Double Header: Duck Duck Taco Truck & Mabuhay!

Duck Duck Taco Truck 

By Laura Levoie and Teresa Martinez

"Duck. Duck. Taco truck. Working hard to make a buck."

Two food trucks staffed by sworn enemies: ducks vs. geese. Before you can say "curly fries", these two rivals are in an epic food truck face-off. "Battle on! At dawn, we ride!"

But soon, Goose becomes overwhelmed by hangry crowds. He sure could use some extra wings to help out! Will these foes find a solution and become feathered friends?

This clever, high-energy, taco tale, packed with bright art featuring kids' favorite foods, shows young readers how cooperation and teamwork can overcome conflict. It's a superbly silly summer story, the perfect pick for taco and truck fans.

Mabuhay!

By Zachary Sterling

Can two kids save the world and work their family food truck?

First-generation Filipino siblings JJ and Althea struggle to belong at school. JJ wants to fit in with the crowd, while Althea wants to be accepted as she is. To make matters worse, they have to help their parents run the family food truck by dressing up as a dancing pig and passing out samples. Ugh! And their mom is always pointing out lessons from Filipino folklore -- annoying tales they've heard again and again. But when witches, ogres, and other creatures from those same stories threaten their family, JJ and Althea realize that the folklore may be more real that they'd suspected. Can they embrace who they really are and save their family?

It seemed a little skimpy to use one illustrated kid's book as a prompt, so instead I used two! Duck Duck Taco Truck is a picture book for the 2-4 crowd, which is who I read it to. It wasn't an instant hit there, but I enjoyed it at least.

For me, the key to enjoying reading kids books for toddlers is that they need to be at least a little bit smart. Good rhythm is important (one of my recent favorites to read is The Seven Silly Eaters), although rhyming isn't essential (we also enjoy a good Marianne Dubuc story), decent illustration and compelling story. It doesn't have to be complicated, and in fact that sometimes hurts the experience. Very little actually happens in the evergreen Blueberries for Sal, but what does happen is beautiful.

All that is to say, the unexpected resolution of Duck Duck Taco Truck charmed me. I thought for sure it would be a great battle in which the taco ducks emerge victorious over goose, but this was better, a little bit kinder, even if I think the revised food combos sounded grosser than the original offerings. It's not a perennial classic, but I won't mind reading it a few more times.

Mabuhay! is a graphic novel for older kids, maybe the 8-10 year olds. It's a good little book, even if (like Duck Duck Taco Truck) it doesn't meet the high standard of similar books (here I'm thinking of Vera Brosgol's oeuvre).

There's good elements in it, characters, setting and illustrations, but I do think the shift to a supernatural battle would have been better served if it had been a longer book. The coming of age story alone would be fine in something this size, but once the paranormal element was brought in, it felt like we just got sidelined character development in order to rush through the plot. The revelations the kids have in the third act feel less important in light of the battle for light over darkness. 

That's probably why all my favorite parts are in the first half: Tito Arvin is great whenever he appears, the video game all-nighter with JJ, Althea, and Victor is hilariously accurate, and the side stories about Juan Tamad and Pinya are fun digressions. But having Juan be the one to tell JJ that being yourself is best feels like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Like it was shoehorned in because someone needed to do it and otherwise there was no point to Juan. There also didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for the magical powers that JJ and Althea developed: why did the unathletic kid get martial arts weapons?

Of course, the book doesn't stint on the most important part (especially a book about food trucks): descriptions of food, including a recipe for chicken adobo in the back. That would have been real cause for complaint. Mabuhay!

 

29: A Book About A Food Truck

Dark Waters

Dark Waters

By Katherine Arden

Until next time. That was chilling promise made to Ollie, Coco and Brian after they outsmarted the smiling man at Mount Hemlock Resort. And as the trio knows, the smiling man always keeps his promises. So when the lights flicker on and off at Brian's family's inn and a boom sounds at the door, there's just one visitor it could be. Only, there's no one there, just a cryptic note left outside signed simply as —S.

The smiling man loves his games and it seems a new one is afoot. But first, the three friends will have to survive a group trip to Lake Champlain where it's said Vermont's very own Loch Ness monster lives. When they’re left shipwrecked on an island haunted by a monster on both land and sea, Brian's survival instincts kick in and it's up to him to help everyone work together and find a way to escape.

One thing is for sure, the smiling man is back and he wants a rematch. And this time Brian is ready to play. 

I zipped right through this one, and my only complaint, really, is that it felt very short, compared the first two.  I read it on a device, and the little ticker said the book ended at 75%, the other 25% being previews of other books.  I didn't want to read the preview of the next book, Empty Smiles since I wanted to get to it all at once.  So I was left wanting more, which isn't a bad thing, but I am glad that I waited so long to read this one, so I don't have too much longer before the next (and final) book is published.  

In fact, I read this one akin to when events were happening in the book, i.e., a Saturday in early May, although I was not at Lake Champlain, sadly.  And it looks like the next one takes place in August, so from this time to then, I will assume poor Ollie is lost in the mirror world.  That's a long ass time!

Because of the cover, I was thinking that this might take place underwater (I mean, if you can do a mirror world, you can do an underwater world I suppose) and I was thinking that was kind of stupid, so I'm glad Arden didn't go for that.  It's also interesting to me how she manages to keep the adults on the other side of these supernatural shenanigans even where they're clearly necessary to keep the plot mostly believable (send four kids out on a boat by themselves? yeah, that would have been a stretch).  It may be a low bar, but I appreciate the effort she put into making it at least semi-realistic in the context of this children's ghost story.  

This one is more of a straight monster story than the previous two.  While, yes, scarecrows are scary, they were more the minions of the Smiling Man.  Here, although I assume the Smiling Man is implicated in the whole set-up, the lake monster is more of a creature-feature, like, uh... Anaconda.  While there's a ghost involved (more than one), he's a nice ghost, who's willing to kill you so as to avoid your slow death by hunger/giant snake.  I like the change of pace, and am (again) impressed at Arden's ability to both incorporate horror tropes, and also switch it up so we don't read the same story four times.  

I would say that this feels less like a complete book, both because it feels shorter than the other two books, but also because it leads into and sets up book four.  We're left on a more significant cliffhanger and frankly, haven't even made it safely back to shore yet when the book ends (and really reckoning with the fact that Phil's uncle was eaten by a lake monster... although as Phil says, it's how he would have wanted to go).  

This is Brian's turn to shine (I assume Phil will narrate the final book in the quartet) and he's okay, but doesn't bring a lot of special abilities to the fore.  It seems like both Coco and Ollie take more of an active approach to the problem while Brian and Phil are mostly along for the ride.  It's not bad, just feels a little bit shallower. 

 

I really wanted to read this one, and so I entered into the spirit of the challenge, by selecting this for a "Sister Lake" exchange instead of a Sister City.  Honestly, I'm pretty excited by the other book too, I'm looking forward to learning more about Lake Toba.

49: Two Books Set in Twin Towns Lakes, aka "Sister Cities Lakes"

Ten Second Reviews

Storybook Style: America's Whimsical Homes of the Twenties

By Arrol Gellner

Storybook Style, the rambunctious evocation of medieval Europe in American housing, was born in the early 1920s and almost forgotten by the late 1930s. It took its inspiration from the Hollywood sets that enthralled Americans of the period and that still appeal to our jaded modern eye. Half timbered and turreted, pinnacled and portcullised, these houses owed their fanciful bravura to architects and builders with theatrical flair, fine craftsmanship, and humor. In Storybook Style, architectural information enhances the stunning color pictures by Bungalow and Painted Ladies photographer Doug Keister to impart a wealth of information and enjoyment.

So this was a little off the beaten path, in the sense that it's an architectural coffee table book but I checked it out because of an interview with the creator of McMansion Hell, which I enjoy perusing quite a bit.  I'd never heard of Storybook Style, but I was immediately charmed.  

The problem with Storybook Style is that it is both expensive to keep up and not well suited to mass production, so there aren't so many examples and pictures that I would have liked.  Don't get me wrong, there's like, eight chapters, but each of them spends a lot of time on just two or three houses, and in comparison with, for example, bungalow books, which are dense with historical information and pictures, this felt much more minimal.  I do like pictures the most though, since I'm not an architectural student, so I liked that the ratio of pictures to text was so high, I just wanted more and more pictures.  More fantastical creations!

That being said, Storybook houses are pretty great, and we should have more of them.  I think I may be able to convince my husband to convert our front door into a faux-medieval style one, and from then on it's just a slippery slope to mythical creature iron sconces, cobblestone paths and a hedge maze!

The Witch Boy

By Molly Ostertag

In thirteen-year-old Aster's family, all the girls are raised to be witches, while boys grow up to be shapeshifters. Anyone who dares cross those lines is exiled. Unfortunately for Aster, he still hasn't shifted ... and he's still fascinated by witchery, no matter how forbidden it might be. When a mysterious danger threatens the other boys, Aster knows he can help -- as a witch. It will take the encouragement of a new friend, the non-magical and non-conforming Charlie, to convince Aster to try practicing his skills. And it will require even more courage to save his family... and be truly himself.

I don't know why so many of my recent books have witches and wizards in the titles, although I do like a good fantasy!  This one, eh, not worth the time.  It's a graphic novel, and geared towards (I assume) younger readers, like middle-grade, given the style, characters, and plot.  

It felt pretty simplistic to me, that Aster wants to break out of the gender-specific roles he's been assigned, only to discover that he can help, if he uses his "women's" magic, and the bad guy turns out to be (SPOILER!) a similarly situated man who was denied the right to use women's magic and turned to the dark side as a result.  Nothing too ground-breaking, although I guess it's fine to re-hash older tropes in new formats for new readers.

