Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Jules: We at 7-Imp, as you may know, are fond of co-reviews, our euphemism for flappin’ our gums about a book. We are happy today to have a guest co-reviewer – our tri-reviewer, we suppose – Betsy Bird of A Fuse #8 Production. Yes, she agreed to be the the Mo to our Curly and Larry; the Groucho to our Chico and Harpo; the Bart to our Maggie and Lisa; the Harry to our Ron and Hermione; the Gleek to our Zan and Jayna. Oh, you get the idea, and someone stop us now . . .

And you may notice this is numero uno in a new series, ’cause we thought it was so much fun that we’ve got another one lined up soon. And another one after that. And another one. Someone stop us again . . . Really, the chance to talk books with some of our favorite bloggers? We couldn’t pass up the idea.

Back at the beginning of this year, I reviewed Barkbelly by Cat Weatherill and noted that a sequel would be forthcoming. Betsy read the review (indeed, she had reviewed the title herself) and left a comment, asking if we imps were game for reading said sequel, Snowbone (Knopf Books for Young Readers; July 2007; with cover and interior art by Peter Brown), when it was released. And, since I have the memory of an elephant when it comes to my to-be-read piles, I reminded Eisha and Betsy of this pledge these six months later, secured some review copies, and we all three read away at (about) the same time. And now we’re here to yak it up about performance storyteller and UK author Cat Weatherill’s sequel to her ’06 story (’05 in the UK) about a boy hatched from a wooden egg who flees his loving home (with human parents) after a dreadful accident at school, beginning a quest for his real home and family.

{Note: Snowbone Spoilers revealed below} . . . Read the rest of this entry �

Warning: A few minor plot spoilers included below . . .

Jules: I’ll try to briefly summarize the book here and then let Eisha begin with some thoughts on this intermediate-aged novel, the first novel written by picture book author Lynne Jonell.

“Emmy was a good girl. At least she tried very hard to be good,” opens the novel. She’s so good that she never talks back to her rather frightful nanny, Miss Barmy. And Emmy (age ten — but “almost eleven: hardly a little girl anymore”) is a bit disturbed that her parents — normally loving and affectionate — have changed so much, hopping from one vacation spot to the next, too busy to give her the time of day. “If you did better in school, I’m sure they would be pleased,” Miss Barmy tells her. Emmy just can’t win. And, since she really was a little too good, she likes to sit by the bitingly sarcastic, snarky Rat in her classroom. He talks to Emily. Yes, it all begins when she hears him snort one day and she wondered aloud, “Why are you always so mean?” She didn’t expect the Rat to answer, but he did.

Thus begins the novel. With the Rat by her side, Emmy embarks on an adventure to figure out why her parents have stopped talking to her, why the other children in school act as if she doesn’t exist, and why Miss Barmy forces her to drink and eat the strangest things.

eisha: Well, I have long been a fan of Lynne Jonell’s picture books (especially Mommy Go Away! and I Need a Snake), so I expected Emmy to be quirky. But – dude. This was quirky, and dark, and original, and funny, and unpredictable, and just plain weird… I couldn’t really compare it to anything else, except maybe Roald Dahl.

Actually, yeah, that is a fitting comparison. It has Dahl’s edgy darkness in the twisted schemes of Miss Barmy. It has Dahl’s thinly veiled social commentary, in the neglectful behavior of Emmy’s parents and the other adults in their social circle toward their children. It’s got a wacky sense of humor – sometimes delving into a bit of gross potty humor, too. And it’s got a strong dose of the pseudo-scientific supernatural. Read the rest of this entry �

{Note: I’m having fun with covers here and showing you all three that I have seen for the novel. The first one is the cover for the upcoming Candlewick release — unless they change covers at publication. And the next two are from Walker Books in the UK — I believe it was published in June of this year in the UK — the last one being the paperback cover. But don’t quote me on that} . . .

I tried really hard to like British author/journalist Tim Lott’s first book for young readers, a dystopian novel called Fearless (to be released this Fall by Candlewick), even hanging on ’til the very end. Lott was given the Whitbread First Novel Award for his adult novel White City Blue in 1999; his novel Rumours of a Hurricane was short-listed for the Whitbread Novel Award; and he “has carved out a niche for himself as one {of} British literature’s foremost social realists” (says the British Council Arts group). Fearless is about a young girl who, we learn in the novel’s chilling prologue (“The Night They Came”), is snatched one night by a man in uniform from a woman she believes to be her mother — but not until after she gives the young girl three objects: a picture of the girl’s grandmother and grandfather; an old silver watch that she said once belonged to the girl’s father; and a golden locket that encases a photograph of her mother on the day of her wedding. She is whisked away into the darkness with only these three things in her possession.

