Fifty Books, #3: The Shy Little Girl

The Shy Little Girl, by Phyllis Krasilovsky, tells the story of—surprise!--a little girl named Anne who suffers from paralyzing shyness, which she eventually overcomes by making friends with Claudia, a new girl in her class. That’s it; that’s the tweet book.

It’s a simple story, but it spoke to me deeply when I first encountered it at age four or five (The copyright date given is 1970). I was a shy little girl myself [a fact which tends to shock people who’ve known me only in my older, more gregarious incarnation], and the possibility that 1) a shy person could meet one Very Special Friend, and 2) a shy person could stop being shy – gave this book a magical feeling to me that it still retains today.

Much of the magic comes from the illustrations, by the late, great, incomparable Trina Schart Hyman*. The 60s color scheme of mustard yellows and browns and an occasional, striking pop of pink.  The expressive faces on each individual child in the school scenes, so that each spread tells a whole story in itself, almost like Norman Rockwell. The striking technique, in a number of those group scenes, of rendering only Anne – and then only Anne and Claudia-- in color, while the other characters are black-and-white line drawings, so that the two significant characters are highlighted, like Tony and Maria each haloed in light in the “Dance at the Gym” scene in “West Side Story”.

I don’t make that comparison lightly: this book is, essentially, a love story. That the love is a friendship between two kids of roughly six or seven, rather than a romance between teenagers or adults, is of less consequence than the importance of the friendship to Anne’s emotional development: as much as any romantic heroine, Anne is changed by love.

Claudia thinks Anne’s freckles, which she’s been self-conscious about, are “like gold dust.” She admires Annes’s height, so Anne stops slouching and stands up straight. As she spends time with Claudia, “Anne discovered she liked to talk, and that it was fun to make someone laugh.” She begins to speak up in class and to join in games at recess. Because Claudia thinks Anne is worthwhile, and Anne loves Claudia and values her opinion, she learns to think of herself as worthwhile too, and transforms from a lonely, sad, shy child to a socially confident girl who knows her place in the world.

That this all has the feel of a fairy tale is doubly fitting: Trina Schart Hyman is perhaps best-known for her depictions of fairy tales—she won the Caldecott Medal in 1985 for her illustrations for Saint George and the Dragon, and one of her three Caldecott honors was for a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. Even more, though, “Lonely girl saved by love” is the plot of many a fairy tale.

Is it true? Does it really work like that? I certainly thought it would, as a child, and spent many years believing a friendship like Anne and Claudia’s would cure my shyness and sadness. The Shy Little Girl gave a shape to something I’m sure I’d already had an inchoate yearning for. It was, I think, my template for a loving relationship – so much so that when, a few decades later, I wrote a queer young adult urban fantasy story set in a city on the border of Elfland, the scene where young heroine and her love interest meet, in a junkyard strewn with useless discarded appliances, unconsciously echoes the illustration spread where Anne and Claudia meet at recess.

Of course, one thing I’ve learned as an adult is that fiction is not a reliable roadmap for living, and that having a friend (or a girlfriend, or a boyfriend) all by itself doesn’t cure shyness, or not liking yourself.. But it is true that seeing yourself through the loving eyes of someone you in turn love can help you discover your own worth.  And when I’ve been lucky enough to have that happen, I believe I was able to recognize and value what I’d found partly because I’d had this story in the deep bedrock of my mind for over forty years.

Stories might not be literal truth. But sometimes, they capture true magic.

*in 1973, a few years after this book’s publication TSN would become the inaugural art director at Cricket magazine, to which I was an inaugural subscriber, and would subsequently become the first artist whose distinctive style I could identify – her detailed, expressive, spidery illustrations in that magazine jumped right out at me, and I found them at first scary and even repellent, but then, as sometimes happened, they grew on me and she became my favorite illustrator, and has remained so. In a used bookstore [when I used to go to used bookstore] I would snap up anything with Trina Schart Hyman illustrations or even a cover by her – and she did many covers, as a working illustrator her whole life.

Fifty Books, #2: Ariel

 

My synagogue’s choir director was hosting a party that day. The adults were talking and chatting and the kids were running around. “Volare” played over and over on the stereo. I was twelve and bored and didn’t fit in anywhere. I sidled over to the bookcase in the corner to see what I could find.

What I found was a slim white spine on the bottom shelf, the title a single word in a blocky, slightly flourished font: ARIEL, [by] Sylvia Plath. I slid it out, plonked myself down on the floor, and my universe broke open.

To be totally, completely honest, I cannot swear to this day that I’ve read every poem in the book. I think I’ve only ever skimmed the bee poems all this time, for example. And yet, and yet, I think it is fair to say that the afternoon I opened ARIEL marked a passage from childhood to…whatever the next thing was. Not exactly adulthood or maturity. But an intimation of a bigger world, a deeper drop, a darker dark. And an understanding that you could write about it.

A second full disclosure: I didn’t come to it entirely cold, that party afternoon. My mother, on the bedroom bookshelves where she kept her paperback John Updike books and “Best Stories of the 1950s” and an early edition of “The Catcher in the Rye” I wish I’d snagged, had a nonfiction book about the phenomenon of suicide called THE SAVAGE GOD, by A. Alvarez, which included a whole chapter about Plath, as a poet, a suicide, and a personal friend of the author’s. I haven’t gone back to that book since, but the New York Times review calls it “melodramatic” and I think, retroactively, that sounds about right.

It was definitely melodramatic enough to be fascinating to a literary near-adolescent who was already somewhat melodramatically inclined, and I’m sure the mystique of Plath, as much as the poems themselves, had something to do with my penchant, in the months after I first read them, for gazing out the moonlit window in my pajamas and reading “Lady Lazarus” aloud over and over until I had it memorized.

Since that time, I’ve read volumes’ worth of other words by and about Plath: her autobiographical novel “The Bell Jar;” her letters to her mother and to her boyfriend, then husband, then ex-husband, Ted Hughes; theories and screeds about her life, her marriage, her drive and competitiveness, her parenting, her feelings about Smith and English winters and the literary scene of the 1960s, her worthiness [or not] as a feminist icon/adversary/cautionary tale, even her opinions of near-contemporary poet Adrienne Rich.

In high school, as a prank, I submitted her villanelle “Mad Girl’s Love Song” to the literary magazine on whose editorial board I sat; the consensus among my fellow editors was that it was too sentimental for publication. By college, I’d come around to that opinion myself, and thought of Plath’s poetry as something romantically adolescent I’d outgrown, like my fondness for the Greek goddess Artemis; my college’s patron goddess [yes, we had a patron goddess] was Athena, goddess of wisdom and war, the opposite of sentimental: hard-headed, pragmatic, adult.

Now, decades older than Plath ever got to be, with my own parenthood and failed marriage and bitter dark winters behind me, I’ve turned around again. I mean, yes, there are things about Plath, at this remove, that are…okay, let’s just say problematic. The imagery about Nazis and Jews reads as cringey and appropriative to me now. There is, infamously, an actual N-bomb in the title poem – shocking and transgressive even then, as I’m sure it was meant to be. And, aside from any political considerations, I do not think, if we’d met in person as contemporaries, that I would probably have liked the fierce, blonde, competitive, ambitious, very very straight young woman who Sylvia Plath appears to have been.

