Not so green

I refuse to tell you which publisher just sent me this box, because:

A) I want them to keep sending me free books, and
B) I want them to keep sending me free books

But are you serious, Publisher X? These four books really needed ALL THIS PACKAGING?

*facepalm*

Additions to the Wendy House

A tsar:

(Imported from St. Petersburg, courtesy of Romanov-buddy Laura Mabee)

And a throne:

(Courtesy of my mother, who bought herself a new recliner. This one's dangerously nap-alicious)

THE CHOSEN ONE, by Carol Lynch Williams

THE CHOSEN ONE
by Carol Lynch Williams

(St. Martin's Press)

What's wrong with having one father, three mothers, and twenty brothers and sisters? For 13-year-old Kyra, nothing much at all, actually -- until The Prophet decrees she's to become the seventh wife of a man in his sixties. A man who happens to be Kyra's own uncle.

The plot is every bit as stomach-twisting as the premise, but here's the interesting thing: Williams reveals strikingly little about the workings of Kyra's community outside her immediate family's circle of house trailers. No worship services, very little theology or doctrine, limited interaction with other families in the compound. And yet it works. The place quietly scares the bejezus outta you. Maybe because we've all seen enough prime time investigations of polygamist cults to let us fill in the blanks. At any rate, it's not often an author trusts that much of the story so successfully to her readers.

Another unusual facet: Kyra's family is, for the most part, happy and contented. She's got a loving, reasonable, father, a gaggle of beloved siblings, and a trio of mothers who get along quite well, all things considered. Except for her furtive trips to the local bookmobile, Kyra's not some dissatisfied rebel just itching to get loose. And that is precisely what makes her thoughts of escape so wrenching.

******************
Currently reading:

Hold Still
by Nina LaCour

State of the TBR pile

Finished:

After, by Amy Efaw

Faith, Hope, and Ivy June, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Notes From the Dog, by Gary Paulsen

When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead

Next:

Hold Still, by Nina LaCour

Thirteenth Child, by Patricia C. Wrede

Galley lust: Summer '09 edition

Just in case any publishers or ARC-fairies might be watching....

I REALLY REALLY WANNA READ AND REVIEW THESE BOOKS:

By the Time You Read This I'll Be Dead

by Julie Ann Peters

Nothing But Ghosts

by Beth Kephart

Stitches

by David Small

The Unfinished Angel

by Sharon Creech

Anybody got friends at Hyperion, Harper, or Norton they'd like to introduce me to? *bats eyelashes*

*****************

Currently reading:

When You Reach Meby Rebecca Stead

White-washed covers

Excerpts from a terrific post by author Justine Larbalestier about the brewing controversy over her latest novel's cover:

In the last few weeks as people have started reading the US ARC of Liar they have also started asking why there is such a mismatch between how Micah describes herself and the cover image. Micah is black with nappy hair which she wears natural and short. As you can see that description does not match the US cover.

[snip]

Liar is a book about a compulsive (possibly pathological) liar who is determined to stop lying but finds it much harder than she supposed. I worked very hard to make sure that the fundamentals of who Micah is were believable: that she’s a girl, that she’s a teenager, that she’s black, that she’s USian. One of the most upsetting impacts of the cover is that it’s led readers to question everything about Micah: If she doesn’t look anything like the girl on the cover maybe nothing she says is true. At which point the entire book, and all my hard work, crumbles.

How does this type of detrimental mismatch happen? Conventional marketing wisdom dictates that black covers don't sell well. There are a heap of things that suck about this situation, but here's what gets under my skin -- those folks in marketing? They're not entirely wrong.

As a rookie bookseller, I bridled every time Cammie, the owner, sighed and turned down a new book because it was about non-white people. C'mon, this is the 21st century, right? The store was in an educated, affluent neighborhood, not a den of Rednecks. The vast majority of our customers were thoughtful, reasonable people. And yet...

Time and again, I watched as the few books with black covers we did stock got passed over entirely by white customers. In fact they got hardly a glance, much less a leaf-through. Now and then, I'd test the waters and hand someone a picture book with a black face on the cover, with two basic results:

Customer A reads the book and maybe actually buys it. Yay, right? Sort of. Remember, it was as if these people couldn't even *see* the black book until I handed it to them.

