Scoop of the e-e-evening: The Boneshaker

Scoot yourself in toward the fire, my child. It's the hour for stories.

Thirteen-year-old Natalie Minks loves machines, particularly automata—self-operating mechanical devices, usually powered by clockwork. When Jake Limberleg and his traveling medicine show arrive in her small Missouri town with a mysterious vehicle under a tarp and an uncanny ability to make Natalie's half-built automaton move, she feels in her gut that something about this caravan of healers is a bit off. Her uneasiness leads her to investigate the intricate maze of the medicine show, where she discovers a horrible truth and realizes that only she has the power to set things right.

The Boneshaker is by far my favorite book of 2010 (to date). Milford has mastered the art of storytelling--the way she introduces her cast, their histories, deep fears and desires... her prose, their dialogue, their demons and finest moments. Evil is evil and can be overcome. Old stories are true stories and help those wise enough to remember. There's action, poetic justice... this story has it all!

Milford's worldview can be a bit confusing, though. On the one hand, she presents a time and place where the devil is alive, and no simpleton. On the other, the only way to best him is through cleverness and "some kind of grace." But what kind, exactly, pray tell?

Two characters strongly hint at the existence of third parties in our universe--neither angels nor demons, friend nor foe, forces outside the rigid lines of good and evil. One, a guardian angel (of sorts) who did not fall from heaven, but jumped of his own free will, to avoid conflict between two dear friends. The other, an eternally wandering "recruiter" of defecting souls, souls who desire neither heaven nor hell.

Also, be aware that, as with all tales told around the village campfire, there are characters who sometimes speak like the rough adults they are.

But the storytelling, friends, the storytelling! Pages like,

"You are the collector of hands," Natalie said, because it sounded like the kind of thing a brave girl in good story would say, and because she didn't feel brave at all. "You are the gambler of souls. You are the gingerfoot, and you are evil. You can do anything at all, as long as it's wicked."

The Boneshaker is a gem for those seeking their next read-aloud. Just be sure to pull in your chairs.

Scoop of the e-e-evening: Penny Dreadful

Laurel Snyder's Any Which Wall was one of my very most favorite stories last year. With each passing page of Penny Dreadful, I fell more in love with an author who writes friendly stories--in a way that daisies are friendly flowers. "Chock full" (via the author's own slyly depreciating words) "of excitement and mystery and thrills on every page, though not exactly great literature."

My family will vouch for the fact that as I read Penny Dreadful, I exclaimed, "Oh, yes! I love this book!" about twenty times. There is delightful prose. There are characters who read, with plenty of allusions for book lovers to spot, like "Then one day after her finger stopped on a book called Magic or Not? Penelope wandered out into the perfectly manicured lawn of her backyard, holding a folded scrap of paper. There was a decorated wishing well of sorts in the middle of the Grey's backyard..."

Everything was going swimmingly toward a canonization of Snyder in my favorite authors of the 21st century, when Bam! She hit me on the head with a little boy named Twent, his long-haired, pregnant mother Willa, and his other mother, Jenny.

For a moment, Penny shared my dazed confusion. "Your wife?" "Sure," Willa smiled happily. "Twent's other mother. She's at work now, but you'll meet her one day soon..." Penny looked over at Twent, who seemed not to be paying any attention. She'd never known anyone with two mothers, but then, she'd also never known anyone with hair to her knees. Or anyone with a pet skunk."

On her website, Snyder recently posted about this topic: "I didn’t write Willa and Jenny into the book to make it a gay book. I wrote them to make it a real book, an honest book. A book about the world, which is full of all kinds of people."

I can totally agree with those motivations. The world is full of all kinds of people. But what I cannot accept is the way Snyder wrote Willa and Jenny into the book. Notice her words choices:

Sure = Of course, silly! Being a lesbian isn't out of the ordinary, not one bit.

Willa smiled happily = Look at me. Lesbian relationships are satisfying and joyful.

