All posts tagged middle grade

Why Aren’t You Reading… The Tapestry Series by Henry H. Neff?

houndofrowanthesecondsiegethefiendandtheforgethemaelstrom

by Tessa

Maybe you’re already reading this series, about a boy named Max who finds out that he’s the son of an Irish mythological figure, and goes to magical boarding school in America (not in that order) and then the world irrevocably changes because the wrong book gets into the wrong allegedly-demonic hands,  in which case RAD, can we chat about it together?

BUT – I’m guessing that lots of people haven’t – at least it hasn’t been written up in the many places that I go to hear about books. Granted, there are way more places to go read about books that it’s just not possible for me to visit. There are a couple of reasons that may explain this – the series is older middle grade and the first two books read very much like American Harry Potter, so I feel as though it may have been dismissed as reductive in some people’s minds.

There are some very compelling reasons (I hope) to give The Tapestry series a second look if you weren’t into the first book or a first look, if you haven’t  yet heard of it.

Pros:

- Irish mythology!

Ever since I read The Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland, collected by Jeremiah Curtain, I’ve been into the meandering, tough, hyperbolic, funny stories from that country. Even though I know I’m mispronouncing all the names when I read it in my head. Max finds out (spoiler alert?) that he’s the sun of Lugh Lámhfhada, an Irish god associated with the sun and athleticism, which means he’s the half-brother of Cúchulainn, the Hound of Ulster, which is why he’s known as the Hound of Rowan (Rowan being the American Hogwarts stand-in here). Not that you have to know anything about Irish mythology to read the series, I just enjoy that Max has a grounding in a mythology that exists outside of the books.

Cuchulainn Slays the Hound of Culain via Wikipedia

Cuchulainn Slays the Hound of Culain via Wikipedia

This also means that Max is a real badass. He’s full of Old Magic and a member of the Red Branch (magical CIA type people) and although he wields the Gae Bolga, a sword/spear embedded with the terrifying bloodlust of Cúchulainn, he’s a pretty thoughtful kid thrust into a world where he has to make life or death decisions for, like, the entire human race.

Actually there are 3 children of Old Magic in this series. They all have their own strengths, and their own secrets. The magic is well spread out among the students and teachers and the political intrigue is well done.

- Totally epic, metal demons

Demons are a big part of this series. They are trying to infiltrate Rowan to steal a powerful book that can rewrite REALITY ITSELF… and they eventually do. But they don’t turn the world into a stereotypical hell. It becomes more feudal, and more pastoral. But still with tentacled horrors that live inside wells and terrorize families. As the present becomes the past… with demons, things are correspondingly more epic. It recalled the lyrics of metal bands such as the brutal (read:rad) Absu. This is from a song off of 2009′s Absu:

The old woman of Nippur
Instructs Ninlil to walk the banks of Idnunbirdu
She thrusts he magic (k)
To harvest the mind of the great
mountain-lord Enlil

The bright-eyed king will fall to your anguish
His soul lures the hexagonal room
He who decrees fates – his spirit is caught
His soul lured to the hexagonal room

Nunbarshegunu
A silk veil strewn over you
Your face is the cosmos
You hide it in shame

I admire an author who is not afraid to change the entire nature of the Earth. Neff does it and pulls it off without becoming too lost in the large canvas he’s created.

- A new kind of adversary

Astaroth is the main antagonist, although the political intrigues of the demon world shift around during books 3 and 4. He’s firmly not in the Eye of Sauron all seeing all evil all the time camp. He’s an activist godlike figure. Like if NoFace from Spirited Away had all the powers of Old Testament God but not all the wrath – Astaroth pretends he’s a softy but really the world is just his plaything. He’s doing it for humanity’s own good. He thinks humanity is better without choices. His face is an always-smiling white mask.

an imagining of Astaroth from the Dictionnaire Infernal (1818) - via Wikipedia

an imagining of Astaroth from the Dictionnaire Infernal (1818) – via Wikipedia

Cons:

- The first book is deceptively Harry Potter-like (with a dash of Riordan’s The Olympians)

I dunno, this isn’t a huge con for me, but it’s worth noting. Also, if you read the first book and were not into the Hag “humor”, it is much diminished in the others.

- The illustrations can take away from the story sometimes.

I hate saying this because Henry Neff is the writer AND illustrator, so these are the representations of the images that inspired the story that I enjoy reading so much… however, there have been times when seeing the illustrations takes the wind out of the much creepier thing I was thinking of in my brain, inspired by the prose.

- His website uses Papyrus as a title font.

 

Obviously the pros are much stronger than the cons, so what are you waiting for?

