A Middle Grade Fiction Panel Squee

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Can I tell you how ridiculously excited I am about this?

Not only did the Cybils folk let me participate again this year, they let me be on the same panel that I was last year. Which thrills me to no end. On top of that (as if it could get any better!), look at the panelists:

Panel Organizer: Kerry Millar, Shelf Elf

Panelists (Round I Judges):

Sherry Early, Semicolon
Melissa Fox, Book Nut
Abby Johnson, Abby the Librarian
Kyle Kimmal, The Boy Reader
Becky Laney, Becky’s Book Reviews
Sarah Mulhern, The Reading Zone
Sandra Stiles, Musings of a Book Addict

Awesome, no? Three of us are returning from last year (*waving* Hi, Sherry and Sarah!) AND I get to be on a panel with two of my most favorite bloggy people in the whole world! I don’t know Kyle or Sandra at all, but I’m sure I’ll get to know them MUCH better over the course of the next two (or so months)!

Oh, and don’t forget the very cool judges:

Round II Judges:

Kimberly Baker, Wagging Tales
Stacy Dillon, Welcome to my Tweendom
Monica Edinger, Educating Alice
David Elzey, Excelsior File
Kerry Millar (see panel organizer)

Woot!

Remember, also, you can still nominate books through the 15th: keep ’em coming! I can’t wait to read what you nominate. 😀

Book to Movie Friday: Bridge to Terabithia

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I’d been avoiding this movie for a long time. That is, until Betsy posted her best kids book-to-movie adaptations, and this was on the list. Well, I figured if Betsy liked it, then it must be good. So, the next time I saw it at the library I grabbed it and watched it with M and C.

(We made C read the book first, though.)

I came to this book as an adult, having missed it (among others) as a kid. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t love it or was concerned about the movie, especially after seeing the trailer: they turned Terabithia into a fantasy movie? Eek.

I needn’t have worried. (Actually, as I watched the movie, I remembered what my brother-in-law said the summer it came out: he was angry and felt like he’d been gypped because he thought he was going to go see a fantasy flick and ended up with a tear-jerker.)

Anyway.

I liked that it stayed true to the story, and yet worked as a movie. It wasn’t just scenes from the book, which is a downfall of many book-to-movie adaptations, and yet, they didn’t change it substantially, either. There was a sense of Jess’s father’s sternness, of Jess’s need to prove himself. (By the way, Josh Hutcherson did a fabulous job. Anna Sophia Robb was good, too, but I was a bit more distracted by her acting than Josh’s.) I liked the friendship between Josh and Leslie, how it brought out the best in both of them. And, yes, I liked the way they portrayed Terabithia: sure it was fantastical, but how else to portray what was in Leslie and Jess’s imagination? The filmmakers worked it in pretty seamlessly, moving between Terabithia and the real world.

My only complaint was the ending (if you haven’t read the book, then don’t read this part…). Maybe it was me (it most likely was, since M was bawling): I didn’t get worked up nearly as much as I did while reading the book. I wanted to bawl, I wanted to sob like I remembered doing, but all I got was a little teary eyed.

That said, it’s a minor complaint… and really not worth not seeing the movie over.

Verdict: the book’s beautiful, and the movie does it justice. Hooray!

10 Questions for Jacqueline Kelly

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Perhaps it is too much to say that when I finished Calpurnia Tate, I wanted to meet the author behind the book. But, it isn’t too much to say that the instant I got an email from Jaqueline Kellye thanking me for my review, that I jumped at the chance and asked her if she’d be willing to do one. (Happily, she said yes!) Born in New Zealand, raised in Western Canada, she now calls Texas home. If that isn’t interesting enough, she also holds both a medical degree and a law degree (and likes both The Princess Bride and all of the Wallace and Gromit movies!). I could blather on about how interesting Jacqueline and her book is, but I think I’ll just move on to the questions and let them do the work for me.

MF: This is your first novel, congratulations! Can you tell us a bit about how the story came to be?
JK: The first chapter of the book was originally written as a stand-alone short story. It ended by jumping forward in time ten years to one morning when Calpurnia, by then a young woman, smuggled Granddaddy out of the house and took him to the airfield in Luling. There she bought him a ride in a bi-plane and paid the pilotess extra money to throw in some loop-the-loops. She could hear Granddaddy whoo-hooing in happiness as he whizzed by. He died a few months later, still in a fog of happiness.

