What Came from the Stars

Tommy Pepper is turning twelve and for a twelve year old, he has a lot of worries.  Ever since his mother's accident, his father has stopped painting and his sister has stopped talking.  Tommy is wracked with guilt because he feels that he is to blame for his mother’s death.  To make matters worse, the Peppers may be forced to leave their beautiful home on the shore of Plymouth, MA to make way for new condominiums.

The last thing Tommy expects is for a powerful necklace from outer space to land in his lunchbox.  But that is exactly what happens.   Tommy puts on the necklace and suddenly knows the history of the Valorim, beings from a planet light years away from earth.  He finds that he can speak their language, paint pictures that move, and create living creatures from the sand.  But someone is mad that the Art of the Valorim has been sent away and that someone is determined to get it back.

Schmidt has written a fascinating story that is sure to delight lovers of fantasy.  He effortlessly weaves together two separate tales, that of the Valorim and their fight against the evil Lord Mondus and that of Tommy Pepper and his family.  At first, readers may be confused by Tommy’s use of the Valorim language but most of the words can be figured out in context.  If readers are still stumped, they can refer to the handy glossary provided at the end of the book.

What Came From the Stars is unique in many respects and certainly deserves consideration.  Has Schmidt created a Newbery winner?  What are your thoughts?

 

Starry River of the Sky

Next up for discussion in our second round reading list is Grace Lin's, Starry River of the Sky (Little Brown).

A companion book to Grace Lin's 2009, Newbery Honor book, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, Starry River of the Sky is much the same and yet very different. Like the earlier book, Starry River of the Sky contains Grace Lin’s beautiful artwork, features folktale vignettes, and revolves around a journey.  But while Minli’s journey in Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, is an actual journey full of obstacles to overcome, main character, Rendi’s journey, in Starry River of the Sky, is an introspective journey of understanding and self-discovery.

The story opens with a miserable and distressed Rendi traveling as a stowaway in a merchant’s cart,

Rendi was not sure how long the moon had been missing.  He knew only that for weeks, the wind seemed to be whimpering as if the sky were suffering.  At first, he had thought the moans were his own because his whole body ached from hiding in the merchant’s cart.  However, it was when the cart had stopped for the evening, when the bumping and knocking had ended, that the groans began.

Rendi’s story is tied inexorably to that of the moon, though it will take some time for him to determine why the moon is missing and why he, and he alone hears the moaning of the sky each night.  He is discovered by the merchant and left in a dying town, the Village of Clear Sky.  With no other prospects, he becomes the chore boy for Master Chao, owner of the local inn.  Master Chao’s daughter,  Peiyi, takes an immediate dislike to the sullen young boy. It is not until the mysterious Madame Chang, the inn’s only guest, arrives, that fortunes begin to change.  Madame Chang is a beautiful and captivating storyteller, recounting age-old folktales that have particular significance to Rendi; the neighbor, Widow Yan, and her daughter; and Mr. Shan, an elderly, doddering dinner guest who frequents the Inn.  As Madame Chang shares her stories and encourages Rendi to do the same, his protective layer of insolence is removed like layers of skin from an onion.  Starry Village of the Sky is many-layered as well - each character has a hidden story that is coaxed out by the storytelling of Madame Chang.

This is a captivating story that, while holding deep meaning, may be enjoyed in many layers. A magical fantasy, a Chinese folktale, a tale of a boy lost and found, a love story, a mystery, a journey of self-discovery -- all may be found in the tiny and remote Village of Clear Sky.

Starry River of the Sky is another star-filled book for Grace Lin, already garnering three starred reviews and a Junior Library Guild selection.

Your thoughts?

(Reprinted from an earlier post by Shelf-employed)

Splendors and Glooms-First Response #2

  Like the brilliant Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Splendors and Glooms (a line from Percy Shelley's pastoral elegy Adonais written on the occasion of John Keats' death) is more than a dark story set in a particular time and place, it is a theatrical performance that demonstrates just how like marionettes we are when we experience art and then how that art releases us to retrieve ourselves.