But it’s not always about liking, is it? It’s not about whether the poems are sentimental or offensive or do they romanticize suicide or do too many adolescent girls like them too much. It’s about whether the poems, themselves, get at something true.

And the third truth is: I don’t know if I can ever really know. The poems in ARIEL are so interwoven in my mind with the experience of finding them, reading about them, reading and listening and talking and hearing about their author, that I can’t evaluate them just for themselves, as words on a page, as I asked my fellow high school magazine editors to do.

But I think there’s a reason that more than forty years after that fateful party afternoon, there are whole passages I can tell you by heart, and not just from “Lady Lazarus” :

“Love set you going like a fat gold watch.”

“I should sit on a rock off Cornwall and comb my hair./ I should wear tiger pants, I should have an affair./ we should meet in another life, we should meet in air,/me and you.”

“You do not do, you do not do/ Any more, black shoe/ In which I have lived like a foot / For thirty years, poor and white / Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.”

“What a million filaments. /The peanut-crunching crowd/ Shoves in to see/ Them unwrap me hand and foot--/ The big strip tease.”

“I rocked shut/ As a seashell./ They had to call and call/ And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.”

 “The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea/and comes from a country as far away as health.”

Those words, those images, cracked me open that day in suburban New Jersey, circa 1979, revealing raw, sometimes ugly truths about the world and myself that I was just starting to understand. And I’ve stayed cracked open, more or less, for my whole life.

And maybe that’s enough.

Fifty Books, #1: Cindy Bakes a Funny Cake

 

You will not find Cindy Bakes a Funny Cake: A Hallmark Pop-Up Book (by Dean Wally; illustrated by Susan Stoehr Morris) [Youtube storytime link] on any list of classics, or must-reads, or Best Children's Books of the 20th Century. It has been out of print for decades, and no one, as far as I can see, is clamoring for it to be brought back. It doesn't even have a listing on WorldCat, the worldwide catalog of library holdings.

And back when it *was* in print? It was published not by a venerable Big Five publishing house, or a cool edgy indie press, but by: Hallmark. Yes, a greeting card company is responsible for this title.

God, I loved the crap out of this book. Still do, TBH.

I can't be the only one, either. Else, why would used copies be selling for upwardsof $50 a pop? I mean, it is a pop-up book --haha, no pun intended)-- and those are harder to preserve over the course of (gods help me) 55-odd years [n.b. I'm not sure exactly when Cindy Bakes a Funny Cake was first published. There is no copyright date on my copy of the book. One online source puts it at 1979, but that can't possibly be correct, as I couldn't have been more than five or six when, by whatever means - maybe at the supermarket?- it found its way into my tiny little preschool hands and thence into my heart, forever.]

So, you may be wondering, what is this marvelous tale?

Well, it's the story of red-haired little Cindy Hicks, aged "almost six," who, finding herself with nothing to do one afternoon, decides to bake a cake. Since Cindy's reach exceeds her literacy-related grasp, her recipe turns out somewhat improvisational, and includes "a pound of flour, at least--/Baking soda, chocolate syrup / And a dozen cakes of YEAST!!!" [capitalization and emphases in the original text] [and yes, this is a rhyming picture book. I know, it is sounding more and more twee. But there's just something about it, I tell you.]

That's it. That's the tweet book. It does what it says on the tin: Cindy bakes a [funny] cake, yeast-related mayhem ensues, and then (spoiler alert) all is saved by her big sister, who was upstairs on the phone the whole time. Basically, it's a retelling of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice,"-- a little like the venerable Strega Nona, by the venerable Tomie De Paola, except that Strega Nona didn't come out until 1975, and by then I was deep into full-length novels, thankyouverymuch, and would have scorned to read a picture book. 

What makes this book so special? Why, having long lost my original copy (which, if memory serves, I had also written the page numbers on in red magic marker), was I willing to shell out for a used edition and have it shipped all the way up here to the Northlands so I can continue to reread and cherish it into my golden years?

I think a lot of it is the slightly Mary-Engelbreit-esque pop-up illustrations. The hardest part of composing this blog post has been not including photos of every. single. magical. page of Cindy and her sweet hopeful little face and her red polka-dot hair bow and her mustard-and-green 60s kitchen.There's one page where Cindy is kneeling on the (green) kitchen counter, and when you pull the pull tab, the (green) kitchen cabinet door opens and Cindy's arms reach forward so she can gather the ingredients and it is just for some reason so charming. The world needs more cooking-themed pop-up books. 

But my very favorite page, the one that encapsulates the magic of Cindy Bakes a Funny Cake, is the third full-page spread, in which we see the eponymous cake baking in the oven. When you pull the tab at the bottom of the page, the batter POPS[!!!] right out of the oven door, and you begin to see the implications -- fully realized in the subsequent pages - of ALL THAT PINK CAKE DOUGH TAKING OVER EVERYTHING. It's like the twee-est ever horror story. 

  

n.b.: In all the years I loved this book, I'd never given any thought to the author, Dean Walley. When I did look up his name, in preparing for this post, I found that he was actually quite a prolific author, and wrote many other picture books, mostly for Hallmark. He was never famous, but he had what sounds like a fulfiling and meaningful life filled with words and stories. He lived until 2017, and you can read his obituary here. 

Fifty Books: An Introduction of Sorts

 Nobody reads blogs any more. So no one will even notice this! Hahahahahaha! This is the perfect time to sneak back on to my old book blog!

I have an Idea. Just something fun to do while I'm procrastinating on my Serious Writing. And the idea is this, just simply this: to write about books I love. Especially kids' books. Especially older books [say, before 2000]. With no agenda except that: books I love, and why I love them. Say, fifty books. 

If I were going to rename this blog, I'd call it just that: Fifty Books. It it not at all catchy or clever or even interesting. But it's interesting to me. 

I will confess to being inspired by Ann Patchett's Friday video posts, which she always starts "I'm Ann Patchett at Parnassus Books, and it's Friday, and if you haven't read this book, it's new to you." Then she does a short lovely impassioned booktalk about some book I have almost never heard of. Usually it's an older book [though usually still in print]. Mine will not all be in print. But if you haven't read them, they'll be new to you. 

Endings have always been my Achilles heel - I never know how to wrap things up. But my day job now is about 50% diplomatic emails, and about 25% meetings of one kind or another, and both have taught me that you don't always have to make a song and dance of it, you can just sign off. 

So, signing off. For now. More soon. 

Where Am I?

Hi, all. *tap tap*. Is this thing on?

After a wonderful weekend at KidLitCon 2011, it occurred to me that I do have a book blog of my very own, sorely neglected though it might be. So, hi. I'm still here. Well, mostly not HERE, at least not at the moment. But around somewhere.

If you stumble upon this site and want to see what I'm blogging about these days, your best bet is the tor.com website, where I've been posting somewhat irregularly on science fiction and fantasy for kids and teens. I'm also on Twitter as elskushner.

