Howl’s Moving Castle

12 Comments

by Diana Wynne Jones
ages: 12+
First sentence: “In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there.

My third outing with Diana Wynne Jones, and I have to say that I understand why she’s beloved by many. The book was wonderful. Not in a gripping, suspenseful, exciting sort of way. But in a quiet, sweet, kind, yet somehow completely and totally amazing sort of way.

For those who have neither read the book or seen the movie, our main character, Sophie, is the eldest of three daughters. Which pretty much means she’s bound to fail. (As the stories go.) A daughter of a women’s hat shop owner, she’s pretty much resigned to staying there forever. Her sisters manage to get away in apprenticeships — one to a bakery, the other to a witch — but she believes that she’s forever stuck. That is until the Witch of the Waste comes in, has a conitpitoin fit and turns Sophie into an old woman. Sophie figures it’s not going to get much worse, and sets off to seek her fortune, in the form of making a bargain with the Wicked Wizard Howl. Only, she discovers, once inside his moving castle, that things aren’t quite what they seem, and she’s going to get a whole lot more than she bargained for.

I liked it because it was quiet. Everything unfolded properly in its due time, and while the foundation was there, it wasn’t necessarily obvious: I didn’t see the ending coming from a mile away, and yet it didn’t feel like a surprise either. Everything was as it should be. Sophie’s a fabulous main character: determined, if a bit stubborn. Fearless, if a bit pushy. Altogether winning and immanently likable.

The minor characters were thoroughly likable, too. From Sophie’s sisters, Martha and Lettie, to Michael, How’ls apprentice, to Calcifer, the fire demon who’s helping manage Howl’s castle: they were all developed in their own separate ways, adding depth and dimension to the story.

And, then there’s Howl. I have got to stop falling for fictional men, but seriously: I adored him. Sure, he’s a fop and a dandy, and he tries (so hard) to undervalue himself, and yet he’s so wonderfully awesome, in his own way. It all comes on so slowly, and the use of magic is relatively underrated (there’s one battle, near the end, but for the most part it’s just little things), that you don’t quite realize that you’re adoring Howl until it’s too late. Which is, I suppose, how it should be.

My only problem is that I’m a bit wary about watching the Miyazki movie. Should I be?

Library Loot 2010-35

6 Comments

Ta da! The holds came in. And now I have an excuse to pick up a TON of middle grade books, though I only picked up two. Now to find the time to read them all…

Picture Books:
Chalk, by Bill Thomson
Angelina’s Birthday , by Katharine Holabird/Illus. by Helen Craig
Flat Stanley, by Jeff Brown/Illus. by Scott Nash
Gumption!, by Elise Broach and Richard Egielski

Middle Grade:
Countdown, by Deborah Wiles
My Life with the Lincolns, by Gail Brandeis
Celtic Myths, by Sam McBratney/Illus. By Stephen Player

Young Adult:
Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd, by Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci
Marcelo in the Real World, by Francisco X. Stork
Bamboo People, by Mitali Perkins
Chosen: A House of Night Novel, by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast
Marked: A House of Night Novel, by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast
Untamed (House of Night Novels), by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast
Hunted (A House of Night Novel), by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast
I Shall Wear Midnight, by Terry Pratchett

Audio Books:
The Graveyard Book CD, by Neil Gaiman

Adult Fiction:
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zola Neale Hurston

The roundup is either at Adventures of an Intrepid Reader or The Captive Reader. Obligatory FTC note: the links are provided through my Amazon Associates account. If you click through and actually purchase one of these books, I’ll get a teeny, tiny payment. But, since no one ever does, and it’s SO much easier using the associates account to put up these links, I’m going to keep doing it.

Bogbrush the Barbarian

1 Comment

by Howard Whitehouse (Illus. by Bill Slavin)
ages: 9+
First sentence: “The July snow was blowing sideways across the frozen plain toward the village.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy sent to me by the author

Because I am not a 10-year-old boy, nor have I ever had a 10-year-old boy (or am likely to), I have completely missed out on the whole sub-genre of 10-year-old-boy books. You know them: Captain Underpants and the like. As a result, I’m not that versed in the world of fart and poop jokes. (Probably a good thing…) This book falls into that category (though it’s pretty light on the fart and poop jokes), and much to my surprise (or not, since I’ve loved other books by Howard Whitehouse) I thoroughly enjoyed it.

