Kid Reading Report: Age 9

My kid has been reading to herself a lot in the past couple of months; first she powered through the Percy Jackson series, gobbling the five books down as fast as we could reserve them from the library.  Now she’s renewing her acquaintance with the Ramona books, and dipping back into her old chapter-book favorites, the Rainbow Magic series (I admit I’m relieved she can read these on her own this time around). Her school is running a reading-incentive program where she gets stickers and chances at prizes for reading every day, so she’s been assiduous about making sure we sign her record sheet. She still likes picture books sometimes, too, especially if they’re funny; she borrowed Cordelia Funke’s Pirate Girl from her school library last week.

Then there are the night-time read-alouds, chosen by her kids’-book-besotted parents. Now that she’s nine, we’re breaking out the big guns. A few weeks ago, we read her A Wrinkle in Time. I don’t think she would have liked it so much last year—too weird, too complicated, too scary, especially the part where Charles Wallace is subsumed by IT—but we called the timing right and she was totally entranced, though Madeleine L’Engle’s habit of ending every chapter on a cliff-hanger made it very hard to find a point to stop reading each night.

Then, yesterday, we happened to be looking at a cute, accessible picture book one of her grandparents gave her about Leonardo Da Vinci, and I oh-so-casually mentioned that there was a really good kids’ book that was partly about another famous Italian artist, Michelangelo, and that it was also about two kids who run away and hide out in a huge museum in New York City and discover a mystery about a statue that they think Michelangelo might have carved. She begged to hear the first part of the book, and soon we were deep into From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.  I’d tried to interest her in this book as a read-aloud last spring, before our visit to New York, and she’d scorned it. But this year it was just the right time.

I wondered whether the Metropolitan Museum has any kind of guide on their website to the art that Jamie and Claudia encounter during their fictional sojourn in the museum, and, lo and behold, they do. Sort of. They also devoted an issue of their kids' newsletter to the book (opens as a PDF file). Sounds like the 16^th-century canopy bed that the kids sleep in isn’t there anymore, and neither are the pools where they bathe and gather coins. Today we read the part where Claudia and Jamie have breakfast at the Automat, and I had to explain about the Automat, which I remember visiting as a teenager, and how it was like a whole restaurant full of vending machines. And also how it’s not there anymore either.  

Oh, well; things change. But, fortunately, they don’t change so much that The Mixed-Up Files is less comprehensible or less enjoyable for my daughter than it was when I picked it up some 35 years ago.  Getting to share it with my kid is a treat that was worth waiting for.

Remembering Esther Hautzig on Remembrance Day

In the United States it's called Veterans' Day; in Canada, it's Remembrance Day; England calls it Armistice Day, recalling the end of World War I. No matter the name, tomorrow is a day when many people think about war and its costs: for those who fight, those caught in the crossfire, and those waiting at home.

Children who live in a war zone, and those whose parents are fighting, have no choice: they know about war, whether anyone wants them to or not. More sheltered kids, who live without first-hand knowledge of war, often encounter the concept through books.

It was like that for me. Even though the United States was at war in Vietnam when I was born and throughout my early childhood, and even though World War II had dominated my parents' childhoods (so much so that my dad remembers thinking that the newspapers would have to close down when the war ended, because there wouldn't be any news), war was much more of a literary concept for me than as a real-life historical one.

And one of the first books I remember reading about war was The Endless Steppe, by Esther Hautzig.

The Endless Steppe, which is based on Hautzig’s own life, starts on a beautiful, sunny morning. The narrator wakes up as usual in her apartment, which is part of a compound where she’s surrounded by loving relatives and material privilege. But her life is about to change forever: the Communists have taken over the city of Vilna, where she lives, and she, her parents, and her grandmother are about to be arrested as capitalists and sent to Siberia.

The rest of the book is the story of the next five years, as Esther and her family adapt to privations, hunger, unbelievably harsh weather, crazy orders from the military which controls their lives, and, maybe worst of all, isolation from the rest of their loved ones and uncertainty about their future.