     For me, S&G is a book about reading children's books and how we (I) go about fitting each book (consciously or not) within a genre-defined reading space. The story itself is intriguing, multi-stranded, diabolical, and expertly written. but it is my experience of reading S&G that distinguishes it from others I have read.   One book that kept coming up for me alongside S&G was The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope (1975 Newbery Honor)  My initial experience of reading S&G: (remained throughout from start to finish)  I had to recalibrate my reading pace.  I had to slow down and eventually let the story take me where it would.  I had to reexamine what my expectations are of what a children's book's "should" feel like while it's being read, and in this case it did not mean wavering between deciding whether this is a J book or a YA book,  but whether all this densely packed detail had to be there to make a compelling story.  Why, I kept asking myself, did the story need the Cassandra/Grisini nexus?  Is Cassandra redeemed because she too had been dealt a cruel blow as a child and was able to admit her own cruelty?  Is Grisini the unredeemable villain? The whole story appears to operate between and within 3 spheres: the world of adults-love, loss, power and cruelty,  the world of children-survival, resilience and friendship, and the world of magic. The marionettes epitomize both the ability to create and escape control, and the creativity inherent in those enterprises. The collision of one or more of these worlds at any given time gives this story its dramatic suspense.  There are several dramas here: the adult struggle for power is one; loss of love another; (adult loss results in cruelty to children),  survival and resilience dependent on friendship between children is yet another.  Ultimately, the reunion between these spheres of action is forged as a result of the creation and destruction of a magical talisman.  Is it the existence of this amulet and the power that it confers which keeps relationships polarized?  But there is humor and cleverness and affection.   What to make of this?

     The ending--irony?  A happy funeral.  This story on one level is about selfish conniving  adults who use children as pawns in their ongoing drama.  On another level this story is about family and how even desperate souls (adult and children) can survive to reconvene and care for eachother.  And on another level this story is about death and mourning and the rituals society provides to alleviate loss.   At the end of the book Schlitz acknowledges her indebtedness to Barry Smith who "shared his encyclopedic knowledge of Victorian burial customs"  which is a sign once again that death and ritual and theater are intertwined in this story.   Is this a Newbery contender? Of course.  Will it win?  It's up to the committee members.  I for one would give the Oscar to Parsefall for oustanding performance in an historical tragi-comedy.

Splendors and Glooms: First Response

It always excites me to read an engaging, distinguished fantasy novel for children and in my opinion, Splendors and Glooms (Candlewick Press) fits the bill.  Victorian England is the perfect setting for this magical tale of witches, fantoccini, spells, and crumbling towers.  There is a darkness that pervades the story and yet Schlitz knows when to add a touch of lightness and humor.  With all of these positive qualities, the question remains – is Splendors and Glooms distinguished enough to win the Newbery?

One thing that struck me is the way in which Schlitz respects her young readers.  Although the story deals with dark issues and some adult themes, Schlitz does not water it down.  Take for example this quote from Cassandra when she is reminiscing about her childhood: "'My mother had chosen to abandon my father and me so that she could disgrace herself with a man.'" (pg. 268)  Numerous other passages deal with themes of magic, spells, and even unrequited love.  While Schlitz does not hold back from exploring these themes, she does so in an age-appropriate manner. 

In a similar respect, each character is realistically flawed and with the exception perhaps of Grisini, demonstrates moments of both kindness and cruelty.  Even Lizzie Rose, arguably the gentlest of all the characters, displays flashes of anger:  "Lizzie Rose lunged at him.  She grabbed his jacket and shook him.  Then she seized a handful of hair and yanked."  (pg. 117)  And Cassandra, the wicked witch of the story, is perhaps not purely evil: "She wanted to tell the children that at her eleventh hour, she had done one good thing; she had released Clara from her secret, and set her free to dance." (pg. 378)  Perhaps Schlitz even goes so far as to hint at Cassandra’s redemption. (pg. 379)   

In terms of setting, Schlitz’s descriptions are always crisp and clear.  I could see the streets of London with their fog and filth, hear the clip clop of the horse’s hooves pulling the carriages along the cobblestone streets, smell the clean, fresh air as Lizzie Rose skated across the lake.  Yet I never felt bogged down with unnecessary detail.  Although the story is close to 400 pages and might have been trimmed down a bit, I rarely felt a lag in pace due to superfluous descriptive elements. 

My only fault may be with the ending.

  (Spoiler alert!) 


 How did Clara know that the stone would be destroyed if she ran onto the ice?  Cassandra never considered this in all of her attempts to rid herself of the stone?  And was it plausible that Clara's parents would so quickly agree to taking in orphans?  At the end, everything fell into place quickly, perhaps too quickly for my liking, and yet at the same time, I felt that a happy ending was appropriate. 

So what are your thoughts?  Is it distinguished?  If so, is it in your top three?

