Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
So how to explain Leviathan? It is set during 1914 in an alternate world in which Charles Darwin discovered biotechnology. So the British Empire was built on the backs of strange, fabricated beasties while the Germans and the Austro-Hungarian Empire bulked at such blasphemy and relied on machines instead, earning them the title of Clankers.
Reading it on the heels of Howl’s Moving Castle, I couldn’t help but imagine the book coming to life in the hands of Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. The was an element of mecha anime – the “clanker” machines used by that walk around like AT Imperial Walkers (think of Howl’s Castle). Then imagining the blend of machine and animal employed by the British; what the creators of Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke could do with that!
It is the first in a series of three books (published October 2009, 2010, and 2011) and one full-color guidebook, The Manual of Aeronautics. It includes illustrations by Keith Thompson “because back in 1914, almost all books were illustrated, and I wanted it to look and feel like a book from that period. Plus, there are so many weird animals and machines in the world of Leviathan that I wanted to show them” (Scott Westerfeld).
According to the Akron-Summit County Public Library, “Steampunk is a genre with a huge underground following… but it has yet to become mainstream. Scott Westerfeld may help to change that. His newest title, Leviathan, takes history, fantasy, adventure, animals, Star Wars and the women’s movement, tosses them in a pot, swirls them around, and creates an absolutely delicious feast of a story.”
Read the great review at A Chair, A Teacozy and a Fireplace that made me pick this one up.
SLOB by Ellen Potter
SLOB is the story of twelve-year-old Owen Birnbaum, the fattest kid in school. The reasons behind Owen’s eating disorder are revealed as Owen: attempts to build Nemesis (a device that will capture the events of the past), suffers through humiliation after humiliation at the hands of a cruel gym teacher, and as Owen tracks down a thief who takes his lunch time Oreo snack.
The prose often struck me as insightful. This passage, on page 29, jolted me:
Everyone thinks they know the fat kid. We’re so obvious. Our embarrassing secret is out there for everyone to see, spilling over our belts, flapping under our chins, stretching the seams of our jeans.
That doesn’t mean we don’t have other secrets that you can’t see.
I also enjoyed the occasional clever metaphor: “She may not be supersmart, but if you stick her in a crowd of people, she just pops, like a zebra-stripped jeep in a shopping mall parking lot” (p 80).
The ending kept me guessing. It’s not often you read about a boy with an eating disorder but this is an exception read. I’m sure it will be in the run for a Printz (though I’m pulling for The Devil’s Paintbox). I believe it also qualifies for the Newbery.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days by Jeff Kinney
Kinney does it again. This time our admittedly lazy hero, Greg, must mend fences with Rowley (his best friend), work off a debt to Rowley’s dad, go above and beyond to attract the attention of the community pool life guard, and become famous by creating a new comic strip for the local newspaper. All this leads to a boring vacation with Rowley’s family, a failed attempt at a V.I.P. Lawn service company, and no girlfriend or fame.
But Greg remains optimistic through it all. Incredulous at the adults around him and baffeled by their misunderstanding of his genius, he holds himself accountable for nothing and is seemingly without empathy. Of course, this results in one seriously funny book.
Greg has been holding on to a library book for a little too long. This is what he imagines will happen if he returns it.
The Girl Who Threw Butterflies by Mick Cochrane
In the 1960s a guy named J.C. Martin made a living catching the great Hoyt Wilhelm’s knuckleball. Doug Mirabelli always caught Tim Wakefield and his knuckleball for the Red Sox. They were called “personal catchers.” Catching a knuckleball was so difficult and so unpleasant for most regular catchers that if you could do it reasonably well (nobody did it really well), that one skill could keep you on the team. The personal catcher would sit on the bench until the knuckleballer took the mound, and then he and his special floppy mitt would enter the game. It was an odd kind of intimacy, to be joined together like that, a weird baseball marriage (p 74-75).
How can I express how much I enjoyed this book? It blended many of the themes present in several of this year’s best children’s books (see OCL’s Mock Newbery List): death and abandonment, grief and alienation, discrimination and friendship. Yet none of these drowned the story and baseball tied it all together.