I read The Endless Steppe before I knew much about World War II, or even about my own family’s history (my grandmother was also from Vilna, but I didn’t make the connection at the time), and , later, lumped the book in my memory with the many Holocaust books that I was to read in the next several years. When I re-read it a few years ago, I realized that it is a Holocaust book mainly by omission, and that in fact the family’s years in exile in Siberia most probably saved their lives: when they return to Vilna at the end of the war, they discover that most of their extended family has been killed by the Nazis.

So many of the small details in this book have stayed with me:  how Esther has to go to the bathroom so badly while they’re lined up waiting for the train to exile; the sweater she’s wearing, which is to become something like a second skin for her during her years in exile;  the vegetables that her flower-loving grandmother plants in her Siberian garden, because food is more important than flowers; the special boots that Esther saves up to buy near the end of the book and insists on wearing for the family’s return to Vilna, only to discover that they are hoplelessly unfashionable outside of Siberia—in five years, she’s become a stranger, an outsider, in her old home.

Esther Hautzig died last week, after a long life of work with children and books: writing, editing, and volunteering for the New York Public Library. So on this Remembrance Day, I’ll be remembering not only the soldiers who fought, and who still fight, but the kids like Esther, whose worlds are turned upside down by war. The Endless Steppe opened my mind to that understanding—that for many kids war is not just a faraway word--and I’ll always be grateful to Esther Hautzig for writing it.

Trick or Treat for Kidlit Links

As October turns to November, things start to get more end-of-year-ish, don't they? I mean, tonight we Fall Back, which means that tomorrow (at least up here in the northern climes) it will start to get seriously dark in the late afternoons. The trees are transitioning from their glorious technicolor to...well...bare. And you just know that as soon as all the Halloween displays are stripped from the stores, the Christmas/Holiday/New Year's stuff will be going right up.

In the book world, the end of the year means lots of best-of lists. For the second year in a row, Susan Thomsen at Chicken Spaghetti is compiling all the "Best Children's/Teen Books of the year" lists in one handy spot. So far there are only two lists on her list-of-lists, but I'm sure there will be lots more soon.

Speaking of best-of lists, the other day I happened upon a really terrific list of the 100 Best Book Blogs for Kids, Tweens and Teens at Online School. Some of my very favorite kidlit blogs are included, as well as several that are new to me and some that I've perused once or twice and always meant to get back to. Just a short time surfing around this list yielded a whole trick-or-treat bag's worth of cool stuff. Here's just a taste of what I found

• In Shen's Books, a blog about multicultural books, I found two posts about books with biracial characters: one on picture books and one covering books for older kids. I've been thinking about this topic a lot lately, and am happy to see such great lists!

• I loved this behind-the-scenes post by Alvina Ling on the Blue Rose Girls blog about what really happens at a publishing house when good news--in this case, the news that Grace Lin's Where The Mountain Meets the Moon was chosen for Al Roker's Book Club--comes down the pike.

• And last but not least, via Bottom Shelf Books, a blog with a delightfully grown-up perspective on picture books, I discovered that the hero of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day has his very own twitter stream.

Off to wait for trick-or-treaters now (and maybe read something good while I'm at it)-- wishing everyone a happy (and not too scary) Halloween!

Shivery Reads for Halloween

I admit it: I'm not a big fan of the horror genre, in books or in movies. Oh, I have an intellectual appreciation for the deliciousness of the carefully placed detail, the careful dilineation of gore...I just, personally, scare way too easily to enjoy it.

But at this time of year, when fake spiderwebs hang from doorways, and I work in the shadow of a row of witches' hats strung above the children's info desk at the library, it's hard to avoid thoughts of the macabre. And, once I think about it, okay, there are a few spooky kids' novels that I've liked. They're not Halloween titles, exactly. But they all sent chills down my spine:

The Owl Service, by Alan Garner. Three teenagers accidentally tick off the dark forces of Welsh mythology, who then possess them and force them to re-enact a centuries-old tragedy. While I was reading this book--as an adult, mind you--I developed a morbid fear of the hallway between my bedroom and the bathroom, and if I was up too late would have to switch on all the lights if I ventured out that way.

The Sea of Trolls, by Nancy Farmer. While it's not classified as horror, this book has a number of horrific elements, not least the half-troll Queen Frith. When Jack, the young hero, accidentally casts a spell that makes Frith's hair fall out, he has to travel to the farthest reaches of the land of trolls to undo the damage, or Frith will hold his little sister captive forever.

