All in a Day's Work

A ten year old girl checked out a dog-eared copy of Twilight, and as she waited, she asked, "So, has anyone ever checked out this book?"

"Yes," I replied, eyeing the tattered cover.

"And did they say if they liked it?"

"Yeah," I nodded. "I bet they did."

Poor sheltered child.

February Reading Log

The Wisdom of Father Brown, by G.K. Chesterton
The Innocence of Father Brown, by G.K. Chesterton
A Winter's Tale, by William Shakespeare
Audrey, Wait! by Robin Benway
Nefertiti, by Michelle Moran
Cranford, by Elizabeth Gaskell
Twenty and Ten, by Claire Huchet Bishop
Graceling, by Kristin Cashore
The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman
The Possibilities of Sainthood, by Donna Freitas
KJ Bible: I Kings, II Kings
The London Eye Mystery, by Siobhan Dowd
The Year the Swallows Came Early, by Kathryn Fitzmaurice

Readers of this blog, unite!

Bloggers who participated in the Year The Swallows Came Early blog tour were entered in a popularity poll to win a $25 Amazon certificate. If you liked what you saw here, you can vote me in.

The Winter's Tale (RSC)

A new Shakespeare joins my favorites!

The Winter's Tale.

This Royal Shakespeare Company production is absolutely, without a doubt, the loveliest production on the planet (minus a rawther bawdy dance scene with a troupe of horned cuckolds).

But oh, it's good. *weep weep weep* Must get to England!

Kidz Book Buzz Blog Tour: The Year the Swallows Came Early (Giveaway)

In The Year the Swallows Came Early, Groovy's hero is none other than Betty Crocker (despite the fact that she isn't a real person). She admires Betty because of all she's done for cakes, how easy she's made baking them from a box.

I'd rank that as one of the better heroes of our age. :)

Are you thankful to Betty Crocker for anything? Perhaps a particular cake mix? Perhaps a certain recipe or tip from one of her cookbooks? Leave a comment and I'll enter your name to win a free hardcover copy of The Year the Swallows Came Early.

You have until midnight Saturday, February 28th. I'll choose a name from a hat on Sunday.

Kidz Book Buzz Blog Tour: The Year the Swallows Came Early (Cousinhood 2.0)

The Year the Swallows Came Early

Noel: So, whatdya want to talk about?

Marie: I don’t know.

Noel: Why do I always have to come up with the questions?

Marie: I don’t know.

Noel: You know, maybe I’ll just discuss the book with myself. It might generate more conversation.

Marie: Let’s talk about strawberries, then.

Noel: Excellent!

Marie: You know I made chocolate covered strawberries after I read Swallows.

Noel: Really? I thought about it as I read about Groovy making them. They sounded really good.

Marie: Yeah, a friend and I made them and I took pictures.

Noel: Did you add a swallow design in white chocolate, like Groovy does in the book?

Marie: No, we didn’t have any white chocolate. And we were impatient. We wanted to eat the strawberries.

Noel: So. What were your thoughts on the book as a whole?

Marie: I really liked how the same things were tied in throughout the story, like the strawberries and cooking school.

Noel: So it flowed well?

Marie: Yes. Exactly.

Noel: One thing I liked about Swallows was the fact that Groovy’s father didn’t go to jail for abusing anyone. That’s so common in fiction now. I was relieved to see an author show that people mess up in other areas of life.

Marie: I didn’t think about that.

Noel: I guess it’s just a breath of fresh air when something that could go the way of a million other stories veers onto a different path. But anyway, the author’s a member of Class 2k9, a group of authors who all have debut books coming out this year. They have a really great website with interviews and giveaways and stuff.

Marie: That’s cool.

Noel: I sure talk a lot more than you do in these things.

…

Noel: Hello? Are you there?

Marie: I’m sitting right next to you.

Noel: I realize that. But for all you’re saying, you may as well be in California.

Marie: Well, then what else would you like to talk about?

Noel: Oh, that’s brilliant. Make me ask the questions again.

Marie: Alright, then I’ll ask the question.

Noel: Finally.

…

Noel: Question?

Marie: Hold on a second. Okay, what do you think about Groovy’s mother’s reliance on horoscopes?

Noel: Ooh, great question. I loved that detail. Obviously, I’m not a fan of horoscopes, but I think it created a really original character. And in the end, readers were able to see horoscopes for what they really are.
…

Noel: Marie, do not make me type ellipses again.

(laughs)

Noel: Marie!!

Happy "Once Upon a Time" Day!

Read a fairy tale and celebrate the legacy of Wilhelm Grimm!

(Sigh. Arthur Rackham is sososo my hero.)

Kidz Book Buzz Blog Tour: The Year the Swallows Came Early (Review)

The Year the Swallows Came Early is a small and simple story--another reminder that a book doesn't have to be The Great American Novel to be enjoyable.

Eleanor "Groovy" Robinson loves cooking and plans to go to culinary school just as soon as she's old enough. But even Groovy's thoughtfully—planned menus won't fix the things that start to go wrong the year she turns eleven—suddenly, her father is in jail, her best friend's long-absent mother reappears, and the swallows that make their annual migration to her hometown arrive surprisingly early. As Groovy begins to expect the unexpected, she learns about the importance of forgiveness, understands the complex stories of the people around her, and realizes that even an earthquake can't get in the way of a family that needs to come together.