Oh, and right before my birthday I won this picture-book manuscript contest. Then I screamed and babbled happily for a while. Now I'm waiting for more news and will share as it hits my inbox.

Back in the Saddle

Well, hello there! Long time, no see!

I just found out that my last "Librarian Mom" post at the Scholastic Parent Voices website was just that: my last. Scholastic is switching to a new model with their upcoming new site design, and my services are no longer required. I'm bummed: it was a fun two-and-a-half years; I was thrilled to be part of Scholastic's site, and it was swell to be paid for writing about something that I love to write about.

So now I'm back here at my old Blogger kidlit blog, looking around, dusting the place off, thinking about what I can do with it. I have to admit, part of me is pleased to be back, even though I'm disappointed to lose the Scholastic gig. I feel a little more free to rant here in my own space. And it'll be nice to be able to link to other publishers' sites.

For now, though, since they've given me permission to repost my old posts, here's the one I wrote this morning. Sheesh. If I'd known it was gonna be my last one, I might've tried for something a little more substantial:

Canine Sibling Rivalry

One of my colleagues recently became a grandmother! I asked her yesterday how the new family was doing, and she said that the parents and baby are fine, happy, healthy...but the family dog is perturbed. I said, "There should be a new-baby-in-the-house book for dogs!" and we both laughed for a minute and then simultaneously remembered that there actually is such a book: Madeleine L'Engle's The Other Dog, in which Touche the Poodle catalogs the ways in which the new "dog" that her people have brought home is utterly inferior to her own charming self. Touche is particularly scornful of the diaper-changing that she witnesses, noting sniffily that "White cloths or no, I would never do it in the house," but eventually admits that "in spite of myself...I am getting very fond of our other dog."

L'Engle's book isn't the only one where a dog has to adjust to a tiny, screamy, attention-monopolizing intruder. As it turns out, there is a whole mini-genre on the topic. In McDuff and the Baby, by Rosemary Wells and Susan Jeffers, the scrappy little Westie, who first appeared as a stray rescued by Fred and Lucy in McDuff Moves In, faces disruption in his cozy retro household. With the arrival of the baby, Fred and Lucy no longer read the comics to McDuff, or take him for walks, and he can't hear the radio over the baby's crying. He retaliates, in charmingly understated fashion, by glowering at the baby (which no one notices), and then by refusing his food, which does get Fred and Lucy's attention. When they make an effort to include McDuff, he and the baby begin to enjoy each other's company, and the book ends with the two exchanging convivial "woof"s.

In Truelove, by Babbette Cole, the displaced hero is so demoralized by the change in the household that, after all his gifts and advances are ignored, and the love song he sings (or howls) for the baby gets him kicked out to the porch for being too loud, he runs away and joins a pack of homeless dogs and has to be rescued from the pound. The fact that this story is told mostly in the pictures, while the text is a series of cliched sayings about love ( like "Love gives you strength" and "Love makes your heart sing," ) makes it all the more poignant.

Any of these would be a great present for a family with a new baby and a beloved dog...or a beloved older sibling, who might be able to relate!

Where to Find Me

Well, I should've done this months ago, but better late than never:

For now, this blog is on hiaitus, though that chould always change; I'm posting once a week on children's books and divers related topics at Scholastic's Librarian Mom blog, and apparently that is all the kidlit blogging I am capable of without exploding into a mass of pathetic goo. So, go on over there and say hi!

(Just watch-- now that I've gone and posted this, I'll suddenly get the urge to post about something kids'-book-related that doesn't fit into the Scholastic blog's parameters, and then this post will be moot. Happens every time. Until then, though, this post will be up top.)

Elijah Eureka

I've been reading through the Newbery winners (and working a couple different jobs, and setting up in a whole new city and country, and wrestling my kid into her clothes in the morning, and etc. Not writing here, alas, but not because I wasn't thinking about it)--anyway, reading the Newbery books, and I've been thinking about Elijah of Buxton.

Now, I liked Elijah of Buxton. I liked the colorful characters, and the impish narrator, and the sly humor, and the thing with his mom and the snake and the cookie jar, and the classmate who wanders around with the doll to welcome new escaped slaves, and the fish he gives away all over town, and all of that.

I liked it. A lot. And it earned that Newbery Honor, and that Coretta Scott King award, and whatever further honors (or maybe honours) it's going to win in both the U.S. and Canada (where author Christopher Paul Curtis has lived for the last several years, and where I now live too).

But, somewhere around the point where the Reverend takes Elijah to see the carnival, I started to get a bit impatient with Elijah of Buxton. It seemed sort of episodic and rambling to no great purpose. I knew there was a plot coming (from the front-cover flap if nowhere else), and had some general idea of where it was going to be taking us, but when I was over halfway through the book I started having little internal monologues along the lines of: Come on, Mr. Curtis! Enough with the charming anecdotes, and bring it on already!

And then he did, of course, with a pow-pow-pow of plot that lays out--with no sugar-coating whatsoever and yet still miraculously in a way a kid could take in--the horror that was slavery in the United States, and left me gaping, like everyone else did, at how good it was.

But still, I've been thinking about why it took him so long: the book is 341 pages, and the real plot doesn't get rolling until page 181, and only kicks into high gear around 270. That's about 2/3 of the book spent on setup and back story and voice. Curtis's voice is compelling enough, and his characters are strong enough, that he can carry it off, but why does he?

Then I remembered I felt the same way about The Watsons Go to Birmingham, back when that was the new book everyone was raving about: there's this great family, and they're funny, and quirky, and they get in a car, and drive, and that's funny and interesting, and...and...and...well, I knew we were going to end up in Birmingham with a church being bombed, I mean it was 1964 and obviously that was where it was going, and the ride was swell, but I started to feel like one of those kids on a car trip: are we there yet? How about now? Now??

And I knew he didn't have to do it like that; I mean, Bud, Not Buddy isn't like that: Bud hits the road on something like page 7, and after that we're off to the races. And while I wasn't as crazy about Bucking the Sarge, there was no pacing problem there, either.

But tonight I finally figured it out, and I had to write it up here. Here's what I figured out: he did it on purpose. Elijah of Buxton and The Watsons Go to Birmingham are both about Big Tragic Events in African-American History, with capital letters and bold-face. So Big and Tragic and boldface, in fact, that it's easy to lose sight of the reality that these big events happened to regular people, not cardboard cutouts, and that regular people have a way of living their lives in small letters, with no boldface, but plenty of goofy jokes and small emnities and weird little personal habits, even when they're living in the midst of those Big Historical Events.

So he did it on purpose. He undercut the boldface, with embarrassing anecdotes about when the hero was a baby, and surly teenage brothers who are driving everybody nuts, and dads excited about the newest coolest car gadget, and slapstick practical jokes, and anecdotes up the wazoo until you start to wonder, what is the point??