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What: Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy; published by HarperCollins, April 2007 (review copies)

About (without revealing too many spoilers): When twelve-year-old Dubliner Stephanie Edgley’s strange Uncle Gordon dies, she is thrust into a world of magic with Skulduggery Pleasant — a walking, talking, wisecracking skeleton who can throw fire with the snap of his bony fingers — at her side. The death of her uncle spawns an underground, frantic search — by inhabitants of a world Stephanie can hardly believe exists — for the Scepter of the Ancients, a weapon that mythology dictates will allow one to rule the world. And, as it turns out, Skulduggery’s nemesis, Nefarian Serpine, is the one after the weapon he believes can call forth the world’s original, rather baneful gods from their obscurity. Writes Kirkus Reviews: “A high-intensity tale shot through with spectacular magic battles, savage mayhem, cool outfits, monsters, hidden doors, over-the-top names, narrow escapes, evil schemes and behavior heroic, ambiguous and really, really bad.” Stephanie and Skulduggery, along with a few other noble and magical folks, struggle throughout the novel to keep one step ahead of Serpine and his evil lackeys — all within a world of magic; super, special-secret powers; lots and lots of witty, droll dialogue, and some kickin’ good action scenes. This is Landy’s debut novel, though he has written screenplays for horror films (and, hey, check out the Skulduggery movie news) . . .

eisha: Oh, this has a lot of potential as a movie. I mean, the book felt like a screenplay, didn’t it? The really standout feature for me was the dialogue. Stephanie and Skulduggery had that sarcastic banter thing goin’ on – it was like Moonlighting without the sexual tension: Read the rest of this entry �

“The fact that Lyn Gardner is a theatre critic and that Into the Woods is also the name of one of Stephen Sondheim’s best known pieces should act as an immediate prompt that here is a book with a magpie capacity for picking up shiny scraps from all over the place,” wrote Kathryn Hughes in a 2006 Guardian Unlimited review. And Hughes pretty much nailed it. Overall, what Gardner has done in this novel aimed at intermediate-aged readers is re-created the story of The Pied Piper. But, yes, she was evidently inspired by a whole heapin’ bunch of fairy tales (Perrault, The Brothers Grimm, Andersen, you-name-it), myths, and fantasies. “Add in references to Shrek, Narnia and even Touching the Void, and you have the kind of glorious mish-mash of ancient and modern that is sometimes achieved by a very good pantomime,” added Hughes about what she calls “a merry bubbling pot of a text.”

But, even if you are a reader whose hair isn’t exactly blown back by such reinvented, hodgepodge tales, you still might want to consider Gardner’s rollicking story of three sisters, Storm, Aurora, and Any (short for “Anything; when the sisters asked their checked-out father about naming the child, he responds, “‘Oh, call her anything . . . ‘”). The three sisters live in the woods at Eden End — near a village with an over-population of rats and a sinister man named Dr. DeWilde who has been called forth as Exterminator to solve the rodent problem — with their oh-so dainty-weak and inattentive mother (Zella, who “held the view that exercise was so harmful to health that she seldom moved”) and their absent-minded, equally-inattentive father (“{w}hen Reggie Eden was not laughing and whispering with Zella, he was either away on one of his expeditions or busy planning the next one with a large DO NO DISTURB sign pinned to his study door”). Storm’s sister, the beautiful Aurora, is the domestic genius and working head of the household. As the girls’ mother is dying, she gives bold, adventurous Storm a little musical tin pipe, telling her to “use it wisely and only if you have desperate need” and warning her of its “terrible power.” And, after she passes away, their grieving father eventually skips town, once again on an expedition, but he leaves a cryptic note, warning Aurora to be extra vigilant on her sixteenth birthday. Read the rest of this entry �

Time: Monday, 12:35 a.m.

Books Finished: 5. Read Defect by Will Weaver this afternoon, and Grand & Humble by Brent Hartinger this evening.

Pages Read: 1213

Time Spent Actually Reading: 15.25 hours.

Time Spent Blogging About It: 2 hours.

Unicorn Sightings: none.