We follow the (mis)adventures of one Bogbrush (the Barbarian), who’s off to become a Hero. After a quick stop at the Temple of the Great Belch in order to become a Certified Barbarian, he sets off in search of a Quest. He bumps into Diphtheria and Sneaky, who are off to see if they can remove the Great Axe from the Stone and become the true king of Scrofula. Sounds like an adventure Bogbrush — who’s not too bright — can handle. Of course, they will run into a few other obstacles before they get to the Big City, and while things don’t really turn out happily-ever-after, they don’t turn out too badly either.

But, obviously, this book isn’t about the plot. It’s about the gags, the gimmicks, and Whitehouse (with able — and ample — assistance from Slavin’s illustrations) gives us that in abundance. My personal favorite was the parenthetical comments under the chapter headings; the author uses hands and toes to count up from one to twenty (well, chapter 9 reads, “This would be both hands raised if I had lost a finger like Uncle Bob who had that unfortunate accident with the bacon slicer.”); after twenty they become insanely hilarious, counting all over the map (21 gets used a few times, an Chapter 9 makes a reappearance). I found myself looking forward to a new chapter, just so I could see what was going to happen next in the parenthetical comments.

Additionally, the author gives us an “education”, with sidebars in every chapter explaining definitions of words and customs, as well as general “things to know”. And, since this is a humor book, they are (of course) only mostly serious.

Word of the Day: invoke — to call upon a god, as in “O great God of Homework, make that which I did on the bus this morning suffice for a passing grade.”

or

Vocabulary to Learn: Brigands, outlaws, footpads, and bandits are the same thing — groups of unpleasant criminals who hide in the wilds and jump out on honest passersby. And not just to say “Boo!” either.

It’s not deep, it’s not even a particularly compelling story, and it kind of just runs out of steam at the end. But it’s 10-year-old boy funny, and that’s really all that matters.

Dream Factory

1 Comment

by Brad Barkley and Heather Helper
ages: 13+
First sentence: “I wasn’t at all surprised when Cinderella gave me the finger.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

There are expectations for any fluff book, especially one with a pink cover and a glass slipper on it. The measure of the book, in the end, is how well it lived up to those expectations.

The character actors at Walt Disney World — you know: the people who walk around shaking hands and posing for pictures — are on strike. Since Disney is Disney and cannot be shut down, they resort to hiring older teens, those just graduated from high school, or are in their early years of college, to fill those slots. No auditioning necessary: you get to be whichever costume fits you best.

Which is why, her name notwithstanding, Ella ends up as Cinderella. She spends her days in a ball gown, getting married like clockwork at 3, having her Prince Charming — who’s really not a bad guy, and a halfway decent kisser, even if there aren’t any sparks — chase her down. She has friends, but the one person she feels like she really connects with is Luke.

Luke has ended up being the less cool half (if there is such a thing) of Cphip and Dale. He spends his days sweating in a fur animal costume, hiding from the life that waits for him back home. His girlfriend, Cassie, is everything he should want in a girl: smart, beautiful, fun. But, he finds Ella fascinating, and interesting, and not a little captivating.

So, since the question really isn’t will these two get together — because obviously, the nature of the book demands that they do — the whole point of the book is to enjoy how these two get together. And, while the alternating narrative chapters was fun, the rest of the story kind of fell flat. It almost seemed like the authors were trying to channel Maureen Johnson crossed with Sarah Dessen, but both of them do it much much better. The book lacks the swoonworthiness (yes, I just made up that word) and frivolity of MJ’s books; there just isn’t a whole lot of chemistry between Ella and Luke. There wasn’t any tension, there wasn’t any playfulness, and I swear if a character cut their eyes at another character one more time, I was going to scream.) Perhaps it was because, playing with issues of identity and reality, the authors were trying for the issue-heavy romances like Dessen. Except she expertly balances the issues and the romance, never letting one outweigh the other, and creating something that is quite satisfying in the end.

It’s fluff and it was fun. It just wasn’t all that I had hoped it would be.

