Jellicoe Road

I read it again last night.

Gutted.

Again.

Not as deep as the first time, last summer.

Deeper.

Sometimes I almost wish it hadn't won a shiny sticker, because too many people slurp award books, and Jellicoe should be discovered on a back shelf, turned about, weighed, flipped through, sniffed and then carried toward the door.

All the time I wish I could write like this. This bloody brilliant ... this bloody incandescent. A story that shreds, and people who make you love them so much without even trying, and pull you back again, hand over hand.

"...I'm frightened that one morning there will not be enough to keep me going. Except maybe the pages I'm holding in my hands. They comfort me, these characters, like they're my best friends, too. Like Jude when he returned that second year and they were waiting for him."

And I want to say to people who think they can write YA fiction, read Jellicoe Road. Again and again. You don't just walk into a kitchen and cook. You pore through recipes, your eyes blear over Betty Crocker, you eat and sleep and breathe Julia Child, like that Meryl Streep movie, and then, finally, you set out your ingredients.

So many people say, oh, I've always wanted to write young adult novels. And they have no idea. They even write them, and when I glance through the pages I think of that scene in Sleeping Beauty.

Fauna: I'm going to bake the cake.

Merryweather: You?

Flora: She's always wanted to, dear, and this is her last chance.

Merryweather: Well, ...

Fauna: I'm going to make it fifteen layers with pink and blue, forgive-me-nots ...

Flora: And I'm making the dress.

Merryweather: But you can't sew, and she's never cooked!

Flora: Oh, it's simple.

Fauna: All you do is follow the book.

[Flora directs Merryweather to stand on a chair]

Flora: Up here dear, you can be the dummy.

Merryweather: Well, I still say we ought to use magic.

[Flora throws a sheet of pink cloth above Merryweather and begins cutting with a pair of scissors. Fauna has laid all the ingredients for the cake before her.]

Fauna: [reads from the book] Flour, three cups. [searching] Cups, cups, cups, cups, cups ... [finds three cups of different sizes and uses them to pour flour into the bowl] One, two, three.

[Flora has cut a circular hole into the sheet]

Merryweather: What's that for?

Flora: Well, it's got to have a hole in the bottom.

Fauna: That's for the feet to go through.

Fauna: [still reads from the book] Two eggs, fold in gently Fold? Oh well.

[Fauna puts two eggs into the bowl and starts to fold them in. We hear their shells cracking. Merryweather is completely hulled into the pink cloth]

Merryweather: I can't breathe!

[Flora cuts the cloth open at the top. Merryweather takes a look at the dress from the inside]

Merryweather: It looks awful.

Flora: That's because it's on you, dear.

Fauna: [at her cake] Now yeast, one tisp. Tisp?

Merryweather: One teaspoon!

Fauna: One teaspoon, of course.

I still say we ought to use magic. Read Jellicoe Road.

October Reading Log

Goodness, my reading was prolific this month! Best understood chronologically, from the bottom up.

Jellicoe Road, by Melina Marchetta
Here.

The Baker's Daughter, by D.E. Stevenson
Sweet, but not quite as good as I'd remembered it.

Fat Cat, by Robin Brande
Reviewed here.

Pollyanna, by Eleanor Porter
Very nice; if you like the film, you'll enjoy the story.

Thrones, Dominations, by Dorothy Sayers & Jill Paton Walsh
Excellent Whimsey fare.

First Boy, by Gary Schmidt
An under-the-radar Schmidt. Perhaps rightly so, not as amazing as his other works.

A Brief History of Montmaray, by Michelle Cooper
Reviewed here.

Betsy-Tacy, by Maud Hart Lovelace
Reviewed here.

A Fatal Waltz, by Tasha Alexander
Ditto.

A Poisoned Season, by Tasha Alexander
Love this series.

Relativism: Feet Planted Firmly in Mid-Air, by Francis Beckwith & Gregory Koukl
Excellent and challenging and stimulating.

Wise Blood, by Flannery O'Connor
Astonishing prose and dialect and ... I have no idea what it means.

The Great Gilly Hopkins, by Katherine Paterson
Wow. Excellent.

Tristan and Iseult, by Rosemary Sutcliff
Tragic ... lovely storytelling prose. "The love between Tristan and Iseult would not let them be, dragging at them as the moon draws the tides to follow after it, until at last, whether they would or no, they came together again."

