept me from fully identifying with her. At every turn she is wary of the events taking place in the book, fearful, and generally a wet blanket over the enthusiasm of her mother and sister. Having a character with these traits is fine in moderation – it gives her something to overcome – but I found Rosa's struggle more caused by obstinance (or the author's manipulation) than believable struggle. I rooted for her mother and sister, but spent more time wishing I could just shake Rosa by the shoulders, “Get with it, girl!” than looking forward to what might happen to her next.

Along the same lines, there is an unresolved tension between Rosa and Jake as to who takes center stage. The novel opens with Jake digging a hole for himself in the trash heap, and shortly the point of view switches to Rosa. I love books with multiple points of view – the scope it gives, broadening out from one character’s often myopic view of the world. But, often one character is considered the protagonist or lead.

Because more weight, in terms of page numbers and emotional intensity (all that angst and negative energy), is given to Rosa, I assumed she was the lead and big changes would be in store. Yet toward the end of the book I realized that was not the case – Rosa doesn’t change in any life-shattering way. She accepts and gets behind the central movement of the plot eventually, but I was never fully convinced of her ambivalence in the first place (as said, it seemed more a convenience for the sake of plotting), so this wasn’t so big of a surprise. The real change comes in Jake, who goes from being a selfish little trash-digging rogue, to an upstanding young man, with a loving family, no less. This made Rosa seem more a vehicle than a real person. A vehicle to drive the plot, but also one to drive theme, and this I noted particularly in her line toward the end regarding all her prayers being answered but one, that one being for Jake, which by the end is also answered. This treatment is far less deft and subtle than I’m used to with Paterson, and was a disappointment.

That said, Bread and Roses, Too still brought out the tears and still made for a fulfilling read. The history is vibrant, the dialects superb, the characters lively, and the plot satisfying despite those minor qualifications.

A Mix: Good, Bad, Ugly ...

Black Stars of the Harlem Renaissance by Jim Haskins, Elanora Tate, Clinton Cox, and Brenda Wilkinson. 2002.

Ok, time for a rant. I haven't ranted in a while, have I? Well, maybe. Even so, a rant is due so here it is:

The chapter on Du Bois: Do we have a reliable narrator? Du Bois is introduced as “one of the greatest scholars the world has ever known.” First we have the issue of a lose definition of scholar (what is a scholar, exactly?), and then the absurd grandiosity of the superlative. "Greatest World Scholar!" So Du Bois should be canonized with historical and world scholars such as Aristotle, Plato, Hegel, Hume, etc? Or is the author introducing us to a figure who is made larger than life with exaggeration? Acceptable in a Tall Tale, but not in a biography.

Ok, on to pg. 7: it’s said that Du Bois has an academic career that claims nationwide attention. Yet the development, the “proof” to back up his "nationwide attention" is that he taught English, Latin, Greek, and German at the university level. I know a handful of Classics professors ... sadly, they don't get much attention, locally or nationally. The author then follows up that "nationwide" claim with details of Du Bois' marriage and kids. No development of his scholarship, what this "attention" consisted of, or anything else of real interest. 


In fact, Du Bois' ambivalence toward Nazi Germany is entirely ignored, and his strong beliefs against racial integration never mentioned. I found more detail at Wikipedia than I did in this chapter! Even children deserve 1. the facts and 2. the truth at age/developmentally appropriate levels.

Most other biographies: these sketches are so short. I found myself irritated by the lack of interesting detail and by the inclusion of mundane this-is-what-I-read-in-the-encyclopedia factoids. The sketches don’t live and breathe, they gloss over an entire life in sometimes the boringest possible way, with broad and often clumsy brush strokes that, because of the first line of the first sketch and huge omissions of facts, make me want to double check all the facts. Very text-book-y.

Yet the book is uneven. The section on Langston Hughes was interesting and vivid. It didn’t have the broad-brush feel some of the other sketches had. Hmmm. Which makes me ask if there is a problem with the book as a whole, or an issue common to a multi-authored book. Perhaps some authors are better at research/writing/clarity/intellectual integrity than others?

I also noticed that many of the books referenced in the notes are secondary sources at best. Honestly, I wish I'd seen Wikipedia referenced - there might have been more details!

A Little Moody over Judy Moody

Judy Moody by Megan McDonald. Candlewick, 2000.

Very Ramona-the-pest both in tone and content: the every-day becomes huge in a way that takes a child’s moods and struggles seriously. Funny and “edgy” for a third grader. A venus fly trap, a doll that gets sick, fake hand in a toilet.

Judy is just as smart and sensitive as Ramona, and I liked how the story was built around a “me” collage. A lovely addition to the "Cute Little Girl" genre. (Is there such a genre? There certainly must be ...)

Witness this!