MF: That sounds like a fun storye! What inspired you to write Calpurnia’s story?
JK: Calpurnia and the entire novel was inspired by my old house out in Fentress. It is a huge old house originally built over a hundred years ago for a large Victorian family. The house is wonderful but it’s falling down around my ears. I did make the house a promise that if I made money from the book, I would use it to restore it to its former glory. Here comes the shameless plug: buy the book and buy the house a foot of plumbing!

MF: Is there anything in your life that influenced the book as you were writing?
JK: What influenced me most while I was writing the book was my writing group. They are the ones who urged me to turn a simple short story into a full-length novel. I couldn’t have done it without them. We have been meeting every two weeks for eight years now and we have more fun than should be allowed.

MF: I adored many of the characters, from Grandpa and Calpurnia to the little J.B. Do you have a favorite character in the book? Who is it and why?
JK: My favorite character is, of course, Granddaddy. I grew up without a grandfather, so I had to create my own. This is actually rather nice because then you get exactly the grandpa you want.

MF: Is there anything you hope readers will get from your book?
JK: I hope that readers will look at the world and nature in new ways. And I hope that girls and women will realize that their great-grandmothers fought for the right to vote. Civil rights must never be taken for granted.

MF: I know you have a background in both the medical professions as well as in law. How did you end up being a writer of children’s novels?
JK: I have wanted to be a writer my whole life. I’m very fortunate in that I presently practice medicine part-time. This allows me to write. It would be almost impossible to write seriously with a full-time private practice.

MF: Do you have a special time or place where you write?
JK: I prefer to write in the mornings upstairs in a guest bedroom that I have turned into a home office. I listen to the local classical music station and I look out into a huge old oak tree where the squirrels and cats chase each other back and forth, up and down. I try to set aside from 9-12 daily but that doesn’t always work.

MF: Are there five books you think everyone should read?
JK: For children: The Wind in the Willows; Alice in Wonderland; The Princess Bride; The Hobbit; The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

MF: Who or what has influenced your writing, and why?
JK: I am in awe of Alice Munro. Her language is deceptively simple, yet her stories are incredibly rich and complex. Then there’s Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor, Katherine Anne Porter. I would hope that these wonderful writers have had some small influence on me. They are the best at what they do. The rest of us are mere sniveling amateurs.

MF: Thanks for your time!
JK: Thanks so much.

You can find more about Jacqueline and Callie Vee on their Facebook page, which Jacqueline is using as a blog. You can also check out her (very gorgeous) web site.

Go Nominate Your Favorite Book NOW!

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That’s an order.

Go here to do it… fill out the forms and press enter. There’s a bunch of categories to choose from — easy reader/early chapter; poetry; fiction and non-fiction picture books; middle grade fiction; middle grade and YA non-fiction; YA books; graphic novels; and science fiction/fantasy — and you can nominate in one or two or ALL of them. It’s easy peasy.

Just don’t nominate my favorite books… okay?

Library Loot #38

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There were Christmas books and movies out on display at the library today. Last time I checked, it’s not even October yet.

What is this world coming to?

Or, better yet: where has the year gone?

For A/K:
My Goldfish, Barroux
Miranda’s Beach Day, by Holly Keller
Hook, by Ed Young
Baby Baby Blah Blah Blah!, by Jonathan Shipton/Illus. by Francesca Chessa
Mrs. Muffly’s Monster, by Sarah Dyer**
The Bold Boy, by Malachy Doyle/Illus. by Jane Ray
Strega Nona: Her Story, by Tomie dePaola**
Big Wolf and Little Wolf, by Sharon Phillips Denslow/Illus. by Cahtie Felstead**
The Dumb Bunnies, by Sue Denim/Illus. by Dav Pilkey

For C:
She’s still working on OOTP, but I picked this one up for her, anyway.
Roman Diary: The Journal of Iliona of Mytilini: Captured and Sold as a Slave in Rome – AD 107, by Richard Platt and David Parkins

For M:
Brutal, by Michael Harmon
Prophecy of the Sisters, by Michelle Zink
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, by Terry Pratchett
Shine, Coconut Moon, by Neesha Meminger*

For me:
Sweetness in the Belly, by Camilla Gibb
The roundup is either at Reading Adventures or A Striped Armchair.