4 Comments
by tessabarber on May 10, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by tessabarber on May 10, 2013

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Two Middle-Grade Mysteries with Ageless Appeal: “Who Could That Be at This Hour?” and Mr. and Mrs. Bunny–Detectives Extraordinaire!

whocouldthatbe

“Who Could That Be at This Hour?” All The Wrong Questions #1

by Lemony Snicket

Art by Seth

Little, Brown and Company 2012

mr_mrs_bunny_cover

Mr. and Mrs. Bunny – Detectives Extraordinaire!

by Mrs. Bunny, translated from the Rabbit by Polly Horvath

art by Sophie Blackall

Schwartz & Wade Books, 2012

reviews by Tessa

Lately, even with the weather soaring to climate-change induced heights instead of wintery lows, I’ve still been craving cozy reading.  For me that usually means something funny, fast, and in a genre.  I really  hit the jackpot this week and last, with two middle-grade-marketed mysteries that could be read and enjoyed by anyone except maybe for babies, who knows what babies are thinking.

who even knows. from Open Clip Art library

who even knows. from Open Clip Art library

The only thing you have to ask yourself is: do I want to be reading something atmospheric and silly or aggressively silly?  For the former there’s “Who Could That Be at This Hour?”, the first in the All the Wrong Questions series by Lemony Snicket (illustrated by Seth) and for the latter, Mr. and Mrs. Bunny–Detectives Extraordinaire! by Mrs. Bunny, translated from Rabbit by Polly Horvath and illustrated by Sophie Blackall.

Seth! Seth! Seth!

Seth! Seth! Seth!

“Twice I almost fell asleep thinking of places and people in the city that were dearly important to me, and the distance between them and myself growing and growing until the distance grew so vast that even the longest-tongued bat in the world could not lick the life I was leaving behind.” (21)

“Who Could That Be at This Hour?” brings back Snicket in top form, but this time he delves into his own sad and action-packed past, reviewing all the wrong questions he’s asked throughout his life, and presumably leading to tragedy and further mystery.

We find him, at the opening of the story, (you can preview the first chapter here) in a greasy tearoom at a train station, saying goodbye to his parents at the age of 13 and going to act as an apprentice of some sort to someone.  The mystery begins at once, for he does not get on the train. A woman with wild hair drops a note on his lap, giving him five minutes to meet her out front in her roadster–but he must leave through the bathroom window.  Evidently prepared for this, Snicket finds the ladder stowed in the bathroom and exits, but is not prepared to be whisked out of the city to a new destination.

There’s someone in the city waiting for Snicket to help investigate important things in the sewer system, but there isn’t a way for him to go back. He’s now apprenticed to S. Theodora Markson, ranked 52 on the list of as many people with whom it was possible to apprentice, and on his way to Stain’d by the Sea, a seaside town no longer by the seaside.

Seth's illustrations add to the considerable atmosphere of the book.

Seth’s illustrations add to the considerable atmosphere of the book.

Markson and Snicket pass deep wells where giant needles dip in and out, harvesting ink from frightened octopi, the last of their kind.  A bell rings and Snicket is told to wear a silver mask because of “water pressure” although there is no water around. It’s just a taste of the confounding and lonely things to come. He finds that they will be investigating the burglary of a statue of a legendary sea creature–said to be taken from the home of one prominent family in town by members of the other prominent family, and yet the two families are not enemies.

Along the way there are the usual vocabulary lessons (“bombinating”, “hawser”), dryly specific advice, but not as much advice as the Snicket who narrates The Series of Unfortunate Events dispenses. “Who Could That Be at This Hour?” is about a much less assured Snicket at a much more malleable time in his life.  He’s probably still smarter than his mentor, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t acting a little impulsively and having melancholy adolescent feelings about things, as opposed to the older and more settled in inevitable sadness voice from the previous series of Snicket books. There are even two possible romantic interests and a hint that we will learn about some Snicket family members. For me this meant extra emotional depth in a quick read, just as I had hoped for and expected. The mysteries just keep begetting more mysteries, like a man whose hat is filled with men wearing hats containing ever tinier men with hats and so on. In other words: delicious complications!

Readalikes:

Just go back and re-read Series of Unfortunate Events, as I plan to. Or start on the Mysterious Benedict Society series, by Trenton Lee Stewart, which has a similar tone and feel.

Mr. & Mrs.!

Mr. & Mrs.!

Mr. and Mrs. Bunny–Detectives Extraordinaire! has very little melancholy (unless you’re severely inclined to it) and, perhaps in its place, a lot of silliness. Fierce silliness. Unselfconscious silliness.

I admit that I initially checked this book out because of Sophie Blackall, being a huge fan of her art. And it took me a bit to get into the story, which starts out with the human side of things, explaining 5th-grader Madeline’s world, where she’s the square living with a Canadian commune of benign, marimba-playing, luminaria-loving, monarchy-disdaining hippies (including her parents, Flo and Mildred).  The descriptions came off as odd and forced-whimsical with a whiff of mockery, without being charming. I’ll get to the bunnies and then make my decision, I thought.

Luckily for me, the second chapter introduces Mr. and Mrs. Bunny. They are a couple set in their ways but given to impulse, and with a great bantering style. And the second page of the second chapter stops to note that

“Marmots, of course, were the bane of many a bunny’s existence. With their constant whining and tendency to matted fur, no one wanted to live around a marmot. Except perhaps another marmot. And sometimes not even they.”

a marmot, provided by Wikimedia

a marmot, provided by Wikimedia

I used to make zines for my sister, and one of them had a nice large picture of a marmot. I’d intended to make this an ad for the organization M.A.R.M.O.T. but could not think of a phrase to fill out the acronym. Now, any book that understood the comic possibilities of marmots was one that I would definitely have to read.