Swallows reminded me of several middle grade novels I've read in the last couple of years ... A Crooked Kind of Perfect, Waiting for Normal, Emma Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree. They have similar flavors. (Strawberry, perhaps?) Short and sweet, some sweeter than others. But Swallows reads smoothly, and while it followed expected lines ("the odds are stacked against our small-town heroine, but she reaches down and pulls through") it didn't stick to all the cliches. .

The prose is smooth and creamy, full of flavor and detail, but not too rambling. The dialogue slides out of each character’s mouth with realistic simplicity.

In the end, I would hand Swallows to a patron over novels like Waiting for Normal and Emma Jean. There was even a fun novel-to-novel connection ... both Swallows and The London Eye Mystery contain a sentence about a crumpled-up piece of paper that's been thrown into a corner, uncurling "as if it wanted to be read." How about that for your daily trivia?

Kidz Book Buzz Blog Tour: The Year the Swallows Came Early

It seems like it's been forever since the last blog tour ... I guess it was last year!

This month, we beg to put before you a middle grade novel by Kathryn Fitzmaurice, The Year the Swallows Came Early. I'll be reviewing it, and posting the transcript of a chat that Marie and I had about the book. Be sure to come back Wednesday, when I'll give away a free copy of the book.

Shop around the next few days:

A Christian Worldview of Fiction
All About Children’s Books
Becky’s Book Reviews
Booking Mama
Cafe of Dreams
Dolce Bellezza
Fireside Musings
Homeschool Buzz
Hyperbole
KidzBookBuzz.com
Looking Glass Reviews
Maw Books Blog
Never Jam Today
Novel Teen
Reading is My Superpower

Book Boys

Not boy books. Book boys.

You will never kiss them, but they retain a doomed corner of your heart, for whatever irrational reasons.

Tommy from Leppard's Mandie books. My first private school crush.

Sheftu from McGraw's Mara, Daughter of the Nile. Serious heartthrob.

Lord Peter Whimsy. My sister's a Bunter girl, but I could marry Lord Peter.

Jingle from Montgomery's Pat books. There's just something about Jingle.

Mark from Stevenson's Celia's House.

Jim Frayne from the Trixie Belden series. He may or may not have been my idol at one time.

Adam from L'Engle's Ring of Endless Light. Sigh.

So what about you? Who are your book boys? Book-to-film crushes don't count. That's another list entirely. I'm talking purely textual relationships here.

But if your answer is a) Edward b) Mr. Darcy or c) Jacob, please do me a favor and read a few more books before you answer. Please.

I'm Up at Novel Journey Today

Interviewing the one and only Jaclyn Moriarty, author of The Year of Secret Assignments. If you've known me long, you know I adore that book.

Happy Saint Valentine's

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

.

-William Shakespeare .

(Painting: Miranda and the Tempest by my #2 favorite artist, John William Waterhouse)

2009 Cybils Winners

The 2009 Cybils Winners

Easy Readers
I Love My New Toy written by Mo Willems

Fantasy & Science Fiction
Middle Grade
The Graveyard Book written by Neil Gaiman
Young Adult
The Hunger Games written by Suzanne Collins

Fiction Picture Books
How to Heal a Broken Wing written and illustrated by Bob Graham

Graphic Novels
Elementary/Middle Grade
Rapunzel's Revenge written by Shannon Hale and Dean Hale, illustrated by Nathan Hale
Young Adult
Emiko Superstar written by Mariko Tamaki illustrated by Steve Ralston

Middle-Grade Fiction
The London Eye Mystery written by Siobhan Dowd

Non-Fiction Picture Books
Nic Bishop Frogs written and illustrated by Nic Bishop

Poetry
Honeybee written by Naomi Shihab Nye

Young Adult Fiction
Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, The written by E Lockhart


Not much we didn't see coming. Frankie ... Hunger Games ... Shannon Hale ...

I must say I loved The London Eye Mystery. Great choice. Been meaning to write a review, but then I get sidetracked, remembering all Dowd's descriptions of the Tube, which makes me think of riding the Metro in Kiev, and how much I loved loved loved that, and also how much I want to fly to London right this very minute. Will that suffice?

I Have A Dirty Little Secret

According to School Library Journal, that is.

"Self-censorship. It’s a dirty secret that no one in the profession wants to talk about or admit practicing. Yet everyone knows some librarians bypass good books—those with literary merit or that fill a need in their collections. The reasons range from a book’s sexual content and gay themes to its language and violence—and it happens in more public and K–12 libraries than you think."

How to make Noel see red: Pat her on the head and say, “Librarians need to remember that it’s not their job to impose their own ideologies on the kids they serve…”

One commenter, a middle school librarian, articulated most of my reactions (a lot more calmly than I would have).

