by Cornelia Funke
ages: 12+
Read by Elliot Hill
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

When Jacob was 11, his father disappeared. After a year of missing him, and being angry at his disappearance, Jacob enters his father’s study, and following some cryptic notes, ends up falling through a mirror into a completely different world.

Fast forward 12 years, and Jacob has made a life for himself in the Mirrorworld as a Finder for the Empress Therese of Austry. Then once (and once is all it took) his younger brother Will followed him through the mirror and was attacked by the Goyl, stone people who are at war with the humans. As a result, Will is slowly turning into the jade Goyl, cursed by the Dark Fairy to be the protector for the Goyl king.

Jacob is angry — at himself, at the fairy, at the world, at Will — and has vowed to do anything to save his brother. This leads himself, Will, Will’s girlfriend Clara (who came through the mirror after him), and a shape-shifter by the name of Fox (who’s been Jacob’s companion for years, and wishes that Jacob could realize that she’s more than just his shadow) on an interesting, dangerous and possible futile adventure across the world hoping to save Will from becoming a Goyl for good.

It’s a clever story, turning Grimm’s fairy tales upside down, weaving them through this dark tale. And don’t get me wrong, with the age of the characters and the intensity of the tale, I kept wondering why this was a middle grade novel. It’s scary. It’s intense. It’s not for the faint-of-heart. But it wasn’t until I read the review of it at Charlotte’s Library, that I realized that it really is a coming-of-age story, and not just a fairy tale. Charlotte puts it quite nicely:

Despite the ostensibly already grown-up age of the central characters, this is a book about growing-up, about how the relationships of brothers and friends, and perceptions of oneself, change in terrifying ways as adulthood is entered. Jacob might be 24 on paper, but the young man in the mirror world is more an avatar of oldness exploring a fantasy world than a convincing adult–his character is still very much that of the reckless adolescent, confused by his emotional responses to the questions posed by growing up. Although sex lurks in the background (it’s never explicitly or centrally part of the story), for Jacob it is still the hormonally charged lust of the adolescent–he has yet to learn love (oh poor Fox. I felt for her so very much).

It makes so much more sense when viewed at it this way. Though, like Charlotte, I’d be loathe to give it to the younger middle grade readers, for this isn’t of the faint of heart. And as the jacket flap warns: it’s not a happily-ever-after.

As for the medium, I think I enjoyed listening to it better (though there were times when I
wondered about who was speaking; I gather Jacob talked to himself quite a bit) than I would have reading it. Hill did an admirable job narrating as well as with the character’s voices, which helped me get into the story in a way I wouldn’t have if I’d read the print version. It also helped that I couldn’t look to the end to see if it all turned out “okay”.

Also, props to Funke for creating such an elaborate and interesting world. She, much like Rowling, has an incredible imagination and a gift for making everything pop off the page. It’s a strange book, but one that I think will stay with me for quite a while.

by Frances O’Roark Dowell
ages: 9+
Read by Jessica Almasy
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

I love me some Frances O’Roark Dowell. I first discovered her a couple years ago when Shooting the Moon was nominated for a Cybils. I absolutely fell in love with her books, her writing style, her storytelling. There’s something simple about her books, and yet her stories are actually quite sophisticated, with subtle dark undertones.

This book is pretty much all that I’ve come to expect from Dowell. It was simple: the story of a somewhat neglected girl — Isabel Bean, age 10 — with an aura of the otherworldly about her. She doesn’t really have friends, and while she’s not a bad student or child, she doesn’t really seem to fit in at all. Her mother isn’t very motherly, and Isabel drowns that neglect in a sea of books, especially fairy tales.

It’s all fine and good, I suppose, until one day when Isabel hears this buzz coming from the floor of her school. She gets sent to the principal’s office (because hearing a buzz isn’t exactly normal school behavior), and on the way there gets sidetracked and fell into a closet into the nurse’s office.

Into where, you may ask?

Well, into another world. One which, in Jessica Almasy’s capable hands, was slightly British. Definitely old-fashioned, and most definitely fairy-tale-ish. With a magic, of sorts, a witch that’s terrorizing the county of five villages. Isabel has to help defeat the witch, of course, but it’s not really about that. It’s about making friends, and learning to be a friend. Simple, yet elegant.

And Almasy’s narration was spot-on. Her voice was slightly irritating to begin with, but after a while it became Isabel. And it helped that she had different voices for the characters, ones in which you could picture the character just from their voice. It’s also a book that worked better as an audio — there were lots of interruptions by the narrator, making the book more of a story to be heard rather than read. I’m not sure I would have liked it as much as I did had I read it. (Though it is Frances O’Roark Dowell.) But it was a fabulous listen.

by A. A. Milne
Read by: various British actors including Stephen Fry and Judy Dench
ages: 4+
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

What can you say about Pooh Bear? Nothing. Seriously. Pooh Bear is Pooh Bear, and if you don’t love him you are either not a child, don’t have a child, never have been a child, or are a grumpy curmudgeon in need of some humor in your life.

Because the Pooh Bear stories are absolutely wonderful. Funny, sweet, tender, silly, and captivating. How can you not love the characters, Pooh with his earnestness, Eeyore and his sarcastic grumpiness, Piglet and his insecurity, Tigger in his enthusiasm, Rabbit with his bossiness and worry, and Owl with his self-educated importance. I love them all. And the stories: this one has two of my favorites: the one in which Christopher Robin goes to school, leaving a note that says “Gone. Be back son.” and the animals try to figure out what a “backson” is. And Pooh sticks. Yes, I play Pooh sticks with my kids. I love Pooh sticks.

So, when K asked to listen to something for her very own, of course I thought of Pooh. This recording has the benefit of being unabridged, even though it is a full-cast production. I usually prefer a single reader over full-cast, but in this case it worked. It helped K keep track of who was talking — every voice was quite distinct, even if I did find Tigger’s and Piglet’s portrayals a bit grating — and some of them — Stephen Fry’s Pooh and Geoffrey Palmer’s Eeyore, among others — were dead on perfect. I noticed things that I didn’t when I’ve read these to the girls in the past; it’s amazing what a different interpretation of a specific line, what a different emphasis and inflection will do to the meaning of the sentence. And yes, the end in which we have to say good bye did find me teary.

Wonderful, wonderful Pooh.

by Neil Gaiman/read by Neil Gaiman
ages: 10+
First sentence: “There was a hand in the darkness and it held a knife.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

This is a reread for me — my face-to-face book group is reading it this month, and I needed a brush up — but this time, I decided that I really wanted to hear Gaiman read it. I’d heard that he was a fabulous narrator, and that it’s a singular experience.

I was pretty wishy-washy about the book the first time around; I thought the illustrations didn’t add much, and that it wasn’t always as gripping as I’d have liked.

But listening to it? I kept the CDs in the car, to listen to while I drove around, and I kept finding excuses to go places. Gaiman’s a captivating storyteller. Absolutely, completely captivating. There’s something about his voice, and because he’s the author, he adds subtle nuances here and there that just make the story come alive. It was funnier that I remembered it being. The beginning and ending were still intense, but there was a different sort of intensity to it. And it all — from the Sleer to the Goul chapters — seemed to make more sense as Gaiman was reading it. I loved it so much more this time around.

A very highly recommended way to experience this book.