THE MAGICIAN'S ELEPHANT, by Kate DiCamillo

THE MAGICIAN'S ELEPHANT
by Kate DiCamillo

(Candlewick)

If you were feeling pedantic, you might call the plot outlandish instead of fantastical. You might be tempted to fuss about not getting a detailed portrait of every character. But if you did, you'd be missing the point.

This story has the aura of a folktale about it, with its impossibilities and matter-of-fact narration. Like a fairy tale, you don't holler nuh-uh! when an elephant crashes through the roof of the opera house; you don't feel deprived by the lack of immersion in the minutiae of each and every character's life. Instead, depth mixes with the superficial and surreal in just the right proportions. It's a little like an out of body experience, a little like a Tim Burton movie, and not much like anything Kate DiCamillo's written before.

That's why I like her so much. Never the same book twice, that Kate.

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

Currently reading:

The Rock and the River

by Kekla Magoon

State of the TBR pile

Finished:

The Magician's Elephant, by Kate DiCamilloLove is the Higher Law, by David LevithanLiar, by Justine LarbalestierThe Goodbye Season, by Marian Hale

Next week, I attempt to do as I'm told:

The Rock and the River, by Kekla Magoon

(because Helen Frost said I should)

Sabriel, by Garth Nix

(because Jackie Parker said I should)

And the most improved (paperback) cover of the year award goes to...

...Someone Named Eva, by Joan M. Wolf.

Hardcover:

Paperback:

Thank you, Clairion/Sandpiper!

Poetry Friday

A Great Need

Out of a great need

we are all holding hands

and climbing.

Not loving is a letting go.

Listen,

the terrain around here

is far too dangerous

for that.

~Hafiz

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

Currently reading:

The Goodbye Season
by Marian Hale

WIP update

Chapter 40, while not exactly vanquished, has finally become something I can stand the sight of. For the first time since, oh, MARCH.

Going to read now...

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

Currently reading:

Liar
by Justine Larbalestier

A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING, by Bill Bryson

A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING
by Bill Bryson

(Broadway Books)

The idea was to see if it isn't possible to understand and appreciate - marvel at, enjoy even - the wonder and accomplishments of science at a leve that isn't too technical or demanding, but isn't entirely superficial either.

Yes, it is eminently possible. If a self-proclaimed science-hater like me can whiz through nearly 500 pages from protons to hominids and like it, anybody can. The key: this is not a book rammed full of formulas, equations, and tedium. It's about people, and the brilliant, stumbling, sometimes accidental and/or lethal paths we've followed to in an attempt to educate ourselves about how we and the universe around us work. Bryson never forgets he's telling a story, not whacking you over the head with a parade of facts, and he's got a heckuva knack for putting numbers and concepts of cosmic proportions into language the average lunk can wrap his head around:

Our own attempts to penetrate toward the middle [of the Earth] have been modest indeed.... If the planet were an apple, we wouldn't yet have broken the skin.

I can't remember the last time I've been so simultaneously bemused and informed on such a vast scale. And now I can proudly proclaim, I have a clue. (Mrs. Morr would be so proud.)

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

Love is the Higher Law
by David Levithan

State of the TBR pile

Finished:

The Unfinished Angel, by Sharon Creech

Charles and Emma, by Deborah Heiligman

Next week:

Love is the Higher Law, by David Levithan

The Goodbye Season, by Marian Hale

The Magician's Elephant, by Kate DiCamillo

STITCHES, by David Small

STITCHES
by David Small

(W.W. Norton & Co.)

First I read the words, and I said, "Wow." Then I re-read the pictures, and...what was left to say?

As much as the story, the art is bleak and often disturbing, yet fascinating -- like David and his brother huddled over the forbidden images in their father's medical books, you can't look away. Perhaps because converting emotions into words is essentially a process of translation, while images (especially images like these) forge a much more direct connection between artist and audience. The emotion is laid plain in the brush strokes themselves, with little need for explanation or description.

We talk sometimes about getting inside a character's head, or reaching the heart of a story. Instead, Small's memoir goes straight to the gut, so that reading Stitches actually feels different from reading other books. With its economy of words, it forces the reader to process the images into language, leaving you momentarily speechless. And is there any more just reaction to the story of a boy who lost - and then found - his own voice?

Poetry Friday

A Lady Who Thinks She Is Thirty

Unwillingly Miranda wakes,
Feels the sun with terror,
One unwilling step she takes,
Shuddering to the mirror.

Miranda in Miranda's sight
Is old and gray and dirty;
Twenty-nine she was last night;
This morning she is thirty.

Shining like the morning star,
Like the twilight shining,
Haunted by a calendar,
Miranda is a-pining.