But that is the point. He doesn't need to grab you right up with a plot first thing: the historical setup is carrying the tension right along with it, and even a 10-year-old knows it. If he brought in the big history-related plot right away, that would be what the book was about. And the book isn't about that: it's about the people who lived then, living their lives in spite of the racism lurking all around them. He needs to lope along with the funny anecdotes, because the loping and the funny are what's subversive. In Bud, Not Buddy, he can move along right away, because Bud, Not Buddy isn't about a Big Tragic Event in African-American History. It takes place in the Depression, sure, but since most of us have almost no ready-made sterotypical images of African-Americans in the Depression, he doesn't have to fight quite so hard to make Bud a real kid as opposed to a Tragic History Cutout.

It's not a new thing, to take a big historical event and make it human-sized. It's what every decent historical novel ever written has done. But I'm not sure how many people have done it by writing as little as possible about the elephant in the room until close to the last minute of the book.

It may be that everyone else has had this epiphany already, or that it was so self-evident that no one else has felt the need to point it out, but it was the first I've thought of it. And I know I've neglected this poor blog to the point where there may be no one even reading this. But if there's anywhere where someone else might have noticed this, and/or might think it was kind of a cool thing for Christopher Paul Curtis to have done, it's the kidlitosphere.

So, Kidlitosphere, here it is, should you happen to stumble across it.

Terrible Days and Pizzas: Books About Emotions

[Cross-posted once again at Librarian Mom.]

My kid had a terrible tantrum last night: a real humdinger of a meltdown over a Chanukah present. She’s kind of old to have those on a regular basis, but we still get them every once in a while. She was furious, then upset, then penitent, then furious again about the consequences for her first tantrum.

After she’d calmed down some, she started recounting all the awful things that had happened to her that made this the WORST DAY OF HER LIFE.

“Wow,” I said. “It’s kind of like Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.” I didn’t want to push the comparison, but it seemed to take her out of herself just a little to remember that other people have felt the way she did—enough that Judith Viorst wrote a whole book about a kid whose day goes so badly that he declares repeatedly that he wants to move to Australia.

Here are a few other books about emotions that might help a kid who’s stuck in her (or his) own anger or misery:

When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry, by Molly Bang. Enraged over a sibling dispute, Molly runs and runs outside, then cries, then climbs a tree and lets “the wide world comfort her,” until her anger is dissipated and she returns to her house to play a game with her family. What I love about this book is the way the vibrant, bold, pulsating colors of Bang’s painted illustrations make it absolutely clear what Sophie is feeling. A rare nonjudgemental book about a child’s totally believable anger.

How Are You Peeling?, by Saxon Freyman and Joost Elders. This duo has created a whole series of books in which the characters are played by fruits and vegetables, cleverly carved to resemble animals and people. This one, which introduces a surprisingly broad range of emotions, is my favorite: who would have guessed that lemons and onions and even turnips could be so expressive? (I’m particularly fond of the sulky red pepper who illustrates the concept of pouting.) The illustrations, along with the jaunty rhyming text, also help keep the book from bogging down with seriousness or preachiness.

Pete’s a Pizza, by William Steig. [out of print, but available used and at many libraries.] It’s raining, so Pete can’t go outside to play with his friends. He’s miserable, but not for long: his parents start pretending he’s a pizza: they “knead” him on the kitchen table, sprinkle paper (for cheese) and checkers (for pepperoni) on him, and drop him on the couch to be “baked.” All the while his expression modifies from full-bore crabbiness to mildly-amused-in-spite -of-himself to total giggling enjoyment, until he leaps off the counter (where’s he’s about to be “sliced”) and runs away, only to be caught and tickled. My daughter hates to be cheered up or jollied out of what she’s feeling, but sometimes she likes reading about it, and your child might too.

Light up the Darkness with Hanukkah Books

[cross-posted at Librarian Mom]

Like many Jewish kids, my daughter ends up getting read a lot of Chanukah books around this time of year. It’s one way for her to connect to her Jewish heritage and traditions at a time of year when sometimes it feels like the whole known world is one big Christmas celebration!

Over the years, we’ve progressed from the very simplest board books to some meatier titles. Here are some picks from our Chanukah bookshelf:

• Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins, by Eric Kimmel; illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman

This original tale has everything you need in a kid’s book, really: a wily trickster figure (Hershel of Ostropol, based on a famous character of Jewish folklore) a seemingly impossible task (to defeat the goblins and bring back Chanukah by lighting all eight nights of candles in the old, haunted synagogue) and, best of all, a cast of truly monsterish goblins, by turns dopey and irritating and purely, spookily wicked, depicted with all their glorious warts and teeth by the late, great, illustrator Trina Schart Hyman.

• The Flying Latke, by Arthur Yorinks; illustrated by William Steig, with photo illustrations by Arthur Yorinks and Paul Colin

Opinions vary on this farcical restaging of the Chanukah miracle, wherein one single latke feeds an entire extended family that’s holed up in their New Jersey home for eight days after a Hanukkah party gone wrong. Some people might find it too in-jokey, but my kid loves the Borscht-belt slapstick humor, and I get a big kick out of the illustrations: the author and illustrator rounded up a stellar cast of actors, authors, and children’s book luminaries and their kids (John Turturro and Maurice Sendak each make an appearance) to act out each scene, which were then photographed and superimposed on a painted background. The resulting tableaux emphasize the over-the-top schtick-y nature of the book, and make it a treat to pore over for details.

• The Golden Dreydl, by Ellen Kushner; illustrated by Ilene Winn-Lederer

Sara has a dilemma common to Jewish kids: Christmas envy. When the mysterious Tante Miriam shows up at the family Chanukah party and gives each kid a gift, Sara’s annoyance deepens; her present is a weird, huge, golden dreydl. Except, well, it actually sends her spinning into another reality, one that includes King Solomon, the Queen of Sheba, a lost princess who needs rescuing, and the Demon King. Also, some highly satisfying riddles that my kid has been enjoying trying out on friends.
I can’t pretend to be unbiased about this new addition to the Chanukah canon: it’s by my cousin. But just as she’s more than accomplished enough not to need a plug from me, The Golden Dreydl had plenty going for it on its own to engage both reader and listener, even without the family connection, when I read it aloud to my daughter a few weeks ago. It was especially fun to find the “Nutcracker Suite” connections together (though I have to admit that the riddles were made even more enjoyable by my slowly dawning realization that most of them came from the stock of jokes my dad used to tell us).

These are just a few of my family’s favorite books about Chanukah (Or Hanukkah, or Hanukka…it’s always a challenge to figure out how it’s going to be spelled next). If you’re looking for more, there’s no shortage of resources: About.com, Kidsreads, Childrenslit.com, and the educational website Apples4theteacher.com all have extensive annotated lists of Chanukah titles for children. Scholastic’s own website has a nice list of Hanukkah picture books, as well as an article about December holidays which includes some excellent Hanukkah titles, as well as books about Christmas and Kwanzaa, and tips on discussing all three holidays with children.

Heralding Robert's Snow with Giles Laroche

I’ve been pretty quiet on this blog about the amazing Blogging for a Cure effort (though I did write about it over at Librarian Mom a couple of weeks ago), so it’s a treat to have the chance to not only feature a snowflake illustrator in support of the Robert’s Snow: For Cancer’s Cure online auction, but to do so on the very last day before the first snowflake auction opens.

