books

I’ve decided I like my poetry the way I like my movies. Imagery and abstractions are fine, but I need something concrete to grasp, too. Humor is great, but only if it’s clever and not the same joke over and over. I like to think, but I don’t want to leave wondering what the heck just happened.

These things all sound obvious when I read them over, but too often when I read poetry I find myself bored, confused, and/or generally wondering what the fuss is about. So it’s a great pleasure when I find poetry that speaks to me.

I initially picked up Black Stars in a White Night Sky, by JonArno Lawson, because I liked the cover. Sherwin Tija’s graphic novel-ish illustrations are sprinkled throughout, too. (However, I'm ambivalent on what, if anything, they add to the reading experience.)

Once I opened it, I was hooked from the very first poem, “An Adventure Begins.” It does for this collection what Shel Silverstein’s lovely “Invitation” does for Where the Sidewalk Ends. It thrillingly beckons the reader onward, deeper into the book.

…When the smooth surface pops up with circling fins,
when soft drums surrender to bold violins,
when the light of the moon starts to shine on our skins,

an adventure begins.

Lawson’s poems are rife with word play: distinctive rhymes, phrases that turn back on themselves, tongue twisters. They demand to be read aloud. Many of the poems seem to have been written for the express purpose of delighting the ear, but the ones I liked most had thoughtful, sometimes serious, undercurrents touching on identity and the trials of growing up.

There’s “Water Waltz,” about a moment of elation before a dive, self-consciousness forgotten, and “There’s a Worm,” about the insecurities that eat at us from the inside out. “In the Time That It Takes” muses how quickly and devastatingly life can change. I love “The Old Man’s Lie,” with its supposition that even the most outrageous story can light us inside with belief, perhaps inspiration, and “Deer,” about—well, I should stop saying what these poems are “about.” I like too many of them to list, and it’s best left to the reader to decide their meaning.

Lawson also just sticks in some plain old jokes. I felt about eight years old laughing over “Eat a Duck,” which needs only a catchy tune to make it the perfect commercial jingle for, well, eating ducks. (It’s still in my head.) “Handsome Prince” turns the trope of the handsome prince kissing the sleeping princess firmly, delightfully on its head. “Humpty Dumpty” imagines a far different fate for our old egg friend than the usual.

As a collection, Black Stars in a White Night Sky succeeds because of its variety. It doesn’t stick strictly to the word play or strictly to imagery, to humor or seriousness. Audience-wise, I’d suggest it for upper middle grade readers. Many of the silly poems will appeal to younger readers, and some will speak to adults, but over all the content and sophistication puts it around fifth grade and up, for readers who have “graduated” from Jack Prelutsky.

Catch this week's Poetry Friday round-up at Semicolon!

(What is Poetry Friday, you ask? Start your discovery here.)

Our last day in London, we went up in the London Eye, a/k/a Millennium Wheel. My first exposure to this gigantic observation wheel was in the 2005 come-back episode of Doctor Who, at which point I had no idea it was anything other than your run-of-the-mill Ferris wheel.

The original Ferris wheel, built for the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, had a 264-foot diameter wheel and 36 cars, each of which could carry a whopping 60 people. Today’s wheel at Navy Pier has a paltry 150-foot diameter. It practically looks like a miniature.

In contrast, the London Eye—built for the turn of the millennium, originally intended to stand five years, but so popular it will remain indefinitely—has a 443-foot diameter. It is freaking huge. Around the wheel are 32 sealed pods, transparent except for the floor, each of which accommodates 25 passengers. It rotates so slowly and smoothly—30 minutes per rotation—that from a distance it appears not to be moving at all. It’s right next to the Thames, across from Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, but you can see for miles in all directions.

This is all to say that when I returned to the library after my vacation and found The London Eye Mystery, by Siobhan Dowd, on our cart of new books, I was wicked excited.

Aunt Gloria and Cousin Salim are visiting Ted’s family in London for a few days before moving to America. Ted and his older sister, Kat, are expected to entertain Salim. Unfortunately, their very first activity is a bust. Salim gets into a London Eye capsule, and Ted and Kat watch it make its majestic way around. But half an hour later, when the capsule opens, Salim is nowhere in sight.