Honestly? Fairly forgettable for me. 

Dead Voices

Dead Voices

By Katherine Arden

 

Having survived sinister scarecrows and the malevolent smiling man in Small Spaces, newly minted best friends Ollie, Coco, and Brian are ready to spend a relaxing winter break skiing together with their parents at Mount Hemlock Resort. But when a snowstorm sets in, causing the power to flicker out and the cold to creep closer and closer, the three are forced to settle for hot chocolate and board games by the fire.

Ollie, Coco, and Brian are determined to make the best of being snowed in, but odd things keep happening. Coco is convinced she has seen a ghost, and Ollie is having nightmares about frostbitten girls pleading for help. Then Mr. Voland, a mysterious ghost hunter, arrives in the midst of the storm to investigate the hauntings at Hemlock Lodge. Ollie, Coco, and Brian want to trust him, but Ollie's watch, which once saved them from the smiling man, has a new cautionary message: BEWARE.

With Mr. Voland's help, Ollie, Coco, and Brian reach out to the dead voices at Mount Hemlock. Maybe the ghosts need their help--or maybe not all ghosts can or should be trusted.

 

I picked this one up last fall as a fun aside, and I will be darned if it isn't just as good, if not better than, the first in the series, Small Spaces.  Whatever else Ms. Arden is, she's  a fantastic writer of children's horror.  Not only did it manage to create a brand new story with a new wintery location and spookiness factor (ghosts this time, instead of animated scarecrows), it made me really eager to read the next in the series.  It never felt stale or rehashed, not even (Spoiler Alert!) when we discovered that the bad man was the same smiling man who orchestrated the first go-round.  

 It also really worked that the kids remembered what happened in the first book and really tried to learn from it.  They didn't make stupid choices like splitting up or falling for them ghost tricks.  It's a lesson for us all - no matter how much you know, you can still sometimes be surprised by a supernatural demon and a bunch of old ghosts.  And honestly, even though I knew FOR SURE Mr. Voland was bad news, the lead up didn't aggravate me, but made me question whether I was reading the room right (I was), so it wasn't annoying that the kids weren't more cautious.  

It did throw me a little bit when we started switching narrators between Coco and Ollie, mostly because (AS ALWAYS) I forgot which one was which since I read the first in the series, and I was like, "I remember the main character being... different".  But  we get that wrapped up, and hopefully Brian comes into his own in the next one. 

The ending was also much clearer and less vague than Small Spaces - the whole thing felt really tight, what with the initial scene setting, the trip through the mirror, and the final battle.  Not as much confusion about who was who or how Ollie "won" or anything like that. I told my husband without any shame at all that I was really enjoying this children's horror book, and while I'm sure he thought I was being ridiculous, this is becoming one of my favorite series.  I stalked the author's blog and I'm pretty sure the next one is set in the summer with a LAKE, and it's like, the use of all these classic horror tropes to create this is so thrilling.  I honestly wouldn't have thought it could be done without becoming trite, or cliche, or expected, but it definitely is working so far.

 

Redwall

Redwall

By Brian Jacques

What can the peace-loving mice of Redwall Abbey do to defend themselves against Cluny the Scourge and his battle-seasoned army of rats? If only they had the sword of Martin the Warrior, they might have a chance. But the legendary weapon has long been forgotten-except, that is, by the bumbling young apprentice Matthias, who becomes the unlikeliest of heroes.

I used to love the Redwall series, it was so popular when I was growing up.  Well you know what they say: never meet your heroes, or in this case, never re-read your childhood books as an adult.  I spent the first half of this book NOT GETTING IT, like "If they have horses and hay carts, that implies humans, but if humans, then how did no one notice a GIANT ABBEY populated by woodland creatures?  How does this abbey hold mice plus a badger plus a hedgehog plus a flock of sparrows plus a fox plus a pond full of enormous fish plus who know what all else? Are the doors large enough for Constance to fit through, and if so, how come they aren't too heavy for the mice? Do they have sets of nested doors? How come no one could climb the walls of the abbey except a super special rat thing? Are the walls made of sheet metal?  Mice are great climbers.  Better than people!  How come there is a GIANT SNAKE roaming through the woods and no one knows this??? Or "remembers", since I guess he's passed into myth status. 

Since woodland mice's lives are like, one year long (three in captivity), how long has this abbey been around, really?  Do they have to switch abbots like, every six months?  And for that matter how old is Matthias? He's running around in giant sandals (which, were those ever fixed or did he miraculously become more agile?) and then in like, 48 hours he's taken over as military commander (with no qualifications - by the way, and I know this is a digression of a digression, but all of their best military minds go off on separate side adventures out of the abbey without telling anyone! How is this responsible leadership?! Constance, Jess, Basil Stag Hare, Matthias, all just go traipsing through the countryside on guerilla missions of dubious importance on their own whims.  Man oh man.  They're all getting demoted when I'm done).

And don't get me started on what a dick Matthias is - he throws the sparrow off a roof just to prove he can, he's super rude to the GUOSIM when they're arguing about whether or not to help him, like, you don't fucking deserve these strangers' help, especially when you're both rude, and it's a wholly unnecessary attack on an adder which (spoiler alert!) ends in two shrew deaths. Not to mention the fact that you've spent days? weeks? who knows! on this quest to find a sword.  Just take one off a dead rat!

And don't get me started on how gross it is that the abbot is like, "Matthias! You're a great warrior now and you shouldn't be a monk!  And Cornflower, you're a girl, you seem fertile, marry Matthias!" EEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWW! I mean, she does have a minor battle role, but mostly she's there for Matthias to eyefuck and then bring soup to all the defenders of the wall.

This was originally supposed to be a Ten Second Review but I got carried away, as you can see.   Is Redwall fun? Yes, absolutely, who doesn't want to read about foxes and weasels fighting mice and sparrows and moles?  Is it hilarious and adorable to picture mice wearing widdle monk robes? Awwww, yes. Does Jacques take some creative liberties in deciding which species are going to be "naturally bad" and which good? Uh, YES.  I mean, it mostly breaks down along carnivorous lines (with the possible exceptions of Gingevere and Julian, the cat and barn owl, respectively) which makes some sense from the perspective of a mouse, but wasn't this the whole problem people had with Slytherin house in Harry Potter? If you put a bunch of kids in a room and tell them they're bad, of course you'll end up with evil children!  I mean, where's the love for the poisonous snakes of the world? Well, in reality they're a protected species because they're in decline over the UK (perhaps due to homicidal mice), so that's good.  But yes, Redwall  is a little black and white about these things, so if you're older than, say, fifteen, it might annoy you.

Also, side note, but there are a LOT of gruesome deaths for a children's book.  More pirate deaths than in Treasure Island! (Note, this may not be factual, because a lot, like a lot of pirates die in Treasure Island too. A pirate's life indeed: scurvy and early death for the entertainment of children!). Some of the "goodies" die too, including a particularly sad death by fox burglar that I vaguely remembered was coming, but was still heart-breaking.  Just goes to show, there's no good fox but a dead fox (rolls eyes)!

But this series is, as I said, pretty fun, and the riddles are always a high-point, along with the adventure. My favorites were always the otters (who make a blink and you'll miss them appearance here with their slingshots), so I most enjoyed Pearls of Lutra even though it was very unconnected with the main Mossflower storylines.

Ten Second Reviews

The House with Chicken Legs

By Sophie Anderson

This is like a middle school reader version of Baba Yaga, where she adopts like an eleven year old girl and then shit happens.  I will be very honest: I did not finish this one and only sort of limply flipped through the final pages (Baba never comes back?!).  Among other things, a kid from the Lake District in England tells our heroine Marinka that he is really into " soccer". It brought me in mind of the first Harry Potter book, in which things just got semi-randomly changed for an American audience (because we do not know what a philosopher is, I suppose) and that was twenty-three years ago (sniff) and we've all come a long way since then, and frankly a little cross-cultural contamination is good for the soul anyway.  Let's raise some fricking cosmopolitans.  Anyway, this may be impolite, but I want to shout out to Nine Witch Tales which is actual witch horror for middle school readers, because back in the 60s they didn't care about "mental health" or "not terrifying young readers".

Fatal Inheritance

By Rachel Rhys

This one was certainly nicely atmospheric - and I don't mean it's suspenseful or thrilling, but that it feels nicely of the time and place, i.e., 1948 post-war French Riviera.  I went along for the ride, but I did have some bugaboos: Eve's a doormat until she needs to be otherwise for the sake of the plot, and then she'll quietly subside again.  I never really got a feel for her personality - is she chafing, is she demoralized, is she seizing her opportunity here, what is it?

And the solution to the mystery bugged too.  So her mysterious inheritance is basically unrelated to the "accidents" which keep befalling her, since those are just about the lost Nazi art smugglers who want to get into the house.  And the art is in Guy Lester's house because...? I never made the connection of when and how it got buried behind the wall, and why it needed to be removed conveniently when Eve was still in the house.  Smugglers really demand punctuality and courtesy when removing stolen items, I guess.

But the tagline, "She didn’t have an enemy in the world…until she inherited a fortune." isn't really true: she didn't have an enemy because she inherited a fortune, she sort of just managed to wander into a criminal ring simultaneously with inheriting a fortune.  It's not a very surprising mystery (you know who is mysterious and angry but falling in love with her, and who is mysterious and nice but secretly using her very early on, and the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad thing that Guy Lester did is clear about halfway into the book, although they save the "revelation" for much later) but it's not a bad piece of fiction, and it's such an interesting setting that the novelty at least, should keep you going until the end.