Silly girl, silver girl,
Draw the mirror toward you;
Time who makes the years to whirl
Adorned as he adored you.

Time is timelessness for you;
Calendars for the human;
What's a year, or thirty, to
Loveliness made woman?

Oh, Night will not see thirty again,
Yet soft her wing, Miranda;
Pick up your glass and tell me, then--
How old is Spring, Miranda?

~ Ogden Nash

(And yes, I am. Today, in fact, and taking it better than Miranda -- so far.)

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

Nothing But Ghostsby Beth Kephart

Unsolicited writing tip of the day

Reason #865 to eschew adverbs:

Adverbs sound downright ridiculous in audiobooks. There's no reason to make an actor say "angrily" after he's finished shouting the last sentence, you know?

NOBODY'S FAMILY IS GOING TO CHANGE, by Louise Fitzhugh

NOBODY'S FAMILY IS GOING TO CHANGE
by Louise Fitzhugh

(FSG)

I'm not sure if there's a polite way to say this, so I'm not even going to try: Louise Fitzhugh had balls. I ask you, who else could get away with a character calling her 7-year-old brother "faggot" on page two of a middle grade novel? Here's the setup:

He may be "only" seven, but Willie already knows right down to his toenails that he wants to be a dancer more than anything in the world. His older sister, Emma, aspires to be a trial attorney, and couldn't care less about her little brother's dreams. However, their bigshot lawyer father is far less than thrilled with both their plans. When Willie inadvertently auditions for a Broadway show, the dominoes begin stacking and falling in ways neither Willie nor Emma could have anticipated.

Things learn toward didacticism near the end, and there's more telling (as opposed to showing) than I usually care for in a novel, but geeze Louise, the righteous indignation these obtuse parents provoked in me trumped all of that. I can't remember the last time I wanted to shake two imaginary people by their shirtfronts so badly. And as always with Louise Fitzhugh, the unflinching keenness of the kids' personalities makes for a no-nonsense story that bites back.

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

Currently reading:

The Unfinished Angel

by Sharon Creech

State of the TBR pile

I read a lot this week! My ears helped a lot:

Shakespeare: The World as Stage, by Bill Bryson (audio)

The Willoughbys, by Lois Lowry (audio)

A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson

Buddha Boy, by Kathe Koja (audio)

Stitches, by David Small

Next:

The Unfinished Angel, by Sharon Creech

The Goodbye Season, by Marian Hale

Love is the Higher Law, by David Levithan

Nothing But Ghosts, by Beth Kephart

Recommendations for Grandma

This is my grandma. She's 85 and has Alzheimer's, but in spite of her short term memory issues I've noticed she can follow the 25-minute plot of an I Love Lucy episode well enough to laugh at jokes near the end of the show that depend on context from the beginning. Considering how much she used to read herself, it seems like she might enjoy being read to now, and I'm betting she'd be able to hang in there for the length of a chapter -- so long as she doesn't have to retain the plot from one reading to the next. Hence, the episodic element. Single short stories and upper el picture books might also work, but I suspect if she could become familiar with a recurring cast of characters (as she's done with the Ricardos and the Mertzes) it would free up even more of her brain power to concentrate on the story. Which means that a series of episodic books would be ideal.

So far I've come up with:

Tomie dePaola's 26 Fairmount Avenue series

Richard Peck's Grandma Dowdell novels

Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books

More?

AFTER, by Amy Efaw

AFTER

by Amy Efaw

(Viking)

I’ve been known to grumble now and then about third person present tense narration. For me, that particular combination often accentuates the sense of outside-looking-in, and I end up feeling a curious detachment from the characters — more like an out of body experience than a vicarious one.

However.

In the wake of giving birth alone and dumping the newborn in a trash can, Devon disengages so fully from the world that my usual gripes about this point of view actually harmonize with Devon’s state of mind. The distance, in this case, works to the story’s advantage. For ages, you just can’t figure Devon out, and it’s because Amy Efaw only gradually lets you into her character’s head. The resulting intrigue tinged with frustration keeps the pages whipping along. Meanwhile, you'll never be at a loss for the physical sensations of Devon's environment, from the couch where the cops find her to the rubberized mattress of her cell.