Skellig, by David Almond. I have never read a satisfactory description of this book, and so I'm certainly not going to try. Suffice it to say that the title character's undefined quality is a large part of his/its creepiness, and that the friendship and even love that the kid characters develop for Skellig is things that makes this book stay with me.

Well-Witched, by Frances Hardinge. I read this book when it first came out, and wrote in some detail about it here. Two years later, I think I'm mostly recovered. Except from the part where the boy grows eyes on his knuckles. I don't think I'll ever entirely get over that.

The White Darkness, by Geraldine McCaughrean. Not all horrors are supernatural. This thriller sends its heroine (and its readers) to the furthest frozen reaches of the Antarctic-- and the truth about her "uncle"'s plans for her, which are creepier and crazier than you can imagine. Really.

The Changeover, by Margaret Mahy. You know how little kids love to get hand-stamps at the library? For a long time after reading this book, I couldn't give a kid a hand-stamp without getting the shivers.

All these books would be good for kids of about ages 11-14. Maybe younger, if they're not as wimpy as I am.

Some more Halloween-y links:

• My Librarian Mom post on "scary but not too scary" books
• North Vancouver District Public Library halloween booklist: Strange, suspenseful, and spooky
• Scholastic guide to horror genre
• Scholastic list of spooky early chapter books
• Scholastic list of scary stories for older readers
• Scholastic list of picture books for Halloween

More than the Water Pump Moment: Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan

Here’s a famous moment: It was 1887. Seven-year-old Helen Keller had been blind and deaf since toddlerhood. She was completely wild and undisciplined (she had a terrible temper and her parents couldn’t bear to frustrate her further). Her teacher, Anne Sullivan, was trying to get her to understand that there were words for everything. She put Helen’s hands under the water pump outside her house, fingerspelled the letters “W-A-T-E-R” to her, and suddenly Helen got it. Her face lit up, she spelled the letters back to Anne Sullivan, and she vocalized her long-lost baby word for “water.”

That moment was a breakthrough for student and teacher; a true epiphany. It was the climax of the play and movie “The Miracle Worker” based on Helen’s early life. And now it’s been memorialized in a statue of Helen Keller that has just been added to the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol.

For many disabled people, and for non-disabled people (like me) who have been fascinated by Keller and Sullivan since childhood, news of this statue is both a thrill and something of a source of frustration: because that famous moment was the end of the movie, but it was just the start for Helen Keller. She learned to fingerspell and read and write Braille and even to speak. She graduated with honors from Radcliffe at a time when hardly any women went to college, and went on to become a scholar, author, world traveler, public speaker, and political activist, advocating for women’s suffrage and for peace. She was friends with Mark Twain and Eleanor Roosevelt. She was a person to reckon with.

It’s true that, as a narrative for kids, it’s hard to beat the water-pump story. I have a theory that the story of Keller’s struggle to communicate has a special resonance for children who are having a hard time learning to read, and also for those who love reading, because it’s all about the power of language and also about the amazing things that a passionate and determined kid can accomplish. Plus, Anne Sullivan, Helen’s teacher and lifelong companion, is an equally compelling character: not only was she just as passionate and determined as her student, but she was barely out of her own teens when she started working with Helen, was partially blind herself, and was still shadowed by a childhood of miserable poverty that’s like something out of Dickens.

One book that tells Sullivan’s story is Helen Keller’s Teacher, by Margaret Davidson. I read this one as a kid and still remember the wrenching chapters about her childhood in an almshouse. Miss Spitfire: Reaching Helen Keller, by Sarah Miller, published just a few years ago, is a masterful retelling of Sullivan’s story. Although the book is published as fiction, as the author imagines herself into Sullivan’s thoughts and writes in her first-person voice, it’s prodigiously well-researched and is based on Sullivan’s writings and on actual events.

There is no shortage of kids’ biographies of Helen Keller herself. The World at Her Fingertips, by Joan Dash, also amply covers Keller’s adult life and her formidable personality, in a narrative format. Helen Keller: Rebellious Spirit, by Laurie Lawlor, is a great introduction for older kids (about 10 and up) and adults. There are lots of photos, and the author doesn’t shy away from relating the more controversial aspects of Helen’s life, such as her support for socialism.

