Posts on 2007 favorites

Books Boys Like: There's Something About Everest

Lisa — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 16:26:15 -0800

The past ten years have seen a veritable avalanche of books about the world’s tallest mountain. Why the sudden interest? Is it because of National Geographic’s movie Everest, or the deadly climbing disaster of 1996 chronicled in Jon Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air? Or because 2003 was the fiftieth anniversary of Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary’s historic summit? Or because in that same year a 15-year-old girl named Ming Kipa set the new record for youngest person to summit? Whatever the reason, there is no shortage of books, for all age levels, about the dangerously fascinating mountain that is Everest.

One of my favorite books of 2007 is Peak, by Roland Smith (Harcourt, 2007). This well-written page-turner for junior high readers follows the adventures of Peak Marcello, the 14-year-old son of climbers. After getting caught free-climbing – and then tagging – skyscrapers in Manhattan, Peak is whisked off to Asia, where his father leads climbing expeditions on Everest. At first, Peak is thrilled at the chance to be the youngest person ever to summit, but he soon learns the task ahead is more difficult than he imagined.

I’m not talking about physical dangers; in fact, readers may be surprised that a relatively inexperienced climber such as Peak could make it as far as he does without much in the way of illness or injury. (Some other climbers in the expedition are forced to stop due to HAPE and other climbing-related afflictions.) But Smith compensates with a solid exploration of the political issues surrounding Mount Everest. The commercialization of Everest (Can anyone who can pay play?), Chinese control of Tibet, and the incredibly dangerous – and under-appreciated – work of Sherpa guides all get ample discussion.

In a similar vein is Gordon Korman’s fictional Everest series (The Contest, The Climb, The Summit – Scholastic, 2002), for readers grades 5 and up who enjoy a fast read.

True Books About Everest

Climbing Everest: Tales of Triumph and Tragedy on the World’s Highest Mountain, by Audrey Salkeld (National Geographic, 2003) –Children’s Literature calls these profiles of Everest’s most famous climbers “thrilling reading” for grades 4 and up.
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster, by Jon Krakauer (Villard, 1997) – This thick nonfiction page-turner has a lot of teen appeal.
To the Top of Everest, by Laurie Skreslet with Elizabeth MacLeod (Kids Can, 2001) – One of the first Canadians to summit offers his cheerful and photo-filled account for grades 3 and up.
To the Top: The Story of Everest, by Stephen Venables (Candlewick, 2003) – Photo-filled history of human interest in Everest, including the author’s personal summit story, for grades 4 and up.
Within Reach: My Everest Story, by Mark Pfetzer and Jack Galvin (Dutton, 1998) – A teen’s mountain-climbing diary, with special focus on the Everest disaster, for junior high on up.

Skin Hunger

Lisa — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:30:38 -0800

As of today, I’m in the unusual (for me) position of actually having read all the contenders for the National Book Award’s Literature for Young People category. I enjoyed all the nominees but thought Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was particularly deserving, so la-di-da. It wasn’t until this week, however, that I got around to reading Skin Hunger, by Kathleen Duey (Atheneum, 2007).

When I was a kid, I loved Ursula LeGuin’s The Tombs of Atuan. I eventually read other Earthsea books, but The Tombs of Atuan was the volume I kept plucking from the library shelf. In it, a little girl named Tenar is identified as the reborn high priestess to the Nameless Ones. She’s wrenched from her family and renamed Arha (“the eaten one”), and begins her isolated training. She spends much of her time in the labyrinth of the Tombs, which is where she eventually encounters the wizard Ged of A Wizard of Earthsea. I think what I loved most about the story was its bleakness: the stone, the darkness, the solitude. The horror of it gripped me in some masochistically pleasant way.

Well, in Skin Hunger, Duey takes bleakness to an even higher (lower?) level. It’s the first book of a series called A Resurrection of Magic, and, boy howdy, am I looking forward to the books that follow; please tell me there’s a happy ending somewhere?

In short, alternating chapters, Skin Hunger follows two main characters, in what turns out to be different times: a farm girl named Sadima and a lord’s son named Hahp. In Sadima’s time, the nearest thing to magic is the charlatan “magicians” peddling their snake oil in the marketplace. Every age is ruled by kings or by wizards, and now it’s an age of kings; magic is forbidden.

No one believes in Sadima’s ability to communicate with animals until a mysterious young man appears on her farm and invites her to join him in the far away city of Limòri. There, he and another young man named Somiss are trying to unlock the secrets of magic to bring health, wisdom, and peace to the land. That’s what Franklin tells Sadima, anyway. When she arrives in Limòri and meets chilling and single-minded Somiss, however, she begins to question whether the means outweigh the outcome.

Then there’s Hahp, scorned second son of a wealthy lord, sent to the wizarding academy in Limòri. Before you start envisioning jolly banquets and Quidditch matches, know this: the Academy is no Hogwarts. From Hahp’s arrival, he and his classmates are thrown into a dark, labyrinthine world where days and nights are meaningless (reminiscent of the Tombs of Atuan, actually), and literal starvation is the motivating factor to learn the seemingly impossible tasks the wizards set them. One of the ten boys will graduate to become a wizard – or none at all. And the boys are forbidden to help each other. Despair is always just around the corner.

While at first I found the very brief (three to seven pages) chapters maddening, the shift in point of view jolting, Duey ultimately pulls it off. The two storylines eventually converge, the events and themes of Hahp’s and Sadima’s stories informing the other’s as the tension rises. After a somewhat slow first fifty pages, Skin Hunger turned into a page-turner I could barely put down.