Girl in Translation

3 Comments

by Jean Kwok
ages: adult
First sentence: “A sheet of melting ice lay over the concrete.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Nice.

I’m not sure I’m supposed to sum up an immigrant girl’s horrific-and-yet transcendent American experience in one word, especially nice, but there it is.

I found this book to be… nice.

It’s beautifully written, true. And it tells an untold story: of what can happen to immigrants (legal in this case) when they come to America. It’s the story of the American dream: how a girl’s ambition, and how one thing — in her case, being smart and having a “talent” for school — can change the fortunes of just about anyone, especially with hard work and a few lucky breaks. There’s also a love story, tragic and bittersweet.

We follow Kimberly Chang as she and her mother arrive in New York, fresh from Hong Kong, hoping for a better life. They’re under the patronage (thumb?) of the mother’s older sister, Patricia, who sets them up with a job — being finishers at a clothing factory, being paid by the skirt — and an apartment — in an abandoned building with roaches, no heating, and half the windows gone. It’s a rough adjustment for Kim, although she has some grasp of English, she is not prepared for school in Brooklyn. Her grade fall, she skips school, and it’s really only through the chance grace of a friendly gesture that gets her to go and stay. Which, in the end, is what saves her.

There’s some lovely writing in the book, and small touches here and there — like they way Kwok wrote what Kim heard as opposed to what the real word was, when she was just learning (“Where’s your accent note?”) — that I found to be charming. It covers a lot of time, eight years, as Kimberly goes through middle school and high school. There are lots of downs, understandably, but there are ups as well.

But, in the end, I felt that it was going for depth, for heartache, for the chance to move the reader and all I felt was that it was tragic, and yet how nice that she was able to overcome it all. How nice that it all mostly worked out. How nice that she was brilliant and had opportunities. How… nice.

There are worse things, though. At least it was nice.

September Jacket Flap-a-thon

1 Comment

It’s the end of September, already? Can someone please tell me where this year has gone?? Next thing I know, I’ll have to sit down and do my best-of-the-year post. I’m not sure I’m ready for that yet…

Though how could I forget the Cybils nominations open at midnight, Eastern Time, tonight (so for you West Coast people, you don’t have to stay up late…)? Click through the link to read the guidelines.

And here’s the best from this month:

Shiver (Scholastic): “For years, Grace has watched the wolves in the woods behind her house. One yellow-eyed wolf — her wolf — is a chilling presence she can’t seem to live without. Meanwhile, Sam has lived two lives: In winter, the frozen woods, the protection of the pack, and the silent company of a fearless girl. In summer, a few precious months of being human . . . until the cold makes him shift back again. Now, Grace meets a yellow-eyed boy whose familiarity takes her breath away. It’s her wolf. It has to be. But as winter nears, Sam must fight to stay human — or risk losing himself, and Grace, forever.”

I liked how this one pairs the spare, winter feel of the book, but gives you a hint of the intensity of the love story.

Scumble (Dial Books):”Nine years after Mibs’s “Savvy” journey, her cousin Ledge has just turned thirteen . . . But Ledger Kale’s savvy is a total dud — all he does is make little things fall apart. So his parents decide it’s safe to head to Wyoming, where it’s soon revealed that Ledge’s savvy is much more powerful than anyone thought. Worse, his savvy disaster has an outside witness: Sarah Jane Cabot, reporter wannabe and daughter of the local banker. Just like that, Ledge’s beloved normal life is over. Now he has to keep Sarah from turning family secrets into headlines, stop her father from foreclosing on Uncle Autry’s ranch, and scumble his savvy into control so that, someday, he can go home. Starring a cast both fresh and familiar, “Scumble” brilliantly melds Ingrid Law’s signature heart and humor with the legendary Wild West.”

I just liked this one. It feels fun, whimsical, but grounded. Kind of like the book.