Of course, books like the ones I’ve listed have an advantage over stand-alone statuary: they can use words to depict a series of events, to at least try to capture the totality of someone’s life. A statue has to pick one representative moment, and I’m not sure that the moment depicted in the U.S. Capitol statue is the one I would’ve chosen, despite its fame and its narrative power. I wish there was a way for that statue to honor the accomplished adult person that Helen Keller became, who harnessed that stubbornness and intelligence that had made her such a difficult kid, and used them not only to fingerspell “Water” but to become a force for change in the world.

It's Cybils Time Again!

It’s time for the Cybils once again! This is one of my very favorite kid book awards, bestowed by children’s and teen book bloggers. Last year I was on the Easy Reader judging panel, but this year I’m taking it easy and just watching and reading as the nominations roll in.

One of the things I like best about the Cybils is its democratic nature: you or I or anyone who loves kids’ books can participate in this process by nominating one or more favorite books published in the past year. I wrote some tips for nominating Cybils titles last October, and there’s a shorter introduction on the Cybils website here. This year the dauntless Cybils organizing committee has streamlined the process: there’s a handy nomination form on the website, and if you click on a book category you can see a list of all the nominated titles just by scrolling down a sweet little window in the screen. This makes it easy to see if the book you want to nominate is already listed.

Nominations have been open since October 1, and will close in just five days, on October 15. If (like me!) you haven’t had a chance to nominate anything yet, this late start can be tricky—you might find (like me!) that some of your favorite books have already been added to the list.

For example, someone has already nominated one of my very favorite kids’ books of the last several months, When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead. It’s in the Middle-Grade Science Fiction and Fantasy category, which makes sense, because the plot does hinge on a pretty big science-fiction-y element. (Though what I love about the book is how much it feels like realistic slightly-historical fiction, set in the exact era during which I grew up (the late 1970’s), in a neighborhood (the Upper West Side of Manhattan) where I spent a lot of time around then. It’s just that some things about it are slightly…off-kilter. And then even further off. But all in a completely grounded and believable way.) 

Anyway, I didn’t really think I’d get to nominate it, because I read so many raves about it from other bloggers before I’d even picked it up. But since it’s already on the list, I can nominate another book I loved without fear that When You Reach Me won’t get its chance. The Cybils are friendly that way.

But I only have five more days! And so do you!

My Favorite Banned Books

We’re right in the middle of Banned Books Week, which this week runs from September 26 through October 3. In honor of the occasion, the American Library Association has a spiffy new Banned Books Week website that even includes a map of recent book challenges. Not only that, but this year the National Coalition Against Censorship and the American Booksellers’ Foundation for Free Expression have teamed up to bring us the Kids’ Right to Read Project which tracks book censorship incidents and supports those fighting challenges and making sure that kids and families have a rich and varied array of reading materials available to them.

As a librarian and a reader, I love Banned Books Week (even though I think that “Banned and Challenged Books Week” would be a more accurate name for it). Last year, I wrote about one reason I think it’s misguided to censor books for young people. This time around, I’m featuring five of my favorite recently-banned-or-challenged books, from youngest to oldest age group:

• ·         And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell; illustrated by Henry Cole

Unlike many books about same-sex parents, which tend towards the didactic, this true story of two male penguins and their adopted chick is totally charming.

• ·         The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman (Volume I in His Dark Materials series)

For years I wondered why so many book challenges were directed towards the Harry Potter series while Pullman’s His Dark Materials books, published at about the same time, are so much more subversive of organized religion. They’re also riveting, stunningly imaginative, and gorgeously written.

• ·         The Alice series, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Various titles in this series have been challenged over the years, and usually for the same reason: too much information about sex. But that’s part of the point of the books, which follow Alice as she navigates her way through adolescence. Alice’s mother died when she was a baby, so she’s constantly looking for information about growing up. Relatives like her father, her college-aged brother, her stuffy aunt, and freewheeling cousin, and friends, like devout Elizabeth and daring Pamela, often give her contradictory advice, which she does her best to sift through. Along the way, her readers get a wide range of information and perspectives with their story.