Giles Laroche has been drawing, according to this site,“as long as he can remember.” He illustrates using a technique he calls “paper relief,” a combination of drawing, painting, and paper cut that produces a three-dimensional effect.

I knew of Laroche through his illustrations for Sacred Places, by Philemon Sturges, but discovered through research for this post that his illustration credits include an impressive variety of other titles. On my desk right now are What Do Wheels Do All Day? written by April Jones Princes, and Bridges are to Cross and Down to the Sea in Ships, both written by Laroche’s frequent collaborator Philemon Sturges.

In each of these books Laroche takes on a specific and visually striking topic—respectively, wheels, bridges, and boats—and brings it alive in a way that’s meticulously detailed enough to satisfy the most mechanically-minded kid (I’m especially fond of the gears and pulleys in “What Do Wheels Do All Day?” and the individually cut and placed pieces spanning the Apurimac River Bridge in “Bridges Are To Cross”) and bright and accessible enough for even easily-distracted toddlers. Each page is a world in itself, and rewards multiple viewings.

Like his book illustration, Laroche’s snowflake, entitled “Compass and Cormorant,” is both stunning and simple. I love the juxtaposition of the medieval-esque angelic herald with that alert seabird on the other side, ready to take flight. Here; it's worth a closer look:

The Robert’s Snow: For Cancer’s Cure auction is ready to take flight too, as of tomorrow. Please take a look at all the snowflakes, and consider bidding on one (or more!). It’s a rare chance to support a truly worthy cause and to own an affordable piece of art by a children’s illustrator.

Books for Halloween: Scary, but not TOO Scary

[Cross-posted on Librarian Mom]

[Note: I promised a post on Robert’s Snow this week, but am postponing it once more as Halloween waits for no blogger. If you just can't wait, take a look at this post--and many others around the kidlitosphere--for a quick overview.]

Spend any time around kids in first or second grade who are looking for books, and you’re sure to hear a request (or two, or seventy-five) for scary stories. Especially as the end of October draws nigh. Now, as children’s librarian Adrienne has rightly pointed out, not everyone likes to be scared. But more than once I’ve had some tiny, pudgy-cheeked child turn his or her adorable angel face away in utter scorn of whatever mildly frightening title I’ve proffered, demanding instead “Something REALLY scary.”

This presents the thoughtful librarian or relative with a book-recommending dilemma: if you’re too weenie about offering up scary stuff, the kid will decide you are just another clueless grownup and stomp off on his or her own to find the most irritating and/or product-placement-laden book possible, and then demand that someone read it to them over and over until all family members are driven insane. On the other hand, accede too readily to the “REALLY scary” imperative and as likely as not the child will end up having nightmares and/or hiding the book under a pile of junk in the basement so as to be spared the scary sight of it.

So, for those parents (and kids) who don’t have a taste for insipid junk, night terrors, or library replacement fees, here are a few picture books and early readers to take a look at. None of them are Halloween books per se, but they all aim for that sweet spot beloved of many kids at this time of year: scary enough…but not TOO scary.

King o’ the Cats, retold by Aaron Shepard. This retelling of an old English tale features, among other things, a spooky feline funeral in a church. The author even provides a readers’ theatre script of the story on his website.

Black Lagoon series, by Mike Thaler. Every book in this series follows the same pattern: a kid recounts the terrible, gruesome, scary things he’s heard about the (teacher, principal, librarian, custodian, bus driver…) only to be disabused by the actual niceness of the grownup in question. I used to read The Librarian from the Black Lagoon to 1^st graders at the beginning of every year, and they loved it even when they didn’t understand all the jokes. My favorite part is how if you talk too much…the librarian laminates you! Heh, heh, heh.

The Spider and the Fly, by Mary Howitt and Tony DiTerlizzi. A gloriously creepy illustrated version of the 19^th-century poem that speaks to the goth in us all. I know one very young kid who loved this book so much she simply took it home from the library and refused to return it.

For the rest of the year. Her mom wasn't thrilled, but I bet the illustrator would be if he knew.

Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich, by Adam Rex. In one gleefully silly (and perfectly illustrated) poem after another, monsters do things that you don’t usually see them doing: the Mummy demands a bedtime story before his eternal rest; the Phantom of the Opera (in a particularly crowd-pleasing running joke) gets a series of songs stuck in his head; and of course there is the titular sandwich. This is one of those books that is sophisticated enough for middle-schoolers to enjoy, but younger kids go crazy for it too even if some of it is over their heads.

Precious and the Boo Hag, by Patricia McKissack. Precious’s brother is just teasing her with his stories about the Boo Hag…or is he? I have to admit that this one is my favorite out of all of these. It is juuuust the right amount of scary, has a great refrain, a great story, and a spirited and smart heroine.

[Next week: for real, the big idea behind some little snowflakes.]

Environmental Books for Blog Action Day

(Cross-posted at Librarian Mom.)

In honor of Blog Action Day, all the books recommended today have something to do with the environment. "The Environment" is a pretty big, abstract concept, especially for kids. These books all do something to make that concept concrete. Mostly they're not treatises on global warming or any other specific environmental crisis; instead, they do what books do best: tell stories, bring characters to life, and help us understand that the big picture is made up of many small pieces.

Aani and the Tree Huggers, by Jeannine Watkins.
Aani, a young girl in rural India, marshalls the girls and women of her village to join forces and stop the nearby trees--a precious natural resource for the villagers--from being cut down. The story, which is based on true events, is told clearly and directly; when the women literally hug the trees to stop them from being felled, it's easy to see how much courage this simple action took. And the illustrations, by Venantius J. Pinto, are striking and rich.

Pearl Moscowitz's Last Stand, by Arthur A. Levine. [out of print, alas]
Another picture book about taking action to save trees, but with a very different setting. Mrs. Moscowitz has seen her neighborhood change: from Jewish, to African-American, to Latino, to Asian. But she's still there, and so is the gingko tree that her mother saw planted many decades ago. When a man from the city comes with official orders to have the tree cut down, Pearl and her neighbors try to distract him, first with plates of food, then with overloaded wallets of family photos. Finally, Mrs. Moscowitz chains herself to the tree, bringing on the TV cameras and saving the day.

Henry Hikes to Fitchburg, by D. B. Johnson.
What's the faster way to get from Concord to Fitchburg: walking? Or taking the train? Henry, an amiable bear, poses this question to his friend, and they try it out: The friend works all day to earn the train fare, while Henry spends the same time walking to Fitchburg through fields, gathering flowers, and picking blackberries. This first volume in a series of four stories about Henry is based on a passage in Henry David Thoreau's journals, and is a great way to start kids thinking about the way people live (and don't live) our values through how we choose to spend our time and energy.

If the World Were a Village, by David Smith
The concepts in this book pack quite a wallop and could keep a family or a class busy thinking and discussing for days. The premise is simple: If the entire population of the world was represented by a village of only 100 people, how many would speak English? How about Chinese? How many would be children, and how many adults? How long would each person's life expectancy be? How many would have clean, safe water to drink? The answers are often surprising and sometimes sobering, and bring the issue of population growth and its effect on the earth into striking focus.

