Posts on middle grade

In this graphic novel by Hope Larson (Atheneum 2008), Abby—age 13 or so—is drawn to her late-arriving bunk mate, Shasta, who claims to have been struck by lightning. Problem is Shasta’s an all-around weirdo. She’s abrasive. She’s geeky. She has secrets. She’s scornful of Abby’s other more mainstream, boy-crazy friends. Sensitive Abby is torn between her old friends and her new geeky pals, made harder when Abby falls for Teal, a sweet, bespectacled Dungeon Master—and Shasta threatens to steal him away.

The art is gorgeous: bold, fluid lines, captivating, expressive characters. The story is realistic and compelling. I remember there was a flurry of favorable blog reviews for Larson’s Gray Horses two years ago, but the story left me nonplussed. Chiggers makes up it. There is some of Gray Horses’ whimsy in the mysterious sparks Shasta seems to attract, but the main focus is Abby’s struggle to navigate the treacherous waters of adolescent society and find happiness in herself. Recommended for middle school on up.

You can read a preview of Chiggers online at New York Magazine and an interview with Hope Larson at Comic Book Resources.

This slim and pretty volume showed up on our new book cart this morning. It's pretty on the inside, too! John Frank opens the world's junk drawers—the seashore, the attic, the flea market—and presents a poetic ode on each treasure he finds. The verses, written in formal rhyme and meter, are as spare, simple, and lovely as the items he considers.

In "Low Tide", the volume's opening verse, "...shells like broken lockets / Lie scattered on the sandy shore / Where the ocean empties its pockets." An abalone shell is "a melted rainbow cupped in pearl."

I enjoyed "A Trunk of Clothes," in which a child pawing through the attic discovers, initially disdains, and eventually delights in fashions of a bygone era:

Did people actually wear this stuff?
I ask myself as I pull out
a two-tone shoe, a fur-trimmed muff,

a hat that's so old fashioned
you would not be caught dead dressed in it...
but then, I glance behind me,
and...I wonder if...it just might fit.

Each poem is accompanied by a photograph by Ken Robbins. Some of them are sharp and detailed, but others appear to have been blown up too far, then blurred in Photoshop.

Overall, it's a tidy collection, particularly refreshing in its notion that poetry for kids doesn't have to be all wacky, all the time.

Find this week's Poetry Friday round-up at A Year of Reading!

It's Timeslip Tuesday again at Charlotte's Library, when Charlotte reviews time travel fiction for kids and invites others to do the same! Today I'd like to talk about one of my favorite books from childhood: Time Cat: The Remarkable Journeys of Jason and Gareth, by Lloyd Alexander.

Jason is an ordinary boy with, he thinks, an ordinary cat named Gareth. Until, that is, Jason wishes aloud that he had nine lives and Gareth speaks up! Cats don't really have nine lives, Gareth explains, but: "I can visit nine different lives. Anywhere, any time, any country, any century." What's more, he can take Jason, too.

Thus begins Jason and Gareth's rather whirlwind sampling of world history from a cat's and a boy's eye view. From Egypt in 2700 B.C.E. to America in 1775, the two adventure across every inhabited continent. They confront emperors, march in battle, face imprisonment, and lollygag with Leonardo da Vinci.

Meanwhile, Jason—and readers—learn about cats' role in the various cultures they visit. Cats in ancient Egypt are revered; those in medieval Germany are feared as creatures of the Devil. Some places they're regarded as good luck, other places bad; sometimes they're treated with affection, other times detested.

Time Cat is an unusual, entertaining, and informative middle grade adventure, much more light-hearted than Alexander's Prydain or Westmark sequences. What's more, it gets away from Alexander's plot and character formulas that have caused more than one person to ask: Why did Lloyd Alexander write the same book over and over again? Take a peek!

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.

Bestsellers aside, one of the most popular middle grade series at my library is Blue Balliett’s trilogy consisting of Chasing Vermeer, The Wright 3, and, most recently, The Calder Game. I hesitate to call it a mystery series, for the reasons J. L. Bell and friends state, though it does share some of the appeal of mysteries—i.e., mysterious things happen. They’ve also got an appealing intellectual slant, with their focus on great works of art; reading them, you feel like you’re painlessly learning something really cool. And while I’m not a huge fan myself, there’s no denying: the books are darn popular with the kids.

So, when they’ve gobbled those up and are looking for more, hand them Ghost Letters, by Stephen Alter (Bloomsbury, 2008).

Seventh grader Gil Mendelson-Finch has just been expelled from McCauley Prep and sent to live with his poet grandfather, Prescott, in the ancestral Finch home. Initially prepared to be bored out of his skull, Gil learns that Hornswoggle Bay (somewhere in New England) is anything but dull.

As a joke, Gil writes a message, puts it in the odd, blue bottle that washes up on shore, and throws it back into the ocean—only to have it return the next day with a letter from a boy named Sikander, who lived in the Indian province of Ajeebgarh in 1896! And that’s just the first in a series of strange occurrences. There’s also a putrid-smelling skeleton’s hand Gil and his new friend Nargis find in an abandoned mailbox, a ghostly postman who walks the town, and a genie who’s been sleeping in an envelope for more than a century!