Ten Second Reviews

The Best Lies

By Sarah Lyu

Remy's life changes when she meets Elise.  Charismatic Elise, who is determined to right the wrongs of the world, and bring Remy along with her on her quest for justice.  But Elise's history is darker than Remy realizes - and when Remy tries to get away from Elise's plans, the night ends with Elise killing Remy's boyfriend Jack.  But is Elise the aggressor or the victim, or both? This one had some promise.  I thought it was going to be like a real Basic Instinct or Single White Female (note that I haven't actually seen either of these movies, but in today's cultural world, do you even have to, to know what they're about?) but it turned out to just be sad, a tragedy about an abused child who winds up lashing out and then taking a really wild left turn into murder.  Even though the book leads with the shooting, it didn't feel earned by the end.  As ominous and weird as Elise was, the fact that she was actually being beaten bloody by her father meant that whatever else she was, she wasn't a liar, and she wasn't ridiculous for wanting justice/revenge. So the finale where she kills Jack because he threatened to tell people she set a house on fire if she didn't let Remy detach, just feels really out of character.  Not to mention that I cannot for the life of me figure out what any of these people see in Remy.  At several points, I thought the reveal was going to be that Remy was actually the killer, because she was so frigging obsessed with whatever person happened to be cool in her direction most recently. 

Carry On

By Rainbow Rowell

So sue me, I ended up being curious enough from Fangirl to read Rowell's take on Harry Potter fanfic.  In some ways, it's a lot like In Other Lands, another post-HP take on the idea of a child being indoctrinated into a magical school and growing up and making friends (and making out, which is also very important).  Carry On did not thrill me? I mean, you kind of know where everything is going, and who the "Big Bad" is and frankly, things don't happen at all until Baz appears, 150 pages in to a 500 page book.  Because we're meant to think this is the last of a series, there's a lot of describing previous years' adventures, however, because this isn't in fact the last of a series, none of the adventures can be significant at all to this years' adventure, so they're a little bit pointless.  As is the character of Agatha.  I think I sort of get what Rowell was going for, a reversal of the idea that the Chosen One has a Chosen Girlfriend, but Agatha's role seemed limited to being the Debbie Downer of the group - just real unhappy, and ironically enough, existing only to be moved around by the other characters and her life threatened.

In the end, I felt oddly let down by the ending - leaving your magical protagonist powerless and with wings and a devil's tail which have to be made invisible every twelve hours, and permanent magical deadzones seems kind of a downer to me. I don't know if the forthcoming sequel would solve any of those problems, but after reading Carry On, I have little interest in finding out.  It's just not my bag.

Ten Second Reviews

As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride

By Cary Elwes and Jay Layden

Essentially Cary Elwes' behind-the-scenes look at his role and interactions in The Princess Bride, and, although it certainly has the benefit of a built-in, forgiving audience, it also manages to tread the same fine line of the movie, that is: it's sweet without being sappy, funny without being mean, and gentle without being weak.  It gives you the same "This world may be populated with fundamentally good people after all" feeling that The Great British Bake-Off does.  It makes you nostalgic, and definitely in the mood to re-watch the movie.  Even though it's not "juicy", there's plenty to make you feel like you were there during filming, and you do get a sense of the various personalities on set.  A lovely, nostalgic, easy read.

The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone

By Jaclyn Moriarty

Ten year-old Bronte receives the news that her mostly absent adventurous parents have been killed by pirates - and that their Last Will and Testament requires her (under pain of her town collapsing) to visit her father's ten aunts and deliver gifts to them.  But as she visits orange orchards, dragon hospitals, cruise ships, water sprites and musical kingdoms, she begins to realize there's more going on that she originally suspected. This one was delightfully plotted - although the generous hints throughout the book mean that you'll probably guess what's happening long before we get to the reveal (except one where I was completely surprised - happily so) there are so many strings and sub-plots that it's never boring.  Plus, in addition to the book-long narrative, each aunt is like a mini-adventure, including a crime puzzle, an avalanche, tidying up for depressed people, fleeing pirates, saving babies, and learning magic.  It's a real confection of a book, as Bronte's instructions include many restaurant recommendations along with travel tips, and the master spell reads like a recipe.  There's some darker points as well, which, although it makes sense there would be, given that the book is about events set in motion by the murder of her parents, does feel a little off sometimes, given the upbeat and candy-colored attitude the rest of the book has.  Given the large cast of characters, it also doesn't get confusing or crowded, and it's a pleasant and ultimately feel-good way to spend an afternoon. 

Hot Dog Girl

Hot Dog Girl

By Jennifer Dugan

Elouise (Lou) Parker is determined to have the absolute best, most impossibly epic summer of her life. There are just a few things standing in her way:

  *  She's landed a job at Magic Castle Playland . . . as a giant dancing hot dog.

  *  Her crush, the dreamy Diving Pirate Nick, already has a girlfriend, who is literally the Princess of the park. But Lou's never liked anyone, guy or otherwise, this much before, and now she wants a chance at her own happily ever after.

  *  Her best friend, Seeley, the carousel operator, who's always been up for anything, suddenly isn't when it comes to Lou's quest to set her up with the perfect girl or Lou's scheme to get close to Nick.

  *  And it turns out that this will be their last summer at Magic Castle Playland--ever--unless she can find a way to stop it from closing.

I'm doing this one out of order, because the prompt is seasonal, and I figured why not squeeze the review in seasonally too?

So although I didn't love Hot Dog Girl, I am allowing myself to be charmed by it, and I will not be too harsh.  I mean, it's just a light summer read about a girl learning about falling in love, treating your friends right, not being down on yourself all the time, and becoming a little more grown up and mature.  Not like, real mature though, the book ends in a bake sale after all, but it's a cute enough story, done with a light hand.

I gravitated towards it because I love hot dogs and wanted a book for summer that was really about summer - summer as you always remember it fondly years later with endless days and warm nights when you're able to roam the town. Mosquito bites and shorts and beaches and the smell of sun screen and bug spray and the feeling of freedom.  Adult books about summer are mostly about indiscretions on Cape Cod during a rich people get-together or "finding yourself" in a new place after your husband divorces you.  Not quite the same thing.  Summer is my favorite season, but summer as a child, not summer as an adult, where you still have work in over air-conditioned offices, and only get brief tastes of the freedom you used to feel. Although you do occasionally get to participate in hot-dog eating contests, so it's not all disappointment as an adult.

Anyway, Hot Dog Girl does have that same nostalgic sense of summer freedom and loss, in this case because the fun park she's working at is going to close, which is nicely obvious metaphor for the closing of that period in your life where you can still go home again. Everything moves on!  You grow up and visit the old haunts and realize the water slide has become a parking lot for a pharmaceutical company and you just have to deal with it.  Or like in Grosse Pointe Blank, when your home has become an Ultimart. "You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there."

Lou is a fictional character and also only like, seventeen, so the fact that she doesn't realize that her bonkers plan to fake date her best friend to get closer to this guy she has a crush on is going to end in her realizing she's actually in love with her best friend is more forgiveable.  I suppose she doesn't have access to tv tropes like the rest of us.  Or like, to Can't Buy Me Love and To All The Boys I've Loved Before.  I was so-so on this part.  It was pretty telegraphed what was going to happen, but Nick (her crush) turns out to be nice and into her, and I felt kind of bad at the end when he winds up telling her that he moved to town to get away from bullies and then he ends up alone, after both his girlfriend and his crush find new partners.  Seeley, Lou's best friend, has a more limited arc, since her role is mainly to be the ever-patient friend who's been in love with Lou forever and puts up with her shenanigans. 

But like I said, it's all done with a light enough hand, and Lou never becomes so annoying with her antics that you end up rooting against her.  They all re-partner, they don't save the park, but they raise money for the owner's sick granddaughter, and much lessons are learned about meddling, self-confidence, and friendship.  The parts about Lou's mother leaving are well done, and the mental image of her in a hot dog costume is never not funny. More hot dogs, is what I say!

44: Read A Book During The Season It Is Set In

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

By Sherman Alexie

Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.

Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings by Ellen Forney that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live.

As the young folks say, this one made me feel all the feels, but I was disappointed to find out, when trying to look up how much of this "based on the author's life" book was true or fiction, that Sherman Alexie apparently has a sexual harassment problem.  Also, that he didn't draw the illustrations in the book! I feel very let down by both of those.  So I am left struggling with how much to like it.

It's certainly a very moving book, a portrait of a young man who doesn't deserve all the shit hurtling his way, over and over and over.  We know, by virtue of the fact that we're reading this as a book by Sherman Alexie, that he does in fact make it off the reservation and find success (albeit ultimately brought low by his dick).  That doesn't really make all the things that happen to him any better, but at least you get some hope for the future.

Alexie's style is well suited to the story - matter of fact and poignant without being maudlin.  He straddles the line well, and it's both a fast read as well as genuinely moving.  Alexie manages to lay out a lot of the reasons the reservations are failing the people, without being preachy or pointing fingers. Not that fingers shouldn't be pointed, because the history of American Indian policy in the United States is a total shitshow, but it helps keep the story running smoothly.

Is this book on its own, a good and worthy book?  Yes, for sure.  But how much do we separate out the art from the artist?  How much leniency do we grant for a childhood of hardship?  How do we support a person who uses his fame and fortune in bad ways? And perhaps, only "middling" bad, on a minor scale.  I mean, I only checked it out of the library, so it's not like I'm funding genocide.  But it did color my impressions, and it really disappointed me.  And it's well-nigh impossible to be absolutely saintly in this - it seems like you would never be able to live a life in the modern era that doesn't benefit some asshole somewhere.  I suppose that's the credo to The Good Place - in this life and times, how can we always do good?  And what is the better good - boycotting a gross person, or reading a work of art and enlightenment and potentially learning something yourself in the process?