Material World, by Peter Menzel et. al.
Like If the World were a Village, this book takes a simple concept and uses it to completely crack your head open. It's brilliant: a team of photographers travelled around the world, finding one "average" family in each of over 30 countries and photographing that family surrounded by all their material possessions. The logistics involved must have been tremendous, and the contrasts are fascinating. Aside from the photo-essays on each family, there are pages devoted to individual items: televisions of the world, typical meals around the world, and (always a favorite among kids) toilets of the world. It's an eye-opener--literally--to see the evidence of how many millions of people get along the sheer amount of stuff that's amassed by many people in Western countries.
I have to admit that this is my favorite title of any on this list. Though it's not technically a children's book, I've used it many times with 4th, 5th, and 6th grade classes, and the kids are always fascinated and fight to check it out.

If you want to find out more about Blog Action Day, check out their website! You might also be interested in some of the environmental charities affiliated with Blog Action Day.

In Which I Scuff My Toe And Look at the Ground

So. I have an announcement.

Here's what happened:

Some months ago, I got a warm and informed e-mail from someone who asked if I wanted a paid weekly blogging gig.

What I felt like I honestly should say: "Um... are you sure you want me?? Because there are all these really fantastic kidlit bloggers out there [and you know I could link to way more, too] who are incredible writers and also post reliably, like, all the time. Here, let me give you some names..."

What I did say: "Sure!"

What happened after that: Nothing, for a while. And then, some more e-mails, culminating in the launch of a raft of new blogs at Scholastic.com's site for parents. Including one by me with the highly descriptive title Librarian Mom. My first post went live today.

I'm linking to it even though some of the layout is still a bit rough, because...well, because I'm happy about it and wanted to tell people.

I'll be cross-posting some posts from the new blog on this one, though the intended audience is somewhat different: the general book-friendly parenting public, as opposed to the kind of obsessive kidlit hounds (like me!) whose idea of fun is a rousing evening spent debating the relative merits of A Little Princess and The Secret Garden (ah! a post I haven't written yet!)*. I'm also going to focus over there on books for kids between the ages of 3 and 13, so ruminations on the far ends of the kid/teen lit spectrum will end up at this site.

Anyway. I would love to have visitors from those among you who are still reading this blog after what's been a rather fallow summer. Even if you just click over because you're curious to see a photo of me with what appears to be a halo emanating from the back of my head. (It was originally snapped against a background of kitchen cabinets, and transformed by the photoshop wizards at Scholastic.)

Now that I have a new library job, along with this new blogging one, my brain is buzzing with ideas for things to write about, and I'm looking forward to writing about them here and there and...well, not quite everywhere. Yet.


*Though actually, when you get talking kids' media with many parents who don't on the surface appear to be that involved with the genre, you find hidden pockets of obsession: I once heard a volunteer mom at my old job riff for a good twenty minutes on the themes and idiosyncrasies of the "Arthur" TV shows and how they compared with the books. So, you never know.

Cheese Balls and Tshuvah

Tonight marks the start of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. This is the first year in almost a decade that I haven't had the Jewish holidays off work, and I'm thinking wistfully of the holiday book collection at my old job and wishing I could get my hands on some of them now, to share with my daughter and to think about myself.

The central concept of Yom Kippur is tshuvah. Though tshuvah is generally translated as "repentance," it literally means "turning": turning from sin--however you define that, whether it be hurtful behavior or not living up to one's own potential--to something better. Trying, and failing, and apologizing to whoever you hurt, and trying to make restitution if you can, and then getting back on that horse and trying again.

This is a concept that even--or maybe, especially--young kids can understand, and there are several decent children's books on the topic. One perennial favorite is Gershon's Monster, by that doyen of Jewish holiday books (and Anansi stories, while he's at it) Eric Kimmel. Instead of repenting or apologizing for any of his little thoughtless acts, Gershon sweeps them up and puts them in the cellar. On Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, he tosses them all into the sea. Eventually all the un-dealt-with sins become a huge monster that threaten what is dearest and most precious to him. There are echoes of King Lear and other old, dark tales in this simple story, but it never seemed to bother the enraptured kids who sought the book out by name even in the off-season. I think they recognized the power and truth behind it. Or maybe they just liked the big scary monster, as illustrated by Caldecott Honor medalist Jon Muth.

Jacqueline Jules's The Hardest Word is more nakedly didactic, but still enjoyable. The Ziz (an imaginary huge bird creature that apparently has its origins in Jewish mythology), after destroying a vegetable garden, must do repentance by finding and saying the very hardest word of all. Any guesses what it is? (hint: it starts with an "S.") Kids enjoy this one, too, and can identify with the well-meaning but hapless Ziz.

For my money, though, the best book about tshuvah is a title doesn't even refer to Yom Kippur, or to Judaism at all. In Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse, by Kevin Henkes, Lilly goes through all the important steps of true repentance after drawing a mean picture of her teacher, Mr. Slinger, in a burst of temper: She owns up to what she did, she feels true remorse, she makes restitution by drawing a nicer picture and writing a story and bringing in home-baked cheese balls, and she apologizes in person. She even does the hardest thing of all, which is to confront the evidence of her wrongdoing when Mr. Slinger gently brings out the dreaded picture and asks what she thinks he should do with it.

I'll be thinking of Lilly tomorrow night when the final shofar blast sounds and everyone cheers, and then the whole congregation--like Mr. Slinger's class--eats some tasty snacks. Tshuvah like hers deserves a celebration.

What to Do with the Babies-O at Story Time

My new job, as new jobs tend to, involves doing some stuff I've never done before. Among other things, I'll be creating and performing a weekly story time for babies/toddlers (take your pick of terms) aged 12-24 months.

Now, I adore this age group. Back in my distant youth, I even taught toddlers full-time, at a childcare center. But I have to admit that after nine years of mostly dealing with elementary-aged kids, I'm daunted at the prospect of keeping the attention of preverbal crowd, even with parents in the mix.

I'm going to stick to mostly songs and finger plays, and just slip a couple of books in each week. I spent a fair bit of work time in the past week flipping through picture books, immediately discarding anything that had more than four or five words on a page.

One side-effect of all this planning is that is What'll I Do With the Baby-O? by Jane Cobb has become my new favorite book in the world. I've been shamelessly cribbing from Cobb's preschool story time resource book I'm a Little Teapot! for the last several years, and now she has once again saved my bacon. Or my little piggies. Or my thumbkins. Whatever. In any case, Baby-O is a treasure trove of songs, finger plays, bouncy rhymes, and simple circle games for the very youngest storytime-goers.

Cobb lays out step-by-step outlines of a few sample story times for babies and for toddlers, and even includes suggestions for low-key informational asides to make to parents in between songs: "When you bounce your baby to the beat of the rhyme, you're helping her absorb rhythms and language with her whole body"-- that kind of thing. The accompanying CD, which I've been listening to somewhat obsessively on my commute, provides sung/spoken versions of 35 of songs. It's a teaching CD, so the versions are pretty bare-bones, but some of them are very sticky and I was surprised at how many were new to me and how many were quite lovely. I've found myself singing her version of "Mr. Moon/T'was On a Summer's Evening" at odd moments, hoping to find someone to sing it with as a harmonized round as Cobb demonstrates on the CD.