Customer B gives the book a cursory browse, then a non-committal "nah" or shake of the head. And somehow, I'd know. They'd skirt eye contact, or turn just a little extra casually toward another *coughwhitercough* cover.

On a couple occasions, I sought revenge on Customer B by asking in my most innocent, helpful bookseller voice, Can you tell me what is it about that story that doesn't appeal to you? So I can help you find a better fit?

You should have seen these people battling the urge to squirm. Whether or not their initial reaction to the book was subconscious, my gentle prodding clearly forced the issue to the surface, and not one of them could bring themselves to admit why they were turning down my suggestion. And pardon my sadism, but I quietly reveled in their discomfort.

Let me be perfectly clear: these were never people an uninvolved observer would brand as racist. They wouldn't have cringed if a black person walked in the door, and they certainly would never forbid their children from reading about people with brown or black skin. For that matter, I'll bet they'd have been genuinely shocked and offended by the very idea. But somewhere way down in a whole lot of those same white people, there's a latent feeling that non-whites are, well, just...not like us. To the extent that the notion of giving a white child a book with someone of color on the cover either makes them ill at ease or catches them by surprise entirely.

That's why I tend to straddle the fence when it comes to the idea that the whole black-covers-don't-sell theory is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It doesn't help that publishers feed into this phenomenon, and I'm sure not going to sit here and say Bloomsbury made a good decision with the cover of Liar. Of course, more black readers would buy more books if they saw their own likenesses on the front. (I once had a good, frank talk with a frustrated black mom on this very topic.) But as much as I'd like to see the end of white-washed covers, putting more black and brown faces on dust jackets probably isn't going to solve the real problem.

This business with Liar is pretty blatant, so in conclusion I'm wondering how you, gentle readers, feel about the more subtle disparity on the cover of Gail Carson Levine's fantasy, Ever, which I lamented here over a year ago?

******************

Currently reading:

Faith, Hope, and Ivy June

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

pssst!

The Revise-O-Meter is on the rise again. Keep your fingers crossed.

ANYTHING BUT TYPICAL, by Nora Raleigh Baskin

ANYTHING BUT TYPICAL
by Nora Raleigh Baskin

(Simon & Schuster)

Lately, I've been cultivating an attitude about the preponderance of characters in fiction who love writing and/or dream of becoming writers themselves. I hereby make an exception for Jason Blake of Anything But Typical. Is it because he's autistic? Not exactly. Is it because his voice is unique? To some extent. Or is it because he posts his original stories on a fanfic website instead of toting around a beloved poetry notebook? You bet your sweet patootie.

Yup, that's all it took to keep my eyes from rolling at yet another character with literary ambitions. Jason's deliberate, logical, and web-savvy approach to his writing put a new spin on the stereotype and won me over. Add to that short chapters, and the fact that I find the autistic point of view endlessly fascinating, and it's no wonder the pages turned so effortlessly.

(Plot summary, first chapter excerpt and so forth here.)

**********************
Currently reading:

Afterby Amy Efaw

State of the TBR pile

Finished:

The Princess and the Goblin, by George MacDonald

Going Under, by Kathe Koja

The Chosen One, by Carol Lynch Williams

Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck (audio)

Operation Yes, by Sara Lewis Holmes

Next:

After, by Amy Efaw

Faith, Hope, and Ivy June, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Gloating

That's me with Kathe Koja, just after she finished speaking to Oakland University's Authors and Illustrators Art & Craft class, and just before we got treated to a tasty lunch at Mind, Body & Spirits.

If you're into kidlit and live anywhere near Rochester Michigan, you should get your tushie into this class. Take a look at this year's lineup.

*****************

Currently reading:

Operation Yes
by Sara Lewis Holmes

Poetry Friday

For Poetry Friday this week, you should go to the HarperCollins website and have yourself a virtual browse through this:

Once I Ate a Pie

by Patricia MacLachlan and Emily MacLachlan Charest

(click here, or on the cover or the title)

Think of me when you get to Mr. Beefy, the cover model. (I'm dog-sitting for Hugo the pug. And Sadie the I-dunno-what, who is very like Dug in Disney's "Up," personality-wise.)