• ·         Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging, by Louise Rennison

Georgia Nicholson is a silly, feckless, unabashedly (well, sometimes abashedly) boy-chasing British teen. Sometimes I get impatient with her character, who makes some missteps along the way and isn’t always a great friend, but this book isn’t a primer on How To Act; it’s just a kick to read. The language alone is so funny and breathlessly zippy (and the over-the-top Britishisms are so goofy) that I find myself smiling over and over while reading it.

• ·         Fat Kid Rules the World, by K.L. Going

I can see why this Printz-award-winning young-adult novel might disturb some parents: its hero, a self-described fat kid drifting through high school, finds redemption and meaning through his friendship with a teenage drug addict who encourages him to play drums in a punk band. But that pulling of no punches, combined with a real sweetness that comes through in all the main characters (our hero, his friend, and even his straitlaced dad) is what gives this novel its power and poignancy.

For more about Banned Books Week from a librarian’s perspective, and a handy list of the most frequently challenged book titles, take a look at Scholastic’s web page on The Freedom to Read!

The Gift of Reading

My daughter had her ninth birthday at the end of August, and we celebrated with not one but two parties: a biggish one at home with her Vancouver friends, and a smaller one on the beach with three of her oldest friends from Seattle and their families.

My daughter is the youngest in the group, so now these four “girl’s gang” members are all nine years old. They’ve always shared interests—at least some interests—and I was quietly thrilled to see that those interests now include books, specifically Rick Riordan’s popular series of books about Percy Jackson, and that one of my daughter’s friends gave her a copy of The Lightning Thief, the first volume in the series, as a birthday present.

My kid was immediately obsessed with the book and started reading it on the drive home. She got distracted by birthday and back-to-school stuff and forgot about it for a couple of weeks, but then picked it up again and read it continuously—in the car; at Rosh Hashanah services; in bed; at meals (when we let her)—emerging only to ask the occasional question about the pronunciation or meaning of some Greek-mythology-related word before dipping her head back into the book. Last night, she triumphantly turned the last page, and immediately dove into the next book in the series, The Sea of Monsters, which my spouse had considerately brought home from the library already.

I've often been astonished at the textbook developmental pattern my kid appears to be following for reading: she listened eagerly to picture books in preschool and kindergarten; learned to read on her own in first grade; struggled through early readers in second; spent last year gaining confidence and fluency by tearing through reams of short, easy chapter-book series and listening to books on CD; and now, just as she turns the corner on fourth grade, she’s tackling meatier stuff in print.  It’s exciting to watch, and it makes me (and her) happy that it’s also a way for her to stay in touch and in tune with the friends she’s had since babyhood.

Celebrity Surprises, Archie’s Choice, and The Best Birthday Present Ever

We’re on one last vacation before school starts up again, so I’ve gathered a few links and notes about kids, books, and kid-book-like stuff. If all goes well, it will post while I'm gone and you'll never even know I'm not here! (well, except that I just said so.)

• First Book, an organization that provides books to kids in need, is running a “What book got you hooked?” campaign. I am totally fascinated with the “Celebrity Favorites” section; I never would have thought that Neil Patrick Harris’s favorite book as a kid was Bridge to Terabithia. Or that Ed Asner has been a lifelong fan of that peace-loving bull from The Story of Ferdinand. And if I had to guess Scarlett Johanson’s favorite book as a kid, I don’t think The Fantastic Mr. Fox even would’ve occurred to me. Who knew?!
  

• Speaking of childhood favorites, I wouldn’t be surprised if some thousands of kids first got hooked on reading through Archie Comics. Oh, those fun-loving teenagers and their antics, in a world where even in my childhood (the tumultuous 1970’s) it still appeared to be approximately 1953! Ah, the eternal triangle, in which Archie is forever torn between wholesome Betty and rich, bossy Veronica! Well, that bitter rivalry is about to be resolved at last: The Guardian reports that Archie has proposed marriage to…what, do you think I’m going to tell you who? Go read the article!