[SPOILER ALERT]
Baseball is what helps Molly hold herself together. It helps her come to terms with her father’s death and to discover herself. It is how she codified life:
Molly meanwhile was fantasizing about a scoring system not for baseball but for life. If she said something stupid, if she forgot to bring home her science book – those would be errors. If her mother came through for her and a third of the time – that sounded about right – her batting average would be .333. Back when her locked has been defaces and Lonnie came along and rescued her, he could have been credited with a save” (p 147).
The setting – Buffalo, NY – was a perfect choice. Like Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, whose wintry and bleak Syracuse, NY setting gave the perfect backdrop to Melinda’s troubles, the gloomy Buffalo is “like Siberia, a place you’d go to disappear, or to be punished” (p 115) to this story. It supports Molly’s suspicions that her father’s job was “taking the starch out of him” (p 37) and that her mother was like a flower withering in such grey desolation.
My father, like Molly’s, was a reporter for the local newspaper, covering equally mundane and repetitious stories. While scavenging to salvage some of her father’s memorabilia, Molly stumbles across one of her father’s notepads. At first hopefully it will contain some sort of explanation for his mysterious death, she finds it blank and instead stages a mock interview with her father (p 55). I thought this and all the other little steps Molly took toward forgiving her father was exceptionally well done.
[END SPOILERS]
If you enjoyed this book, I recommend No Cream Puffs by Karen Day and Playing the Field by Phil Bildner.
Love, Aubery by Suzanne LaFleur
“I had everything I needed to run a household: a house, food, and a new family. From now on it would just be me and Sammy–the two of us, and no one else.”
I couldn’t help but compare this book to Ann Dee Ellis’s Everything is Fine.
Both books feature a female protagonist whose physical well being has been abandoned by the adults in her life and her mental well being has been disrupted, both by family tragedy.
Love, Aubrey is an excellent first offering from new author Suzanne LaFleur but Ellis’s story is more concise, literary and ultimately more haunting. Both authors navigate their precious girls through the horror and confusion of one life-altering moment and the aftermath with elegance and poignancy. Both also do an excellent job building suspense.
I’ve seen this on some mock Newbery lists but decided to pass on it for our Library’s final list.
Strawberry Hill by Mary Ann Hoberman
I was reluctant to pick this one up because of its Pollyanna cover art. It’s initial tone was as I suspected. Set in Connecticut during the Great Depression, it follows eleven-year-old Allie as her family moves from New Haven to Stamford when her father lands a job.
Much of the story is reminiscent of a simpler time when girls played hopscotch and boys played marbles, where mothers were homemakers and divorce was rare. But while these nostalgic images are pleasant, Hoberman reminds her readers that life was equally as difficult then as it is now; jobs were scarce, hobos weren’t bad people but rather men who could not find work, across the ocean anti-Semitism was growing.
As the story progressed, I grew more interested. Allie developed in so many lovely ways. Take this passage on page 160,
When we got home, I went into the dining room and stared at my grandmother’s cups and saucers. My mother has said that someday they would be mine. I wondered whether when I grew up I would let my little girl drink from them like Mrs. Minnick or be like my mother and keep them safe behind glass doors.
The supporting characters were also well developed and while Allie’s best friend and her family met with a happy ending, her other friends and their families had more ambiguous futures. Definitely a contender for the Newbery but it’s not my front runner.
Murder at Midnight by Avi
“There can never be enough books,” said Magnus. ” The pity is it takes years to create each one.”
“Is that true?” said the surprised boy.
“Fabrizio, a book must first be written. To do so, the writer exchanges days for words, months for paragraphs, and years for chapters – time turned into books. There’s your magic” (p 31).
I wasn’t expecting funny but this book was a hoot! Especially in the beginning. It reminded me strongly of the word play humor of R.L. Stine’s (sadly out-of-print) Space Cadets series (see Fabrizio’s misunderstanding of the truth, pg 49 – 50).
Fabrizio was a street urchin before Magnus and his kind wife took him in as a magician’s apprentice. In his extreme naïveté, Frabrizio succeeds in implicating his master in a plot to overthrow King Claudio of the Kingdom of Pergamontio, Italy in 1490. A loyal servant to the end, Fabrizio must prove his master’s innocence before the stroke of midnight or his master shall be killed and Fabrizio will become homeless once again.