Mare’s War (Knopf): “Meet Mare, a grandmother with flair and a fascinating past. Octavia and Tali are dreading the road trip their parents are forcing them to take with their grandmother over the summer. After all, Mare isn’t your typical grandmother. She drives a red sports car, wears stiletto shoes, flippy wigs, and push-up bras, and insists that she’s too young to be called Grandma. But somewhere on the road, Octavia and Tali discover there’s more to Mare than what you see. She was once a willful teenager who escaped her less-than-perfect life in the deep South and lied about her age to join the African American battalion of the Women’s Army Corps during World War II. Told in alternating chapters, half of which follow Mare through her experiences as a WAC member and half of which follow Mare and her granddaughters on the road in the present day, this novel introduces a larger-than-life character who will stay with readers long after they finish reading.”

The best flap copy, I think, is one that explains the book, but doesn’t give anything (or at least much) away. This is a perfect example of that.

Other Books Read This Month:
Green
Dance With Them
The Red Pyramid
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (DNF)
The Youngest Templar: Trail of Fate
Ugly as Sin
Cracked Up to Be
Nine Parts of Desire
The Summer of Moonlight Secrets
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice

Running total: 131 books
Adult fiction: 22
YA: 47
MG: 37
Non-fiction: 15
Graphic Novel: 10
Didn’t Finish: 7

Library Loot 2010-34

2 Comments

It’s a light load this week; mostly because while I put a lot of books on hold, only one of them came in. There’ll be more loot next week for you (and me).

Picture Books:
Pete’s a Pizza, by William Steig
Where Is the Green Sheep?, by Mem Fox/Illus. by Judy Horacek
Farm, by Elisha Cooper
A Balloon for Isabel, by Deborah Underwood/Illus by Laura Rankin
Animal Crackers Fly the Coop, by Kevin O’Malley
One Too Many: A Seek & Find Counting Book, by Gianna Marino
The Squiggle, by Carole Lexa Schaefer/Illus. by Pierr Morgan

Young Adult:
Happyface, by Stephen Emond

The roundup is either at Adventures of an Intrepid Reader or The Captive Reader. Obligatory FTC note: the links are provided through my Amazon Associates account. If you click through and actually purchase one of these books, I’ll get a teeny, tiny payment. But, since no one ever does, and it’s SO much easier using the associates account to put up these links, I’m going to keep doing it.

2010 Challenge #2: Cybils

2 Comments

Since the nominations for this year’s Cybils opens tomorrow (go nominate books!!), I figured now was as a good time as any to wrap up Michelle at Galley Smith‘s Cybils challenge! Sure, it goes until the end of the year, and I’m going to try and get to the few that I missed, but for the most part, I’m moving on.

Here’s what I was able to find to read (the ones I didn’t get to, for the most part, were because my library — shame on them — didn’t have them):

YA:
Blue Plate Special, Michelle D. Kwasney
Carter Finally Gets It, Brent Crawford
Cracked Up to Be, Courtney Summers*
How to Say Goodbye in Robot, Natalie Standiford
Into the Wild Nerd Yonder, Julie Halpern
North of Beautiful, Justina Chen
Wintergirls, Laurie Halse Anderson

(The library has Wild Nerd Yonder, so I’ll probably read that sooner or later.)

MG Sci-Fi/Fantasy:
11 Birthdays, Wendy Mass
Dreamdark: Silksinger, Laini Taylor*
The Farwalker’s Quest, Joni Sensel
Odd and the Frost Giants, Neil Gaiman
The Prince of Fenway Park, Juliana Baggott
The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories, Joan Aiken
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, Grace Lin

YA Sci-Fi/Fantasy:
Candor, Pam Bachorz
The Demon’s Lexicon, Sarah Rees Brennan
The Dust of 100 Dogs, A. S. King
Fire, Kristin Cashore*
Lips Touch Three Times, Laini Taylor
Sacred Scars, Kathleen Duey
Tiger Moon, Antonia Michaelis

(The library has Sacred Scars, and, in Graphic Novel, YA, Gunnerkrigg Court: Research, but as both of these are seconds in a series, and the library doesn’t have the first, I probably won’t read either.)

