Spellbound

Spellbound, the second volume of The Books of Elsewhere by Jacqueline West (Dial, 2011) picks up right where The Shadows left off, with eleven-year-old Olive stuck outside the magical paintings in the McMartin house, and what's worse, her friend Morton stuck inside them. The cats (especially Horatio) are reluctant to help Olive--in fact, they're actively discouraging her. But when her new neighbor Rutherford suggests she look for the McMartins' spellbook, Olive is somehow inexorably drawn to it (that's it in the painting on the cover). Can she use the spellbook to help Morton escape Elsewhere, or is it using her to help the McMartins do the same?

I loved The Shadows, which won a Cybil award last year; and Spellbound might be even better, in that there is more of everything to love and some new things besides.  Olive continues to explore the old stone Victorian on Linden Street (which West says looks almost exactly like the LeDuc House in Hastings, MN): the library, the attic, the basement (sorry, Leopold!), and the garden, as well as some previously undiscovered paintings.

Spellbound also introduces a new character in the gallant yet rumpled Rutherford, and revisits Morton, whose plight is increasingly poignant (spoiler alert: he's still stuck inside his painting). Olive herself does some devastating things while under the spell of the spellbook--even the cats abandon her at one point--but ultimately faces up to Annabel McMartin and the mysterious Mrs. Nivens. Not for the last time, though: now Olive is more determined than ever to rescue Morton...and Annabel is on the loose.

I read an ARC of Spellbound (thank you, Penguin!) with cover art and fantastic black-and-white interior illustrations by Poly Bernatene, who also did the illustrations for The Shadows. I wish all my favorite middle grade novels had illustrations as perfect for them as these, actually--they add so much atmosphere. Spellbound will be out in hardcover on July 12, and I'm already looking forward to Volume 3.

A note about the author: When asked what paintings she might sneak into if she got her hands on Olive's glasses, Jacqueline West said she'd have to go with Salvador Dali's, "because they would be such amazing worlds to explore. I imagine everything would feel rubbery and slick, sort of like Silly Putty or fried eggs." I would pick Vermeer, because of the order and light.  What about you?

Thank you, Greenwillow!

I was the lucky winner of this big box of Greenwillow books last December.  Can you see what's in there?  Everything from Kitten's First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes, winner of the 2005 Caldecott Medal, to The Thief by Meghan Whalen Turner, which won a Newbery Honor in 1997.  I read Turner's Attolia books, of which The Thief is the first, for the first time last year (no, I have no idea why I waited so long), and it was definitely a Peak Reading Experience--sort of a combination of Dorothy Dunnett's House of Niccolo books and C.S. Lewis's Til We Have Faces.  The latest, A Conspiracy of Kings (2010), is my favorite in the series.

But my very favorite Greenwillow book is this one: The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley. It was the first book I bought in hardcover, probably before it won the Newbery in 1985 (my copy, a first edition, doesn't have the gold sticker); and it still sets the standard against which I judge high fantasy for young readers. By now I've read it so many times that I can remember certain passages and fragments of dialogue almost word-for-word: Aerin's centuries-long climb up the spiral staircase to Agsded's chamber; Aerin and Luthe (their final scene together is Martha Mihalick's favorite, too); the lovely last lines. Thank you, Greenwillow!

Physik

The portrait of Queen Etheldredda, known as the Awful, and her Aie-Aie featured in last week's Middle Grade Gallery is from Septimus Heap, Book Three: Physik by Angie Sage (Katherine Tegen Books, 2007).  When Silas Heap breaks the 500-year old Seal on the attic, the ghosts of the Queen and her pet step out of the portrait and proceed to wreak havoc.  Queen Etheldredda has a plan to give herself eternal life that sends Septimus back in time to serve the Queen's son Marcellus Pye, Alchemist and Physician; and the Aie-Aie spreads Sicknesse throughout the palace.