(Does it count as bragging if I mention that Cobb is not only Canadian, but a librarian at the Vancouver Public Library?)

What'll I Do With the Baby-O? doesn't seem to be available yet through Amazon. But it can be purchased through its publisher, Black Sheep Press. Independent bookstores may also be able to order it. If you do any programming for this age group, it's more than worth the list price, even with international postage.

Moving: In Praise of Bibliotherapy

I've been pretty cagey about it on this blog--at first because I hadn't given notice at work yet, and then because things were so frantic there was no chance to sit down and write a substantive and literary post about it--but we've spent the summer moving to Vancouver. That's Vancouver, Canada. We have a new home, with new jobs and new school, in a new city, in a new country.

It hasn't been a painless move for any of us. I'm probably the most jazzed about being in a new place (all those British editions!), and my just-turned-7-year-old daughter is easily the least enthusiastic. And why shouldn't she be? She had a nice life, good friends, great school, comfy (if somewhat snug) home. She didn't ask to move. But she had to, anyway, just because her parents got this crazy idea in their heads.

Just before the end of the school year, I snagged a copy of Alexander, Who's Not (Do you hear me? I mean it!) Going to Move, by Judith Viorst, at my school's used book sale. I thought the book might be too blatantly bibliotherapeutic for my kid--that she might feel emotionally manipulated, or put on the spot--but I gave it to her anyway in early July, and she's glommed onto it. Not every day, but once every week or two, all summer and now into the fall, she asks for it for her bedtime story.

Even though it's about a boy and she's a very girly girl, even though he has siblings and she doesn't, even though she's only moved a hundred-some miles from her old home, not a thousand miles as in the book, this story speaks to her. She likes the humor; she likes the eponymous refrain; she likes the litany of people and things that Alexander is going to miss; she loves the variety of places where the hero contemplates hiding (at the friendly neighbors'; behind the clothes racks at the cleaners'; inside the pickle barrel at the market). And I think she likes the hope held out in the end, that there can be new things to love in the new place where you live.

It calms her and makes her laugh, knowing that someone else, somewhere, has been through the same thing that she's going through, and felt the same things, and that there's a story about it. And it doesn't hurt that it's a decent, funny, well-written one, at that.

Here are a couple more good books about moving, that focus especially on friendship:

The Shelf-Paper Jungle, by Diana Engel. (o/p, alas.) When Frannie has to move away from her best friend, the two create a huge mural on a roll of shelf paper, dive into their creation and have one last adventure together, then cut it in half and each take a portion.

Ira Says Goodbye, by Bernard Waber. In this book, it's the hero's best friend, Reggie, who's moving away. Ira acts like he doesn't care, but at the last minute he's able to say goodbye to Reggie.

Anyone have any other suggestions?

Grace Paley, 1922-2007

It's been a hectic few weeks in our household, and it was only today that I heard of writer Grace Paley's death last week. The New York Times printed a moving and literary obituary. If you've never read any of her writing, this is a great introduction, quoting some of the most delicious bits from her short stories and giving a great sense of Paley as an activist as well.

Paley never wrote for children (though her friend and sometime collaborator, Vera B. Williams, did and still does), but her stories have the honesty and immediacy that I associate with the best writing for kids, and there are kids all over them: dumping sand on each other in the park; riding daredevil between subway cars; carried on their fathers' shoulders, and always, always, worried over and talked about and arguing with the mothers who are the heroes of most of her writing.

It's killing me right now that I can't find in our box-stacked living room a copy of Paley's first book, The Little Disturbances of Man, which includes the first short story of hers that I ever read, "The Loudest Voice." It's the story of a little girl, Shirley Abromovitz, who gets a coveted part in the Christmas pageant at her (circa 1930's, somewhere in New York City) school. You see, she has the loudest voice: so strong and clear it can peel the paper off Campbell's soup cans, so she's a cinch for the narrator's role in the school's annual reenactment of the Nativity story.

Naturally, Shirley's mom and several of the other parents in her Jewish neighborhood are horrified at this "creeping pogrom" of a public-school activity. But theirs isn't the only opinion; Shirley herself is thrilled, and her dad is encouraging, and the conclusion is more nuanced than anything I've read before or since on the whole Jewish-kid-at-Christmas topic. The important and unquenchable thing is, indeed, Shirley's voice; at the end, after her triumph in the pageant, she hunkers down and prays for everyone: her family near and far, her teachers, and "all the lonesome Christians." She's sure her prayers will be heard: "my voice was certainly the loudest."

Paley herself has quite the voice, zippy and sneaky; she started off as a poet, and it shows. Her verbal path is loopy but at the same time direct--straight to the heart. She's a master of first lines. One story starts out: "There were two husbands disappointed by eggs. One was livid and one was pallid." The narrator refers to the two men as Livid and Pallid throughout the rest of the story. (Not surprisingly, neither of them comes off very well, either as a husband or as a dad.)

After reading and admiring her since high school, I got to see her in person, once. The Seattle Arts and Lectures series hosted an evening with Grace Paley and Anne Lamott, a possibly inspired combination that nonetheless was pretty much a disaster as far as literary events go (Anne Lamott wrote about it in Salon here, and also in one of her recent books). They tried for an unscripted discussion, which resulted in Anne Lamott, nervous and fast-wired, stepping into any pause before Grace Paley got a chance to say much. As the evening wore on and Lamott got more visibly anxious about how it was going, she only talked faster, until I thought the audience would start throwing things.

I only remember one thing Grace Paley said that evening, but it was worth the price of the ticket all by itself: one audience member asked what advice she would give to a new writer, and she said that she would give the same advice she gave her writing students: "Keep a low overhead, and don't live with anyone who doesn't respect your work." Nothing about "write what you know," or "kill your babies"--just smart common (or maybe not so common) sense on how to live and survive as a writer.

Grace Paley always struck me as one of a very few people (Jessica Mitford was another, and maybe Molly Ivins too) who managed pull off three tough feats simultaneously: she knew how to have great time in life; she stayed committed to serious political activism over several decades; and while she was at it, she wrote some kickass books. Not too shabby. But I wish she'd had just a little more time to do all those things.

Her voice will be remembered. It might not have been the loudest, but it was, and is, one of the strongest.