Every odd event brings Gil and Nargis closer to understanding the connection between Hornswoggle Bay and Ajeebgarh—a connection nearly 200 years old and rooted in the tragedy of a lost love letter. Meanwhile, Gil receives increasingly panicked letters from Sikander, whose province will soon be attacked by the British Army—all because of a postage stamp!

If you’re looking for a linear plot, you won’t find it here. The omniscient narrator jumps between perspectives and time periods on a chapter-by-chapter basis. Still, it’s a fun ride. Alter works many mail-related tropes—dogs who chase mailmen, carrier pigeons, secret wartime codes—into the plot (though a chain letter disappointingly went nowhere). There’s also a recurring poetry motif that, while not essential to the plot, does not feel out of place either.

Readers (e.g., I) may be disappointed that there is no such place as Ajeebgarh, nor was there ever a Postage Stamp War in India, but they will catch the vibe of British Colonialism and perhaps read into real-life postage stamp wars in other parts of the world throughout history. My other disappointment was the rather Deus Ex Machina ending—but kids who have enjoyed Blue Balliett’s books, with their similarly fantastical and serendipitous conclusions, will probably not be bothered.

All in all, an entertaining read for grades 4 and up.

After gushing about it to my husband this weekend, I was all set to write this nice, long review of Ain’t Nothing but a Man: My Quest to Find the Real John Henry, by Scott Reynolds Nelson with Marc Aronson (National Geographic, 2008). Then I realized the New York Times beat me to it, and did a fine job. A good thing, really; I don’t want to think about how many orders of magnitude separate the Times’ readership and mine! But here’s a few thoughts of my own to add to the mix.

In our library catalog, Ain’t Nothing but a Man gets the subject headings you’d expect: John Henry, African Americans, railroad construction workers, etc. And while readers of this book will indeed learn about the “steel-drivin’ man” behind the myth, the real narrative here is that of the primary author’s historical research process.

Those familiar with Marc Aronson’s columns in School Library Journal or other work (including his blog on SLJ) will not be surprised that he is a secondary author of this book. Aronson is committed to promoting good nonfiction for children, especially history. One of his consistent arguments is that history should not be presented to children as this dry, static body of facts. History, like science, is full of mysteries, and we are always learning new things about the past and finding new ways to interpret what we’ve found.

And that’s definitely the driving message of Ain’t Nothing but a Man. Nelson presents his findings not as a cut-and-dried summary but rather as a discovery process. He describes scouring written and oral histories for different versions of the John Henry ballad, and visiting railroad tunnels, libraries, and prisons. He discusses the hard, dusty work of poring through ancient records, the frustration of dead ends, the magic of serendipity, the need for patience and perseverance and even guesswork, and the miraculous pay-off when you find the facts to create a convincing story.

Ain’t Nothing but a Man is a perfect candidate for working into a junior high or even high school history curriculum, focusing on the railroad worker aspect or the dynamic history aspect or both. Though the reading level is grades 4ish and up, I honestly don’t think, with its sepia photographs, old-time song lyrics, and sophisticated approach to history, the appeal is going to be there for most kids—not without pushing. So, I hope that teachers do take advantage of the lessons this book offers; there’s so much fodder for discussion here, the lesson plans would practically write themselves.

Meanwhile, Colleen at Chasing Ray has written some very thoughtful reflections on how Nelson’s findings force us to reexamine our understanding of John Henry as an American legend:
“…do not give me John Henry as an American folk hero anymore. He is a truth that we all need to recognize—he is the America we all keep trying to deny.”
She has some great points; take a look.

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.

I suppose one could say that all poetry is, on some level, a celebration of language – figurative language, compression of language, blah, blah, blah. But F E G: Ridiculous Stupid Poems for Intelligent Children, by Robin Hirsch, art by Ha (Little, Brown, 2002), goes to extremes.

Read strictly for meaning, these poems are nothing special; in fact, many of them do no more than serve as vehicles for a punny punch line. But that’s not the point. Rather than dress up the English language with frilly similes, Hirsch gleefully shows its underpants. These poems express the sheer joy of playing with language, exploiting its every eccentricity (or, dare I say, X N TR C T?).

Treating letters of the alphabet as phonemes rather than merely symbols is just one form of word play you’ll find in F E G. You’ll find visual word play in palindromes and anagrams, and aural word play in spoonerisms, puns, and onomatopoeia. Then there’s all the other stuff that doesn’t fit under a tidy linguistic label.

One of my favorite pairs of poems contrasts conventional “ear rhyme” with “eye rhyme.” Bough, cough, dough, and enough are all spelled alike, yet ough makes a different sound in each! In contrast, “Ewe Rhyme” collects words that rhyme with ewe but are spelled very different. Here’s the first stanza:

There once was a man whose name was Lou
Whose favorite dish was lamb ragout
He liked nothing better than a stew
Thickened with a tasty roux

The footnotes are as much or more fun to read than the poems. In them, Hirsch explains the various types of word play, including the etymology of their names. (For example, I now finally know the difference between homographs, homophones, and homonyms.) Hirsch also waxes humorous on various historical and literary tidbits alluded to in the poems.

The collection’s subtitle is fitting. F E G assumes the reader is intelligent and inquisitive – delighted by knowledge in general, and language in particular, for its own sake. Suggest it to upper elementary and middle school readers who are bright, love puzzles and arcane knowledge, and like a good dose of silly with their poetry.

Find this week's Poetry Friday round-up at Susan Writes!

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."