Of course, there is a lot of intrigue and mystery leading to a satisfying theatrical ending. Another great book to add to OCL’s suggested reading list.
Publisher: Scholastic Press (September 1, 2009)
I have an ARC copy of this book. First person to leave a comment with email will get it!
The Dragon of Trelian by Michelle Knudsen
One hundred years ago, the Kragnir Queen was found murdered during a visit to the neighboring Trelian kingdom. The countries have been at war since. In an effort to end the feud, the current kings plan to wed their children, Princess Maerlie of Trelian and Prince Rylant of Kragnir.
Calen is a mage’s apprentice. Tied to the service a Lord or King, mages use magic to serve their patron. When Calen shows no great aptitude, his master, Serek, royal mage to the King of Trelian relaxes his teaching.
Meg is Maerlie’s younger sister with a special bond between herself and a dragon she stumbled upon in her youth. Lately, the secret bond between the two grows stronger. A chance meeting between Calen and Meg lead to an unlikely but mutually welcome friendship. When the two overhear a plot to murder Maerlie on her wedding night, they must pull all their cleverness, courage and strength to save Maerlie and the kingdoms.
A well-structured, intriguing plot with realistic characters and a good balance between action, politics, character development and fantasy appropriate for middle grade readers.
Nothing in the way of extraordinary regarding the magical elements. We’ve seen links between dragons and people before (Eragon), mage’s (Tamora Pierce and The Bartimaeus Trilogy), and dark creatures that inspire fear (ringwraiths and dementors).
Calen’s unique gift to see magic was rather interesting.
‘I saw the spell as she was casting — it was deep red, like the spell for killing weeds, only much stronger. Or the spell you used on that soldier, that first one who was attached, when you were trying to burn out the poison. Only this was darker, and … worse, somehow.’ Calen shuddered, remembering.
Serek had stopped and was looking at him intently. ‘You saw the spell?’ (p 291).
But the story is engaging and the writing (although I spotted a few copyrighting errors) is solid. Young fans of Fablehaven, The Shamer’s Daughter, The Hobbit and dragon lore in general will greatly enjoy this book. I’ve seen it on several mock Newbery lists but as much as I love fantasy, it’s not the strongest contender.
Read additional reviews at: Dolce Bellezza, King County Library, School Library Journal, Becky’s Book Review
Publisher: Candlewick (April 14, 2009)
The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg by Rodman Philbrick
Telling the truth don’t come easy to me, but I will try, even if old Truth ain’t nearly as useful as a fib sometimes (p 7).
“Although he is underage, Homer P. Figg’s brother, Harold, is illegally sold into the Union Army by their ruthless guardian. Now Homer must run away from Pine Swamp, Maine, and his wretched home to find his brother and save him from the war, before it’s too late.”
Like Tom Sawyer, our young and inventive hero sets out on a ridiculously impossible task, runs into scallywags, spies, crooks and the occasional Good Samaritan and, firm in his task, Homer cajoles, performers and escapes by whatever means necessary to achieve his ends…
I scampered into that balloon with nothing in my head but the desire to get away, and no idea what it meant to cut the anchor line. I wasn’t thinking about how you get down again, that’s for sure (p 167).
An amusing and adventurous read with equal measures of depravity, death, and hope that I’m sure will be as well received by readers as it has been by critics: Fuse #8, Shelf-Employeed, Kirkus, and Publisher’s Weekly.
The cover is unfortunate. As much as I adore Shannon’s children’s picture books, this cover, while appropriate, did nothing to grab my attention.
Publisher: The Blue Sky Press (January 1, 2009)
The Year the Swallows Came Early by Kathryn Fitzmaurice
Eleanor “Groovy” Robinson has a talent for the culinary arts. Her sandwiches are more popular with her classmates than desserts. She dreams of attending cooking school and wearing a white apron. When she learns that her beloved father has gambled her inheritance away, Groovy’s world is shaken.
A solid, layered read. Narrated by Eleanor, the reader is taken inside the innocent heart of a child who is betrayed by someone she loves and who must learn to forgive or “turn to stone” (p 190). One for the summer reading list and possibly in the mix for a Newberry discussion, but not one I expect to have a sticker.
Publisher: HarperCollins (February 3, 2009)