Good thing, because Mr. & Mrs. Bunny may not be great detectives but it’s fun to follow them as they bumble along with gumption.  As a couple, they don’t come off as a stereotype of an old bickering married pair, although they have been married for a long time and they do bicker.  There’s something about them that still seems fresh. It could be that they are scatterbrained. It could be that when Mrs. Bunny starts poking Mr. Bunny in the side for emphasis, she continues to do so because it’s fun, and then Mr. Bunny pretends not to notice but saves the retaliatory pokes for later, when she won’t expect it – and later in the narrative where it’s funnier to see brought up again.

It’s also a jumbled world where Foxes can learn to speak English in order to decode recipes for making food of rabbits, where bunnys can drive cars and build villages with freestanding Olde Spaghetti Factories, just like human towns, but clearly have their own bunny priorities like too much fursweating under a waterproof cap, or being called in front of the dreaded Bunny Council.

I laughed and/or smiled many times to myself while reading it, especially for the parts where the ongoing joke about Madeline having a gigantic bottom came up.  I even laughed in public while reading alone at a bar. That alone makes a it recommend-worthy, I think, and the mystery itself is solved in an escalating way filled with madcap rubbery red herrings all over the place.  There’s even a couple phrases of Fox to be learned from it, and also how to hypnotize a marmot.

Readalikes:

M.T. Anderson’s Thrilling Tales series (start with Whales on Stilts!) is pretty close in humor, although a bit more absurd.  And you’d do well to also read Maryrose Wood‘s Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place series, also delightfully illustrated by a talented person, Jon Klassen.

PLEASE LEAVE YOUR SUGGESTIONS FOR WHAT M.A.R.M.O.T. STANDS FOR IN THE COMMENTS. Prizes possible.

12 Comments
by tessabarber on December 7, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by tessabarber on December 7, 2012

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Chicken is Chickens!: Liar & Spy by Rebecca Stead

A Review of Liar & Spy by Rebecca Stead

Wendy Lamb Books (Random House), 2012

By REBECCA, August 20, 2012

Rebecca Stead Liar & Spy

characters

Georges (the S is silent): lovely, observant, sincere (but not saccharine) seventh-grader you totally want to be friends with

Safer:  a coffee-swigging, super-observant, home-schooled spymaster and dog-walker

Candy: Safer’s younger sister, she occasionally does recon spy work for the cause

Pigeon: Candy and Safer’s older brother who is very avian-oriented

Bob English Who Draws: an unexpected school friend, he knows all about spelling reform

Georges’ dad: communicative, and supportive dad who is always up for Chinese food, yay!

hook

When Georges moves in to his new Brooklyn apartment, he quickly joins Safer in a building-wide surveillance of the mysterious Mr. X, who Safer says must be evil. His dad lost his job, his mom is always at the hospital where she works, and a gang of boys at school have painted Georges with a target, so he likes hanging out with Safer . . . until Safer’s spy demands start to go a little too far.

worldview

Georges has only moved twelve blocks away from the house he and his parents were forced to move out of when his father lost his job, but it gives him totally different vantage point on his Brooklyn neighborhood. Georges’ neighborhood, school, and apartment building are the world of Liar & Spy and Georges moves through them with familiarity and affection, observing delightful things and thinking delightful thoughts:

“We’re playing volleyball, with an exclamation point. Ms. Warner has written it on the whiteboard outside the gym doors: Volleyball!.

The combination of seeing that word and breathing the smell of the first floor, which is the smell of the cafeteria after lunch, creates some kind of echo in my head, like a faraway shout.

In the morning, the cafeteria smells fried and sweet, like fish sticks and cookies. But after lunch, it’s different. There’s more kid sweat and garbage mixed in, I guess. Or maybe it’s just that, after lunch, the cafeteria doesn’t have the smell of things to come. It’s the smell of what has been” (3).

Georges’ voice is strong and extremely relatable—I totally wish I lived in his apartment building and would get to chat with him in the lobby or the basement. It’s a world where things are both rife with mystery and shockingly clear; where kids’ play has complete power and yet is powerless against larger fears and threats. Every character feels fully-realized, even the gym teacher or a girl with a crush who appear for but a few sentences, which makes me feel like I live in this world, too, and am merely hearing the story of someone else’s view of it.

When You Reach Me Rebecca SteadLike Stead’s previous novel, When You Reach Me, Liar & Spy is about middle-school-aged kids, but is plenty rich to appeal to older audiences, for sure. For a short novel (180 pages in my copy), Liar & Spy covers a lot of ground. The plot isn’t complicated, but it’s a book with a lot of components, all of which feel like they are in their right place. It’s the same feeling I had when reading When You Reach Me (which I love love loved): that I was reading a book by someone who really knew what she was doing. Stead makes it feel effortless. Pre-teen boys, a potential serial killer, bullying, how taste works, spelling reform, candy, the nesting habits of parrots, umami, phobias, home-schooling, Brooklyn restaurants—all the pieces orbit each other like a perfectly balanced mobile, and at the end you realize that without every one of them it wouldn’t be the same beautiful whole.