As for the portrait, we learn that the Queen was Entranced into it by none other than Marcellus, and eventually they're both (Queen and portrait; Aie-Aie, too) consumed by a Fyre.  I suppose this was necessary, but I hate to think of her official portrait being lost.  There was nothing magical about it, after all.

The books in the Septimus Heap series are the sort of fantasy novels that are pure pleasure for younger middle grade readers especially.  They're almost overstuffed with characters and creatures and spells of all sorts.  We listened to the first one, Magyk, which is beautifully read (for 12 hours!) by Allan Corduner, thus avoiding the capitalized, bolded, and magykally-spelled words in the printed text.  The chapter headings in the books themselves are nicely illustrated by Mark Zug, though; here is his rendering of Queen Etheldredda's portrait (scanned from the paperback).  Elizabethan, wouldn't you agree?

Ninth Ward

Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker Rhodes (Little, Brown, 2010) is dedicated to "all the children who experienced Hurricane Katrina and the levees breaking in New Orleans." Five years ago today.

The book itself is a coming-of-age story, with realistic and fantastical elements in equal measure.  Twelve-year-old narrator Lanesha and her Mama Ya-Ya can see ghosts, including the ghost of Lanesha's mother, who died birthing her.  And Mama Ya-Ya can see the future.  That future, of course, includes the hurricane and its aftermath--events that will test Lanesha and over which she must find a way to triumph.

Rhodes gives Lanesha a lovely voice, and for the first several chapters (the calm before the storm), all is well in the Ninth Ward.  Lanesha is a bright girl who loves words and wants to be an engineer.  She has a close, loving relationship with Mama Ya-Ya; a supportive teacher at her new middle school; a strong community of neighbors and shopkeepers and even, for the first time, friends her own age (Ginia and TaShon).  I loved this part of the book and wanted it to go on, for Lanesha's sake, even though I knew full well the storm was coming.

When it does, Lanesha must cope with the realization that Mama Ya-Ya, already old, is losing strength as rapidly as the storm is gaining it.  Now Lanesha has to rely on her own fortitude (one of her vocabulary words, meaning "strength to endure") to get herself and TaShon through the storm.

A note about the ghosts:  Mama Ya-Ya, and especially Lanesha, see ghosts throughout the book.  The ghosts are usually in the background, and I almost took their presence for granted (this is New Orleans, after all).  Ninth Ward just doesn't feel like a ghost story or a fantasy novel.  Maybe it's magical realism?

[See the author's website for resources related to Ninth Ward.]

The Shadows

The painting of the forest at night featured in last week's Middle Grade Gallery comes from Jacqueline West's debut novel, The Shadows (Volume 1 of The Books of Elsewhere; Dial, 2010).  It's one of several paintings--landscapes, portraits, genre scenes of stonemasons and laughing girls-- in the old house on Linden Street that serve as portals into a mysterious Elsewhere.

Enter Olive Dunwoody, the eleven-year-old daughter of two abstracted math professors who have just bought the house and its contents.  Olive, lonely and left to her own devices most of the time, senses almost immediately that the house is keeping secrets.  With the help of a pair of spectacles, three talking house cats (Horatio, the gigantic orange one, is my favorite) and her own determination to solve the mystery of the paintings and the people in them, she travels into--and out of--Elsewhere.  But if she's not careful, she may get trapped in a painting before she can stop the dark forces who created them...and live in them still.

I absolutely adored this book.  Starting with Olive, who's an extremely likable heroine--shy and awkward, but also imaginative, curious, and brave (lots of bookish girls will recognize themselves in her); her relationships with her parents, who are present if not exactly paying attention; and with Morton, a small annoying boy who's been trapped in a painting for a long time himself.  Plus the cats!

Then there's the house.  Who can resist an old stone Victorian, full of antique furniture and strange knicknacks?  Not I.  It's got an attic heaped with things, too; not to mention an overgrown garden that I hope Olive explores more thoroughly in one of the later books in the series.