All we can hope for is the same energy and drive to continue to better ourselves that Junior has. 

43: An "Own Voices" Book

Comic Bonanza

Here's a round-up of a couple of kid-friendly(ish) comic books I've been reading:

Courtney Crumrin, Vol. 1: Courtney Crumrin & The Night Things

By Ted Naifeh

Courtney's parents have dragged her out to a high-to-do suburb to live with her creepy Great Uncle Aloysius in his spooky old house. She's not only the new kid in school, but she also discovers strange things lurking under her bed.

This one is why I'm calling these "kid-friendly (ish)" emphasis on the "ish".  Courtney is a somewhat darker take on the beginning witchcraft dabbler tale, both figuratively and literally.  I mean, everything is kid-appropriate, but at one point a changeling takes away a baby that Courtney is watching, and although she tries to get it back (being captured and sold herself) her uncle basically tells her in the end, "Forget about trying to get the baby back, these things happen, his parents won't even notice." And they don't!  That was a more chilling story than I expected it to be.  Anyway, these are set up as four short stories, all in black and white.  I would have loved to have them in color, but I suppose it sets the mood.  Courtney herself is an entertaining little curmudgeon.  The last story finds her losing energy, only to realize she's been replaced by a doppelganger who is living her life (and doing much better at it apparently).  In the final confrontation, you think that Courtney will let the doppelganger just take over since everyone seems to prefer it to her, but she comes out swinging hard with a "fuck everyone else, I'm a difficult and unpleasant person, and that's exactly how I want to be!" that completely saps the doppelganger.  Good on you, Courtney.  I would never want to meet you in real life, but bless your confidence. 

Goldie Vance Vol. 1

By Hope Larson and Brittney Williams

Sixteen-year-old Marigold “Goldie” Vance lives at a Florida resort with her dad, who manages the place. Her mom, who divorced her dad years ago, works as a live mermaid at a club downtown. Goldie has an insatiable curiosity, which explains her dream to one day become the hotel’s in-house detective. When Charles, the current detective, encounters a case he can’t crack, he agrees to mentor Goldie in exchange for her help solving the mystery.

This one is a lot of fun to read, colorful, bouncy, basically Nancy Drew in 60s Florida, if Nancy weren't so lily white.   Whereas Courtney was a loner and preferred it that way, Goldie has a colorful cast of supporting characters, including friends, enemies, potential ladyfriends, adults who seem to exist mainly for spoiling fun, and also: aliens!  Yes, I was really getting into the story when it took an abrupt right turn into Martian colony weirdness.  This was set up so the mini-stories merged into a longer connected story, so we'll have to see if all of the mysteries end like that.  It was a little off-putting, but I (a) enjoyed the rest of it enough to keep reading and (b) can kind of see where they're going with the 60s cold war and space-focus (one of Goldie's friends wants to be an astronaut) so I will allow it for now.

The Lost Path

By Amélie Fléchais

Three young boys set off from Camp Happiness, map in hand, determined to be the first to find the treasure before anyone else. But the shortcut they take leads to something far more spectacular and sinister! All manner of magical beasties live in these woods, and the kids find themselves caught between warring Forest Spirits. Will the three boys find their way out of trouble? Get your map and ready, set, go!

This was something I picked up and bought during my sojourn on Free Comic Book Day solely because of how beautiful it was, and that definitely panned out.  It is gorgeous, done in multiple color and drawing styles.  I would have liked something 100% in color, just because the coloring that was there was so beautiful, but, I acknowledge that (like Courtney) the black and white was an appropriate style choice for those sections - when the three boys are simply wandering in the woods.   I agree with a lot of other reviewers that felt the story-line was lacking in comparison to the illustration.  The story is good, but it felt oddly incomplete and only half explained.  We wind up in the middle of fighting forest spirits, but it was hard to tell who was on what side and why.  A crown/hat becomes a Chekov's Gun that never goes off, and when I got done, I went to look if this was intended to be a stand-alone story or not.  So far it is, which is a let-down.  Overall, a beautiful, but otherwise somewhat empty, little book. 

Small Spaces

Small Spaces

By Katherine Arden

After suffering a tragic loss, eleven-year-old Ollie only finds solace in books. So when she happens upon a crazed woman at the river threatening to throw a book into the water, Ollie doesn't think--she just acts, stealing the book and running away. As she begins to read the slender volume, Ollie discovers a chilling story about a girl named Beth, the two brothers who both loved her, and a peculiar deal made with "the smiling man," a sinister specter who grants your most tightly held wish, but only for the ultimate price.

Ollie is captivated by the tale until her school trip the next day to Smoke Hollow, a local farm with a haunting history all its own. There she stumbles upon the graves of the very people she's been reading about. Could it be the story about the smiling man is true? Ollie doesn't have too long to think about the answer to that. On the way home, the school bus breaks down, sending their teacher back to the farm for help. But the strange bus driver has some advice for the kids left behind in his care: "Best get moving. At nightfall they'll come for the rest of you." Nightfall is, indeed, fast descending when Ollie's previously broken digital wristwatch, a keepsake reminder of better times, begins a startling countdown and delivers a terrifying message: RUN.

Only Ollie and two of her classmates heed the bus driver's warning. As the trio head out into the woods--bordered by a field of scarecrows that seem to be watching them--the bus driver has just one final piece of advice for Ollie and her friends: "Avoid large places. Keep to small."

I do think that children's stories (and children, really) have a better grasp on visceral horror.  Yes, it's terrifying to be chased by a masked killer, but you know what will scar you for life? A man with hot dogs for fingers, with the ends split out.  Just ask me and my brother, courtesy of Nothing But Trouble.  It's like what the Counting Crows asked: We were perfect when we started/I've been wondering where we've gone" - the answer is Nothing But Trouble, my friend.  Even thinking of it today makes me want to vomit.  Now that's horror.  Or, conversely, a scarecrow skinning an old farmer. Shoutout to Harold!  Adult horror is about real things, twisted, or targeting you.  Children's horror is about that stomach-churning feeling you have before the figure turns and you realize that the person's hand you've been holding isn't your mother after all.

That's the good thing about it.  However, it can be hard to sustain for long periods.  I do think that the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series is the apex of children's horror, as they manage to get in, get the job done, and get out in like, ten pages or less.  Books are much harder to keep tense for that length of time, although I do think there are some recent good ones: Boneshaker, which is definitely more children's than YA, and bears some similarities to the classic Something Wicked This Way Comes, as it plays on the fear of the carnival (and come on, who isn't scared of carnivals?  I once got extremely ripped off by a carny, and frankly was lucky not to face worse).  In the older category, I think The Diviners created a bogeyman that felt like he hadn't been created by Bray at all but stolen from our collective imagination.  I don't think the sequels were as successful in that, though.

Anyway, three paragraphs in, maybe I'll finally start talking about Small Spaces.  It's good!  It is a horror story, or a ghost story, but not a horror ghost story, because it's also about grieving and accepting that sometimes, it's just better not to raise the dead.  (With all due respect to Stephen King and Buffy, at least Ollie has the sense to figure that out before the dead get raised).

I really like Arden's work in the Winternight Trilogy, which I've reviewed here earlier, and Small Spaces is also well written and spooky.  The biggest hurdle is keeping the tension up throughout the entire book.  It's about two hundred pages, and the first half is a lot of set up - Ollie's mother's death, Ollie's frustration with the school system and her fellow classmates, her taking the book and getting wrapped up in it, and then increasingly concerned during the school trip to the farm.  I don't know if the pacing is entirely successful, although I don't think a longer book is the answer. It was very nicely atmospheric (can't go wrong with fog and scarecrows, as Harold knows) and would be a fun read on an autumn night.  The messages on her watch also allow Arden to keep her characters moving forward without forcing too much guesswork or unrealistic knowledge on them - the obviousness of the deus ex machina somehow makes it more palatable.

I also don't know that it quite coalesced at the end - she poured some water on the scarecrows, and that turned them to dust, but then it also started raining?  It's a little glossed over, while I need everything spelled out.  It also wasn't clear to me why this one particular family kept running afoul of the Man even though at the end it seemed like he would do a deal with anyone, and if anyone would be reluctant to make bargains, you'd think it would be the descendants of the ones who had already faced him and lost.

 On the whole though, it's a clever, well-written addition to the pantheon of children's horror.  It's also (as you'll see in other reviews) a lovely coming to terms with grief and letting someone go, and finding joy in life again. Ollie's mother's death haunts Ollie, but as everyone could stand to learn as a child: just because it's a spook, doesn't make it bad.  Embrace your inner demon!

36: A Ghost Story

White Stallion of Lipizza

White Stallion of Lipizza

By Marguerite Henry

The magnificent white Lipizzan stallions, bred for hundreds of years to dance and delight emperors and kings, captivated Marquerite Henry when she saw them perform in the Spanish Court Riding School in Vienna.

Now she makes this unique spectacle the focal point in her story of Borina, one of the most famous stallions of this famous breed.  It was Borina who, at the height of his career, took a fling in the Viennese Grand Opera.  And it was Borina who, as a mature school stallion, helped train young apprentice riders, and thus became known as the four-footed professor.

One of his pupils was Hans, a baker's boy.  Day after day Hans had watched with longing eyes the parade of Lipizzaners as they crossed the street from their stables to the Palace Riding Hall.  Impossible as it seemed, Hans felt that he must become a part of that world. He must become a Riding Master.  