Graphic Novel, Middle Grade:
Creepy Crawly Crime, Aaron Reynolds
Adventures in Cartooning: How to turn your doodles into comics, James Sturm
The Stonekeepers Curse, Kazu Kibuishi
The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Curse, Eleanor Davis*
Frankie Pickle and the Closet of Doom, Eric Wight

Graphic Novel, YA:
The Dreamer: The Consequence of Nathan Hale (Part 1), Lora Innes
Gunnerkrigg Court: Orientatiom, Tom Siddell*
Crogan’s Vengence, Chris Schweizer
Edgar Allen Poe’s Tales of Death and Dementia, Edgar Allen Poe
Outlaw: The Legend of Robin Hood, Tony Lee

Wow, my library is terrible at getting YA graphic novels. Wonder who I should speak to about this?

YA Non-Fiction:
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, Phillip Hoose
The Frog Scientist, Pamela S. Turner*
I Can’t Keep My Own Secrets, Larry Smith
Marching For Freedom: Walk Together Children and Don’t You Grow Weary, Elizabeth Partridge
Written in Bone, Sally M. Walker

*2009 winners.

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice

1 Comment

by Phillip Hoose
ages: 11+
First sentence: “Claudette Colvin: I was about four years old the first time I ever saw what happened when you acted up to whites.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

When I came across a brief mention of Claudette Colvin in Mare’s War, I knew I needed to (finally) read this book, if only to find out a little bit more about who this girl was.

Told in a combination of narration and quoted memories from Claudette herself, the covers a broad range of history in Alabama, though it focuses specifically on Claudette, following her from early childhood through the late 1950s. It’s a turbulent time in Alabama, and the book doesn’t sugar coat much of anything: the treatment of blacks during the Jim Crow years, the conditions that they lived, worked and went to school in. Claudette had hopes of rising above all that, and she had a remarkable support system. She was opinionated, and curious, and willing to stand up for what she believed in. Which is why, one day, she just decided that she’d had enough of Montgomery’s stupid backward bus laws/customs, and refused to get off her seat. Nine months before Rosa Parks did the same thing.

What surprised me most about this book — and perhaps it shouldn’t have — was how much class came into play during the civil rights movement. I guess I kind of figured that all the blacks were fed up, that all the blacks would support whatever stand against segregation whomever it was that made them. According to the book and Claudette’s memory, that wasn’t so. She made a stand, but she wasn’t the right class, wasn’t the right person, it wasn’t the right time… all among the reasons she wouldn’t made a good poster girl for the cause. I suppose it’s cynical to think so, but everything dealing with government is political, everything needs PR and the right spin, and the civil rights movement wasn’t exempt.

That’s not to say that it wasn’t a worthy cause, just because it was politicized. It was. I just felt bad for Claudette. In many ways, she was courageous, and deserved to be honored for that. But, instead she was shunned and pushed to the side. No wonder she never made it into history books, even though she was the star witness on the lawsuit — Browder v. Gayle — that actually got the city of Montgomery to integrate the bus system. It’s a portrait of an unsung hero, yes, but it’s also a look into the politics of a movement.

Fascinating stuff.

Mare’s War

3 Comments

by Tanita S. Davis
ages: 13+
First sentence: “It’s just a sporty red car parked across our driveway, but when I see it, my stomach plummets.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

The last thing fifteen-year-old Octavia wants to do is spend the summer with her older sister, Talitha, and their grandmother, Mare. She’d rather be looking for a job. Or hanging with her friends. Anything but sitting in a car, driving from San Francisco to Alabama for a family reunion. All sorts of boring. Especially since she really doesn’t get along with either Mare or Talitha.

Except as they start driving, Mare starts talking about her past: what made her run away from Bay Slough, Alabama and join up in the Women’s Army Corps near the end of World War II. Her experiences in both a segregated south and a 1940s midwest, not to mention in the army. The chapters alternate between then — Mare’s history — and now — the road trip — and as the book unfolds, we learn more about all three of our characters. It’s an interesting journey, for both the characters as well as the readers. In the course of the book, Davis tackles both womens- and race-issues from rape to segregation to sibling rivalry to parental expectations and everything in between. It would seem like this would be a heavy-handed book, but it’s not. It’s got a lot to think about and talk about, but it’s like a sugar-coated pill: it goes down easy. Mare’s a fascinating character, all bumps and edges with a heart of gold underneath. And while I foiund Talitha and Octavia are less charming, they are certainly not uninteresting.

Which means this is one of those rare breeds of books: entertaining while educational at the same time. Well done.