*Ones that M eventually read.
**Picture books we really liked.

September Jacket Flap-a-thon

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Just a quick reminder before we get into this month’s jacket flap-a-thon: the nominations for this year’s Cybils awards open tomorrow. Go make a nomination: the more, the merrier, and you know you don’t want your favorite book to be left out!

On to this month’s reading:

Rules (Scholastic): “No toys in the fish tank. Twelve-year-old Catherine just wants a normal life. Which is near impossible when you have a brother with autism and a family that revolves around his disability. She’s spent years trying to teach David the rules from “a peach is not a funny-looking apple” to “keep your pants on in public” — in order to head off David’s embarrassing behaviors. But the summer Catherine meets Jason, a surprising, new sort-of friend, and Kristi, the potential next-door friend she’s always wished for, it’s her own shocking behavior that turns everything upside down and forces her to ask: What is normal? Filled with humor and warmth, Cynthia Lord’s debut novel takes a candid and sensitive look at feeling different and finding acceptance — beyond the rules.”

I thought this captured the spirit of the book — humor and tenderness and all — while making it intriguing enough that someone would want to pick it up.

Twilight of Avalon (Touchstone): “Ancient grudges, old wounds, and the quest for power rule in the newly widowed Queen Isolde’s court. Hardly a generation after the downfall of Camelot, Isolde grieves for her slain husband, King Constantine, a man she secretly knows to have been murdered by the scheming Lord Marche — the man who has just assumed his title as High King. Though her skills as a healer are renowned throughout the kingdom, in the wake of Con’s death, accusations of witch craft and sorcery threaten her freedom and her ability to bring Marche to justice. Burdened by their suspicion and her own grief, Isolde must conquer the court’s distrust and superstition to protect her throne and the future of Britain. One of her few allies is Trystan, a prisoner with a lonely and troubled past. Neither Saxon nor Briton, he is unmoved by the political scheming, rumors, and accusations swirling around the fair queen. Together they escape, and as their companionship turns from friendship to love, they must find a way to prove what they know to be true — that Marche’s deceptions threaten not only their lives but the sovereignty of the British kingdom. In Twilight of Avalon, Anna Elliott returns to the roots of the legend of Trystan and Isolde to shape a very different story — one based in the earliest written versions of the Arthurian tales — a captivating epic brimming with historic authenticity, sweeping romance, and the powerful magic of legend.”

It’s a little misleading — it made me think it was more of a romance than it was — but otherwise, a good picture of the plot without giving too much away.

Willow (Dial Books): “Seven months ago on a rainy March night, Willow’s parents drank too much wine at dinner and asked her to drive them home. But they never made it — Willow lost control of the car, and both of her parents were killed. Now seventeen, Willow is living with her older bother, who can barely speak to her. She has left behind her old home, friends and school. But Willow has found a new way to survive, to numb the new reality of her life: She is secretly cutting herself. And then she meets Guy, a boy as sensitive and complicated as she is. When Guy discovers Willow’s secret, he pulls her out of the solitary world she’s created for herself, and into a difficult, intense, and potentially life-changing relationship. Julia Hoban has created an unflinching story about cutting, grieving, and starting anew. But above all, she has written an unforgettable tale of first love.”

I thought this was nearly perfect: captured the intensity and desperation, and the whole bit about it being unforgettable is spot-on.

Catching Fire (Scholastic): “Sparks are igniting. Flames are spreading. And the Capitol wants revenge. Against all odds, Katniss has won the Hunger Games. She and fellow District 12 tribute Peeta Mellark are miraculously still alive. Katniss should be relieved, happy even. After all, she has returned to her family and her longtime friend, Gale. Yet nothing is the way Katniss wishes it to be. Gale holds her at an icy distance. Peeta has turned his back on her completely. And there are whispers of a rebellion against the Capitol — a rebellion that Katniss and Peeta may have helped create. Much to her shock, Katniss has fueled an unrest she’s afraid she cannot stop. And what scares her even more is that she’s not entirely convinced she should try. As time draws near for Katniss and Peeta to visit the districts on the Capitol’s cruel Victory Tour, the stakes are higher than ever. If they can’t prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are lost in their love for each other, the consequences will be horrifying. In Catching Fire, the second novel of the Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins continues the story of Katniss Everdeen, testing her more than ever before… and surprising readers at every turn.”