I was originally struggling with a book for this prompt, since I was trying to steer clear of books I've already read (unless explicitly required) and how would you know whether a book will inspire a certain feeling unless you've already read it?  But in looking over old books, I realized a good Marguerite Henry book would fit just fine - and this one more than most, since it reminds me not only of my horse-reading days, but also of my time in Vienna (even if I do now regret never making time for the Hofreitschule, whomp whomp, although I did get to the opera - which had no horses, but was crazy nonetheless).  Nowadays though, even the Lipizzaners are online for everyone's viewing pleasure, so it's not irredeemable.

My favorite Marguerite Henry book has always been King of the Wind, which may explain some of my predilections for heavy angst and happy endings.  (Although really, once Sham dies, Agba just goes back to Morocco?? After like, twenty years, and while he's mute [and I think mostly illiterate too]? How is he going to get a job again? Why can't he just stay with Sham's kids? Why do I care so much? AND THEY MADE A MOVIE I NEVER KNEW ABOUT UNTIL JUST NOW? And it stars Jenny Agutter? Mind blown!) I barely remember any of her Misty books, but Justin Morgan Had A Horse and Brighty of the Grand Canyon - oh I remember those.  

White Stallion is pretty classic Henry.  It follows a young boy (her protagonists are by historical necessity almost always male, although I do note that two young women were admitted to the Hofreitschule in 2008 for the first time in 436 years of operation, aye yi yi) in Vienna in the late 1930s, early 1940s (and let's unpack that later, shall we?) who dreams of riding Lipizzaners instead of delivering pastries. I mean, who wouldn't? We spend probably 80% of the book focused on him before he is even admitted to the riding school, and just a couple of chapters cover his training and time in the school.  The book is more focused on his dream and his relationship with Borina, who was apparently a real-life famous horse.  Which is how I know when the book was set.  By the way, although Henry obviously wanted to write about horses, there is NO WAY she wouldn't get blasted in reviews for writing a book about a kid in Vienna in 1940 and completely ignore the batshittery going on around him, namely, THE ONSET OF WORLD WAR II.  And yes, we know when this is, because Maestoso Borina was born in 1910, and he is thirty years old in the book. Don't even holler at me.  

I do think that the story of the Lipizzaners during WWII is an interesting one  (and clearly, I'm not alone, since they made a movie about Podhajsky and General Patton saving the Lipizzaners called Miracle of the White Stallion, which now I have to see)  - what place does beauty and art have in Nazi-held Austria, and what does it say about Hans that we know only about riding, and nothing about the terrors going on in the streets? Even the Lipizzaners themselves were caught under the reign (rein?) of the Nazi regime, subject to Nazi stud farms and starving refugees and soldiers.  Perhaps the end note omitting Hans' further activities is for good reason.  

And yet, even so, White Stallion is truly nostalgic, both of a time in history, and of a period in a child's life when you can be consumed wholly by your dream, and achieve it in every measure.  It was a pleasure to discover a Henry book I hadn't read, and the version I had (I don't know if they ever published a normal trade paperback version), which is quite large, with beautiful black and white and color illustrations, was exquisite.

I know this review is chock-full of factota but here's one more to leave you with: Marguerite Henry lived in Wayne, Illinois, which is now kind of a suburb of Chicago, but they did, and still do, host annual Fox Hunts!! Like, for real, they get on horses and chase fake fox smells through the suburban forests.  What the fuck did I just read.  Incredible.


02: Book That Makes You Nostalgic
Jan 5

No Crystal Stair

No Crystal Stair: A documentary novel of the life and work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller, by Vaunda Michaux Nelson

Lewis Michaux was born to do things his own way.  When a white banker advised him to sell fried chicken, not books, because "Negroes don't read," Lewis took five books and one hundred dollars and built a bookstore.  It soon became the intellectual center of Harlem, a refuge for everyone form Muhammed Ali to Malcolm X.

No Crystal Stair covers Lewis Michaux's life from 1906 to his death in 1976, and while it is interesting, stylistically, it's a bit of a light read, considering it's a biography of a man who lived through two world wars, one great depression, and civil rights era, not to mention his establishment of a long-standing business and friendship with Malcolm X.  Vaunda Nelson is Lewis Michaux's grand-niece, and she writes the story from the perspective of various people's reactions to and about events in Lewis Michaux's life.  Interspersed with those sections (which are generally not much more than a page long) are illustrations, pictures, and FBI file notes.  It's especially appropriate for children (and me) as it doesn't wind up spending too long in any one place, keeping the reader's interest and moving along briskly. 

It's a nice book, but it doesn't have a lot of depth to it - it offers a glimpse of the various times and momentous events in Lewis Michaux's life, but aside from his apparently plentiful charm as a salesman, skimps on details of his personality and personal life.  It's more of a celebration of life than any real look at how this man achieved what he did.  In fact, I could have stood to have this be longer, if Nelson had included more details about how, exactly, Michaux expanded from five books to a store, what he did while he struggled to get the storefront going, and so on.  It's hard to get the sense of the journey that he made, especially in light of the fact that the creation of the National Memorial African Bookstore didn't truly begin until Michaux was over 40 years old. I was more intrigued by the bookseller aspect than the African American history one, so I was disappointed by the glossing over of those details.

It is a fun read though, if only for the cameos by black celebrities through time.  It's the Forrest Gump of African American culture.  Which is the point, really: that one man dedicated his life to creating and fostering the culture of a marginalized people and succeeded beyond anyone's dreams (except perhaps his own).  It is a "moving tribute", as PW puts it, one which could and should be in every school library: but someday I'd be interested in seeing what an adult biography of the man would net.  No Crystal Stair, unlike the Langston Hughes poem from which it takes its name, is limited by its intended audience, even as it may inspire them to greater and larger things.

Bitterblue

Bitterblue, by Kristen Cashore

In a world where a small percentage of people have an extreme skill called a Grace, King Leck's Grace allowed him to tell lies that everyone believed. When Bitterblue became queen at ten years old, she thought her father's murder meant the end of his violent, sociopathic influence.

She was wrong.

Bitterblue isn't going to make much sense if you haven't read Graceling, or Fire, to a lesser degree.   It's not the book I hoped it would be after the first two, but that doesn't mean it's a terrible book.  And certainly once you've read the Graceling and Fire you will have to read this one, if only to find out how Bitterblue turns out [spoiler alert: she's a dick].

It begins with Bitterblue, age 18, deciding she needs, like Princess Jasmine in Aladdin, to see a bit more of the world and winds up, like Princess Jasmine in Aladdin, meeting with some less-than-upstanding citizens, who she befriends and romances, etc. etc.  It's the weakest of the trilogy, although my mother and I disagree as to which of the other two books we prefer more.

Both Graceling and Fire revolve more around a straightforward action-adventure plot, with character interaction taking center stage.  Bitterblue is more of a mystery book, and there are so many new characters introduced, it can be difficult to keep them all straight, especially Bitterblue's four elderly advisers, Rune, Runnemood, Darby, and Thiel. 

Overall, I just wasn't as pleased with this entry.  It does suffer from such an excellent first and second entry, and the anticipation of waiting months to read this.  I remember feeling a similar feeling when I first started reading Fire, but I was won over by the end of that, which I wasn't, quite, here.  For one thing, I think Ms. Cashore had enough material for two more books, and the way that it's all squished into Bitterblue means that she (and the reader) are juggling a few too many plot lines at once, until they all start wrapping themselves up quite suddenly.  Bitterblue starts the book with a lot of questions, mostly about why her cabinet is acting so strangely, why people are attacking her friends, why things are being stolen that were never there in the first place, and why no one will tell her the truth about anything that happened during Leck's reign.  Unfortunately, it's structured so that we're asking more and more questions, and getting no answers, until everything is unraveled at once.  It's like a balloon popping in your face, yes, it's quite exciting, but not something particularly enjoyable.  I wound up feeling exhausted after everyone's secrets were out in the open.

Tied in with that is the secondary problem that Bitterblue suffers from, which is the problem of telling, not showing.  There were several times in there where two characters would be having a conversation between themselves, and, well, like this one, where Bitterblue wants to know who knifed her new-found friend Teddy in the gut:

"Teddy, who did attack you?"

Teddy answered this with a quiet smile, then said, "What did Saf mean about you asking your third question?"

And that's it! This is one of the questions that Bitterblue writes down as one of the mysteries she totes around for the first half of the book, and we don't even get to hear the answer.  Plus, it's something that comes up again and again, since Teddy was apparently the victim of a faction out to stop people from bringing up the past, and who turn out to be the big "villains" of the book.  Why would this clue be so off-screen?  Bitterblue doesn't even acknowledge it, she doesn't bring it up again at all, not even to say, "Hmm, that name means nothing to me, but I'll keep my ear to the ground."  Come on, anything!**

 [Interjection Time!  As you may know, often I can be a little slow myself, and it's only after writing something all out that I realize I am completely wrong.  In this case, I think a bit of linguistic confusion was the cause of the problem.  Looking back on it now, it's pretty clear to me that "answered with a quiet smile" means that he didn't say anything, just smiled and moved on.  HOWEVER, I want to maintain that it could also be read as "answered with a quiet smile" meaning that he answered her question while smiling.  Obviously I took it the second way.  I would take this section out and replace it with one that actually supports my point, but I am, too lazy to care about the quality of my output. Which is why I am a reader, not a writer.  And a lover, not a fighter.  And a count, not a saint!]