And lastly: my sister-in-law and 5-year-old niece came to visit last week, and brought with them a belated birthday present for me: my very own knitted, stuffed Elephant and Piggie! Look, aren’t they cute?:

(My daughter thought of making Gerald the elephant’s glasses out of twist-ties, and I think they are indeed the perfect touch.)

 

Apparently they inspired my nearly-9-year-old and her cousin, who is about to start kindergarten, to collaborate on some fan fiction. (They’re not the only ones; Mo Willem’s blog is full of tribute art and stories from kids.) I came home from work the next day to find this promising beginning written in an open notebook:

 

Today is the first day of school

 

Piggie: “Gerald, how is school?”

Gerald: “School is great!”

Gerald [sic]: “I know all about school, you get 3 resses and they give a snak!”

I’m still curious to see where it goes from there. According to my daughter, Piggie is worried about school, and Gerald assures her that it will be fun.

 

And may it be so for everyone starting school around now, with lots of recess and snack thrown in.

When Kids in Books Read Other Books

One of the things about the characters in children’s books is that, sometimes, you’ll find them reading children’s books. I always get a kick out of it when that happens.

The other day I was (finally!) reading The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, and at one point, the Penderwick sisters’ aunt gives Jane a stack of books by her favorite author: Eva Ibbotson, and she exclaims with delight and glee and plunges right into reading Island of the Aunts. And I, too, was delighted and gleeful, and felt for Jane Penderwick the kind of fellowship that sometimes happens when you find someone who loves the same things you do, a feeling which was in no way lessened by the inconvenient fact that Jane Penderwick is fictional.

I suppose I really should have been feeling fellow-feeling towards the Penderwicks’ creator, Jeanne Birdsall, who chose such a perfect favorite author for the kind-hearted, thoughtful, imaginative Jane. It always warms my heart when children’s book authors sneak references to other kids’ books into their fiction; it’s a neat way to establish character, and is the best kind of advertising for the books, to boot. Also, it’s mildly surreal, like when people on a TV show watch television: it reminds you that the people you’re reading about are not actually real people but are, themselves, characters in a children’s book, reading about other characters in other children’s books, who might themselves be reading further children’s books, and so on ad infinitum…

Anyway, here are five of my favorite intertextuality/kidlit-product-placement moments in kids’ books:

• When Angel in The Same Stuff as Stars, by Katherine Paterson, takes her  little brother to the library, and the librarian immediately, and accurately, pegs him as the kind of kid who would like The Stupids, and he immediately plonks down on the floor, entranced. He’s a very angry kid, with a lot to be angry about, and these irreverent books give him something to laugh about instead.

• When the two kids in Linda Sue Park’s Project Mulberry meet a helpful guy who reminds them of Mr. Titus in And Then There Were Five, the wonderful third book in the Melendy series.

• When Rose in Forever Rose by Hilary McKay doesn’t like reading, and her friend Sarah keeps trying to get her to read by giving her books she might like, and one of them is Where the Wild Things Are, and Rose, who is a brilliant artist although she has trouble with reading, is inspired to draw huge trees on all the walls of her room.

• Not a moment exactly, but the kids in Half-Magic and Edward Eager’s other books are forever referring to the E. Nesbit books, which is as it should be, considering how much his fantasy owes to Nesbit.

• I think it’s in Toy Dance Party that the toys recall to each other the various books that the Little Girl has read to them, or has had read to her as bedtime stories; they don’t name them by title, but at least one is about a mouse and it seemed to me that it was a reference to The Tale of Despereaux.

Actually I like that kind of hint even more than when actual titles or authors are mentioned—it’s like being a member of a secret club. Though if a book is mentioned by name, and I haven’t read it, and like the book that mentions it, I always want to go out and read that title right away; it’s like having a good friend recommend a book. Because, I guess, I think of the characters in books I’m reading (well, some of them) as my friends. At least while I’m reading about them. And getting a book suggestion from a friend who knows what you like is one of the best bets going. Authors know this, and that’s one reason they throw in those references—to get kids reading other good books.

But also, I think, authors—being book-lovers—just can’t resist recommending books they love, so much so that those suggestions sneak into their fiction, too. Because the feeling of turning someone on to a good book that you loved is almost as good as—maybe some ways even better than—the feeling of reading that book yourself.