Plus, did I mention it’s wicked funny? It is. Here’s a story from Safer and Candy’s brother, Pigeon, who doesn’t eat birds:

“‘So one day when I was totally little, Mom, Dad, and I are driving along this road up in Connecticut and we see these cows. And I’m like, what are cows for? I mean, what do they do, you know? And Mom’s trying to give me the easy answer, so she tells me, “Cows are for milk, remember? Cows give us milk.”

‘But then Dad pipes up, “And meat.” And I’m like, “What do you mean, meat?” Then he tells me that hamburgers are cow meat. And this lightbulb goes on in my head, and I start thinking about all the foods we eat, and I’m asking, what about dumplings, and what about bacon—and they’re telling me, pork dumplings are from pigs, blah blah blah. I was real interested in all of it. It’s one of those things you remember—you’re just a little kid, and you’re finally clueing in to the real world, you know? And so then I say, “What about chicken? Where does chicken come from?” And right then this other lightbulb goes on in my head, and I start screaming, “Chicken is Chickens?”‘ (62-3).

what are this book’s expectations? does it live up to them?

Harriet the Spy Louise FitzhughYes! (that was the second question first, but I got really excited.) In a lot of ways, Liar & Spy kind of reminded me of what it might be like to be friends with an altera-verse Harriet the Spy. It’s not that the book is similar to Harriet the Spy, but that Georges’ experience being friends with Safer feels like glimpses into what Sport might feel like hanging around with Harriet when he really wants to be playing baseball (or, in Georges’ case, watching it) instead.

I think, too, that there is something about the experience of growing up a kid in New York (my mom is a Brooklyn kid, like Georges, although Harriet lives on the Upper East Side) that tinges books set there. The kids’ relationships with neighborhood-ishness really appeal to me (I love placey places). They approach a neighborhood Chinese restaurant or the newsstand at the entrance to a certain subway stop with the same particular ownership and favoritism that non-city kids would the park on the corner, and for whatever reason I find the idea of a kid having regular interactions with the people who run these places really delightful.

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, Georges Seurat, 1884

So, throughout Liar & Spy, we get the feeling that there are things going on in the background that aren’t addressed head-on (you know, like in real life). This gives a real richness to the book, and also prompts the kind of questions that might feel trite in a novel with older characters, but feel exactly right in a novel with middle-school-aged characters. Georges is named after Pointillist Georges Seurat, his parents’ favorite artist, and like the Seurat poster hanging in Georges’ living room, at the end of Liar & Spy, you can look back at the big picture of the book and see all the little pieces come together, and it’s really lovely. Stead masterfully embeds hints to what is going on that make sense when looked back on.

Liar & Spy is available NOW!

personal disclosure

I had the pleasure of getting my book signed by Rebecca Stead at BEA, and she was extremely lovely and gracious, and liked that our blog was called Crunchings & Munchings because she, too, loves Gurgi. I feel this needs to be said because I have a particular dread of meeting people that I admire, for fear that they will be disappointing. Check out this post over at Rookie on the topic.

Rebecca Stead rocks!

readalikes

Skellig David Almond

Skellig by David Almond (2000). Like Georges, Michael, the protagonist of Skellig, has recently moved into a new home, where he meets a home-schooled girl who teaches him new things. Michael finds a bird-man-angel who eats Chinese food dripping with bugs in his shed. It’s a short, simple story, but has an elliptical, fantasy quality (what is the bird-man-angel? what is really wrong with Michael’s baby sister?). Lovely and lyrical.

What They Always Tell Us Martin Wilson

What They Always Tell Us by Martin Wilson (2008). Brothers James (a senior) and Alex (a junior) are close in age but not in much else—James is an outgoing overachiever and Alex has withdrawn into depression and is questioning his sexuality. But when the brothers make friends with their oddball 10-year-old neighbor, they find common ground they didn’t know they had.

When You Reach Me Rebecca Stead

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead (2009). I know maybe it’s cheating to put an author’s own book on the readalikes list, but in the case of When You Reach Me, I’ve included it because although the books share very little in terms of plot they are very close in style and worldview, so I think someone who liked one would really enjoy the other. Also, seriously, this book is amazing. I can’t say any more for fear of spoiling it. Don’t read anything about it; just read it. Now. It’s short. I swear you’ll thank me.

procured from: ARC from the publisher at Book Expo America

7 Comments
by Rebecca on August 20, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by Rebecca on August 20, 2012

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Re-Read: The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles

A Review of The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie Andrews Edwards

HarperCollins, 1974

By REBECCA, August 6, 2012

The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles Julie Andrews Edwards

hook

Ben, Tom, and Lindy Potter meet Professor Savant one Halloween night, and aren’t sure whether they believe him that there is a place called Whangdoodleland, where the last of that kind rules over a kingdom of otherworldly creatures. But, the more they practice the Professor’s methods of using their imagination to get closer and closer to Whangdoodleland, the more convinced they become that they can travel there and meet the Whangdoodle. Once they’re in Whangdoodleland, however, they realize that imagination is a dangerous tool that can be used against them just as easily as they can use it for their own purposes.

why am i re-reading this?