And Only to Deceive, by Tasha Alexander
Quite delightful. Less brazen than Lady Julia, just as intriguing.

Jacob Have I Loved, by Katherine Paterson
The woman sings her prose. Yes, the bit where Sara Louise falls in love with the Captain's hands still willied me, even though I'm not twelve any more, but I was able to appreciate the story this time. How does Paterson know me? Thinking her mother has thrown herself away by staying on the island, and then slowly, seeing and understanding when she goes away to the Appalachians... Brilliance.

Hebrews, James, I Peter, II Peter KJ Bible

On my nightstand for November

Scoop of the e-e-evening: Fat Cat

It's been a week since I finished Fat Cat. And in that time, I haven't eaten one bite of sugar. Or dairy. Or white flour. Or listened to music on my ipod.

Yes, it's quite persuasive.

You are what you eat. . . . Cat smart, sassy, and funny—but thin, she’s not. Until her class science project. That’s when she winds up doing an experiment—on herself. Before she knows it, Cat is living—and eating—like the hominids, our earliest human ancestors. True, no chips or TV is a bummer and no car is a pain, but healthful eating and walking everywhere do have their benefits. As the pounds drop off, the guys pile on. All this newfound male attention is enough to drive a girl crazy! If only she weren’t too busy hating Matt McKinney to notice...

For the record, this isn't the first time I've gone on a literary-inspired tangent. My mind patters back to the Mandie Era, the year I lived and breathed those phantoms of delight, baking at least three pies a week and getting up every morning at 6:30 (AM) to "fix" myself grits and coffee. With molasses. (Yes. The molasses went in the coffee.)

Aside from my inability to withstand literary peer-pressure, however, there is a lot to like in Fat Cat: it isn't about how she looks (mostly). It's about refusing to throw trash into the ocean that is our bodies. About reclaiming the time we waste on media.

I like that Cat grows closer to her brother because they walk to school together; spends evenings around the dinner table with her family because she's cooking healthful delectables. But never does Brande descend into thinly-veiled dieting tips. The romance entertains, the experiment provides framework and motivation, and you close the novel with an exhilarated determination to copy Cat.

Would a Renaissance woman blog every week (query)

Things I'm doing while this blog dwindles, peaks and pines:

1) Watching Lost in Austen. Slightly mad, but funny.

2) Having shingles. Not. Fun.

3) Learning how to deal with a flat all on my own in the middle of nowhere on the way to visit Marie at college.

4) Putting five new-to-me D.E. Stevensons on hold for a British-binge night (coming soon).

5) Violin pedagogery: researching ways to teach my newest students, ages 6 and 58, while transcribing and organizing Christmas music for the other eight.

6) Buying a wool-lined raincoat for walking beside the Thames.

7) Feeling overwhelmed, bored, out-of-my-mind excited, blasé ... which is to say, living life.

Scoop of the e-e-evening: Betsy-Tacy

At last, after twenty-three years, I’ve read Betsy-Tacy! Now there are only ... eleven more books in the series to go. I did like the story, very much, as expected. It was difficult, though, because earlier this summer I read Strawberry Hill by Mary Ann Hoberman, a new novel inspired by a love for Betsy-Tacy. I wish I had read the original first; the taste of Betsy-Tacy was constantly reminding me of Strawberry Hill, when Betsy-Tacy should have been the standard. It truly is the stronger story.

There are lots of children on Hill Street, but no little girls Betsy's age. So when a new family moves into the house across the street, Betsy hopes they will have a little girl she can play with. Sure enough, they do--a little girl named Tacy. And from the moment they meet at Betsy's fifth birthday party, Betsy and Tacy becoms such good friends that everyone starts to think of them as one person--Betsy-Tacy. Betsy and Tacy have lots of fun together. They make a playhouse from a piano box, have a sand store, and dress up and go calling. And one day, they come home to a wonderful surprise--a new friend named Tib.

Lovelace knows just how children think and reason and speak: playing paper dolls, for one. The girls divide their categories exactly right: servants, fathers, mothers, sixteen-year-olds, ten-year-olds, eight-year-olds, and then five-year-olds and babies. “The five-year-olds were the most important members of the large doll families. Everything pleasant happened to them. They had all the adventures. The eight-year-olds lived very dull lives; and they were always given very plain names.”