The Grey King

When I was in 4th grade I won a school-wide poetry contest with a poem entitled "Grey".  I didn't know I was spelling it the "English" way. I was shy, and often found myself  gravitating towards places where I could hide, and in the poem I find myself exploring dusty places and corners where a shadow has just been.  I spent seven years in Oregon  many decades ago--a gray misty magical place wedged between the Oregon sea and Mount Neahakahnie.  I instinctively crafted an incantation to the god of the mountain every time I traversed its foggy, treacherous reaches.  These memories bring  me to the 1976 Newbery Medal winner by Susan Cooper.
        The Grey King is a distinguished novel.   I do not think I would have even finished it had I read it as a young reader.  I often bemoan the fact that I am unfamiliar and uncomfortable with contemporary fantasy since I did not read any when I was in school, and then I realized that there wasn't much out there in the sixties.  I didn't like A Wrinkle in Time (still found it rough going as an adult), and I found The Hobbit dense and impenetrable.  I had read some of the Narnia books which I liked, but never pursued with any serious purpose. I don't remember ever encountering the Lloyd Alexander books (Prydain Chronicles) which were published in the sixties and won two Newbery awards (The High King won the Medal in 1969 and The Black Cauldron an honor in 1966).  By the time the seventies rolled around I was off to college and children's books were no longer on my radar. But many years passed.  I became a children's librarian, and I began reading everything old and new.  Three months ago I read The Dark is Rising (Newbery Honor 1974) - the second  in Cooper's the Dark is Rising Sequence, and came under its spell.  The night I finished it I dreamed a powerful and unsettling dream about a murder of crows that chased me from a village to a city square where a dark shrouded figure stood on a raised platform. This evil presence was creating chaos.  There were no lights, and no electricity, and no technology, and people were running riot.  I felt alone and terrified, but assured of my place in the design of this terror. That is powerful story making.
       Poetry, Welsh mythology, Arthurian legend, English history, and a brilliant evocation of landscape combine to make The Grey King -the fourth installment in the Dark is Rising sequence- a glorious reading experience. WhenWill Stanton is sent to Wales to stay with relatives while he recovers from hepatitis, he struggles to retrieve memories he knows are critical for resuming his role in the fight against the rising dark.   The clues are enshrined in a poem and certain words and images trigger his memory.  Remembering the verse is key to remembering who he is (last of the Old ones) and his final mission to combat the dark (finding the golden harp which will awaken the Sleepers who will aid in the war aginst the Dark whose agent is the Grey King).  Children need poetry, and Cooper shows her readers how much magic a poem can summon and contain.  Verse is part of the magic and its tool as well.  Cooper renders landscape/setting so fully realized that as a reader one feels the power and magic emanating  from those places.  The landscape is not just a "character" in the novel or the "setting" of the novel, but the very magic of story itself. The Grey King (evil one) lives in the mountain Cader Idris, a mountain that dominates the Dysinni Valley. When Will is picked up by his cousin at the train station he makes note of the ragged cloud that covers the hill. Rhys tells him 'The Cloud? Oh, when it hangs like that we call it the breath of the Brenin Llyd. The Grey King.'  In fact the Grey King is the hill that contains the golden harp and the site of the final battle between the forces of light and dark. Cooper says that when she began writing The Dark is Rising she was living in America and missed her country so much she decided to set the action in England.  When we read we are reading sometimes to find our way or to find ourselves there in the story.  The more beautiful and strong the elements are in a story the stronger and more assured we feel about stepping outside of the story.

An Unlikely Winner

The first few pages of The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman can be disturbing to say the least.  A strange man with a knife moves methodically through a house one night, attempting to kill an entire family.  He has killed the mother, the father, and the sister, but where is the toddler?  I know at least one librarian who put the book down at this point, debating whether or not to continue.  Luckily, the 2009 Newbery committee kept on reading.

The Graveyard Book is a surprising Newbery winner for several reasons.  For one, it is a fantasy.  A quick glance at past winners will tell you that fantasy novels are not in abundance.  Secondly, The Graveyard Book was already popular before winning the Newbery.  Gaiman remarked on this saying, “I had thought that’s nice, there are books that are best sellers and books that are winners.  Very often, the world of award judges, and I think rightly, use their magical judging powers to try to bring books to the attention of the world that might not have otherwise been noticed.” 

So why did this unlikely nominee win the award for most distinguished contribution to American literature for children?  We can’t know for sure but the committee did comment on its “delicious mix of murder, fantasy, humor and human longing.” Perhaps it was this combination of elements combined with Gaiman’s “magical, haunting prose” that pushed it over the top.

Have you ever read a book that you absolutely loved and that met all the criteria but you felt, for one reason or another, would never win the Newbery?  Were you right or wrong?