Searching for Shona and children's books about the Evacuation

The painting of the ruined Victorian house in last week's Middle Grade Gallery is from Searching for Shona, by Margaret J. Anderson (Knopf, 1978), a recently rediscovered childhood favorite.  After Marjorie and Shona trade places on the train platform in Edinbugh, Marjorie is evacuated to Canonbie.  She and another orphan, Anna Ray, are billeted with the Miss Campbells, middle-aged identical twins who own a dress shop.  Marjorie and Anna find the house in the painting, empty (although not yet in ruins) save for a cozy playroom in the turret.  Clairmont House becomes a refuge for them until the army requisitions it to house soldiers, and by the end of the war, the house is as the artist depicted it in the painting.

How is the painting connected to Shona?  I don't want to give it away--if a middle grade novel about two girls, one from a privileged background (Marjorie) and another with only one clue about her family (Shona), trading places during the evacuation appeals to you (don't forget the abandoned house and the identical twin sisters, either), you really should try to find a copy of Searching For Shona.  I will say that Shona's father, like John Piper (whose work I featured in the original post), turns out to have been a war artist.  But there's more to the story than that, and it's all very satisfying.

Unfortunately, I didn't get many (any) other recommendations of children's books about the evacuation.  Anna Hebner noted that in C.S. Lewis's The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950), the four Pevensie children are evacuated from London to the Professor's country house (Lewis himself took in evacuees at his house in Oxford).  A Tale of Time City by Diana Wynne Jones (1987) also begins with the main character's evacuation from London, although she only makes it as far the train station (this one's out of print, and Charlotte doesn't like it anyway).

As for realistic fiction, The Children's War (a blog dedicated to books written for children and young adults about WWII) has a review of In Spite of All Terror by Hester Burton (1968), and I'm looking for a copy of that one now.

But the books about the evacuation I most want to read are (perhaps not surprisingly) by Noel Streatfeild.  The first is Saplings (1945), a novel for adults about the devastating effects of the war on a middle-class family with four children.  It's available in a gorgeous Persephone Books edition (have you heard of Persephone Books?) and sounds very depressing. The second is When the Siren Wailed (1974), a children's book written at considerably more remove from the war itself, and in which three working-class children are evacuated from London.  The original edition was illustrated by Margery Gill and thankfully, it ends happily.

[See the comments for more suggestions.]

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?

Masterpiece

The drawing of the lady and the lion featured in last week's Middle Grade Gallery is from Masterpiece by Elise Broach (Henry Holt, 2008; this is the cover of the paperback edition, SquareFish, 2010).  It's a invented work of art by a real artist, Albrecht Dürer. I chose Dürer's Stag Beetle to accompany the original post because in the book, a beetle named Marvin is indirectly called on to copy the Dürer drawing in question. It represents Fortitude, one of the four cardinal virtues; the others (Prudence, Temperance, and Justice) have all been stolen, and the museum's plan to recover them involves a forgery, a theft, and an eleven-year-old boy named James.

Masterpiece is very much in the tradition of E.L. Konigsberg's From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which might explain why I love it.  That book won the Newbery in 1967; and while Masterpiece didn't get any Newbery honors, it did win the E.B. White Read Aloud Award for Older Readers in 2009.

It's also illustrated, in pen-and-ink of course, by one of my favorites, Kelly Murphy (see the Beastologist books, among others).  This image, scanned from my hardcover copy of Masterpiece, shows James and his father looking at Dürer's drawing in a gallery at the Met.  Hanging next to it, in a more ornate frame, is Bellini's drawing of Fortitude, a real work of art on loan from the Getty.  And if you look closely, you can even see Marvin perched on James's shoulder.

Emily's Quest

The portrait of Elisabeth Bas featured in August's Middle Grade Gallery hangs by the fireplace in the Disappointed House, as furnished by Emily Starr and Dean Priest during their ill-fated engagement in Emily's Quest by L.M. Montgomery.  This is the third and final book in the Emily series, which isn't nearly as beloved as Montgomery's Anne series (or so I am forced to conclude, since no one guessed.  Members of the Emily Starr Fan Club, please leave a comment).

I didn't love Emily either, but I still like to reread the chapter of Emily's Quest dedicated to making over the Disappointed House (it's Chapter 9), inside and out.  Montgomery describes everything, from the wallpaper in the living-room ("shadowy grey with snowy pine branches over it") to Emily's great-grandmother's wedding china (willow-ware) to the brass chessy-cat door knocker on the front porch door.  And of course, the pictures:  Lady Giovanna, Mona Lisa...and Elisabeth Bas.