Or when the girls climb farther up a hill than they’ve ever been before, and it’s lovely up there under a tree, and Betsy says suddenly, “Let’s live up here,” and they immediately begin mapping out their house and planning how they’ll survive, and it’s absolutely thrilling and not a bit implausible. I remember that.

Their picnics, their dressing up to call on neighbors, the stories Betsy tells, every amusing episode is woven together by the end, and with the promise of many more adventures to come with the new neighbor Tib, Betsy-Tacy beckons the reader toward further delights.

Scoop of the e-e-evening: A Brief History of Montmaray

I was willing, waiting and wanting to fall in love with Michelle Cooper's "A Brief History of Montmaray." Votaries compared the Aussie tale with Dodie Smith's classic romance "I Capture the Castle." One reviewer even dared suggest Montmary might be "even better than that much adored book." Unfortunately, the addition of extra plot and adventure do not automatically a better novel make.

Sophie FitzOsborne lives in a crumbling castle in the tiny island kingdom of Montmaray, along with her tomboy younger sister Henry, her beautiful, intellectual cousin Veronica, and Veronica's father, the completely mad King John. When Sophie receives a leather-bound journal for her sixteenth birthday, she decides to write about her day-to-day life on the island. But it is 1936 and the world is in turmoil. Does the arrival of two strangers threaten everything that Sophie holds dear?

Montmaray does indeed share many elements with Castle--aristocratic poverty, eccentric family and scribbling heroine--but it falls short in more areas. Perhaps the most glaring to me, while not the most prominent, is the modern twist, soon to become cliche: Girl loves boy. Boy loves girl's brother. Yes, that was me hurling a spoiler. Live with it. I wish someone had mentioned it in one of the reviews I read. As it was, I received a repugnant shock when that little tidbit came to light.

My overall impression upon closing the book was a dewless morning--something lacking. Montmaray contains beauty, exhibits literary merit. But like a dry morning, with the grass bare of diamonds, something elusive was missing. Elusive, yet essential to classic storytelling.

Betsy-Tacy Challenge

Over the years, Betsy-Tacy has popped up more than once. I don't remember where I first saw the cover, but I've noticed it in selective five star literature catalogues, and I purchased a copy for the library where I work, and I checked it out for my 2nd-grade sister and watched her read it.

However, despite the feeling that I'd probably love Betsy-Tacy, and despite the knowledge that Betsy-Tacy, All-of-a-Kind-Family, etc. are right up my alley, I had yet to read it myself.

But I'm starting today! Thanks to the challenge at A Library is a Hospital for the Mind, I'll be reviewing it later this month. Here's to old books for the first time!

I tink I am in luff

...wit Sigur Rós.

Watch Glósóli here.

Scoop of the e-e-evening: A Season of Gifts

It is now 1958, and a new family has moved in next door to Mrs. Dowdel: a Methodist minister and his wife and kids. Soon Mrs. Dowdel will work her particular brand of charm—or medicine, depending on who you’re asking—on all of them: ten-year old Bob, who is shy on courage in a town full of bullies; his two fascinating sisters; and even Bob’s two parents, who are amazed to discover that the last house in town might also be the most vital. As Christmas rolls around, the Barnhart family realizes that they’ve found a true home—and a neighbor who gives gifts that will last a lifetime.

When an author writes a drippingly juicy gem, and lets it lie, you rejoice. Those who wring every last drop from a winning creation are not fair to the characters, who, being wrung, protest too much ... which hurts the reader's ears.

Richard Peck is not guiltless when it comes to dishrag novels. I've read more than one of his books that could have been delightful if it weren't so exhausted. For me, A Teacher's Funeral, Here Lies the Librarian, they never really lived up to the name on the cover. When I saw that Peck was writing a companion to his golden Grandma Dowdel books, I sighed. A post script novel published eleven years after the original was sure to be drenched in reminisces. It would reiterate everything that had already been said, and nobody likes hearing the same story twice.

But A Season of Gifts isn't the same story. It is a Richard Peck in its own right. Grandma Dowdel returns, not rehashed, but larger than before, with even more to reveal about herself and the people around her.

A Season of Gifts is worth reading, and it's worth chuckling over--"My motto is, 'Ready, Fire, Aim.' Keep that in mind.'"--it's worth wiping tears away, and it's definitely worth sharing.

One of my favorite books of 2009.


As for the swirls of controversy concerning insensitivity to Indians, Methodist ministers, and the like ... ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.