(Available TODAY)

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

A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson

State of the TBR pile

Much to my consternation, I ditched three different novels this week, only managing to read one book all the way to the end:

Angry Management

by Chris Crutcher

So next week, I figure if I only read one book, I might as well take a shot at making it an impressive accomplishment:

A Short History of Nearly Everything

by Bill Bryson

He has not so much brain as ear wax

I'd like to think that both Holling Hoodhood and Alvin Ho's dad have copies of this on their bookshelves:

Shakespeare's Insults: Educating Your Wit

by Wayne F. Hill and Cynthia J. Ottchen

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

Currently reading:

A Difficult Boyby M.P. Barker

Poetry Friday

Woman Work

I've got the children to tend
The clothes to mend
The floor to mop
The food to shop
Then the chicken to fry
The baby to dry
I got company to feed
The garden to weed
I've got shirts to press
The tots to dress
The can to be cut
I gotta clean up this hut
Then see about the sick
And the cotton to pick.

Shine on me, sunshine
Rain on me, rain
Fall softly, dewdrops
And cool my brow again.

Storm, blow me from here
With your fiercest wind
Let me float across the sky
'Til I can rest again.

Fall gently, snowflakes
Cover me with white
Cold icy kisses and
Let me rest tonight.

Sun, rain, curving sky
Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone
Star shine, moon glow
You're all that I can call my own.

~ Maya Angelou

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

A Room on Lorelei Street
by Mary E. Pearson

Familiar faces -- for the first time

You know how every so often I run across a rare batch of Romanov family photos I've never seen and go berserk? It's just as good when it happens in my own family. Behold, from the back of Grandma's closet:

Grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great grandparents galore. There's even a triple-great in there -- can you find her? That dashing doughboy in the center? That's my great-grandpa Thompson, in probably the sixth (and certainly youngest) photo I've ever seen of him. Or how about that itsy-bitsy photo of my grandma right beside it, sporting a pose that immediately brought to mind the cover of Anne Frank: Beyond the Diary.* In the upper right corner, a photo of the family farm before it was in the family. An 8x10 hand-colored portrait of my great-aunt, Alice, in her twenties.

A whole pile of history, there.

Oh, and just the other day someone gave my grandpa a photo of his mother's 1914 high school basketball team. (Don't have a copy of my own yet, though.) Did you even know girls played basketball in 1914? In skirts, yet.

*speaking of Anne Frank, today is August 4th** the 65th anniversary of the Gestapo's raid on the Secret Annex and the arrest of the Franks and their four companions.

**speaking of August 4th, today is also the birthday of bookstore buddy Linda Brick, which I once overlooked in a rather extravagant manner and vowed never to forget again.

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

Angry Management
by Chris Crutcher

WHEN YOU REACH ME, by Rebecca Stead

WHEN YOU REACH ME
by Rebecca Stead

(Wendy Lamb/Random House)

Fact: I am scared of plotting. Which is why I've been sissily sticking to the ready-made plots of historical fiction in my own books, and why I go downright berserk when I read a story with such a clever, concise plot as this one. Everything, and I mean everything, counts in this book.

Now, because everyone's lobbing stars at When You Reach Me, I was braced for one of those profound, grandly composed exemplars of children's literature. But you know what? Instead, it's a perfect delight, written with an agile hand, a dose of intrigue, and a stealthy punch of emotion.

As the official synopsis will tell you, things in Miranda's neighborhood start to unravel, and then get downright mysterious when a quartet of anonymous notes foretelling the future creep into her life. But that's nothing compared to how the loose pieces (and a few more besides) all work themselves back together in the end.

And by the way, I FIGURED OUT THE TWIST. Me, all by myself. (Actually, I only figured out the big twist. There were a couple extra ones to keep me from getting too big for my britches.)

Read a smidgeon here and try to resist.

State of the TBR pile

Finished:

Hold Still, by Nina LaCour

(Also, still working my way through a preliminary draft of a Romanov-related manuscript by Greg King and Penny Wilson.)

Next:

A Room on Lorelei Street, by Mary E. Pearson

Burned, by Ellen Hopkins

A Difficult Boy, by M.P. Barker

NOTES FROM THE DOG, by Gary Paulsen

NOTES FROM THE DOG
by Gary Paulsen

(Wendy Lamb Books/Random House)

"Sometimes having company is not all it's cracked up to be." Fifteen-year-old Finn is a loner, living with his dad and his amazing dog, Dylan. This summer he's hoping for a job where he doesn't have to talk to anyone except his pal Matthew. Then Johanna moves in next door. She's 10 years older, cool, funny, and she treats Finn as an equal. Dylan loves her, too. Johanna's dealing with breast cancer, and Matthew and Finn learn to care for her, emotionally and physically. When she hires Finn to create a garden, his gardening ideas backfire comically. But Johanna and the garden help Finn discover his talents for connecting with people.

Two things you need to know about this book:

1. It's by Gary Paulsen

2. I've never seen an ending that is so merciful, yet not a cop-out.

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

Currently reading:

Angry Managementby Chris Crutcher