Art Saves!

In celebration of Cecil Castellucci & Jim Rugg's The Plain Janes, Little Willow invited me to take part in the Readergirlz Art Saves! project -- to create or display an image of how art affects us. Here's my booksy-artsy story...

Once upon a time, I shelved books five nights a week at the little library down the street. Down in the children's room where I spent most of my time, there was a book called Jon O.: A Special Boy. I'm not sure why its spine ever caught my eye, except that it was so euphemistic and dated. And also, so rarely checked out that it was something of a landmark on the shelves -- to the extent that I remember my co-worker, Alisha, making a Vanna White-style presentation of shelving it one day.

But the cover had this irresistible picture of Jon O. himself flashing a look-at-me grin. The book's since been discarded and I can't find an image of the cover online, which is a shame, because if you could see that, you'd understand why this face, smiling down at me from the art showcase stopped me dead in the middle of the hallway one day at school:

"You painted Jon O!" I gushed to Alisha the next time I saw her at work.

"You saw him!"

You bet I did. And somehow I hinted and wheedled so effectively that before Alisha left for college the next year, she gave me Jon O. He grins from just inside my bedroom doorway to this day. Look at me, Jon O's face says. And how can I resist?

(Oh, and Alisha? Nowadays, Alisha's designing her own line of clothing in New York.)

***********************
Currently reading:

Going Under
by Kathe Koja

DAYS OF LITTLE TEXAS, by R.A. Nelson

DAYS OF LITTLE TEXAS
by R.A. Nelson

(Knopf)

Orphaned by a meth lab fire at six...a faith healer and evangelist preacher at ten...by sixteen, Ronald Earl "Little Texas" Pettway finds himself haunted by doubts. And, maybe, the ghost of a girl he couldn't heal. When his aunt orchestrates a revival on the grounds of a plantation so notorious the devil himself is said to have walked there in 1934, the stage is set for a show of faith like no other. Come one, come all...

A swirl of the surreal wound through this tale, coyly leading me from evangelism to ghosts to devilment with nary a whisper of disbelief; meanwhile, short chapters conspired to pull me further and further in until there was no escape. There's also an oddly appealing air of electricity and decay surrounding most every character but Little Texas himself, to the extent that readers who savored Lesley M.M. Blume's creepy-gothic Tennyson should feel right at home. In this case, however, the sophistication and weight of the story teeter much more precariously along the thin line between YA and adult.

State of the TBR pile

Finished:

Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins

Tom's Midnight Garden, by Philippa Pearce

Palace Beautiful, by Sarah deFord Williams

The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck (audio)

Next:

The Chosen One, by Carol Lynch Williams

Operation Yes, by Sara Lewis Holmes

After, by Amy Efaw

*****************

Currently reading:

The Princess and the Goblin
by George MacDonald

Romanov photo-glory

Um, does anyone else go all tingly at the thought of seeing HUNDREDS of newly scanned photos of the last tsar of Russia and his family? Because thanks to the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library, you too can spend 90 minutes emitting amazed mewlings and whimpers at the sight of all the goodies in here:

1907-1908 photo album of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna
1914-1916 photo album of Tsar Nicholas II

Two techinical hints:
1. Make sure you've got MS Silverlight installed.

2. When you get to the Russian sites, click on the red text next to this little icon to actually see the photos:

(That's "foto" in Russian. It's on the lower left of the screen, and if you're lucky, it might even be in English.)

Then sit back and bask in the wonderment. I was up until nearly 3 am the other night...

Incidentally

Today is:

• Miss Spitfire's second anniversary
• my godson's third birthday
• the day my grandpa gets released from the hospital

In the immortal words of Ron White's bulldog, Sluggo, "It's gonna be a good day, Tater."

Poetry Friday

Lines On A Young Lady's Photograph Album

At last you yielded up the album, which
Once open, sent me distracted. All your ages
Matt and glossy on the thick black pages!
Too much confectionery, too rich:
I choke on such nutritious images.