Most of all, though, I love the mystery, and the mechanics, of The Shadows.  The paintings aren't just portals between the house and Elsewhere, they are Elsewhere.  The people there are mostly paintings, too--the scenes where Olive realizes this about Morton, and then later when he realizes it about himself, are especially memorable.  [For what this might look like, check out Alexa Meade's acrylics on flesh.]

A note about the book itself:  If I were to write a middle grade fantasy novel, I would want it to be as beautifully made (let alone written) as this one.  Poly Bernatene's black-and-white illustrations are fantastic, a perfect fit for the creepy/comic tone of the text; the endpapers, printed with empty frames, are the exact same shade of blue as the sky on the jacket; there's even a debossed pair of spectacles on the hardcover underneath.  It's all very satisfying.

The Shadows has been compared to Coraline, but really, I liked it even better.  Highly recommended!

[Review copy received from publisher at ALA; thank you so much!]

Middle Grade Gallery III

This week in the Middle Grade Gallery, a painting (one of several) from a brand-new novel I absolutely adore and can't wait to review.  In the tradition of paintings like the one of the Narnian ship at sea, it's a portal to another, mysterious place. 

It was a painting of a forest at night.  The twigs of leafless trees made a black web against the sky.  A full moon pressed its face through the clouds, touching a path of white stones that led into the dark woods and disappeared.  But it seemed to [her] that somewhere, maybe just at the end of that white path, maybe in the darkness where the moonlight couldn't reach--there was something else within that painting.  Something she could almost see.

[Me again.]  Okay, so there are no trees in Andrew Wyeth's Snow Flurries, 1953 (NGA).  There is the suggestion of a white path, though, and of something else....

I'll reveal (and review) the source of this description next week.  In the meantime, please comment if you can recall any other portal paintings in middle grade novels, so I can add them to my collection.  Thanks!

[The review is here.]

Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Congratulations to Charlotte of Charlotte's Library and Jennifer of Jean Little Library, who correctly identified the source of last month's featured work of art in the Middle Grade Gallery:  The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis.  The rest of you just weren't trying!  It is of course the picture of a Narnian ship at sea that hangs in a back room at Aunt Alberta's (I've always wondered who gave it to her) and becomes a portal into Narnia--or more precisely, into the Narnian sea--for Lucy, Edmund, and their horrible cousin Eustace.  I love this scene in the book and have been very curious about how it will look in the movie (due out December 10); fortunately, it's featured prominently in the trailer.

In the book, the children notice that the things in the picture are moving (Lewis notes that "it didn't look at all like a cinema, either"); then there's wind and noise and a wild, briny smell; finally, "a great, cold salt splash [breaks] right out of the frame." Then the children grow smaller or the picture grows bigger (it's not clear which), and they're all drawn down into the sea.  Here's the trailer for comparison:

What do you think?  Does this scene look as you had imagined it?

Middle Grade Gallery II

This week in the Middle Grade Gallery, a work of art which might be more familiar than the portrait of Oldknow children we looked at last week, and maybe even instantly recognizable.  As you read, try to imagine what this work of art looks like (I'm not a visual thinker, so I have to remind myself to do this):

It was a picture of a ship--a ship sailing nearly straight towards you.  Her prow was gilded and shaped like the head of a dragon with wide open mouth.  She had only one mast and one large, square sail which was a rich purple.  the sides of the ship--what you could see of them where the gilded wings of the dragon ended--were green.  She had just run up to the top of one glorious blue wave, and the nearer slope of that wave came down towards you, with streaks and bubbles on it.  She was obviously running fast before a gay wind, listing over a little on her port side.  All the sunlight fell on her from that side, and the water on that side was full of greens and purples.  On the other, it was darker blue from the shadow of the ship.

[Me again.]  It doesn't look anything like Fitz Henry Lane's Lumber Schooners at Evening on Penobscot Bay, 1853 (NGA), does it?  In many ways the two paintings are exactly opposite, yet I think they share the same magical quality (hint).  If you can identify the source, please be sure to leave a comment so I don't lose faith in my readership.

