Copyedits, BLARGH

If I ever start writing a book that includes vocabulary from a language with a non-latin alphabet, SHAKE ME BY MY SHIRTFRONT.


Motherofgod, I'm a Russian minor, and I can't tell you how much of the transliteration I've botched. Lemme tell you, in 400+ pages, there's a lot of room for botching.

Just when I think it's all sorted out, one more sneaky word pops up to throw me for a loop. For example, the Russian letter "Я" can be rendered correctly in English as "ya" or "ia." I picked "ia." Oh wait, except for when I spell dorogaya -- which I refuse to change, because dorogaia looks ridiculous and unpronouncable. If I want to keep my preferred spelling, then all my "ia" words and names (Obednia, prigoditsia, Rodzianko...) have to be converted to "ya."

Hence, I have been Find-and-Replacing for three hours.

And it's dawned on me that technically, if I follow this -ia/-ya rule, the two youngest grand duchesses' names should be spelled Mariya and Anastasiya.

NO NO NO I WON'T AND YOU CAN'T MAKE ME.

(I'm afraid to look at my character list now.)

Sunday grumble

Been doing a bit of reading on Laura Ingalls Wilder's portrayal of Native Americans in Little House on the Prairie, and if one more historian sees fit to remind me that "Wilder's genre was fiction -- and children's fiction at that," I'm going to blow a gasket.

Reds

You might recall that not long ago I was raving about Orson Scott Card's Seventh Son. Couldn't wait to read the sequel.

Well. Red Prophet has been on my nightstand for the better part of two weeks now, and I'm all the way up to...page 11. The thing is, I've been reading up on Native images and stereotypes in American culture -- mostly here and here -- and I must be starting to get it, because in less than a dozen pages the descriptions of the Indians in Red Prophet are turning me right off. Given the setting, I can't say the white characters' racism is inappropriate. It's probably accurate, and it may even turn out to be an integral element of the story. But for me, right at this moment, it's not much fun to wade through.

Those of you who've read the series -- should I stick with this installment? Are there going to be other perspectives to counterbalance Hooch's attitude toward the Reds?

KEEPER, by Kathi Appelt

KEEPER

by Kathi Appelt

illus. by August Hall

(Atheneum)

If I told you exactly what I liked best about this book, I'd spoil it for you in at least three different ways. Instead, I will be cagey, brief, and metaphorical -- probably maddeningly so:

If The Underneath was a ballad, Keeper is a pot of gumbo. So many flavors and combinations, some of them even a little audacious -- a girl who believes her mama is a mermaid? -- but so, so tasty when they're all simmered together.

Read it by the sea, or a lake -- like so:

(Or a puddle, if all else fails.)