Witness by Karen Hesse. 2002.

This book was made up of poems from different points of view and usually in differing and discernible voices all telling one story.

The plot, though ... the story seemed to end at the wrong spot. It ended with one of the secondary (even tertiary) characters, with a sort of twilight zone “dun dun dun!” campfire ghost story ending. The whole meaning of the book was lost.

I saw little Esther’s attempt to take the Heaven Train (i.e. kill herself) as the primary focal point of the book—she’s certainly the only character the reader ends up knowing intimately and loving thoroughly. Yet this scene happens mid-way in. The scene seen by the author (I’d guess) as “climax” is her father getting shot. Why is this climactic? We don’t know nor really care about her father, except in how his death might hurt Esther.

So, today's lesson boys and girls, is this: end a book with something directly related to the character we come to love most. And the most emotionally charged moment maybe ought to be the climax? Or that the emotional intensity must escalate to the climax. So if the reader is choking on sobs at the half-way point, she sure better be all-out weeping by the end. Dénouement is allowable, but it really can’t take up half the book (and the “shooting” scene, like I said, wasn’t resolution—it was escalation/climax, except it ended up being anticlimactic related to the Heaven Train in the middle).

A Compass of Gold, off to a Good Start

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman.

The power of a great opening: Pullman’s The Golden Compass begins, “Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen.” We see a bit of each method of creating conflict. We know Lyra only by name, but it’s a lovely name, likeable and not quite ordinary. We sense that Lyra is also a likeable and not quite ordinary girl. The hook in this case involves action—Lyra is sneaking around in the dark—which provides obvious mystery: why is she sneaking? What on earth is a daemon? Pullman makes us wait.

Pullman continues to keep us waiting. He follows his opening line with a smidge of description—Lyra lives in a fancy place—and then provides a glimpse into Lyra’s character when she taps crystal to hear it ring. She’s curious and playful, yet her response to her worrywart daemon of, “They’re making too much noise to hear from the kitchen,” shows Lyra as a sensible, independent girl.

In effect, we are dumped straight into the action in a strange world. Lyra snoops where girls aren’t allowed, but before our curiosity about Lyra and her world can be sated, she must duck into hiding to avoid detection. Yet more questions arise as she overhears a plot to murder her uncle. Lyra’s character has heart, we have ample hook to propel us forward, and Pullman gives us abundant mystery. If we want answers, we must read on.

The end of the book continues with questions. Lyra rescues a group of children, but the story continues into the next book. Of the three, I thought the first two fit together best. The whole world of the dead/souls/something like that in the third was bizarre and hard to follow.

The Gift of Suffering

The Giver by Lois Lowry. 1993.

Lowry opens The Giver with a description of fear and immediately cements the unusualness of the world she’s created as well as giving us insight into the young protagonist, Jonas. She also is so deliciously good at creating a Utopia that seems wonderful, at the start, and only slowly becomes sinister. It’s not at all obvious, unlike, say, Wrinkle in Time, that this Community is full of darkness. Especially chilling is the parallel between Lowry’s Community and that created in Hitler Youth.

• Emotions are real and honest. I think it was Stephen King who wrote that the key to creating fear was to let characters respond in a realistic way to unrealistic situations (something like that). Lowry does exactly that. Jonas has the same doubts and confusions any of us would have given his situation, which makes the story all the more believable.
• Last residency some of us were discussing the ending, some saying that Lowry was shocked that anyone thought Jonas and Gabe died in the snow. They’re riding down to an “Elsewhere that held their future and their past.” Throughout, Elsewhere has been the place people go when they’re released. I.e., when they die. So where else but into death was Jonas headed? I always assumed the boys died. Yet reading the book again, I see the ambiguity. My only point is that clarity would have been far, far more satisfying. I spent 10+ years being disappointed and peeved by the end to the book, while now I’m just bewildered.

How to Build a Mosque

Mosque by David Macaulay. Houghton Mifflin, 2003.

The intro is sort of dry, but the melding of fiction and nonfiction with fascinating detail on construction held my interest to the end. Yet why was there such a need for bathing? (I know it’s ritual bathing, but the text doesn’t tell me this.) There’s a ton of info on engineering, but not much on culture. The how is thorough; the why is underdeveloped.

Babe, Such a Gallant Pig

Babe: The Gallant Pig by Dick King-Smith. 1983.

The style is hysterically understated and plays off stereotypes of the gumpy farmer and meddlesome wife. I found the proper usage of bitch for female dog interesting. I do wonder if dam might have been substituted? (Can dogs be dam and sire or is it just bitch and dog?).