Spoiler alert:  Emily breaks off her engagement to Dean when she realizes that she still loves Teddy, and the Disappointed House is boarded up again.  But years later, Dean gives the deed to the house and all it contains to Emily as a wedding gift.  I can't imagine Emily and Teddy actually living there among Dean's things, but it's always been my House of Dreams.

Does anyone else remember the Disappointed House? Or, for that matter, Anne's House of Dreams (perhaps my favorite of the Anne books)?  Which would you prefer?

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 Saturdays

The French painting of the girl on the garden wall featured in last week's Middle Grade Gallery comes from The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright (first published in 1941; Square Fish, 2008).  The Saturdays is the first, and my favorite, of the books in The Melendy Quartet.  There are four Melendy children, too (guess who is my favorite of them?), and in this book they decide to pool their allowances so each can have an Independent Saturday Afternoon Adventure.

On her Saturday, Randy visits an art gallery where French paintings are being shown for the benefit of war relief.  That's where she finds the painting of The Princess, and its model, who turns out to be old family friend Mrs. Oliphant.  The story behind the painting is long and best told as Mrs. Oliphant told it to Randy, over vanilla ice cream and petit fours.  Suffice it to say that at one point Mrs. Oliphant is kidnapped by gypsies (I agree with Charlotte that this is a bit much).

Elizabeth Enright's own pen-and-ink drawings illustrate all four of the Melendy books.  Here's one from The Saturdays of Randy in front of the painting in question (I scanned this image from my childhood copy).  I'm still wondering whether Enright saw a similar exhibition in New York City and based her description on a real painting, or whether she made up exhibition, painting, or both.  At any rate, we know what it looks like.  Congratulations to Charlotte for recognizing it right away!

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!]

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?

The Blue Bird of Happiness Project

I read The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin (Harper, 2009) during my blog break and immediately set about starting my own Happiness Project.  (Me and everyone else who reads the book, I imagine.)  I'll spare you the details, although it does involve more blogging--which brings me to this post.

At one point during Gretchen's project, she decides to collect bluebirds, because bluebirds are a symbol of happiness.  The connection arises from Maurice Maeterlinck's play The Blue Bird (1908; link is to Project Gutenberg), in which two children--Tytyl and Mytyl--search everywhere for the Blue Bird of Happiness only to find that it was at home all along.

And of course, The Blue Bird is the matinee performed by the students of Madame Fidolia's Academy of Dancing and Stage Training in Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes (1937).  Two scenes from the play are quoted at length in the book; I loved reading these as a child and imagining myself in the roles of Pauline-as-Tytyl and Petrova-as-Mytyl.  I collect books, not bluebirds, but they bring me happiness all the same.

[N.b.  I love the costume notes for The Blue Bird:

TYLTYL wears the dress of Hop o' my Thumb in Perrault's Tales. Scarlet
knickerbockers, pale-blue jacket, white stockings, tan shoes.
MYTYL is dressed like Gretel or Little Red Riding-hood.
LIGHT.--The "moon-coloured" dress in Perrault's _Peau d'âne;_ that is
to say, pale gold shot with silver, shimmering gauzes, forming a sort of
rays, etc. Neo-Grecian or Anglo-Grecian (à la Walter Crane) or even
more or less Empire style: a high waist, bare arms, etc. Head-dress: a sort
of diadem or even a light crown.
THE FAIRY BÉRYLUNE and NEIGHBOUR BERLINGOT.--The traditional dress of the
poor women in fairy-tales. If desired, the transformation of the Fairy into
a princess in Act I may be omitted.
DADDY TYL, MUMMY TYL, GAFFER TYL and GRANNY TYL.--The traditional costume
of the German wood-cutters and peasants in Grimm's Tales.

And many more, all of which I want to make.  Puppet show, anyone?]

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.

KidsPost Summer Book Club 2010

The tenth annual KidsPost Summer Book Club reading list came out today.  This year, the focus is on new books by "rock star" authors (last year it was nonfiction).  The first three books on the list are Rick Riordan's The Red Pyramid; Ann M. Martin's prequel to The Baby-Sitters Club series, The Summer Before; and Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer by John Grisham.  Not really my kind of list!  But there's probably something on there for everyone, and for me that something might be Chasing Orion by Kathryn Lasky (Candlewick).  KidsPost describes it thusly:  "The author of the "Guardians of Ga'hoole" series writes a story set in Indiana in the 1950s."