That brings me to my next beef: Bitterblue is kind of (a) a jerk and (b) stupid.  I didn't want to say stupid, but she's got blinders on the size of Texas, which has the same effect.  She knows (since she was there and all) that her father basically mind-raped (and rape-raped) his constituents for decades.  She herself has nightmares about his handwriting.  And yet, she uses people's experiences during that time as like, a conversational tool, a I'm-tired-of-losing-this-argument-so-I'm-going-to-say-the-most-hurtful-thing-I-can-to-you kind of a thing.  For example, when her adviser, Thiel, is trying to get her to talk about the fact that she maybe should be thinking about marrying someone, she goes,

"There's something I'd like to discuss," she said. "Do you remember the time you came into my mother's rooms to say something to my father that made him angry and he brought you downstairs through the hidden door? What did he do to you down there?"

and then later, when he shuts down and leaves, like she wanted:

Left along, Bitterblue shuffled papers, signed things, sneezed at the dust - tried, and failed, to talk herself out of a small shame.  She'd done it on purpose.  She'd known full well that he wouldn't be able to bear her question.  In fact, almost all of the men who worked in her offices, from her advisers to her ministers and clerks to her personal guard - those who had been Leck's men - flinched away from direct reminders of the time of Leck's reign - flinched away, or fell apart.  It was the weapon she always used when one of them pushed her too far, for it was the only weapon she had that worked.  She suspected that there'd be no more marriage talk for a while.

Wow, can you be more of an asshole, Bitterblue? "Let's talk about that time you watched my father kidnap and torture hundreds of little girls and perform experiments on them and kill them so I don't have to answer questions about boys."  I'm getting ticked thinking about it again.  Plus, she keeps doing it, like, what does she hope to accomplish?  Thiel does snap, eventually, and hits her with some truth she maybe could have figured out a few hundred pages ago, so, uh, great plan? 

The fact of it is that her entire kingdom is suffering from some mass PTSD and she goes around using that as a weapon.  Even after someone has to tell her that of course, her father couldn't have accomplished all this theft and kidnapping on his own, he had to have people helping him, she still doesn't ease up on her interrogation techniques.  Even after she finds out that he appointed four doctors to be his advisers, in all likelihood so that when he cut people open, they'd be there to sew them back up and keep 'em alive, she doesn't take a moment to go, "well, gosh, maybe they're suppressing some seriously heavy shit, let's get them to a therapist, stat." Nope, it's all, "When you lie to me in an effort not to talk about that time my father mind-controlled you in raping little girls, you lose my trust." I'm not surprised that she's down to only one adviser by the end of the book, I'm surprised she has any. 

It's a somewhat similar storyline to the one in the Miles Vorkosigan books by Lois McMaster Bujold, specifically the first two (Shards of Honor+Barrayar=Cordelia's Honor).  That also concerns a man who was kept as the puppet of a psychopath, and forced to deal with the resulting mental anguish in the fallout. People are a lot more understanding in that book than this one.  And yes, I know Bitterblue is only 18, but she lived it as well.  She watched her mother live through it, and she's not unintelligent.  She should know better.  She should also maybe not have waited eight years to even peek through her father's old rooms or the other closed-off areas of the castle.

That's really the problem (and the difference between Bitterblue and Graceling or Fire).  In Bitterblue, when there's a problem, Bitterblue can't really go out and do something about it - she basically assigns people to collect information for her, instead.  In the other books, even when Katsa or Fire wasn't really accomplishing anything, at least there was visible progress.  This is a claustrophobic book, and I think it suffers from the main character being so restricted in her movements.  There's a lot to explore here, and it's telling that a lot of big discoveries (the river of bones, the Dells, the re-taking of the crown) take place completely off-page.  I'm sure it was a deliberate choice, but it should have been explored a little more.  What's weird is that we spend the whole book in Bitterblue's head, but I still feel like I don't know her all that well, not as well as Katsa and Fire, or even secondary characters in the earlier books. 

Besides follow-up-itis, Bitterblue also has the problem that the reader knows all about the Dells (from reading Fire), so that when Bitterblue finds out that her father's fantastical stories may have, in this case, actually been true, the reader is all, finally, instead of whu-uh?  There's a feeling of impatience instead of wonder, which makes me peevish, as I'm sure will come as a big shock to anyone reading this. 

Plus, the book kinda ends abruptly, so I'm left wondering about all these loose ends I have - like who put the red language dictionary on Death's shelf?  Was that explained, and I just missed it?  What is going on with that revolution up in Estill? What about Bitterblue's sadly depleted cabinet? I felt like the other two books had a lot more closure than this one, even though it's ostensibly the final book.

There's just such a rich story here, that I don't feel like this book does justice to it.  The idea of a mad king and the reconstruction and restoration of trust is a grand topic, and I felt like it got obscured in the frenetic introduction of new plot points and characters. Oh well, I'm off to re-read Graceling!


To sum up, I leave you with the immortal words of Martin Blank:

"A psychopath kills for no reason. I kill for money, it's a job... that didn't come out right."

World War I for Kids

I had an itch to watch War Horse, which, as I described it to a friend before I had seen it, is about a boy and his horse, and the horse goes off to war, and the boy goes off to find him. And then I told her that I was pretty confident the horse survives, although I couldn't be sure about whether there was any maiming involved, because this is a war movie after all, and maiming has become the go-to shorthand for writers when they don't want to kill off a main character (because wouldn't that be depressing) but they don't want them to be visibly unharmed, like shell-shock and PTSD aren't enough, let's cut off one of their legs, too. And she looked all horrified about the direction this was taking, and long story short, I ended up watching it by myself. Good times!

Anyhow, I prepared for this experience by watching episode 1 of the second season of Downton Abbey, and making a list of things I know about WWI, which, due to the vagaries of a school system which favors memorization over retention, have basically all come from children's books. What's weird is that there are a ton of books about WWII, children's books especially, but not so much about the Great War, which you would think would be a lot more child-friendly than say, the war which resulted in such works as The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, which, for all of its faults, definitely leaves you with the haunting image of a neatly folded pile of clothes.

I also want to confess my sins: I originally included A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett on this list, because I was remembering that 1995 movie version where Sara's father has mustard gas poisoning and Sara herself is this well-fed blonde beauty, and she winds up screaming at him while he's trying to recuperate, like, don't you think he's been through enough without some urchin accusing him of being her father? And why do the movies insist on keeping her father alive? What is the point of that? Anyway, leaving all that aside, the book couldn't possibly take place during the war, since it was only written in 1905. Although I do love the scenes from the Ramayana.

Without further ado, here is a (short) list of children's books about WWI:

The Good Master & The Singing Tree, by Kate Seredy

Jancsi is overjoyed to hear that his cousin from Budapest is coming to spend the summer on his father's ranch on the Hungarian plains. But their summer proves more adventurous than he had hoped when headstrong Kate arrives, as together they share horseback races across the plains, country fairs and festivals, and a dangerous run-in with the gypsies.

(The Good Master, from Barnes & Noble)

Life on the Hungarian plains is changing quickly for Jancsi and his cousin Kate. Father has given Jancsi permission to be in charge of his own herd, and Kate has begun to think about going to dances. Jancsi hardly even recognizes Kate when she appears at Peter and Mari's wedding wearing nearly as many petticoats as the older girls wear. And Jancsi himself, astride his prized horse, doesn't seem to Kate to be quite so boyish anymore. Then, when Hungary must send troops to fight in the Great War and Jancsi's father is called to battle, the two cousins must grow up all the sooner in order to take care of the farm and all the relatives, Russian soldiers, and German war orphans who take refuge there.

(The Singing Tree, from Barnes & Noble)

Okay, technically, only The Singing Tree is about WWI, but it's really a two book series, and they're each only like, 100 pages, so it won't hurt you at all to read The Good Master, too. It's actually a really interesting look at Hungarian farm life in the early 1900s, with the beehive stove, and the egg-dying, and the horse-herding. It's a fun kid's book about Jancsi, and his wild cousin Kate, who isn't mean or bad-tempered, just a little imp, so you don't get irritated with her. It's definitely where I first heard of the term "pins" used for legs, which I used the other day and confused someone, since they hadn't grown up in 1915, and had no idea what I was talking about.

The Singing Tree is a much more mature book, but only because the author doesn't shy away from the fact that the war exists and has changed everything. The war itself doesn't touch the children's lives much, although the house becomes a sort of halfway home for war strays, including not only German soldiers, but also Russian prisoners of war, since, as you may recall, Austria-Hungary was allied with Germany, not with the "good side" that most kid's books use as a viewpoint. It's too easy to think of one side being good or bad, especially in light of the atrocities committed in the second World War, while forgetting that there were innocents on both sides, and that often, soldiers on both sides were farmers whose lives were upended by the decisions of powerful men.

[Aside: I think this is something that War Horse does well - the humanization of both armies, as seen through the eyes of this horse. The horse goes through a variety of owners, English, German, French, and it's never the case of owner mistreatment, like in Black Beauty, or King of the Wind. I mean, yes, there are terrible things that happen to him, but it's always the case that the people who have the responsibility of the horse(s) try to protect them as best they can, no matter which side they are fighting for.]

The Singing Tree is a sweet book, and definitely a rosier-than-strictly-accurate view of the war, since all the prisoners and soldiers get along, and are relatively unscathed and happy to be at the farm. There are some very serious moments, including those dealing with an AWOL soldier, but for the most part, it is a sweet and moving coming-of-age story. There is also a particularly bittersweet chapter, in which Kate's father, I believe, comes home and tells the story of a christmas miracle on the front lines, but has to acknowledge that after the story, darkness returned, and men picked up their guns once more.