Pathetic. I thought I would rock at this. I mean, seriously, sitting around reading is pretty much how I spend every weekend. Why was it so hard this time? Here’s what I think: because reading is what I usually do to procrastinate whatever I should be doing but don’t really want to, like cleaning or packing or whatever. When reading becomes the thing I’m supposed to be doing, my whole equilibrium is thrown. Good to know for next year.

But hey, I read some good books. Wanna hear about them?

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As you probably know, the 2007 Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards for Excellence in Children’s Literature were announced this week. We were pleased to see the list of winners and honor recipients and were in happy agreement.

Fiction and Poetry Winners:

* The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party (Candlewick) by M. T. Anderson — co-reviewed here at 7-Imp (followed by our recent-ish interview with Anderson)

Picture Book Winners:

Fiction — * Dog and Bear: Two Friends, Three Stories (Porter/Roaring Brook) written and illustrated by Laura Vaccaro Seeger — reviewed here by Jules

Nonfiction — * The Strongest Man in the World: Louis Cyr (Groundwood) written and illustrated by Nicolas Debon Read the rest of this entry �

Here are two co-reviews of two books by two first-time novelists (one, a proud member of the Class of 2k7, and the other, a proud member of The Longstockings). And we know that practically everyone else has covered The Thing About Georgie — particularly, around the time that Lisa Graff conducted her entertaining blog tour — but we’re just now getting to our review. Better late than never, right? . . .

This, Rose Kent’s first novel, is about fourteen-year old Joseph Calderaro, who was borne of a Korean woman but adopted as a wee babe into an Italian family. Considering himself “an ethnic sandwich,” he isn’t too terribly caught up in identity issues (he’s mostly consumed by the worries typical of children that age — girls, friendships, school, etc.), but when his teacher assigns a project in which the students must write about their heritage, he starts to become more aware of the holes in the story of his biological family and birth. His parents have little information about his birth, and his father almost refuses to discuss it, emphasizing that he became part of their Italian family and heritage the day they decided to adopt him. Read the rest of this entry �

Here’s the continuing middle-grade novel round-up, the first book here being for the younger set and the other being for your slightly older middle-grader (I’ve mentioned before that I hate the category game, but I feel like I need to point that out).

And both titles feature some unforgettable heroines, so let’s get right to it then. Without further ado, meet Moxy. Meet Cadence . . .

Nine-year-old Moxy Maxwell may not have actually started her required summer reading — Stuart Little, of course — but she’s at least had it on her person practically all summer. It’s “spent a considerable amount of the summer soaking up sun and water,” as she has carried it with her everywhere: in her backpack, on her lap, and in the car on the way to rehearse her water-ballet daisy petal routine, where it then promptly fell into the pool. “It was also true that Moxy’s mother had found Stuart Little on the porch under the broken leg of the wicker coffee table more than once.” When the book opens, it’s late August — specifically, it’s the day before school begins — and Moxy’s mother warns her: If she does not stay in her room and read all of the book, “there were going to be ‘consequences.'”

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When Ruth White — one of children’s literature’s most celebrated authors (and, yes, let’s pause and do a little dance for teacher/librarian writers such as herself) — brings us a new novel, it’s cause for celebration in my book. Ruth White can transport you to another time and another place with great ease and can bring the reader such superb characterization — of that complex creation called a Southerner, no less — that you feel as if you’re in the presence of a master. And she never fails to provide a bit of wise, home-spun commentary on the Big Things of our emotional inner lives, both our strength of spirit and vulnerabilities as humans — and without ever laying it on too thick. As School Library Journal once put it well, White is a “real truth teller.” Not to mention, her books are infused with those mysterious, amorphous matters of the heart — love, friendship, familial devotion. Yessirree, when I’m in the mood for some good, old-fashioned Appalachian storytelling, some good Southern fiction, one of the writers I turn to is Ruth White.

On the whole, White doesn’t disappoint with her new title, Way Down Deep, which is — as pointed out by Lee Smith — part fable, part mystery. But, as KLIATT and Booklist also point out, we’re also dealing here with elements of folklore, fantasy, biography, and even magic realism (and, Publishers Weekly wrote, “{s}ome of White’s narrative teeters on the wobbly edge of farce”). The publisher itself will tell you it’s a bit of “fairy-tale magic.” There’s a little bit of everything here, but White pulls it all together with the cohesive thread that is, at its core, a tender narrative about the relationship between a caretaker and her child — and what it truly means to be a family. Read the rest of this entry �