My swivel eye hungers from pose to pose --
In pigtails, clutching a reluctant cat;
Or furred yourself, a sweet girl-graduate;
Or lifting a heavy-headed rose
Beneath a trellis, or in a trilby-hat

(Faintly disturbing, that, in several ways) --
From every side you strike at my control,
Not least through those these disquieting chaps who loll
At ease about your earlier days:
Not quite your class, I'd say, dear, on the whole.

But o, photography! as no art is,
Faithful and disappointing! that records
Dull days as dull, and hold-it smiles as frauds,
And will not censor blemishes
Like washing-lines, and Hall's-Distemper boards,

But shows a cat as disinclined, and shades
A chin as doubled when it is, what grace
Your candour thus confers upon her face!
How overwhelmingly persuades
That this is a real girl in a real place,

In every sense empirically true!
Or is it just the past? Those flowers, that gate,
These misty parks and motors, lacerate
Simply by being you; you
Contract my heart by looking out of date.

Yes, true; but in the end, surely, we cry
Not only at exclusion, but because
It leaves us free to cry. We know what was
Won't call on us to justify
Our grief, however hard we yowl across

The gap from eye to page. So I am left
To mourn (without a chance of consequence)
You, balanced on a bike against a fence;
To wonder if you'd spot the theft
Of this one of you bathing; to condense,

In short, a past that no one now can share,
No matter whose your future; calm and dry,
It holds you like a heaven, and you lie
Unvariably lovely there,
Smaller and clearer as the years go by.

~Philip Larkin

***********************
Currently reading:

Tom's Midnight Garden
by Philippa Pearce

CATCHING FIRE, by Suzanne Collins

CATCHING FIRE
by Suzanne Collins

(Scholastic Press)

I can tell you exactly three things about this book without spoiling it:

1. I'm shallow enough that I savored just *having* Catching Fire as much as I enjoyed actually reading it.

2. If you're tempted to be let down by the political domination of the plot in the first half, don't despair. The second 200 pages will nail you.

3. You know that sinking feeling you get when the chunk of pages left to read is getting skinnier and skinnier, but the action isn't winding down? And can't possibly wind down in the remaining 1/8 inch? Be prepared for that. (Especially if you're as great big a pouty-pants about cliffhanger endings as I am.)

The end.

(Available September 1. As if you aren't already counting the days.)

*****************

Currently reading:

Jerk, California
by Jonathan Friesen

HATE LIST, by Jennifer Brown

HATE LIST

by Jennifer Brown

(Little, Brown)

Five months ago, Valerie Leftman's boyfriend, Nick, opened fire on their school cafeteria. Shot trying to stop him, Valerie inadvertently saved the life of a classmate, but was implicated in the shootings because of the list she helped create. A list of people and things she and Nick hated. The list he used to pick his targets.

Now, after a summer of seclusion, Val is forced to confront her guilt as she returns to school to complete her senior year. Haunted by the memory of the boyfriend she still loves and navigating rocky relationships with her family, former friends and the girl whose life she saved, Val must come to grips with the tragedy that took place and her role in it, in order to make amends and move on with her life.

There's a sketchy line between the way things look and the way things are -- sketchy enough that it's not always easy to tell which side you're on. Hate List is real enough to make you sit up and wonder.

In middle school, I floated on the fringes of a crowd that would eventually become the loser-freaks. As time went by, their eyeliner, reading material, and boot soles all darkened. I stuck with them through V.C. Andrews and Depeche Mode, then drifted away when they began graduating to Anne Rice and Marlboros. If I hadn't bailed, would I have noticed if one of them blew a fuse and began crossing the line? Maybe. Like Valerie, could I have missed the the shift of their customary death-centered banter into something more ominous? Probably.

On the other hand, could I have found myself on the Hate List? Entirely possible. By high school I'd firmly entrenched myself in the Nobody in Particular clan, but I can remember laughing while some higher member of the food chain jacked up Jason Hills like it was some kind of indoor sport. Creepier yet, one girl I ate lunch with swore I'd tormented her little sister in elementary school, yet I don't have the slightest recollection. And when somebody finds their way to the edge, that's all it might take, really.