[See this post for the answer.]

Children of Green Knowe

Last week's featured work of art in the Middle Grade Gallery came from L.M. Boston's The Children of Green Knowe (1955; this edition, Harcourt Young Classics, 2002). No one guessed.  I hope this is a reflection of how many people visit books together and not of how many people read Lucy Boston, because the Green Knowe Chronicles are wonderful. Old-fashioned, yes, but in the very best sense of the word. There's an ancient manor house, an almost equally ancient great-grandmother, and the ghosts of the three children in the painting--Toby, Alexander, and Linnet.

The painting of the Oldknow children (which can be glimpsed in the background of Brett Helquist's cover illustration for this edition) is at the center of the second book in the chronicles, Treasure of Green Knowe. It's gone to an exhibition in London and may have to be sold.  Worst of all, its ghosts (but not all of them) have gone with it.  I think I like it even better than the first.

Middle Grade Gallery

I've been collecting written descriptions of works of art that appear in middle grade novels (fairly frequently, as least in the sorts of middle grade novels I like).  I'll post them here every now and then; bonus points if you know the source of the one below (leave a comment!).

As you read, ask yourself:

• Would you recognize this work of art from the author's description?
• What do you think it looks like?

Over the fireplace hung a large oil painting of a family, three children and two ladies.  There were two handsome boys, wearing lace collars and dark green silk suits.  They had long hair but looked anything but girlish.  The elder of the two, who might be fourteen years old, was wearing a sword, and it looked so natural to him that [he] was filled with hero-worship.  He had his hand on the collar of a tame deer.  The younger brother had a book under his arm and a flute in his hand.  The little girl had a smile of irrepressible high spirits that seemed to defy the painter to do a serious portrait of her.  she was holding a chaffinch, and beside her on the ground was an open wicker cage.  One of the two ladies was young and beautiful.  At her feet was a little curly white dog with a black face; on her arms was a basket of roses.  The other lady was old and dressed in black.  They all had large dark eyes and all their eyes seemed fixed on [him].  If he moved to one side all the eyes moved after him.

[Me again]  One more question:  If you were an artist (or a child; regretfully, I am neither), how would you recreate this work of art?  Imagine a whole series inspired by fictional works of art!  Someone should get on that.

Meanwhile, I'll unveil the title and author next week.  Hint:  It's a timeslip.

[For comparison to the written description and to each other:  Joshua Johnson, The Westwood Children, c.1807 (top) and Johann Zoffany, The Lavie Children, c.1770; NGA.  Does one or the other of these match your image of the painting described?  Mine is closer to The Westwood Children.]

[Unveiled!  Jennifer (Jean Little Library) and Charlotte (Charlotte's Library) knew but alas, didn't comment in time.]

Half Magic at the library sale

I had to return some books before the library opened on Sunday morning and (I swear I didn't plan this) got there just in time for the big Friends of the Library book sale.  I managed to limit myself to a handful of middle grade paperbacks and a hardcover copy of Anno's Journey by Mitsumasa Anno, but I really shouldn't have:  apparently everything is half price on the last day of the book sale.  Do you think that was good news (I only spent half as much as I thought I would) or bad (I could have bought twice as much as I did)?  Me, too.

I did pick up a copy of Edward Eager's Half Magic to read with the kids, although sadly not the glorious 50th anniversary edition (Harcourt, 2004) shown here.  I'm beginning to think I picked up the magic charm in the book (it grants you half of whatever you wish for) somewhere along the way, too.

