Good book night

Another First Friday book discussion. Among the books we liked this month:

Going Bovine - Libba Bray
Jumped - Rita Williams-Garcia
Rapunzel's Revenge - Shannon Hale
To Dance: A Ballerina's Graphic Novel - Siena Cherson Siegel
Princess Ben - Catherine Murdoch
Charles & Emma - Deborah Heiligman
When You Reach Me - Rebecca Stead
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon - Grace Lin
Rock 'n Roll Soldier - Dean Ellis Kohler

Thanks, Claire, for hosting.

The Timekeeper's Moon

I will have to stop saying I never win anything. Recently, I won a Native American dinner prepared from authentic recipes and ingredients. It was delicious and interesting! The same could be said of The Timekeeper’s Moon, by Joni Sensel. I won an advance copy of the book in a contest over at Joan Stradling’s blog .
I loved it! I did not want to put it down and I stayed up late to finish it. A sequel to Sensel’s The Farwalker’s Quest, Timekeeper’s Moon, is set in a world far in the future when all technology has vanished from the world. The people developed innate talents to survive after “the Blinding” a war that left everyone blind.
Ariel, the only remaining one with “Farwalker” talent is a wonderful character. She hears the moon calling her and feels compelled to follow. With a mysterious map and her feet to guide her, Ariel sets out on a dangerous journey to save the vault of knowledge she discovered in the first book.
The writing is beautiful, original and suspenseful. The world is fascinating and well-crafted. It’s hard for me to say which of the books I like best, but if I had to choose, I would say the relationships between the characters in Timekeeper’s Moon tips the balance. They feel so real they practically thrum off the page.
Another thing I will have to stop saying, is that I don’t like fantasy. Joni Sensel, you captured my heart with this one.

Kidlit Contest

Associate agent Mary Kole, from Andrea Brown Literary Agency, is offering a chance to submit the first 500 words of your completed MG or YA novel over at her blog’s “Novel Beginnings” contest!

The prize?

Grand Prize Winner: A 15 page critique
First Place: A 10 page critique
Second Place: A 5 page critique
Third Place: A 2 page critique
Honorable Mention(s): A critique of the first page of your novel

Deadline for entries: Sunday, January 31st at 11:59 p.m., Pacific Time.

Read the details of the contest and submit at Kidlit Contest

Talking Books

Many thanks to Mary Cronk Farrell for organizing a monthly book-talk group. Last Friday, a congenial mix of teachers, librarians and writers gathered to chat about recently read books we loved. Among those discussed:

Woods Runner by Gary Paulsen

All the Broken Pieces by Ann Burg, YA

Bless Me Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, HS/adult

The White Giraffe by Jill St. John, MG

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly, MG, YA

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead, MG, YA

Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, YA

Pagan's Crusade by Catherine Jinks, YA

Columbine by Dave Cullen, HS/adult

A Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger, HS/adult

Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barberg, adult

The Help by Katheryn Stockett, adult

--cross-posted to Under the Covers

A Valentine for Children in Need

Save the Children, with the help of seven prominent children's book illustrators, has created this lovely set of Valentine's Day cards. Perfect for classroom distribution, the proceeds go to aid children living in poverty in the United States. A nice way for kids to lend a hand.

Shout Out to Shannon

Here's a shout out our fellow native Northwesterner David Shannon (though he now calls SoCal home). His Too Many Toys, was named a Top Ten Children's Book of the Year by Time Magazine. Mr. Shannon was recently here in Spokane, for Whitworth University's annual Writing Rally. He never fails to entertain. Congratulations!

--Under the Covers

About Those Cinderella Stories...

Check out Joanna Weiss's article, "Fear of Fairy Tales," in the Sep. 21, edition of the Boston Globe. In it, she writes that modern re-tellings of fairy tales are so sanitized, they're rendered impotent. Disney is, of course, an easy target when making this claim. Their "Little Mermaid," drifts so far from the Hans Christian Andersen's original that the only thing left in common between the two is a fin. Disney's heroine marries her prince; Andersen's sacrifices earthly love as well as her own life, but is rewarded with an eternal soul. I read the original to my own daughter when she was about four, skipping over the more violent descriptions. It was, still is, a favorite.

Weiss argues that bland characters sell more associated toys. Based on the number of mermaid dolls my daughter owns, I might disagree. Weiss notes that the original Rapunzel somehow got pregnant up in that tower, and what parent wants to buy her daughter a pregnant Rapunzel? (Well, Sarah Palin, maybe, but that's for another post...) I think there's more to it than marketing. Fairy tales get a bad rap, but they deal with some complex emotions. For the Little Mermaid, the story's subtle message is that sometimes love means letting go. Maybe we assume children can't understand nuance in a story because we struggle with nuance ourselves.

Watch the audience graph droop during the presidential debates when a candidate attempts to explain a complex issue. We grownups need our information in black and white, in bullet points, in sound bites. Save the gray areas for those wacky academic types! It's possible that by spending a little more time in some old-fashioned fairy tales, we'd all do a little better handling reality.

-- cross posted to Under the Covers...

Turning the Little House Books into Classics

I recently came across a research paper by Anita Clair Fellman, on the relationship between Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter, Rose Lane. Fellner paints Laura's childhood in different strokes than Laura herself did, describing it as unstable due to their frequent moves, and filled with demanding responsibilities. As a devoted Little House fan, I must have read Big Woods through Golden Years at least a half dozen times, and never would have used Rose's words, "a hard, narrow, relentless life," to describe the journey.

When Rose, an established writer, convinced her mother to write stories based on her childhood, Laura produced "Pioneer Girl." First-person and written on a more adult level, it languished with publishers. As Rose worked the manuscript, complaining to her diary that her mother wanted, "prestige rather than money," she at last found a publisher interested in seeing one part of the manuscript expanded. This eventually became Little House in the Big Woods, but not without plenty of writer-editor, mother-daughter tension. At one point, Rose wrote to her mother, "you must listen to me…If you don't do what I tell you to, you must at least have good hard reasons for not doing it." Good advice from an editor, but the daughter continues, "Just because I was once three years old, you honestly oughtn't to think that I'm never going to know anything more than a three-year-old."

Fellner notes that through the books, Laura recast her family and her childhood with a "golden glow" that never really existed. Meanwhile, Rose, without whom the books might not have taken shape, never could take credit for work which became more celebrated than anything she produced under her own name.

--cross posted to Under the Covers...