I find the author's definition of censorship to be rather restrictive in its scope, for several reasons:

1) Knowing one’s community…

2) In loco parentis is more complex that the author would wish readers to believe. A student’s physical, emotional, and intellectual development are intertwined, not separate entities…

3) Common sense. Not everyone is going to comprehend the message an author may be trying to convey. Heavy doses of profanity and other strong choices of language may become distracting to a reader who has an aversion to such language, though the student may be in a position where he/she must read it to complete an assignment…

…Common sense also tells me that I will NOT EVER select a book for my school’s library that instructs the reader on how to build a pipe bomb, manufacture meth, or in any other way harm themselves or another individual--physically or emotionally--and that I should take care that the stories I select do not also promote such behavior.

Call it censorship if you like. I call it respect for the well-being of my community.

Hear, hear, Ms. Kincaid!

It infuriates me that “censorship” is streng verboten unless a book is, say, a Nativity story. Then, of course, it cannot be included in the collection, because it might be offensive to someone.

Reminds me of Ben Stein’s findings in his film Expelled. If you haven’t seen that film, you really, really should.

Scoop of the e-e-evening: Graceling

My Gollum self moans, “Noel, enjoy a story as a story for once and forget about Ideas With Troubling Consequences that pop up in the narrative. We’re reading YA, for goodness sake.”

I have tried to ignore them. But Smeagol always wins.

Graceling has fangirls in the living room and committee room alike, appearing on many reader-favorite lists, as well as the 2009 Morris shortlist. It tells the action-packed story of a girl born with the burdensome Grace—extreme skill—of killing. As such, she is the king’s hangman, whether she likes it or not.

Did I stay up until 2 a.m. to finish Graceling? Yes. Did I close it feeling satisfied with the story, as a whole? Yes. Is that all there is to it? No.

Katsa is adamant. She will never marry. She will never bear children. She knows that marriage, even to the man she loves, would change her as a person. Would, in fact, transform Katsa into someone else entirely. And so, she makes the difficult decision to become Po’s lover, but never his wife.

This choice is presented as the logical, reasonable, acceptable choice. Not easy—Katsa and Po realize that such a relationship would not be without heartache—but they believe it is the right answer. “I’m not going to marry you,” says Katsa, “and hang on to you like a barnacle, just to keep you to myself and stop you loving anyone else.” Their friends and family don’t understand this unselfish love.

Perhaps because it isn’t unselfish, after all?

The most unselfish act a person can perform is giving up their self (duh?). Putting someone else’s wants and needs above their own. In marriage, two individuals become one, lose and gain until they melt into a single united being. Together, they become someone else entirely. They love each other that much.

Graceling tells a compelling story, but the drama is ultimately distorted. It shows a world where a girl should never value anyone more than she values herself. This world doesn’t stop at the edge of the Seven Kingdoms, however. It’s the world we live in today.

Ideas do indeed have consequences, even when found in YA fantasy. Our society is so messed up in the romance department because we’ve forgotten that true love means sacrifice. True love means, you love, therefore you willingly become someone else. Only then is it true love.

Scoop of the e-e-evening: The Graveyard Book

I’m wary of bestsellers. More often than not, they’re bandwagon books, written to tickle the ears of the masses—here today, gone tomorrow.

I’m even warier of ghost books. What are ghosts? The spirits of the dead. Rather ghoulish subject matter for middle-graders, don’t you think? Lots of facets to that discussion.

So I was double wary of The Graveyard Book. Neil Gaiman wins the Newbery? Geez, the committee must have been desperate to jazz up their tighty-whity image. The Graveyard Book was certainly one in the eye for “inaccessibility.” But had the pendulum swung too far?

Our current culture taken into consideration, I think not.

The Graveyard Book is modeled after Kipling’s Jungle Book, with a human orphan being raised by an assortment of non-humans—animals, in the case of The Jungle Book, ghosts in the case of The Graveyard Book.

Gaiman’s prose is lovely. The episodic stories are timelessly drawn, laced and book-ended with the constant fear of the man who murdered the orphan’s family, and will one day return for the boy.

In a society that sees no harm in witches, vampires, et al, The Graveyard Book was a natural Newbery choice. Accessible to kids, yet well-written. Popular among the masses, and with librarians.

But for parents wary of desensitizing the young readers in their family, wary of stories that dash age-old archetypes of an unfriendly spirit world … these parents should read The Graveyard Book before their kids do. It’s a wonderful, engaging story on an increasingly popular topic, written from an increasingly prevalent (and unbiblical) worldview.

Paradoxical review? It’s a paradoxical world.

Mail Time!

An Amazon package just came in at the library ...

The Graveyard Book
Possibilities of Sainthood
Graceling
Teashop Girls

... and more!

Which to read first?

Embryo, Week Two

Promised photo of quilt #1, two weeks into the project. All (!) that's left is the border and the quilting. Croopus, if novel-writing cantered along at this pace, what an author I would be!

FYI, every one of those cute little appliques has one thousand and one tiny blanket stitches around each piece. Never again!

(Note: this is not a baby quilt. It is just a quilt using Pottery Barn fabric I fell in love with. Who knows when/where/how I'll use it. But isn't it adorable, nonetheless?)

Best Valentine Ever

I am seriously making these for all my friends.

All two of them.