Julie Andrews as Mary PoppinsI’ve been feeling a little lazy and uninspired in my reading lately. Maybe it’s the oppressive heat of this interminable summer; maybe just a little slump brought on by a borderline-shameful bout of attention-span-ruining tv on dvd watching; I dunno. Either way, I decided it was time to go back to my roots and pull one of my childhood favorites off the shelf. I first read The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles as a very young kid (it’s middle grade, I should mention) and had no idea that the author who created this super creative world was none other than the rather stern, besmocked, rosy-lipped Mary Poppins that my sister made us watch repeatedly. What?! Someone who can act, sing, dance, and write? No fair! Inspiring!

I have really strong memories of the world of Whangdoodleland from reading it as a kid. It’s filled with awesome creatures and gorgeous landscapes:

“Their first impression of the forest was that it was dark and gloomy. But as their eyes adjusted to the light, they saw that it was unusually colorful.

The plum-colored trees had brown, gnarled trunks. Most of them were embraced by a vivid pink ivy, growing and twining around the tall columns and twisted limbs. Garlands of the honey-cream flowers hung from the branches, linking one tree to another. The floor was mossy and bedded with ferns the color of amethyst. Huge pearl-white and crimson orchids grew at the side of the road, which pointed straight as an arrow into the dark interior.

Then they saw the eyes. There were thousands of them—large, unblinking, tortoiseshell-yellow orbs staring down through the leaves from every part of the forest” (169).

Julie Andrews Edwards The Last of the Really Great WhangdoodlesBut my favorite thing about The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles was that Professor Savant wasn’t able to get to Whangdoodleland without the Potter kids because the only way to get there is to have a boundless and malleable imagination—an imagination that only children have. So, Savant engages the kids in what is, to them, a great adventure; at the same time, though, he is placing them in great danger because he is dependent on the resource of their imagination. Lindy is seven, Thomas is ten, and Ben is thirteen. By the logic of the book, Lindy has the deftest imagination and is better than her brothers at surrendering to it entirely. Some of the most interesting moments in the book are when Ben, on the cusp of losing his childish ability to view reality as something different, is unable to do what he needs to do to keep himself and his siblings safe. At the start of the book, his maturity makes him responsible and trustworthy; someone Lindy looks up to. But, in Whangdoodleland, he’s something of a liability, and Edwards does a great job of capitalizing on those moments.

did the book hold up?

Mostly. I had forgotten that the mythology of mystical creatures in Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles is that these creatures used to have a lot of power when people believed in them, but

“as the years passed, man became involved in technology and agriculture and industry. Of course, it was natural for him to want to learn about his environment and the laws of nature, about the universe and how to get to the moon, and so on. But as he broadened the new part of his mind, so he closed down a beautiful and fascinating part of the old—the area of fantasy. The more knowledge man gained, the more self-conscious he became about believing in fanciful creatures. People began to think that such things as dragons, goblins and gremlins didn’t exist. The terrible thing is that when man dismissed all the fanciful creatures from his mind, the Whangdoodles disappeared along with them” (34).

The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles Julie Andrews EdwardsThis sets up the stuff about kids’ versus adults’ imaginations and their relative power really well. One of the tropes that I often like in middle grade fantasy is the way that fear gains power the more you believe in it—the nightmare of imagination’s power. Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles has a splash of this for sure, but it wasn’t quite as dark as I remembered. The Prock, a skinny, slinking man who I always thought of as a sinister villain when I read the book as a kid now appeared to me as a totally reasonably watchdog of the magic of Whangdoodleland. He tries to stop the Professor and the Potters from getting to Whangdoodleland and meeting the Whangdoodle because he fears that if they can get there then humans could potentially overrun Whangdoodleland.

The scenes where the Professor trains the Potters to get in touch with their senses and imaginations totally hold up (plus they are constantly eating picnics and scones and stuff, yum!) and I found myself wishing, just as I did when I was a kid, that I could go on grand adventures via my imagination.

The only thing that felt a great deal different on this reading was the quest that the Potters go on to get through Whangdoodleland and meet the Whangdoodle. It didn’t seem quite as tense and suspenseful as I remembered, and the little clues they get along the way didn’t seem quite as clever. Still, though, the meeting with the Whangdoodle was just as delightful as I remembered and the ending just as good.

Check out this awesome art that a 3rd grade class did after reading The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles:

Sidewinders!

Prock!

Swamp Gaboon!

procured from: my home library

So, what about you? Any childhood favorites you’ve been meaning to dust off?

3 Comments
by Rebecca on August 6, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Book Review, Classic YA, My Home Library
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Posted by Rebecca on August 6, 2012

http://crunchingsandmunchings.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/re-read-the-last-of-the-really-great-whangdoodles/

Poison Apples, Poison Worms: The Mysterious Benedict Society

The Mysterious Benedict Society
Trenton Lee Stewart
Illustrations by Carson Ellis
Little, Brown and Company, 2007

review by Tessa

Characters
The Society:
Reynie Muldoon, ultra-observant orphan
Kate Weatherall, extremely resourceful orphan
Sticky Washington, mind like a steel trap, nerves like wilted lettuce, runaway from his parents.
Constance Contraire, tiny body, huge reserve of grumpy attitude.

Adults:
Mr. Benedict, a good man, also a genius with emotionally-triggered narcolepsy
Rhonda Kazembe, passed all of Benedict’s tests and now works as his assistant
Number Two, insomniac, always noshing, fond of yellow, very loyal
Milligan, the eternally sad super spy
Miss Perumal, Reynie’s tutor and only friend
Ledroptha Curtain, evil genius mastermind inventor. director of a boarding school on an island.