Toby Alone

I'm currently reading Toby Alone by Timothee de Fombelle (translated by Sarah Ardizzone; illustrated by Francois Place; Candlewick, 2009).  There's Toby on the cover of the book, larger than life:  he's really only one-and-half millimeters tall, and his whole world is a great oak Tree, just like the ones in my backyard.  I'm reading the library's copy, so I can't see the map of the Tree on the other side of the cover, but spot illustrations in pen-and-ink appear frequently throughout.  Maybe it's better that I can't see the whole Tree, actually;  neither can the tiny people who live in it, and that's part of their problem.

Part of my problem is that I've lost my mind--or rather, the key to it.  The metaphor is scientist Sim Lolness's:

"Every brain has its key," [Toby's] father always used to say. "Mine is my bed.  Yours is your plate.  Eat before you think, or you'll think badly."  (48)

My key is solitude.  Companionable quiet will also work.  Both have been in short supply lately; in the last week or so alone I've attended everything from my 20-year high school reunion to KidlitCon (guess which was better?!).  Right now I'm making room for more quiet in which to read and write and think.

In the meantime, I would love to know what your keys (or your children's) might be.  Sleep, food, quiet, or something else entirely--what do you need to think your best?

Cybils alert!

Nominations for this year's Cybils close at midnight tomorrow, October 15. If, like me, you've been holding your nominations in reserve, now is the time to check out what's been nominated (or overlooked) so far and make your choices. I'll post mine here as soon as I've made them.

Exciting news: This year I'm a first round panelist in Middle Grade Science Fiction and Fantasy, which means I'll be reading a lot of SFF between now and December 31. Where should I begin? Leave me a comment with the title and author of your favorite book in this category, and I'll move it to the top of my to-read pile. Provided it's been nominated for a Cybil this year, of course. And if it hasn't, what are you waiting for?

Laura Amy Schlitz's next book, The Night Fairy

I adore Laura Amy Schlitz.  Each of her four published books--a biography, a retelling, a melodrama, and a Newbery-winning collection of medieval monologues--is exceptional.  They also may as well have been written expressly to appeal to my particular set of tastes.  I've been wondering about her next book, and was delighted to discover that The Night Fairy, illustrated by Angela Barrett, will be published by Candlewick in February 2010.  Fairies!  Schlitz obviously knows what I like.

The cover image and text below are from Walker Books Australia, Candlewick's sister company:

"What would happen to a fairy if she lost her wings and could no longer fly? Flory, a young night fairy no taller than an acorn and still becoming accustomed to her wings - wings as beautiful as those of a luna moth - is about to find out. What she discovers is that the world is very big and very, very dangerous. But Flory is fierce and willing to do whatever it takes to survive. If that means telling others what to do like Skuggle, a squirrel ruled by his stomach so be it. Not every creature, however, is as willing to bend to Flory’s demands. Newbery Medal winner Laura Amy Schlitz and world-renowned illustrator and miniaturist Angela Barrett venture into the realm of the illustrated classic a classic entirely and exquisitely of their making, and a magnificent adventure."

Hmmm.  Do you believe in fairies?

Catwings and a Kindle of Kittens

The Catwings books by Ursula K. Le Guin seem so appealing.  Kittens with wings!  There they are in S.D. Schindler's pen-and-ink drawings, perched on a branch of tree or curled up beside their mother ("How is the milk this morning, children?" she asks them, which I loved).  "A small gem of a book," says PW.  "A lovely, gentle fantasy," Horn Book.  "Contemporary and timeless," New York Times Book Review.

Be that as it may, bookstogether is here to tell you that if you have a sensitive child, perhaps one who just started kindergarten this very day, you may not make it past the place where Mrs. Tabby says to her kittens, "I think you are ready.  I want you to have a good dinner and fly away--far away."  Because they're not ready.  And neither are you.

[See also Rumer Godden's A Kindle of Kittens (illustrated by Lynne Byrnes; Viking, 1978), which is a sort of cautionary tale for single cat mothers.  We didn't read that one, either.  But it may interest you to know that the verb to kindle can mean to give birth, and a kindle is the collective noun for--kittens!  Probably not what Amazon had in mind.]