• Charlotte’s Web feel. The animals have personalities. But while Charlotte saves Wilbur, Babe saves himself. And his surviving the holidays isn’t so much of an issue. It’s more about Babe learning to herd sheep.
• The action reads a bit like a screenplay, stripped down to necessity.
• Love the little details like “Shepherding suited Farmer Hogget—there was no waste of words in it” (55).
• In the final challenge, rain stops and a single shaft of sunlight flows down. Fabulous use of atmosphere to add drama.

Exquisite Poetry for Two Voices

Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices by Paul Fleischman. 1988

This is a Charlotte Zolotow book, which is no surprise. Such lovely language, metaphor, all the poetic devices one learns in school. I don’t read music, but this reads like I imagine music to be read—heard in my head, both voices blending, pulling apart, coming together.

Fleischman made use of point of view by getting in the heads of bugs. Most vivid, the differing views of life between worker and queen bee (even if a mite predictable). And on the more unexpected side, the water strider analogy to the biblical walking on water miracle was beautifully done.

Secrets, Platforms, Bizarre Britishisms

The Secret of Platform 13 by Eva Ibbotson. Dutton, 1994.

Rich and fun fantasy. Ibbotson starts off with quaint Brittishisms, ghosts, and secret doors to other worlds. What’s not to love? Loads of fantastical invention and a heavy dose of political correctness. Atmospheric with a distant 3rd person narrator, similar in voice to others like Charlotte’s Web, Tuck Everlasting, a storybook voice that’s lolling and gentle, saying “come along for a story, children.”

• There’s no mad rush to get the action going at the start. Too bad children are so impatient and discriminating that they won’t bother with such a slow beginning (note sarcasm). In my experience, children are far more tolerant of lousy writing/boring books than adults. Not that this is lousy or boring. Much to the contrary.
• Wonderful use of jump cuts/scene breaks and such, and phrases like pancakes “warm as puppies,” make me salivate. 
• A strange, Dursley-like character (Harry Potter). 
• Deft use of POV. Note the selection from pp. 91-92: We were in a rather distant 3rd narration, then a new paragraph, “Raymond was still staring at the little creature. No one at school had anything like that. He’d be able to show it off to everyone. Paul had a tree frog and Derek had a grass snake, but this would beat them all.” Clearly diving into Raymond’s head, then pulling back out again with the voice of another character speaking. 
• Handbags of Harpies. HA! And the various scenes weave together brilliantly. Mrs. T’s perfume down the drain giving away her location, etc. All around fun!

Collection of Poems, linked

Carver: A Life in Poems by Marilyn Nelson. Front Street, 2001.

Would it be admitting ignorance to say I don’t like poems I don’t understand? I mean, I sort of understand “The Perceiving Self,” but I mostly don’t. It makes me wonder if the purpose of poetry is to communicate, to feel smart, to make your reader feels unsmart ...

“[T]ouched our stamens/pleasured us with pollen.” Obviously sexual, but what to do with a lynching? Other images in that one confuse me too. Am I too dense to read poetry? 

I do love the artistry and form of this book: poems from various perspectives all drawing a picture of Carver and the world in which he lived. The sad truth: I had to Google Carver to make sense of the poems (I dimly remembered his name being related to peanuts from some lesson in preschool—my lord, preschool!). Thank God for Wikipedia. 

I wish Nelson had found some way to contextualize the poems for those of us who are a. young (since this is in the junior nonfiction section), b. products of the modern educational system, c. missed a lot of school (literally or metaphorically) even if a and b are not the case, or d. are just plain ignorant. 

Lovely words, lovely poems, but the poems are sort of like single petals of a yellow flower. We don’t know if we have a daisy or a dandelion. And how we understand and appreciate the flower depends upon where we find it: a garden, the lawn, a clogged downspout. “His students/see the light of genius/through the dusky window of his skin”—beautiful petals, but of what? Where? Many stunning poems like, “From an Alabama Farmer.” But the title says it’s a life in poems. Somehow I missed the life, found only poems.

Nelson's other book for this age group however, Fortune's Bones, is among my favorites of all time.

On Homesick

Homesick: My Own Story by Jean Fritz. 1982.

The story of Fritz’s childhood in China. A memoir for children full of fun stories and written in an accessible fairy-tale tone. Rich detail, vivid storytelling, a likable protagonist. There is very little difference between this work of nonfiction and many of the novels I’ve read. Though I’ve yet to read a quote as fun as this one:

“A cat is a cat. There are no foreign cats, no Chinese cats, no capitalist cats, no Communist cats. Just cats.” --Yan Sze-Fu

Love it! Although I'd guess my cat is a Union cat ...

Bizarre and Creepy: Perfect Middle Grade

Skellig by David Almond. 1998.