Not a particularly compelling description, is it?  Maybe the publisher can do better:  When a beautiful teen with polio enters their lives, a girl and her older brother find themselves drawn into a web of lies.  The polio epidemic?  Why didn't you say so, KidsPost?  It's on the hold list.

11 Birthdays on Groundhog Day 2

I didn't like Groundhog Day (the movie), but I loved 11 Birthdays (the middle grade novel) by Wendy Mass.  They share a similar conceit:  the main characters repeat the same day over and over again.  In the case of Amanda Ellerby, it's her eleventh birthday--the only one she hasn't celebrated with her ex-best friend Leo.  Now she has to figure out how to move on, and she needs Leo's help to do so.  But is Leo experiencing the same day over again, too?  Who's responsible, and why?

It's easy to forget that 11 Birthdays is a fantasy novel (and a Cybils finalist in that category), simply because it's so firmly set in a middle grade world.  Mass revisits that world (and some of its characters) in her latest novel, Finally (Scholastic, 2010).  This one is about Rory Swenson's long-awaited 12th birthday--but the weeks that follow it aren't what Rory wanted them to be.  I wonder if Angelina has anything to do with that?

STBA Blog Tour: Margarita Engle, Tropical Secrets

 

Welcome to the 2010 Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour!  I'm honored to be hosting Margarita Engle, author of Tropical Secrets:  Holocaust Refugees in Cuba (Henry Holt, 2009), at bookstogether today.  Tropical Secrets is this year's STBA winner in the Teen Readers category.

Anamaria Anderson (AA):  Congratulations and welcome to bookstogether, Margarita!

Margarita Engle (ME):  Thank you.  I am so deeply honored by the Sydney Taylor Award, and I am so grateful for this opportunity to speak about Tropical Secrets. 

AA:  Tropical Secrets is such an evocative title.  Would you share some of the secrets to which it refers (without, of course, giving any of them away)?

ME:  I feel very close to this title.  It springs from my own sense of wonder about the story.  There is a feeling of discovery.  I am fascinated by the safe harbor Jewish refugees found in Cuba, and in other Latin American countries as well.  I am particularly intrigued by the Cuban teenagers who volunteered to teach Spanish to the refugees.

AA:  How did you go about the research for this story?

ME:  I found the factual details in an amazing scholarly study called Tropical Diaspora, by Robert M. Levine.  Without the nonfiction accounts in that reference, I could not have written Tropical Secrets.  I am astonished that the history of Holocaust refugees in Cuba, and in Latin America as a whole, is not more familiar. 

AA:  I agree, Margarita.  The fictional characters of Tropical Secrets—Daniel, Paloma, David, and el Gordo—bring these unfamiliar historical events to life for your readers.  When did your characters, and their personal stories, begin to reveal themselves to you?

ME:  The characters and plot of Tropical Secrets came to me in a huge wave.  It was overwhelming.  I could barely scribble fast enough to keep up with the flow of words.  It was as if this story had been waiting to be told, and was searching for a home.

My mother is Cuban, and was raised Catholic.  My father is the American son of Ukrainian-Jewish refugees.  Tropical Secrets unites the diverse branches of my ancestry.

AA:  I think it found the perfect home.  What would you like your readers to take home from Tropical Secrets?

ME:  I wrote Tropical Secrets because I admire the resilience of refugees, and the generosity of those who help them.  This is a facet of Tropical Secrets that transcends all borders and eras.  It is true of natural disasters as well as manmade ones.  I simply wanted to pay homage to the idea of safe harbors and the kindness of strangers.

AA:  That facet of Tropical Secrets resonates especially clearly right now, in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti; and it is always worth remembering.

Thank you so much, Margarita, for these insights into your work, and congratulations again.  I look forward to your forthcoming books (The Firefly Letters and Summer Birds:  The Butterflies of Maria Merian, both 2010) and wish you all the best.

And thank all of you for stopping by the STBA Blog Tour!  Please be sure to visit the other stops on the tour today and later this week; and of course I hope you'll visit me at bookstogether anytime.

What about the Belpre?

Oh--what is the Belpre, you ask?  The Pura Belpre Award goes "to a Latino/Latina writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth." Like the Newbery and Caldecott, the Belpre is awarded by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of ALA; and by REFORMA, an ALA affiliate.  When?  Tomorrow!

Tropical Secrets by Margarita Engle (Henry Holt) and Confetti Girl by Diana Lopez (Little, Brown), are (as you might guess by their covers) representative of the range of Latino cultural experience recognized by the Belpre.  Tropical Secrets is a haunting verse novel about Holocaust refugees in Cuba; Confetti Girl is a more typical middle grade novel, with familiar middle grade concerns, set in the predominantly Latino community of Corpus Christi, TX.  I hope they are both recognized tomorrow.