How could Salim have vanished from a sealed, transparent capsule with so many witnesses? And where has he gone? The police are on the case, but Ted and Kat have a few theories of their own. Will they find Salim before it’s too late?

My usual complaint about middle grade mysteries is that their solutions are either totally obvious from the beginning (at least, to an adult reader) or are completely obscure and fly in from out of nowhere. Where those mysteries fail, The London Eye succeeds, allowing readers to gradually pick up clues throughout the book and formulate reasonable hypotheses along with the characters. Even if readers don’t guess the solution before Ted reveals it, they’ll recognize the pieces were in place all along.

Dowd accomplishes this feat by keeping very close to Ted, driving the novel at least as much by character as by plot. Ted is quirky but likeable, a high-functioning Aspie with a “brain that runs on a different operating system from other people’s.” Like many people with autism spectrum conditions, he has a great eye for detail, a tendency to take everything literally, and difficulty reading people’s emotions. He’s also obsessed with the weather, well-meaning, and a sweet contrast to his prickly (but grudgingly likeable) sister Kat. Throughout the course of the story, Ted exchanges some of his innocence for worldliness, goes out of his comfort zone for Salim’s sake, and makes new friends.

One of my favorite, albeit serious, parts of the book is when Ted’s father goes to the morgue to see if a boy pulled from the river is Salim. Ted is waiting at home. “Something terrible happened in those fifty-four minutes. No amount of making up shipping forecasts could stop me from thinking about it. Death. I realized it was real.” Ted lapses into deep thoughts about his mortality, infinity, and God. I’ll bet you a dollar Frank and Joe Hardy never have.

The London Eye Mystery, being a British mystery with an autistic main character, invites obvious comparisons with Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. In spite of the surface similarities, it’s no rip-off but a solid work in its own right, with an upper middle grade/early YA rather than YA/adult audience. Recommended for boys and girls in middle school and up.

It's been a very good couple of weeks, reading-wise. These are two of my favorites, both excellent graphic novels for adults and teens.

Life Sucks, by Jessica Abel, Gabe Soria, and Warren Pleece (First Second, 2008)

What if vampires weren’t the romantic figures of legend: rich, beautiful, and powerful? What if they were ordinary people with “regular crappy jobs”?

That’s the question Dave poses to his vampire-wannabe crush Rosa, and he ought to know. Transformed (and therefore enslaved) by a Romanian, poker-playing sleazebag vampire named Radu, Dave is doomed to spend the rest of eternity as night manager at the Last Stop convenience store, rotating hotdogs and selling blood orange juice to the nightly crowd of vegetarian goths.

Dave endures all the drawbacks of being a vampire (can’t endure sunlight or regular food) but enjoys none of the perks. He’s the same shy, gawky geek as ever, and his work uniform isn’t exactly a chick magnet. Because he refuses to kill, drinking only expired plasma, he can’t cash in on powers like super-strength, hypnotism, and turning to mist. How can he possibly compete for Rosa’s affection?

Life Sucks is Clerks meets Dracula meets Better Off Dead, in all the best possible ways. Winning characters, hilarious dialogue, strong writing, and top-notch art make this a graphic novel you won’t want to miss. Highly recommended for teens and adults.

More Links
Bookshelves of Doom reviews Life Sucks.

Skim, by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki (Groundwood, 2008)

In this quiet, poignant coming-of-age story, high schooler Kim (called Skim because she’s so often overlooked) comes to grip with Life in the wake of a fellow teen’s suicide.

Kim struggles with many familiar teen concerns. She seeks to define her identity through her diary and exploration of goth culture and Wicca. Her best friend, Lisa, seems to be drifting away. Kim’s hopelessly in love with her English teacher, Ms. Archer (significantly complicated by Ms. Archer seeming to reciprocate). She feels terribly out of place among the phonies at her all-girls school, all of whom seem to think she's suicidal just because she's different and on the morose side.

What makes this book so special is the fine storytelling and gorgeous, brushy illustrations. The characters are sympathetic and fully realized, and the writing is beautifully spare with plenty of wry humor. Again, highly recommended for teens and adults.

More Links
Belletristic Impressions interviews Mariko Tamaki.