Hook
Every time you turn on the TV or listen to the radio in your car, you’re not just hearing the normal soundtrack. There’s someone whispering behind all the other words. It’s a child’s voice, saying what seem like nonsense phrases.  The whispering is ratcheting up world fear and causing all kinds of global problems. Mr. Benedict knows who is doing it. But he can’t stop it.  He has to find the children who can.  And he knows the best way to do it: take out an ad in the newspaper.

Worldview

It’s the world you know, but more sinister. Think They Live! but through the lens of Lemony Snicket.  The Mysterious Benedict Society opens with a premise that was nearly irresistible to me–the completion of tests with tests embedded within them. An orphaned boy (Reynie) spots an ad in the newspaper, which he makes a habit of reading every day, targeted towards “gifted children looking for special opportunities”. Reynie notices it not only because he is a gifted child, but because it’s addressed to the children themselves, not their parents. That’s just the kind of kid Reynie is.  He notices the little things.

Hidden messages… photo by flickr user lkrichter

This advertisement attracts four children in particular who make it through the tests in varying ways, using their particular skills.  I’m not going to describe the tests, because the fun part is figuring them out.  The kids are led on to more tests, and so on and so forth until they land at the house of one Mr. Benedict, and learn that they are all, more or less, alone in the world and all, more or less, equipped to help in his quest.  A quest that involves a school for special children, a reclusive genius who uses his mechanized chair as a bullying tool, and a machine called “The Whisperer”.

Of course, the school is much like another test for the children, but with much higher stakes.  Will they prove to be resistant to the lure and comfort of The Whisperer, and the stress of their mission?  They have almost nothing to go on, but they know their actions will determine the course of world history, and the quality of life for most people on the planet.  Because the Whisperer is behind the problems that have been growing worse year after year. Problems they are familiar with, having read about them in the newspaper every day.  The kinds of problems that don’t seem connected, more like a string of bad luck that goes on so long that it only merits a shake of the head when another example of it pops up.

“Things had gotten desperately out of control, the headlines reported; the school systems, the budget, the pollution, the crime, the weather … why, everything, in fact, was  a complete mess, and citizens everywhere were clamoring for a major–no, a dramatic--improvement in government.  ‘Things must change NOW!’ was the slogan plastered on billboards all over the city (it was a very old slogan), and although Reynie rarely watched television, he knew the Emergency was the main subject of the news programs every day, as it had been for years.”

Weirdly, even with all this going on, Reynie, Kate, Sticky, and Constance finally feel at home, because they’ve found each other, and they’ve found a purpose for their odd talents. (Well, no one is sure about Constance yet, because her talent seems to be stubbornness and grumpiness).

Intention Achievement

You’re probably sick of me talking about balance aaaaalllll the time, but it’s important, dammit, and I’m a Libra.  I know that part of what made me want to always be furiously reading The Mysterious Benedict Society was that I was burned out on reading what I’d been reading – many superhero comics.  I needed prose, and I needed a little adventure that required more detective work and less action fighting sequences (I know, Batman is technically a detective, but he does a lot of fighting, too).  The MBS provided all these things in a cute brick of a book that hooked me with its tests and did not let go.

But part of why I enjoyed it was that it had balance.  There are cheesy jokes, like Kate wanting to have a ridiculous nickname that never catches on–in fact, the character quirks of all the characters are the cheesiest thing about this book, and I didn’t escape without many an inward groan.  The names of the adults and some of the children usually have a meaning that points towards important facets of their personality–one of the traits the book shares with early novels, a similarity that I was happy about, even though it seems cheesy– Mr. Benedict is benevolent, Number Two looks like a No. 2 pencil, Constance Contraire is quite contrary, Kate Weatherall is tough and can weather it all, S.Q. Pedalian has big feet (ped = foot in Latin)… etc., etc.

Then there’s the requisite danger, which does get chilling, especially during its first reveal, because of its subliminal nature.

“The unseen child–it sounded like a girl about Kate’s age–spoke in a plodding, whispery monotone, her voice half-drowned in static. At first only a few random words were clear enough to be understood: ‘Market … too free to be … obfuscate …’ Number Two typed more commands into the computer; the interference lessened considerably, and the child’s word came clearly now, slipping through the fain static in a slow drone:

‘The missing aren’t missing, they’re only departed,
All minds keep all thoughts–so like gold–closely guarded …’

Again the words were overcome by static. Number Two muttered under her breath. Her fingers flew across the keyboard, and the child’s slow, whispery voice returned:

‘Grow the lawn and mow the lawn.
Always leave the TV on.
Brush your teeth and kill the germs.
Poison apples, poison worms.’”