Els Kushner Does Love Moxy Maxwell

I usually spend the last weeks of school brainstorming with classes to get their picks for great summer reads (so much more effective than suggestions from adults), and by mid-June, what with the kid recommendations and the review journals and the blogs and the catalogs, I've got a sizeable To Be Read list of my own. This year my self-assigned summer reading list looked like this:

• Specials
• Heat and/or Travel Team
• So Totally Emily Ebers
  
• Rickshaw Girl
• Vive La Paris
• Gilda Joyce
• Peaches
• Shackleton’s Stowaway
• The Glass Castle
• Key to the Golden Firebird
• The Jew Store (adult)
• Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie
• Twilight
• Kiki Strike
• Weedflower
• Year of the Rat
• The Green Glass Sea
• Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
• Julia’s Kitchen
• Ruby Lu
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
  
• Between Mom and Jo
• Dairy Queen
• Plain JANEs
• Total Constant Order
• The Mislaid Magician
• Emma jean lazarus fell out of a tree
• Moxy Maxwell Does NOT Love Stuart Little
  

The five bolded books are ones I have read as of this moment. Please note that today's date is August 15, and thus summer is roughly 3/4 over. Also please note that 5/28 is nowhere near 3/4.

And so I feel for poor Moxy Maxwell, whose tale of woe and required summer reading I just finished half an hour ago (while I was supposed to be doing something else. But that's another story). Summer slips by so fast, with so many projects to accomplish, and in the blink of an eye it's the last day of vacation, and even though you've been carrying around Stuart Little all summer--and, as we all know, carrying a project around is practically the same thing as actually doing it--the actual reading-the-book part has not exactly happened.

I expected to love this book, having read so many enthusiastic reviews in the past few months. And so indeed it was. What I didn't expect was that it would be so suspenseful that, even though I had managed to restrain myself from skipping ahead throughout the 600+ pages [Canadian pagination] of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I cheated and jumped to the end of this 92-pager because I could not stand one more moment of not knowing whether Moxy's mother would really, truly keep her from performing in the Goodbye to Summer Splash daisy-petal water ballet, as was the threatened consequence if Moxy did not finish Stuart Little by 6:00.

The result left me feeling for Moxy's mother as much as for the title character herself, fellow book-lover and fellow procrastinator that she is. And it left me feeling lucky that my own reading list is made up of books that I chose myself. And that there are still a few weeks left for me to stay up late on hot summer nights getting lost in them.

Don't Toss That Coin inThe Well: Verdigris Deep

Everyone--well, everyone who's ever heard or read any fantasy or folklore, or who has any common sense, for that matter--knows how dangerous it is to make a wish; how the wish, if granted by a god or elf or genie or pixie, is almost always distorted, twisted, turned against the wisher.

But what of the wish-granters?

That's the question Frances Hardinge asks in Verdigris Deep, and she goes deep with it. Hardinge's first novel, Fly By Night, gathered many genres--alternate history, adventure, coming of age, political intrigue--into its capacious (maybe too capacious) embrace, but managed to avoid the one she delves into here: creepy, creepy horror. Like Alan Garner's The Owl Service, with which it's sure to be compared many times, Verdigris Deep pits a trio of troubled adolescents against the raw, living forces of an ancient mythology, forcing them to confront the deepest and most secret recesses of the human heart.

How'd that be for jacket-flap copy? But it's all true. Horror is not so much my thing, and if Fly by Night hadn't been one of my very favorite books read last year (it wasn't everyone's, I know, but it was mine) I probably wouldn't have gone near this one. But there it was, sitting
on the bookstore table, and my hand just went for it. Almost without my control. Ooo, spooky, and so much like this book. I couldn't even bring myself to read it at night. When our hero, Ryan, got those weird itchy bumps on his hands and they turned into--oh, I can't tell you what they turned into but believe me it will give you the willies--and then the well witch started showing up on posters in tunnels, streaming water from her eyes, and then the creepy Miss Gossamer showed her true colors, well it's a good thing there was bright daylight outside or I would have lost even more sleep than I did last week.

For plot, I'll tell you what the back-cover copy told me: three kids steal some coins from a well for bus fare, and are then forced to serve the god ("well witch" is what the back cover says, but really she's a god, that's clear) responsible for granting the wishes each coin represents. It's pitched creepy, and it reads creepy. But there's more here. This book is more compact and less picaresque than Fly By Night; page by page I'm not sure that I enjoyed it more, because it's not my favorite genre, but I think it might be a stronger book. Hardinge doesn't mess around this time having fun with made-up worlds, just goes straight for the heart with a pick-axe. Man, she's good.

I can't decide yet if there's too much troubled-family problem-novel psychological stuff in the book or not. You get right away that Ryan's parents are part of his issue: his mom writes "unauthorized biographies" that get her stalked by her subjects, and does bad-fictional-parent stuff like making Ryan wear his contact lenses instead of the glasses he prefers when reporters come to the house to interview her; she and Ryan's dad alternate between bickering and icy silence, which drives Ryan batty. And Ryan's friends' parents wouldn't win any functional-family awards either: Josh is a charismatic budding juvenile delinquent whose folks punish him for his frequent misbehavior by banishing him from the house; and Chelle is all but ignored by her family, which might be one reason she keeps up a constant torrent of chat, in hopes of catching someone's attention even for a moment.

But the family psychology is part of Hardinge's point, not tacked on but integral. As our three protagonists blunder through the summer, desperately trying to grant wishes, they gradually realize what the Well Spirit cannot: not only can wishes turn against those who make them, but each wish has an unspoken component, born of the wisher's deepest unacknowledged yearnings, and granting these can be even more disastrous than making the intended wish come true.

Ryan lays out the heart of the novel when he tries to explain to Chelle that wishes are "sort of like conkers [chestnuts]...There's an outer bit which is what the wish seems to be, but there's another bit inside which is kind of the real wish...And I don't think when most people wish, they really know what they're wishing. It's like they only see the green spiky outer bit." The ancient Well Spirit, he goes on, "doesn't really get the green spiky bits of their wishes...But the shiny nut bit of wishes, she gets that, kind of. She can help with that. Because those are the great big, painful, simple wishes, you see. Life. Death. Love. Revenge. She gets that."

Hardinge, it's clear, gets that too. Not to give too much away, but some of these wishes--past and present--are the hard, real, unpretty deal, and I wouldn't recommend this book to readers much younger than ten, or maybe eleven, unless I knew them (and their parents) quite well. Or unless they'd already read The Owl Service or Margaret Mahy's The Changeover and come out the other side unscathed.

I can't wrap this up without mentioning Hardinge's way with language, which outshone all the plot baubles in Fly By Night and which illuminates the murky relationships here: When Ryan's mum prepares him for a visiting reporter, "Ryan could feel his mother's fingers pulling and poking at him as they had the orchid. He sometimes wondered whether she thought that if she tugged at him for long enough she would end up with something more interesting." Chelle offhandedly complains about what it's like "when somebody's watching you and you can feel it like dead leaves down the back of your jumper..."Of Magwhite, the town where the fateful well is located: "Nobody could quite remember which, but something had happened to give the name 'Magwhite' ugly edges. If Magwhite was mentioned, parents' faces stiffened as if they had picked up a bad smell."

There are also some nice funny bits, and several adults have their own surprises in store; it's always a relief to see kids' books where the grownups turn out to be flawed human beings rather than caricatures.

All in all: if you liked Fly By Night, try this one. If you didn't like Fly By Night, try this one too, as it is utterly different in its particulars. Either way, watch for more by Frances Hardinge; her first two books, put together, are a pretty powerhouse combination, and I wish (uh-oh) I could read whatever else she's got in store.