Chapter 1 thoughts: The protagonist is sort of grouchy, but the toilet in the dining room made me laugh. Now on to the rest of the book:

• Psychological honesty: Michael’s emotions aren’t simple I like this I don’t like that. He can love and hate simultaneously, feel compassion for and horror at the creature in the garage at the same time. So often I’ve had critique partners comment on my work—"But he called the baby stupid and now he’s praying for her to get better? Inconsistent!" they cry. When are we ever, any of us, consistent? 
• Description: “The red sauce below his lips was like congealed blood” (29), or, “I thought of his wings and of the baby’s fluttering heart” (99). It just doesn’t get better than that! 
• The art teacher says you get better at drawing by drawing. The same goes for writing—Michael got braver and bolder, and I think Almond shows incredible bravery and boldness by writing this book that any (most, anyhow) writing teacher would dismiss as too bizarre for words. Owl-angel-men, Persephone, dying infants, and adorable britishism like blinking and bloody and knocky down. 
• Repetition of ideas, phrases, the whole is unpredictable as anything, yet feels choreographed, like a complicated and beautiful dance. 
• Enough of these books that make me cry like a blinking baby!!!!

Classics of Moles and Rats

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. 1908.

So Pooh-like with that quaint voice and silly words and lots of happy adverbs (see, sometimes adverbs can be good!). Mole meanders aimlessly and is bewitched, entranced, fascinated by a bubbling, gurgling, chuckling river. What wonderful words! Never mind that Moles are blind; I could eat it up.

I was more than a little shocked to read Rat’s line, “Stop it, you silly ass!” on page 17, however.

Despite the lovely turns of phrase and the appeal of classic literature, I don’t favor talking animal stories. I’ve started and stopped this one every few months since entering the program (not to mention the times I’ve tried to read it in previous years). I’m just not a child at heart, I suppose. I did glimpse an interesting parallel to some of these characters and Tolkien’s Hobbits—maybe this was a source of inspiration for Tolkien, or just a similarity because of the tone, but the homey little Mole is rather Hobbit-like, and his crusty friends reminiscent of Frodo’s mishmash of companions.

A Book to Cry Over

Morning Girl by Michael Dorris. Hyperion, 1992.

Dorris hooks the reader with voice and woos her with lovely prose: personification like “the day welcomed me, brushed my hair with its breeze, greeted me with its songs” (5). The alternating POV chapters are interesting and risky for this age group. Yet I found the voice of each chapter distinct.

On pg. 27 Star Boy (brother to Morning Girl) is hiding after losing his father’s canoe. He thinks, “I closed my eyes and concentrated on being a rock. I sank so deep into the ground that no digging stick could roll me from my hole. I became so hard that no tree or bush could take root on my surface.” It’s vivid, clear, yet develops setting and character beautifully. He goes on to describe things he can feel as a rock that he can’t as a boy, like shadows moving over him.

And Morning Girl wanting to see her face, and finding “two pretty girls” in her father’s eyes made me cry.

• This is a book to dissect for theme. Names, self-knowing, understanding. 
• The epilogue from Columbus is chilling to my very soul. Ugh. It went from tender family story to horror novel in that final, masterful page.

Long Titles, Short Books

I Thought My Soul Would Rise and Fly: The Diary of Patsy, a Freed Girl by Joyce Hansen. Scholastic, 1997.

Delightful voice and vivid research. The research shows and adds layers to the text. The diary form is highly personal, sort of like a verse novel. I found the premise compelling but the setting just seemed a little claustrophobic. I guess that’s the downfall of a diary novel—you’re stuck in one person’s head, and if that person is a girl who stutters and limps and doesn’t leave the plantation, well, you’re limited to her experience. For a book in a series, however, this one was far and away beyond what I expected. Not formulaic, and with a fabulous historical note at the end with photos and tons of detail.

Rats of NIMH and other Rodent Themed Books

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien. 1971.

There’s a certain sameness to rodent-themed books, I’ve noticed. Velveteen Rabbit (ok, not quite, but ...), Ralph and the Motorcycle, Borrowers. Most have a lot of “critter skittering about for food” along with lots of scurrying, scraping and scampering. This one is the same, and the anthropomorphism (done well) is the hook here. On page 21 we get a description of Dragon, the cat: “He was enormous, with a huge, broad head and large mouth full of curving fangs, needle sharp.” Vivid, as a cat would be to a mouse, then the monstrous and mythical take over, “He had seven claws on each foot and a thick, furry tail, which lashed angrily from side to side.” Other thoughts—

• Honor and respect are heavy themes. In the first scene with the crow, throughout. The nature of true nobility. And a great quote from p. 32, “All doors are hard to unlock until you have the key.” 
• Little details like the smell of frost melting make the reading delightful. Twists and turns in plot too, like the drugged cat, the backstory, overhearing the family planning to poison the rats. There’s adventure and death/violence on a level that would not be possible for this age group with human characters.