Rilla of Ingleside, by L.M. Montgomery

Anne's children were almost grown up, except for pretty, high-spirited Rilla. No one could resist her bright hazel eyes and dazzling smile. Rilla, almost fifteen, can't think any further ahead than going to her very first dance at the Four Winds lighthouse and getting her first kiss from handsome Kenneth Ford. But undreamed-of challenges await the irrepressible Rilla when the world of Ingleside becomes endangered by a far-off war. Her brothers go off to fight, and Rilla brings home an orphaned newborn in a soup tureen. She is swept into a drama that tests her courage and leaves her changed forever.
(from Amazon and B&N)

Now, okay, this one is also part of a series, but honestly, I'm not going to make you read all seven Anne of Green Gables books before this one. Mostly because like, the sixth one is all about Anne's mid-life crisis, and one of my favorite games is to see whether there are any pages in the book without ellipses (I think there's one or two?). Most of them have multiples! If you don't read the earlier books, you won't have any idea who all these people are, and probably won't care about whether they live or die, but I have found that to be true even when I did know who they were, so I wouldn't stress about it.

Rilla of Ingleside is about Anne's daughter, Rilla (no shit!) who lives, not coincidentally, at Ingleside. It starts in 1914, when Rilla is about 15 or so, and abruptly plunges into war. The book covers the whole four year period, so there is some serious time-compression involved, although I wouldn't say that any part feels rushed, and Rilla's maturity comes at a natural pace.

This one is also about the home front, although it's for older readers than The Singing Tree, even though this home front is a lot further away from any action than Hungary. There is some death in this book, although all off-screen, and there is a semi-orphaned child (whose father is at the front) that Rilla takes care of. There is also more news of the war in this book, as basically the entire rest of Rilla's siblings are working for the war effort in one way or another, while Rilla stays at home and organizes Red Cross events and buys ugly hats. In fact, there's a lot more detail than necessary, as LMM seems to think that the readers will be just as familiar with Kitchener and the Kaiser and Verdun and Courcelette and Bucharest and Jutland and Wilson and so on as she is. I'm sure that was true when it came out, but people today are so much less informed about the war, it can be kinda confusing, like you're missing the context for a lot of these references.

I remember not liking this much when I first read it, as I was mostly interested in the romance between Rilla and Kenneth, and there, frankly, isn't a whole lot, since he's at war most of the book. But I did re-read it more recently, and I was able to enjoy Rilla for her own sake, as the desperately proud and stubborn teenager, that everyone else seems determined to bring down to earth. She's got a pretty good attitude about herself, and I do relate to her scene in the movie theater.

[Another aside: I don't generally feel the need to yell things at the screen, but I had to tell you, I had the most god-awful urge during the Quiévrechain advance in War Horse to scream at the British cavalry, "You're all going to die! Stop! Go home!" which would have not only been disruptive, but also, in light of what happened next, a bit of a spoiler. If one can spoil the plot of WWI, that is.]

A Countess Below Stairs, by Eva Ibbotson

After the Russian revolution turns her world topsy-turvy, Anna, a young Russian countess, has no choice but to flee to England. Penniless, Anna hides her aristocratic background and takes a job as servant in the household of the esteemed Westerholme family, armed only with an outdated housekeeping manual and sheer determination. Desperate to keep her past a secret, Anna is nearly overwhelmed by her new duties—not to mention her instant attraction to Rupert, the handsome earl of Westerholme. To make matters worse, Rupert appears to be falling for her as well. As their attraction grows stronger, Anna finds it more and more difficult to keep her most dearly held secrets from unraveling. And then there’s the small matter of Rupert’s beautiful and nasty fiancée. . . .

This is sort of cheating, since it doesn't take place quite during the war, but immediately after, in 1919. Rupert actually comes home after recovering in a hospital, and Anna's family is fleeing the fall out of the events of 1917. This is a pretty unrealistic book, and even though there are serious topics involved, the parties all sort of brush them aside in favor of romantic hijinks and pratfalls. For instance, when Anna is telling Rupert about the death of her father in the war, and then mentions, almost as an afterthought, that during the revolution, the soldiers were killing the officers, so they try to be glad he died before his own men could shoot him. Wait, what?!

I know it's part of Anna's charm that she is supposed to be unsinkable in the face of tragedy and obstacles, but to be honest, that sounds like a lot more interesting book right there, albeit one possibly not for children. Instead of getting the full scoop on that, we're treated to love triangle between Rupert and Anna and Muriel, Rupert's hilariously over-the-top evil fiancee. And when I say "hilarious" I don't mean she's funny, only that she's ridiculous, and an insult to three-dimensional villains everywhere. She has literally, not one redeeming feature. She's racist, she's snobby, she's a eugenicist, she's practically an adulterer, she's selfish and unaware, she's petty, etc., etc., etc. No, wait, one redeeming feature: she's got a great bosom. Great call, Rupert. I really respect your taste.

I mean, there's just no tension there, since it's absurd that anyone would allow this farce of an engagement to actually proceed to marriage. It's just not even a legitimate concern, just a stage prop for shenanigans and set-pieces involving the black sheep cousins pretending to be loony. And you know, I can generally handle a bit of non-realism in a teen novel, but this is taking it way too far. Even Disney wouldn't have had the long-missing nanny turn up with millions in sapphires and emeralds after a mysterious and ominous four year absence. Okay, maybe Disney would have. But it's the same reasoning that leads to Sara Crewe's father reappearing alive and (mostly) well, having gotten convenient amnesia for most of the book. It's not necessary to the story, and it cheats it a little. Well, it might have been necessary in this book, since Rupert desperately needed the funds to get the house back on its feet, but it still feels like cheating.

I guess I like A Countess Below Stairs alright, but more because I like the idea of it, rather than the execution, a problem I seem to have with all of Ms. Ibbotson's works. On top of all that, I barely got to talk about WWI for this book. It's there, it's the basis for the book, and why everyone is where they are, but it also has more of a deus ex feel, so as to provide a convenient excuse of PTSD nightmares for when Anna and Rupert need to have a secluded little heart-to-heart.



And that really is a surprisingly short list. I do feel like I am leaving books off, so if there are others, leave a note in the comments, if you like, so perhaps the next time I list what I know about WWI, the extent of my knowledge won't end with christmas cease-fires and white feathers.

Hush

Hush, by"Eishes Chayil"

Inside the closed community of Borough Park, where Brooklyn's Chassidim live, the rules of life - everything from how to dress to whom to marry - are very clear, determined to the last detail by an ancient script written thousands of years before. Then young Gittel witnesses an unspeakable act of violence against her best friend, Devory, an act that goes against everything she's been taught as a Jew. For the first time in her life, there are no guidelines to tell her what to do, so she remains silent. But even inaction has consequences, and sometimes they are deadly.

Now a teenager, Gittel is racked with guilt over the choices she made and those that were forced upon her by the community she once trusted. She must question everything about herself - her own innocence, her memories of the past, and the beliefs of her sect - to find peace for Devory and for herself.

Hush bears a lot of similarities to Fox Girl - starting with the opening narration. In Fox Girl, Hyun Jin dreams of her friend Sookie, from years past; in Hush, Gittel speaks to her best friend, Devory, whom we are told is dead. I really enjoyed Hush, and I hope that anyone reading this will not be dissuaded from picking it up when I say it resembles Fox Girl once again, as it deals with child sexual abuse, albeit in a radically different setting. Hush is set in a Jewish Orthodox community in New York in 2008, although it could easily have taken place anytime in the last fifty years, as the readers realize how little this community has changed, and indeed how they make this immutability a canon of their religious and social lives. The particular Chassidim (perhaps more commonly known as Hasidic Jews) in Hush are fictionalized (as is the author's name - Eishes Chayil is a pseudonym meaning Woman of Valor), but that a large pocket of such people live in Borough Park in Brooklyn is not. In fact, if you watch The Daily Show, you may recall an episode about the erection of an eruv in Westhampton Beach in March of this year, which is a boundary line enclosing a Chassidic community space. They also made the news last month, in much sadder circumstances, when a young Chassidic boy was found dismembered after a two-day long search after he missing on his way home from school. And now that I've made you all depressed, time to talk about Hush!

Besides being a moving book about child abuse and trauma, it's also an engrossing peek into an entirely different kind of world (at least for me, and I dunno about you all, but I doubt very much I have a large, or even existent, Hasidic readership. Feel free to lambast me about it in the comments). It is a world so divorced from my own experiences, I did doubt at times that it was even possible. How could one maintain such ignorance and such isolation in this period of over-sharing and intrusiveness? Gittel, to us, has only a child's knowledge of the world - she doesn't know facts about the human body that I learned by the time I was ten - and one of craziest (and most hilarious) scenes in the book is when she gets into an argument with her husband about the fact that she has breasts. Cause, you know, he's never seen 'em on a Chassidish woman before. At last, the bra's true purpose of destroying the very fabric of society is revealed!

Hush is actually two halves - the first is set in 2008 and flashes back to 1999, when Devory and Gittel are nine years old. The second half takes place entirely in the present, from 2008 to 2010. Hush concerns itself more with the aftereffects of the trauma than the trauma itself. We see the terrible burden that being the survivor has placed on Gittel. The problem here is not that no one cares about what is being done to their children, but that in a community which prides itself on adherence to rules they have been following for thousands of years, and a vast gulf between their world and the outside world, there is no outlet for this situation. It is a shameful secret which brings more condemnation on those who tell their stories and rock the boat than on those who commit the assault. These things are hushed up, not to protect the perpetrators, but to protect the innocent.