The Mysterious Benedict Society is in the tradition of Gulliver. Here he talks to the Houyhnhnms (by Grandville. via Wikimedia)

There are riddles for the kids to work out that the reader, if they are above a certain age, will probably get before the kids do (this is firmly a middle grade novel, and I love it for that).  And most importantly, there is real feeling.  It’s the same thing that makes Lemony Snicket work so well–the life lessons mixed in with the silliness are written about as they would occur in a human brain.  And it’s in the same format as early novels like Henry Fielding’s The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews or Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels–the hero(es) have adventures and travel, and each new encounter says something about society and/or teaches a lesson–but it never fails to be imaginative or exciting.  When Reynie worries about whether he’s a good person or not, it rings true.  There’s a moment where the kids are exhausted and irritable and homesick, and it’s really poignant, because these are all kids that have felt alone for a long time, and they’re being made to grow up.  So although the themes are stated plainly, they don’t sound like a panel of child psychologist inserted them into the narrative to promote maximum emotional development in the reader.

“Reynie’s mind went back to his last night at Mr. Benedict’s house. It seemed so long ago now, yet he remembered it with absolute clarity.  Much like tonight, he had felt too worked up to sleep, and despite the late hour he had slipped quietly out of bed and crept down to Mr. Benedict’s study. Mr. Benedict had welcomed Reynie to sit up with him if he had trouble sleeping; and obviously he’d quite expected Reynie to do so, for when Reynie arrived, a cup of hot tea was waiting for him on Mr. Benedict’s desk. …

‘I was wondering if you ever wish you had a family,’ Reynie sputtered. He hadn’t meant to speak so directly, but once he’d begun to ask it, the words just tumbled out.

Mr. Benedict nodded. ‘Certainly when I was your age I did. But not anymore.’

Reynie wasn’t sure whether to be comforted or depressed by this revelation.  He’d been wondering how it would feel for him to grow up without relatives. ‘You … you grew out of it, then? You stopped wanting it?’

‘Oh no, Reynie, you don’t grow out of it. It’s just that once you acquire a family, you no longer need to wish for one.’

Reynie was caught off guard. ‘You have a family?’

‘Absolutely,’ Mr. Benedict replied. ‘You must remember, family is often born of blood, but it doesn’t depend on blood. Nor is it exclusive of friendship. Family members can be your best friends, you know. And best friends, whether or not they are related to you, can be your family.’

Reynie had drunk up those words like life-saving medicine. Even though the next morning he would leave on a dangerous mission, even though he knew something terrible was coming down the pike, those words of Mr. Benedict’s had made all good things seem possible.”

Readalikes

A Series of Unfortunate Events / Lemony Snicket
3 orphans grow up under the most dire conditions, learn vocabulary along the way.  In one of the books there’s a hotel where each floor corresponds with a section of the Dewey Decimal System.

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase / Joan Aiken
Her website calls this series “invented historical” adventures – I’ve only read one, which I bought because Edward Gorey did the illustrations–much like Carson Ellis did the illustrations for The Mysterious Benedict Society.

Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place / Maryrose Wood
Like if Jane Eyre were obsessed with a series of children’s books featuring a horse and had to tame three feral children.

Will I read the next book in the series?
I already have, and though I’m sad to say Carson Ellis was not the illustrator, I am happy to report that the Society gets to go to an entirely different island, meet a brave Dutch archivist, and learn about botany.

8 Comments
by tessabarber on June 13, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by tessabarber on June 13, 2012

http://crunchingsandmunchings.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/mysterious-benedict-society/

The Only Ones: a package tied up with a Möbius bow

The Only Ones

Aaron Starmer

Delacorte Press, 2011

characters

Martin Maple, raised in island isolation on mechanical milk
George, a Friend
Kelvin, an absent founding father
Darla, a go-getter with a monster truck
Lane, performance artist, keeper of her own secrets
Nigel, shadow leader of a not-so-Peaceable Kingdom
Chet, underestimated gardener
Felix, a different kind of weaver of webs
Henry, sneaky peanut roaster
Trent, small but responsible
Martin’s Dad & Mom, alive in absence

hook
Is the best leader for a recently deserted world a boy who has grown up without people?

worldview & intention achievement
The world in The Only Ones is our world, up until page 15. Then it is our world with one major difference: nearly every human in it has disappeared in an instant.   The realization of this is slow, however, because it’s seen through the eyes of Martin Maple, a young boy who has lived on a small island (possibly somewhere in New England) for his whole life.  His education consists of working on a machine with his father.  He doesn’t know what the machine is, just how it is put together.  He has one book of fantasy and sci-fi stories that keeps him entertained.

Two things occur to help Martin grow up. When Martin is 9 years old, he meets a friend.  He’s not supposed to have friends so George remains a secret.  George has access to books, and soon Martin treats George as his own personal librarian and not much else.  Not being socialized, Martin has a slippery grasp on what friendship requires.  Then, when Martin is 10, his father leaves to find the last piece for the machine. He doesn’t return–his empty boat washes up on shore on Martin’s 11th birthday.  The next summer, there are no summer people on the island.  Martin realizes that something is going on.  He’s not exactly lonely, but he does want to find his father.  So he leaves the island for the first time, almost 13 years old.

and Martin finds... parking lots. jk!