Hobbit houses

Leo's dad is reading him The Hobbit; both of them are enjoying it immensely.  There is something special about reading a favorite childbood book with your own child.  I'm not a Tolkien fan myself (I'll be reading the Narnia books to the kids, thank you), but I'll make an exception for The Hobbit:  I would love to live in a hobbit house.  This one, built to house someone's collection of Tolkien manuscripts and artifacts, is my favorite.  Check out the interior shots of the round door, the "butterfly" window, the fireplace, and the library.

While googling "hobbit house" I turned up a reference to a hobbit house practically in our own background.  The kids and I went looking for it at the Winkler Botanical Preserve in Alexandria, VA this morning.  I had never even heard of the place, but I'm so glad we stumbled on it.  There was a network of wooded trails; a stream, waterfalls, and a lake; a Craftsman-style building called the Catherine Lodge; and a mysterious series of book-boxes at strategic points along the trail, each inscribed with a single letter.  Our real-life adventure seems to have criss-crossed with someone else's!  What could be going on at the Winkler Botanical Preserve?

Oh, we also found an abandoned hobbit house, just Milly's size (she went in).  It was nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

School's out, or A scary magical adventure

Our last-day-of-school tradition involves a trip to the bookstore to sign up for the summer reading program (we signed up for the one at the public library already) and pick out a brand new book. This year Leo, who has always liked realistic fiction (think Andrew Clements), surprised me by wanting what he described as "scary magical adventure books." Scary? That didn't sound like Leo. It did, however, sound like some of his friends. Fortunately there were a lot of scary (but maybe not too scary) magical adventure books to choose from, and in no time he had acquired a tall stack and was inspecting them before deciding which one to buy. He decided on 100 Cupboards by N.D. Wilson, on the strength (I think) of its gorgeous green cover. He hasn't read it yet.

I wanted to show you a picture of the stack of books in question (so shiny!), but a bookseller politely informed me that photography was prohibited in the store. Company policy. To keep customers from buying the books online or checking them out of the library, maybe? I was mortified, apologetic, defensive, and finally understanding, if also unconvinced. Anyway, before I photograph the stack of scary magical adventure books we did check out of the library (ahem), please let me know what you would recommend in that genre, for an almost-9-year-old boy going on his very first one.

[Updated to add: Charlotte is looking for 70s-era fantasy books for a nine-year-old girl today.  I am partial to the 70s myself, having done some growing-up during them; and I think fantasy books cross over gender (and time) well.  Check out her recommendations!]

Anticipating my Thirteenth Child

Patricia Wrede's Thirteenth Child (Scholastic, 2009) has been on my to-read list since early spring, when I first heard it described as Little House on the Prairie meets Harry Potter.  Since then, I've heard it described as a lot of other, more problematic things, primarily due to Wrede's decision to eliminate Native Americans from the North American ("Columbian") continent: there are mammoths and other megafauna instead.  [Pause.]  A copy is waiting for me on the hold shelf at the library; I'm anxious to read it, if not for the same reasons I had been, and judge for myself.

Reviews by Jo Walton at Tor.com (many comments), Charlotte's Library (I heard it here first), and A Fuse #8 Production (Review of the Day).

Have you read it yet?  If not, does this controversy make it more or less likely that you will?

Wee Free Men

I am whiling away my time on the hold list for Terry Pratchett's Nation (I've had it on hold since it was reviewed in the Washington Post Book World last fall; I'm now at number 31 on the list) by reading The Illustrated Wee Free Men: A Story of Discworld, illustrated by Stephen Player (HarperCollins, 2008).  I first read The Wee Free Men in a mass market paperback edition, and it's somewhat disconcerting to be rereading it in an oversized one, with glossy pages and full-color illustrations throughout.  But Tiffany is how I had imagined her, and I love the occasional gatefolds that show (for example) Tiffany stepping through the arch and into the snow.  But I would still rather be reading Nation.  Should I just buy it already?