At the book’s close, Hahp’s story pauses on a note of hope and anticipation, Sadima’s on chilling inevitability. Meanwhile, many questions remain unanswered. I’d like to know what it is about Hahp that gives him his wizarding aptitude, and what Sadima’s special ability will amount to. And, of course, I can’t wait for a ray of sunshine. It’s going to be a difficult wait for Book Two.

At this point, I don’t think I have much to add to the conversation about the other NBA nominees, but I'd like to link to some good blog reviews found elsewhere. Read them and consider my opinion “ditto.”

Also, check out Cynsations' interview with Kathleen Duey about Skin Hunger!

Flora Segunda

Lisa — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 11:56:07 -0800

As I commented on Wizards Wireless, I’m terrible at predicting Newbery and Caldecott winners. First, for as many books as I read, there are countless that slip past me. Second, the books I’ve enjoyed most that past few years haven’t seemed to attract those shiny gold and silver stickers. Third, because I wait to read books until they’ve arrived at the library, I’m always lagging a bit in my reading of new books.

But since the end of the year is galumphing toward me all too fast, I figure I may as well start rounding up some of my personal favorites now. Not books I think are destined to win shiny stickers, necessarily, but ones I got a huge kick out of, just the same. Here’s the first:

Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), A House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and A Red Dog
By Ysabeau Wilce (Harcourt, 2007)

Though members of House Fyrdraaca always go into the military, Flora, approaching her fourteenth birthday, has no desire to follow in her General mamma’s footsteps. Instead she dreams of being a Ranger like her hero, the mythical Nini Mo, focusing less on fight and might than on magick, cunning, and survival skills. But when Flora uses her magickal essence to help Valefor, the banished Fyrdraaca Butler, regain his former power, she finds herself in trouble way over her head. And that’s only the beginning!

Once I got through the somewhat overwhelming prologue and first chapter (lots of names thrown around), I was utterly enchanted by this unique fantasy: its haunting magical setting, its unexpected twists and turns, its odd combination of the familiar and alien, the modern and ancient. It also had many bits that made me laugh out loud. For example, in one of my favorite scenes, a disguised Flora enters a bar and gruffly demands a beer, only to discover it’s actually an ice cream parlor.

What I liked best, however, was its distinctly American flavor. This is not done-over Arthurian or Scandinavian folklore. The story takes place in a country called Califa, in what seems to be an alternative San Francisco Bay Area. Califa has a rather strained relationship with Huitzil, its neighbor to the south – a nation ruled by, we are to believe, blood-thirsty Aztec-esque warriors. Wilce draws on Aztec and Native imagery in presenting their different style of magick, but doesn’t chain herself to their mythology. In Summerland, Michael Chabon aimed to write an American fantasy, drawing on various American legends, and the result was a ponderous, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink volume. In contrast, in Flora Segunda, Wilce has created a fresh setting, characters, and story that ultimately owe allegiance to, it would seem, no one.

I recommend Flora Segunda for readers grade 6 and up. Fans will eagerly await the second volume, Flora Redux, on its way in August 2008. Finally, in the interest of full disclosure: I met Wilce at the First Annual Kitlitosphere Conference, where she graciously accepted my effusive, yet stuttering, praise.

Some Online Interviews with Ysabeau Wilce:

BookPage - "It's easier sometimes to use real details than to make things up—I know an awful lot about 19th-century military culture, and rather than let all that useless knowledge go to waste, I figured I'd recycle it."

Cynsations - "...I wanted to try to capture the feeling that you have when you are kid and everything seems so super important, and yet the adults around you are oblivious to this. When you are a kid, everything can feel so super-charged, and yet as adults we forget this and figure that nothing in a kid's life can possibly be that important."

Robot Dreams

Lisa — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 15:59:53 -0700

Last year, Sara Varon came out with Chicken and Cat, an adorable wordless picture book. Now she has a new full-length wordless graphic novel out, called Robot Dreams. And, to put it briefly... it is freakin' adorable.

A shy, floppy-eared dog finds the solution to his loneliness when he orders a DIY robot kit through the mail. The two friends enjoy trips to the library, popcorn and TV movies... but a day at the beach ends tragically, when Robot rusts solid after a dip. When Dog returns to the beach a few days later, with his repair kit, he finds the beach has been closed for the season, a tall chain-link fence separating him from his friend.

In the months that follow, Dog looks for friendship with other assorted critters: ducks, anteaters, a penguin, and even a snowman. But each experience leaves Dog with a sense of loss. No one can replace his dear friend Robot. Meanwhile, Robot lies on the beach and dreams.

I don't want to give away more of the plot, so suffice it to say both Dog and Robot do find ways to cope with their loss. The ending is bittersweet but rings with truth.

Sara Varon infuses every character with incredible sweetness and emotion. Whether Dog is whipping his tail in excitement when the postman rings his buzzer, staring aghast at his anteater pals' favorite snack, glaring daggers at the back of a cat who had the audacity to dress as a robot for Halloween, or sitting mournfully on a park bench, your heart is right there with him.

Robot Dreams is a beautiful, heartfelt gem of a book. It may well be my favorite book of the year. If you're looking for a birthday or holiday gift for a friend, look no further. Or buy it for yourself. At the very least, borrow it from your local library. It's a treat for all ages.