The other day, I looked at my library's New Junior High Books shelf for poetry books and noticed everything on-shelf was based on historical figures or events! An interesting trend. The younger set gets kitties, doggies, and dragons. The older kids get Birmingham, 1963, The Brothers' War: Civil War Voices in Verse, and Frida: ¡Viva la Vida! = Long Live Life!

Which is, it turns out, a really lovely book. Carmen T. Bernier-Grand draws on Frida Kahlo's life story and highly autobiographical paintings to give a personal, poetic voice to Kahlo's timultuous life. Kahlo told her story through her art, over and over, but the symbolism is lost on the average spectator. Bernier-Grand selects details from the paintings--which are printed along-side the poems--to elucidate, putting them in the context of Kahlo's strained family life, life-altering bus accident, rocky marriage with muralist, Diego Rivera, and burgeoning career as a painter.

In my college Intro to Psychology class, I wrote a term paper about artists Frida Kahlo's, Vincent Van Gogh's, and Egon Schiele's concentration on self-portraiture. I'm sure it was terrible. As I recall, the literature I found had very Freudian explanations for this. In Kahlo's case, Bernier-Grand puts forth a much simpler explanation: because Kahlo was so-often bed-ridden, her self was a natural subject for painting. All she needed was a mirror.

I'm not a huge reader of poetry to judge, but to me the verse by itself seems competent but not stick-in-your-brain-and-heart. However, between the poems, the paintings, and the biographical sketch and timeline in the end notes, Frida: ¡Viva la Vida! = Long Live Life! could nearly stand on its own as a "biography book" for junior high readers. As it is, it's a handsome, well-researched introduction to a fascinating and sympathetic figure from 20th century art history.

Meanwhile, in the online world, PBS has a spectacular online exhibit on Kahlo's life and work, including interviews and educational guides. The site was put together in conjuction with the airing of Amy Stechler's film The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo. Definitely worth checking out!

This week's Poetry Friday round-up is hosted by Sarah Reinhard at Just Another Day of Catholic Pondering. Go take a gander!

I love gritty speculative fiction, even though it has a tendency to give me bad dreams. The scenarios lie on the borders of the realm of possibility, just a little too close for comfort and utterly gripping. So, of course I picked up The Compound, by S. A. Bodeen.

Eli Yanakakis’s billionaire father has always warned the family about the possibility of nuclear war, the need to disappear underground when the bombs hit. On Eli’s ninth birthday, that time comes. The whole family flees to the state-of-the-art bunker Mr. Yanakakis has prepared for them in eastern Washington—the whole family except Gram and Eli’s twin brother Eddy.

Six years later, Eli is wracked with guilt and starting to worry for himself and the rest of his family. There’s no way their food supply is going to last the whole fifteen years needed to survive a nuclear winter, and Mr. Yanakakis is behaving strangely. He’s the only one with the code to the exit. What else is he hiding from Eli and his family?

This page-turner is packed not only with mystery and action, but also plenty of fodder for discussion. I could easily see it being a teen or parent/son book group selection for junior high age and up.

One quibble.

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So, the big reveal is that Eli’s family is actually trapped in the bunker on Mr. Yanakakis’s whim. One, of course, wants to know why. The father in The Mosquito Coast drags his family to Central America because he despises American culture. The father in The Poisonwood Bible refuses to evacuate his family from the Congo because he’s on a mission from God. Their obsessions distort their reasoning, pushing it over the edge into the realm of insanity, but everything they do still makes sense in its own scary way.

Bodeen gives Mr. Yanakakis his reasons, too, but I couldn’t quite buy them. Making a bunker prototype to sell for gazillions of dollars? A little nuts, but okay: greediness is a fine motivator. Trapping your family inside it to spend quality time with them? Again, crazy, but family values are a good motivator, too. But it doesn’t make sense to challenge your spoiled kids to be “brave and determined” by locking them in a bunker with a home theater, a gym, and other such niceties, then telling them they’ll have to eat their younger siblings or starve. What’s the motivation there? That’s just insanity talking, no logic behind it. That made the pay-off disappointing to me.

Still, as I said, there’s plenty to enjoy here and plenty to talk about. What I quibbled about above? Maybe it’s just me. I’d be interested to know what other people who have read it think.