I think about the Newbery all year (watch for my annual Newbery predictions post to go up sometime before midnight tonight), but I had to scramble to read more than a handful of candidates for the Belpre in time for the ceremony.  This year I resolve (it's not too late!) to read more books by Latino/Latina authors.  And I also hope you'll join me.

Mockingbird in the Furnace

My friend Madelyn Rosenberg is launching her new blog, The Furnace, with an interview with Kathryn Erskine, author of Mockingbird (forthcoming from Philomel, April 2010).  It's an excellent interview, covering everything from Asperger's Syndrome to the April 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech to the themes of tolerance, understanding, and finally hope that are common to all of Erskine's work.

Mockingbird's 10-year-old narrator Caitlin has Asperger's, as does Erskine's daughter.  I think there are more and more middle grade and YA novels with characters on the autism spectrum lately, many of them inspired by personal experience.  Here are the ones I've read recently:

• Rules by Cynthia Lord (a Newbery Honor book told from the perspective of an older sibling)
• Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree and Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell in Love by Lauren Tarshis
• The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd
• Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork (a potential Printz winner)

Some of these, including Mockingbird, are featured in The Voices of Autism by Suzanne Crowley (SLJ, 8/1/2009), a look at recent books about autism and the people who write them.  Have you read any of them?  If so, did you read them because they're in some way about autism, or would you have read them anyway?

Operation Yes

Congratulations to Sara Lewis Holmes, whose middle grade novel Operation Yes (Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine) is one of Booklist's Top Ten Arts Books for Youth.  For local folk, Sara will be talking about and signing copies of Operation Yes at Hooray For Books! in Old Town Alexandria from 1-3 tomorrow (that's Sunday, November 8).

And from Booklist's list (November 1, 2009):  Miss Loupe, a new teacher at a school on a North Carolina military base, wins over her sixth-grade class with improv theater techniques in this heartfelt story about the power of theatrical collaboration and creativity to inspire and heal.

So should you read this book?  Yes!

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

Sometimes I wish that girls in books who were interested in science could also happen to like needlework.  Calpurnia Tate doesn't, but I've read so many great reviews of Jacqueline Kelly's The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate (Henry Holt, 2009) that I'm willing to let it go.  Maybe a girl living in Texas in 1899 didn't have the luxury of liking both and would have had to commit to one or the other?  Also, look at that glorious cover (it's by Beth White, who also did the cover for The Monsters of Templeton).  Anyway, Amanda at A Patchwork of Books has three copies of Calpurnia to give away:  maybe one of them will be mine.  Or yours!  Or...mine.

The Hidden Adult in Henry Huggins

The CCBC-Net discussion topic for the second two weeks of July is Perry Nodelman's newest book, The Hidden Adult: Defining Children's Literature (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008). Coincidentally, I just read Henry Huggins (one of the six children's books under consideration in The Hidden Adult) aloud to the kids, both of whom enjoyed it immensely; in fact, they're clamoring for me to read the next book in the series (Henry and Beezus) as I type.  I was reminded of how much I loved Beverly Cleary books, which were easily identifiable in their Yearling editions by the author's name in red bubble letters above the title, and of how well they've held up:  Henry Huggins was first published in 1950; I read it in the late 70s, and my kids are reading it another 30 years later.  I'm looking for a copy of The Hidden Adult so I can participate in the discussion.

Aside:  I actively dislike one of the other five books (The Purple Jar, Alice in Wonderland, Dr. Doolittle, The Snowy Day, and Plain City) Nodelman analyzes in The Hidden Adult.  Guess which one? 

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!]

Millicent and Stanford (and Emily, too)

I'm reading two middle-grade novels by Lisa Yee right now:  Millicent Min, Girl Genius (Arthur A. Levine, 2003) is my upstairs book and Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time (Arthur A. Levine, 2005) is my downstairs book.  Reading them together makes sense given that they tell the same story from two different points of view.  I'm a little surprised to find myself enjoying Stanford's book more than Millie's, but that could be because I identify too strongly with her (not necessarily the girl genius part, but maybe the uptight ultra-geeky part); it makes me uncomfortable.  Stanford is just hilarious.  So that's what middle school-aged boys are thinking.  Good to know!

I also just discovered that if I had another floor in my house I could be reading So Totally Emily Ebers (Arthur A. Levine, 2007), too.  See Lisa Yee's website for sample chapters of Millicent Min and Stanford Wong as well as a sneak peek at Emily.