Had to include this one… how do you write a blurb about one of the most anticipated books of the year and not give anything away? This is how.

Other books I read this month:
Just Listen
Faith, Hope and Ivy June
Babymouse: Dragonslayer
The Beef Princess of Practical County
The Moonstone
Perfect Chemistry
From Cover to Cover
Dreaming Anastasia
The Great Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
A Finder’s Magic
The Princess and the Bear
My Life in Pink and Green
The Conch Bearer
The Purloined Boy (DNF)
Tess of the d’Urbervilles

2009 Challenge #4: Classics Challenge

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I finished another challenge! (I have not had a good track record this year…) For the Classics Challenge, I read:

My Antonia, Willa Cather
The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
Tess of the d’Ubervilles, Thomas Hardy
Anecdotes of Destiny and Ehrengard, Isak Dineson

And for the snack, I read Atonement, Ian McEwan

Out of them all, I think I liked the Willa Cather best, but it was good to delve into some headier books. I should read more classics more often. 🙂

Tess of the D’Urbervilles

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by Thomas Hardy
ages: adult
First sentence: “On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemore or Blackmoor.”

Men are jerks.

Really.

That’s basically the bottom line that I got from this book, the one that I stomped around the house growling about, that I vented on the phone to a friend about, once I finished the book.

Men — all men, from fathers to lovers — are just basically going to take a woman’s innocence, their good hearts, their good will, and stomp. all. over. them.

Cheery, isn’t it?

For those who are unfamiliar with this classic, Tess Durbeyfield is part of the Victorian working poor — oldest daughter of a lackadaisical farmer. When her dad inadvertently finds out that he’s a decedent of a noble family — the d’Urbervilles — he decides (practically pushes out the door) to send his daughter to a branch of the family who lives in a nearby town in order to beg them for money.

Male jerk #1.

Tess, being the kind, good, loving daughter that she is, does her father’s (and mother’s — she’s not much better!) will, and heads out. There she meets Alec: pretty boy, ladies man, and who is completely and utterly smitten with his “coz”. (Because as these things go, Tess is not only pure, but beautiful as well.) He pursues her very aggressively, and while she’s able to withstand his advances for quite a while, eventually he rapes her. Or at least, that’s how I see it.

Male jerk #2.

A short while later, Tess up and leaves the house and ends up back at her parents’ place. She gives birth and while the baby dies shortly thereafter (a very touching, passionate scene with her desperately trying to get the baby baptized before it dies), she’s determined to move on with her life. Fast forward a couple of years, and she gets a job at a dairy farm where Angel Clare is working.

A bit about Angel — he’s a gentleman’s son, and an enlightened Soul. He was meant for the Church, but unable to commit because of a lack of faith. And so, he decides to be a gentleman farmer, setting about visiting farms to get training. He falls head over heels in love with Tess, because of her purity and earthiness. She tells him she’s no good for him, that it would be better for him to marry one of the other dairymaids. He persists, and eventually she gives in (either these guys were REALLY persistent, or she really didn’t have much of a backbone), agreeing to marry him. On the wedding night, they decide to be confessional (word of advice: the wedding night is not a good time to be confessional). Angel confesses to having a short affair, whereupon Tess gets hopeful: perhaps he will be sympathetic to her plight. So, she tells him about her past.

Male jerk #3.

Actually — at this point, I don’t know who I was more incensed at: Alec for abusing and using Tess for his own personal pleasure or Angel for being such a merciless hypocrite. I had to put the book down for quite a while (a day or so) before I could deal with the story again.

Tess is totally the victim here, and it’s very frustrating for me as a reader to experience that. Especially since Tess is really the only sympathetic character in the novel. All that said, Hardy is a brilliant writer; engaging, descriptive, gorgeous language. And able to span all the emotions — from love to hate to disgust; he’s a master. The rest of the book is totally downhill, of course. A criticism of Victorian society and norms and a portrait of good intentions gone horribly wrong couldn’t have a happy ending.

That said, I’m not sure I’m going to run out and get more Hardy any time soon. Unless someone can convince me that it’s not full of horrid men. Because, I’m not sure I can handle much more of that!