She'd never known anyone with two mothers, but then, she'd also never known anyone with hair to her knees. Or anyone with a pet skunk = People just happen to be a lot of things. White, black, timid, brave, rich, poor, old, young...

As Snyder writes on her blog, "if more books represented diversity this way, simply, without it being a big issue all the time, more kids would understand that it isn‘t always a big issue. I’d like to think that children’s books are a wonderful way to begin the process of educating people about how varied human experience is, and about how all of it, all of it, is normal." (emphasis mine)

The only problem is, being a lesbian is not normal. It's not something that "just happens" to people, like being poor or brave. In fact, when you look through Biblical glasses, homosexuality is, well, an abomination.

Characters like Willa and Jenny, however, with their happy little family, show elementary-age readers that Christian beliefs are hateful and silly. Add these characters to the full-blown assault of politically-correct propaganda that is molding America's children.

Talent Education

Besides being a part-time librarian, writer, etc., I also instruct violin to a dozen students age five to fifty-one. My teaching methods are heavily influenced by the philosophies of Shinichi Suzuki, a Japanese violinist who believed in the high potential of every human being, not just the seemingly gifted.

"[T]he only superior quality a child can have at birth," wrote Suzuki in 1978, "is the ability to adapt itself with more speed and sensitivity to its environment than others."

Talent, according to Suzuki and his many adherents, is not inborn or inherited, but acquired through a process founded on the mother tongue concept; all children of every culture, when immersed in their language from birth, learn to speak their native tongue with expertise. Similar immersion in a musical home environment, assures Suzuki, develops an equal fluency in music.

He gives the example of a wild nightingale. In Japan, baby birds are captured to be used as pets, and put under the tutelage of a tame "master bird." Exposure to the master's fine voice eventually develops an equally beautiful song in the young nightingale. "Talent," skillful ability, is nurtured, with astonishing results.

But how does this philosophy fit with the Christian belief that talent--musical, literary, and otherwise--is a gift from God? Matthew 25 is often cited as an example of God-given abilities requiring faithful stewardship. John Calvin, in his Institutes, agrees that "the talents which we possess are not from ourselves."

Is every human born with equal potential? Does so much hang on the ability to adapt yourself with speed and sensitivity? At what point does created talent become acquired talent? What are your thoughts?

Scoop of the e-e-evening: Keeper

It took me about one hundred pages to get into this story. Engaging but slow, until one of Keeper’s “beasts,” a seagull, sees his friends and thinks Oh, happy day, calloo callay! Then I warmed up.

Keeper is a Peter Pan story. The night before her guardian plans to tell Keeper that there is no such thing as “magic or mermaids or talking crabs,” we discover that, in fact, there is such a thing. Appelt’s sequencing convinces readers to expect an absence of fantasy, but at the physiological moment, in Sharon Creech’s words, she “blurs the lines between reality and myth.”

Emotions run deep. Keeper asks, Did we love my mama? And Signe later realizes, “she had loved Meggie Marie. But she did not miss her.”

I adored the legends, the water stories, sting rays laying their mermaid purses, and meerfrau in the lakes in the middle of old German forests, and sailors spotting manatee and being sure of finding mermaids nearby. It’s marvelously woven, fine storytelling. Already, Newbery buzz is buzzing.

But.

A big but.

I wanted to adore Keeper, wanted so badly to thrust the small blue book into the arms of waiting patrons. This would have been a year-end favorite, if not for a lovely old man, gentle and caring, “not her real grandfather, but … might as well have been,” who was once an adventurous boy sailing the seven seas. And who was once the lover of another boy. Their lost love is painted regretfully, as a beautiful, beautiful memory, glimmering with moonlight and roses and the intoxicating smell of night-blooming cyrus. Like Anne Shirley’s liniment-flavored cake, this sub-plot soured Appelt’s wonderful story.

Now look. I am not against gay characters. They exist in real life, they have a place in fiction. But when the reading level is 5.0, and the tale ends with two old men, sitting side by side in the warmth of the sun, holding hands, “like they did so long ago…” I can’t adore the story. No matter how perfect an ending, I just can’t do it.