The results are predictably catastrophic. With no way to comprehend what she has seen, and no outlet for her questions and her story, Gittel turns all her guilt inward. Even though she was only a child, and even though she did her best to speak for Devory, she winds up blaming herself for not doing more, for not bringing the wrath of the community down on her, if it would have saved her friend. One thing I particularly liked about this book was the loving relationship Gittel had with her own family, especially her father. Her parents don't repress her out of malice, but out of love, out of the knowledge that Gittel's future will be forever stained if the truth comes out. And even though you shrink from a community which has such beliefs that they would punish the victim over the abuser, by the end of the book, you realize that this isn't because of any ill-motive, but because they see this as one more threat to their way of life, a way of life that they have all fought hard to maintain. It is the great irony of the book that such terrible actions come from a place of love. I've tagged this entry as "tragedy" but it isn't, really, because by the end of the book, Gittel has spoken, and she has opened a light into this world, and it has not destroyed them all.

The first half of the book is Gittel coming to terms herself with what happened, and finally being able to name it as rape. I liked the second half better, since it had more humor, but this part was compelling and necessary to realize the impact that it had on her, years later. Gittel was in the position of seeing Devory's cries for help, but being unable to do anything about them. You feel though her not only the trauma of having seen this horror, but having everyone pretend that it did not happen, which compounds the original horror tenfold. It is only through her goyim (non-Jewish) neighbor that she gathers the courage to speak to a social worker about it.

The second half deals with Gittel's marriage, and her publication of the truth. I will admit, I cried a bit when Gittel wrote her public letter to Devory. Which is the greater crime, the rape of a nine-year old child, or the systematic repression of the truth? I can only hope that a similar sea change is sweeping the Orthodox community, as it is only with knowledge and openness that such crimes can be combated.

I was incredibly fascinated with all the details of Gittel's life - the ban on pets and televisions, the one-track future for the girls, the ritualized cleaning, the expensive hats, the arranged marriages, and the pressure to bear children. Gittel and her husband are two perfectly reasonable, nice people, and yet the rigid guidelines of their lives put them so much at odds. The only thing keeping them together is this common faith, and yet that same faith prohibits even a comforting touch, or a frank discussion. It's a wonder to think that more people don't go round the twist.

Hush is certainly eye-opening, and it's an incredible account simply of what it means to be a Hasidic girl in New York. It also manages to make the Chassidim sympthetic, which is harder than it sounds, given that they have allowed child sexual abuse to flourish under their watch, out of fear. Gittel is also a charming narrator, and you get a feel for her character - stubborn and just as difficult as any adolescent going through puberty, and yet godly and strong in her faith. I was exceptionally pleased for her when her husband turned out to be such a stand up fellow. There is such a danger of abuse, given that this faith and community rests on the fragile pact each member has made to abide by the rules, which are obviously not designed for slackers.

The author has the ability to find the humor in the odd situations her characters' background puts them in, like when Gittel and her parents get so excited about a possible match they forget to ask his name or even if he speaks English, or when Gittel gets into a debate with her cousin about which sect is holier, the litvish or the Chassidish, and it devolves into an argument about whether a husband ought to help his wife with the dishes. As it turns out, nine year-olds are nine year-olds and teenagers are teenagers no matter if they grow up to get married at eighteen, or go on to a co-ed dormitory in college. Everyone has had that experience of accidentally turning out the lights on Shabbos, and everyone has sulked about the resultant scolding.

At last, we end on a message of forgiveness and hope, and of a bright future for Gittel, in which the memory of Devory has finally been sapped of its bitterness. Gittel says that the day of marriage is when a Jew is reborn, but it seems to me that Gittel gets reborn the day she's finally able to say goodbye to Devory.





And a final note to apologize if I screwed up any of them tenses of terms - I'm not sure about the endings on some of the words, so I sort of went with what made sense at the time.

East

East by Edith Pattou

Rose has always been different. Since the day she was born, it was clear she had a special fate. Her superstitious mother keeps the unusual circumstances of Rose's birth a secret, hoping to prevent her adventurous daughter from leaving home . . . but she can't suppress Rose's true nature forever.

So when a white bear shows up one cold autumn evening and asks teenage Rose to come away with it - in exchange for health and prosperity for her ailing family - she readily agrees.

Rose travels on the bear's broad back to a distant and empty castle, where she is nightly joined by a mysterious stranger. In discovering his identity, she loses her heart - and finds her purpose - and realizes her journey has only just begun.

I am a big fan of reconceptualized fairy tales. Beauty, by Robin McKinley, that one Zel by Donna Jo Napoli, the Shannon Hale Goose Girl ones, the Gail Carson Levine ones, especially Ella Enchanted, Daughter of the Forest by Marillier, some other ones . . . I can't say that I love all of them, but I do enjoy them more often than not. So East fit right in - it's based off that Norwegian fairy tale where the girl has to search for this guy east of the sun and west of the moon. In the fairy tale, she is often depicted as riding on the East Wind, West Wind, South Wind, North Wind, etc., but here she takes more terrestrial transportation.

In this version, Rose is destined to be a traveler, but because it was foretold that she would die under an avalanche of snow and ice, Rose's mother decides to lie to Rose in order to keep her close, ironically providing the impetus for Rose to leave when she discovers the lie. Ain't destiny a b? Just when you do everything to subvert it, you realize you're actually what causes it to happen!

So Rose leaves with the Bear, and betrays him, and sets herself to following him to rescue the Bear from the trolls who live east of the sun and west of the moon. As fairy tales go, this one has more depth than most. Pattou does a good job of getting you invested in the relationship between Rose and the Ice Bear, which is both difficult and essential to the book. Difficult, because Rose and the Ice Bear cannot really talk to each other, and the Bear only appears in his human form in the dead of night. Despite these setbacks, Pattou shows them communicating, through action and atmosphere, but mostly through Rose's thoughts. I could feel the connection between Rose and the Bear even though it was scarcely verbalized. It's a good thing I felt it too, or else the entire rest of the book would have been me going, "So wait, why does she feel the need to hit up the frozen north to go looking for this ex-bear?"

The parts of Rose traveling were my favs - she winds up in France after the fracas and reclaiming of the bear by the Troll Queen, travels to a seaport where she gets passage to Norway on the viking booze cruise, sails through a storm and ends up charting a course to Greenland. Of course, she also sends her family a letter, which I appreciated because I dislike stories where the main character gets out of a long confinement, and then just sets off without informing the worried family that they're okay. Consideration only takes a couple minutes, folks. Once in Greenland, she hooks up with the shaman Malmo and journeys ever northward to find the trolls. The trip through Greenland was incredible - the descriptions of ice forests and snow storms lasting days on end was really evocative. In fact, side note, all the descriptions and scenes were really well done - the sense of hushed stillness in the French castle, the brisk air and liveliness of Rose's home in Norway, the bitter chill and jagged edges of the troll landscape, everything set the tone for the book in just a few words. Additionally, the way the book is set out, even though Rose often seems set apart from the other characters, emotionally or physically, it is not until she gets to the land of trolls that she really feels "alone". She does find an ally there eventually, but it's an important emotional cue that Pattou hits to set the stage for the final section of the book.

Rose's arrival in troll-landia also precipitates what appears to be her first second thoughts about the whole process. I found it believable that after all this, when she's finally within reach of her goal, she gets pulled up short and has to say to herself, "What if he really doesn't want to leave?" It's a good thing she thinks of this eventually, because it would be pretty heavy-handed of her to storm the castle, be all, "You're coming with me now," to this guy who just wants to marry the Queen who has been in love with him for three lifetimes.

Speaking of the Troll Queen, she's such a tragic figure here - she defies her father and her people to go after the man she loves, and waits for him to be hers for a hundred and fifty years. Unfortunately, she also kidnapped this guy, poisoned him, and put up every possible roadblock to his getting out of the arrangement. Then she brings down some righteous wrath when she finds out he's leaving her. It was sad to me, because she obviously longs for this guy, maybe even loves him, but her love is sick and twisted, it poisons. It's like a fish loving a bird - doomed from the very beginning. I felt sorry for her, because yeah, she's a terrible person, who kidnaps people to make them slaves and throws them into a snow pit when they've outlived their usefulness. . . . okay, when I put it like that it sounds really bad. But I did feel badly for her, she's got such tunnel vision, and I think it speaks well of Pattou that she made me sympathize with this awful character.

Everything manages to wrap itself up, grand fairy-tale style, and you get that warm cozy feeling when you've finished it. It's a meatier book than other fairy tale adaptations I've read, although at the same time it feels easier, because it's told through short perspective chapters, which go very quickly. It's not the grandest-written book I've ever read, but it is very enjoyable, and very evocative.

There were a few nitpicks I had - the book's opening is of someone finding Rose's stuff, and hearing the voices and sounds of the story. Whatever happened to that? It was never mentioned again for the rest of the book, and why was this person hearing voices? That was weird - I don't think it added anything to the story. And Ned's "hearing" of his sister's call of distress was obviously, deus ex machina, but that didn't bother me as much, even though it had as little explanation as the other.

One other thing I wanted to add - this book is full of women. Rose, her mother, the French woman who rescues her, the Troll Queen, Malmo the shaman - all these women impel the plot and are key characters. In many (european type) fairy tales, the tension often comes from a battle between the heroine and an older scheming woman, so being female-centric is not unusual, but here the older archetype is somewhat softened - those who create the problems for Rose do not necessarily mean to hurt her, and the women who help her add a lot to the story.

And, just as a fun aside, my old version of the fairy tale (in the Reader's Digest Anthology The World's Best Fairy Tales aka The Awesome Edition) says very specifically that this takes place "late on a Thursday evening in autumn." Like, shit no, random talking polar bears do not come up to you asking for your youngest daughter on Wednesdays, that is a Thursday occurance. Get it together.