The Purloined Boy

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by Mortimus Clay
ages: 9-12
First sentence: “All the doors were locked, all the windows were latched, and everything was perfectly secure the night the bogeyman came.”

The premise for this book is an interesting one: a boy, Trevor, lives in a world where bogeymen are real. They are your friends, they know what’s best for you. Except Trevor keeps having dreams about a time before, a time when he had parents, when he was truly happy. One day, he mentions this in class, and suddenly his world changes: he’s whisked away, and in order to avoid Certain Doom, he must find a way to escape.

And it sounded like it would have a Lemony Snicket feel to it, since the author — one Mortimus Clay — is “the most prolific author writing posthumously in the world today. The modest Clay is not given to sweeping generalizations, but he has this on the highest authority.” A dead author writing kids books? What’s not to love?

Well… lots.

I tried to read it. Really, I did. Picked it up and put it down at least a half-dozen times. And every time, I would look at the words, I would try to get into the story, but it eluded me. I tried to get past the stilted dialogue and the clunky sentences, and find the good story in there, but it eluded me, too.

So, about 100 pages into the nearly 250 page book, when nothing remarkable had happened (and yet, I was left with a feeling — that did not elude me — that something remarkable *should* have happened), I bailed.

Hopefully, since the author is dead, he won’t mind the negative review.

Sunday Salon: Double Booking

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Look at me: participating in Sunday Salon!

It’s a dual thing this morning… a response in Suey’s recommendation that I blather more and a column in this morning’s paper about reading only one novel at a time. The author, Lisa McLendon, wrote about how she finds it difficult to read multiple books, commenting:

Confusion aside, reading multiple books at once seems to me to give short shrift to all of the books involved. You can’t give your undivided attention to a book if another book beckons from the coffee table, competing for your eyes. Plus, when a novel transports you to another place, placing you inside another person’s life, it feels almost like two-timing to delve just as deeply into something else.

She ends the piece by asking for responses: how do those of you who read multiple books do it?

I have to say that for many, many years I was on the same page as Lisa: I only read one book at a time, savoring it fully to its conclusion (whether it was good or bad) before moving on to another one. And, honestly: for the most part, I still do that. I’m not a serial double-booker (or triple-booker), I do feel like I should give each book its due; that the time the author put into writing it is deserving of the time I can put into reading it.

However… lately (meaning the last couple of years), that’s not always been the case. Partially, it’s due to book blogging: there are now so many more books I want to read and not enough hours in the day, that I feel almost compelled to double book. But I do it carefully. Take the last couple of weeks, for instance.

I decided to pluck Tess of the d’Urbervilles off my pile. I started reading, trying to get into the language and plot and characters of the dense Hardy novel. Then, I popped by the library and saw that this years’ big read was Edgar Allan Poe. I figured, what the heck, why not pick that up, to. Except that it was a 14-day check-out, as opposed to the usual four week. So, it got bumped to the top of the pile. I didn’t want to give up on Tess, and I needed to read Edgar… so I alternated. I’d read one story of Poe’s (or a couple of poems), and then a couple of chapters of Tess. Then, because all that 19th-century language (and depressing plots) was dragging me down, I complimented them both with a bunch of YA and Middle Grade novels.

So, my reading went like this: one Poe story, two or three chapters of Tess (I’m almost done with it!), half of a contemporary novel. Lather, rinse, repeat.

But how did I keep them all straight?

Partially it’s because when I double- (or triple, in this instance) book, I choose novels that are so far removed from each other they’re easy to keep straight. I’m not going to go confusing plots from a Poe story with the drama in Tess’s life with the middle-grade Indian fantasy. I think that’s crucial, actually: as Lisa pointed out in her piece, if you pick two books (they don’t have to be novels) that are similar in any way, then the tendency to get them confused will be stronger.

It would also help if I took notes on the book — I have noticed that when I double-book too closely, my posts are not as detailed (or as good) as when I only read one at a time.

But, until my reading list gets shorter, or someone invents a way to have 26 hours in a day (with the extra two devoted entirely to reading!), then double-booking is the only way I’m going to get through all the books I want to.

What about you? Do you double-book? If so, how do you manage it? If not, why not?