The world has been left to itself for a couple of years when Martin finds his first town.  He’s nearly eaten by a bear in a library.  Luckily, his upbringing gives him the instinct to escape and the wherewithal to steal the fox that the bear had in its mouth for his own meal.  This is when Martin meets Kelvin.  Kelvin looks like nothing more than a skinny kid in a cape, but he’s very self-assured.  He tells Martin that everyone on Earth has disappeared, except for the inhabitants of Xibalba.  By way of explanation he says:

“You know it’s actually spelled with an ‘X,’ but sounds like an ‘Sh,’ as in ‘Who gives a Xibalba?’ You just find it. Like the rest of them did.  You’ll know you’re close when you smell the nuts.” (34)

And (a bit incredibly) that’s what Martin does.

From this point on the book starts to come into its own, and its intentions become clearer. It’s part mystery, part exploration of society, part whimsical speculative fantasy.  What it surprisingly isn’t is a story of how the kids in Xibalba survive–they just loot towns with a monster truck (belonging to Darla, a nominal leader).

That’s a refreshing aspect for me as a reader–I’ve read many a survival narrative this year, and while I enjoy the permutations, it was refreshing to see this perspective.  At least at this point, they haven’t entered the territory of The Road because nothing apocalyptic has really happened, just something Rapture-iffic.  So the Earth is eminently plunderable.  Each citizen gets his or her own house and each contributes a skill to society, which therefore ends up being barter-based.  So basically what they’re left with is how to grapple with what happened to them.

There’s no way to know why everyone disappeared, or know how.  They have to come up with their own mythologies.  As we come to meet the inhabitants of Xibalba and their quirks (believe me, there are quirks galore), we also learn that there’s already some tragic history to the town.  Starmer drops little hints at this, simultaneously profiling characters, moving their individual arcs forward, and setting elements in place so that Martin becomes the catalyst of activity and hope in Xibalba, while bringing the plot around again to his mysterious machine.  He wants to tie everything together neatly and leave us knowing not only what happened, but what will happen in this world he’s built.

That’s a lot to do in one book, and what makes The Only Ones fall a little short as a reading experience is this ambition to create a neatly-folded Möbius strip of a book to give to the reader.  At the risk of ***SPOILING THE PLOT***, as I got further into it, I couldn’t help but compare it to the 2010 Newbery Medal winner, When You Reach Me, because of one certain similarity, and having this one come up short.  Because When You Reach Me didn’t try to explain everything. That’s totally unfair of me to do, I know.

While I would occasionally fall into the world of The Only Ones because of the tantalizing nature of the empty world and the delicious little details that Starmer writes into Xibalba as a place and into the citizens of Xibalba – the first piece of performance art that Lane shows Martin, for example, is wonderful to imagine, and wonderfully written — I couldn’t fully go there.  Violence happens in this story and it’s pretty unaffecting.

If I had to put my finger on it I’d say that the main culprit for this it would be the dialogue. Something about it is inauthentic — and maybe the fact that I can’t put my finger on quite what is an indication that it’s just my personal dealio.  It’s a little too much old-fashioned, a little too stylized, and then sometimes swerves into modern day interjections like “Mutha!” or describing something as “sweet” while simultaneously spouting things like: “Genuine issue, bona fide. A prophet. I kid you not. The one thing King Kelvin should have respected.” (74).  Or on the next page a character says “Whatever you fancy”.  Starmer is fond of shortening words for the indication of casual speech – Just sayin. Friggin. Tell ‘em. Everyone was a little too slick and quick to quip, ready to turn into a gangster’s moll or a Hardy Boy.

Aaron Starmer, I admire your guts. (photo by messtiza on flickr)

Would less stylization in speech have made it easier to swallow the premise? Probably not.  When Starmer does his big reveal, it’s a lot to swallow. I can’t help but say he’s set himself up for this by providing an explanation.  My first reaction was to think that it’s pretty impossible.  But it takes guts to put your plot out there with its little belly sticking up, waiting to be poked.  So overall I honor his bravery but have to say that if this were an amusement park ride it would be one that sounds really fun, starts off with a satisfying loop, has a stuttering finish, but would be worth recommending to friends nevertheless (unless they are really logical and picky people).

 

readalikes

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead - I mentioned this in the review, so…. yeah. There’s one big similarity and it’s a spoiler for both books! I shall say no more.


The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness - Because it also has a naive boy going on a quest as a narrator and they’re both about Society. But this one is set on another world. And it may make you bite your fingernails.  Because it has nail-biting suspense–and it’s the first in a trilogy.

digressions & nitpicks

1. One of the things that made me want to read this book in the first place was the cover. I love night scenes with lighted elements. (When I got the book, I wasn’t such a fan of the silhouettes of the kids themselves. Somehow they managed to look like jerks, in silhouette. Which they weren’t, in the book.)  It’s drawn by Lisa Ericson, who doesn’t yet have a working website, but who does share a name with an instructor of seated aerobics!  What a nice surprise.

2. Some weird things I noted.  Or… let me nitpick about stuff.  On page 174 a character comes back from the dead to help out with stenography.  On page 185 woodgrain is referred to as fiery.  Actually “fierier”, which indicates to me that the author is used to thinking of wood in these terms. I kind of like that glimpse into his personal vocabulary. Similarly, on page 305 a smile is described as “impious” but from context I’d say that it should be “impish”.

I got this book from: the library

7 Comments
by tessabarber on February 29, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Book Review
Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Posted by tessabarber on February 29, 2012

http://crunchingsandmunchings.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/theonlyones/

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