(Available in September)

State of the TBR pile

Finished:

Nobody's Family is Going to Change, by Louise Fitzhugh

The Teacher's Funeral, by Richard Peck (audio)

Poetry Friday

Escape is such a thankful Word
I often in the Night
Consider it unto myself
No spectacle in sight

Escape -- it is the Basket
In which the Heart is caught
When down some awful Battlement
The rest of Life is dropt --

'Tis not to sight the savior --
It is to be the saved --
And that is why I lay my Head
Upon this trusty word --

~Emily Dickinson

Summer road trips? Listen up!

Fact: I am a sucker for a good audiobook, especially in the car. They're capable of occupying both front- and backseat passengers, thereby making even long trips inexplicably enjoyable. They may even promote better gas mileage. (Honest to God -- I drive more slowly when I'm listening to a story than if I've got music playing.)

However, picking out a great story is only half the task. Imagine getting your paws on an audio edition of Catching Fire only to find out it's performed by...Fran Drescher. 'Nuff said?

Here, then, is a by-no-means-complete hodgepodge of audiobook narrators I l-o-v-e, LOVE. Some of them won me over by portraying a particular character just the way I imagined her in my mind. Others have a magical way of conveying the mood of a story. And a handful just have voices I find especially delicious. The starred titles are the performances that first seduced me, and the rest are recordings I was pretty geeked up to discover as I compiled my list:

Cherry Jones

The entire Little House series* by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Because of Winn-Dixie* by Kate DiCamillo

So B. It, by Sarah Weeks

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers

Graeme Malcolm

The Tale of Despereaux* by Kate DiCamillo

A Single Shard* by Linda Sue Park

The Scarecrow and His Servant, by Philip Pullman

Dylan Baker

The Grapes of Wrath* by John Steinbeck

The Teacher's Funeral* by Richard Peck

The Tiger Rising, by Kate DiCamillo

Scott Brick

In Cold Blood* by Truman Capote

Ender's Game, by Orson Scot Card

The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells

Tim Curry

Peter Pan* by J.M. Barrie

Peter Pan in Scarlet* by Geraldine McCaugherean

A Series of Unfortunate Events, by Lemony Snicket

Sabriel, by Garth Nix

Brendan Fraser (yes, Casey, that Brendan Fraser)

Dragon Rider, by Cornelia Funke

Patrick Stewart

A Christmas Carol* by Charles Dickens

The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis

Sissy Spacek

To Kill a Mockingbird* by Harper Lee

Jessica Almasy

the Clementine series* by Sara Pennypacker (my parents are Clementine fans because of these recordings)

Rules, by Cynthia Lord

Shooting the Moon, by Frances O'Roark Dowell

Lois Smith

A Year Down Yonder* by Richard Peck

John McDonough

The Van Gogh Cafe* by Cynthia Rylant

Poppy, by Avi (and its sequels)

the Mr. Putter and Tabby series, by Cynthia Rylant

the Freddy series, by Walter R. Brooks

Misty of Chincoteague, by Marguerite Henry

George Guidall

The Chocolate War* by Robert Cormier

The House with a Clock in its Walls* by John Bellairs

Night* by Eli Wiesel

Something Upstairs* by Avi

Call it Courage* by Armstrong Sperry

The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm, by Nancy Farmer

the Henry and Mudge series, by Cynthia Rylant

(and half a hojillion other books for adults and kids)

Honorable mentions for authors who can read their own work: Bill Bryson, Chris Crutcher, Robert Fulghum, and E.B. White. (Most authors shouldn't read *anybody's* work aloud, let alone their own.)

An unexpected quirk about Jim Dale, the Grammy-winning dude who does such a fan-freaking-tabulous job of reading the Harry Potter books: Dale is darn near unsurpassed at creating and maintaining unique voices for even the most vast cast of characters, but he's not so hot at livening up the longer narrative passages you find in old-school classics like Peter Pan, or A Christmas Carol. Turn to the likes of Tim Curry and Patrick Stewart for that task.

*******************

Currently reading:

Catching Fire
by Suzanne Collins