A Reader Is Born

Cover, published by Margaret K. McElderry Books

When a book-related list makes the rounds on Facebook, I play along. Maybe it’s 100 books, and everyone chimes in about how many you’ve read, books we can’t believe didn’t “make” this list. Maybe a friend challenges you to list 10 favorite books. I cheat and slip in The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia Wrede as one book (one book, four books, who’s counting?), and The Lord of the Rings trilogy as another book. And when a friend says, “hit me with a book to read, and why.” I offer up one I re-read every few years, like Prince Ombra by Roderick MacLeish.

That list of 100, shared by a writer friend, got me thinking—Did the creator of the list have a purpose, long lost through cutting and pasting and sharing, or were they proud of a reading accomplishment and put it out into the world? This time, it got me thinking about when and how readers are born.

If a list is “classics,” why is the picture book conspicuously absent when picture books are where readers begin? I want to kick a book off the list of 100, but how can I judge a book I haven’t read? Still, I’ll have to add some picture books, sooo…. Maybe it’s a list of 103?

cows typing, duck and rooster watching

Book cover, published by Simon Spotlight

I pencil in Click, Clack, Moo, Cows that Type and Tuesday and No! David. If you didn’t read those picture books, how would you advance to Shakespeare, CS Lewis, or Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner?

Here’s an excerpt from the book to the left: “Farmer Brown has a problem. His cows like to type. All day long he hears:
Click, clack, moo.
Click, clack, moo.” Hmm, what messages will those clever cows send?

And in Tuesday, what will you miss as you sleep? Oh, nothing much, unless you count the antics of frogs who fly around on their lily pads!

I look at the list again, and another absence glares. Why doesn’t this list of 100 have more middle grade books, where we’re cementing our love of reading? I want Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising Sequence, with the Drew children, drawn into evil dating back to King Arthur’s court as they vacation in Cornwall. I’d read those as precious library books. When the broke college years gave way to paid-off-student-loans daylight, I learned the horror of “out of print,” the fate of books as reading tastes changed … until they changed again, and I scored the books one at a time as a publisher re-released them. Joy!

Cover, published by Vintage

But back to those lists … why do only a handful of young adult books make the grade? Isn’t that one of the most formative periods in our lives, our emotions going wonky, our bodies changing, and books giving us a refuge? Why isn’t Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye or Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings on the list? In Morrison’s book, dark-skinned Pecola Breedlove wants nothing more than to fit in with the blond-haired, blue-eyed kids, but her dark skin and curly hair push her apart. This story makes you look at race from the ugly inside, out, a view I’d never have had on my own, growing up in a predominantly white city.

The more I think about these books missing, the more I understand. Perhaps these lists are a clever way to send us down memory lane, chasing after those books that shaped us alongside the readers who nudged those books into our hands.

Remember
I close my eyes, and I’m home again, maybe five.

Animals flee, because the elephant's about to sneeze

Book cover, published by Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books

Mom may be tired of all my requests, but she’s once more reading a favorite, “Stand Back,” Said the Elephant, “I’m Going to Sneeze!” by Patricia Thomas (Author) & Wallace Tripp (illustrator). Her voice rises and falls with the fear of the animals fleeing an impending sneeze that might blow the stripes off a zebra. I’m safe, sitting on her lap or snuggled under the brown and orange “Cleveland Browns” afghan she crocheted, or maybe that was one from Aunt Tootsie’s.

Friends and family shaped my reading tastes when I wasn’t paying a lick of attention. Because one of my best friends growing up, Monica, read Trixie Belden, a mystery series, I devoured it. That got me hooked on Alfred Hitchcock’s Three Investigators, along with Nancy Drew. Mystery, and paranormal mystery, ran rampant across my bookshelves. Then my sister Patti and I loved horses. I think of her any time I look at Misty of Chincoteague, or that collection of Nancy Drew books she gifted me when she moved. Sitting beside them, a few volumes from my mom’s childhood.

A tranquil scene, a house and pine trees, and the water

Book cover, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Cousin Donna guided me straight into the wonder of fantasy. She introduced me to Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain, and when I was a few years older, she made sure I heard of Natalie Babbitt’s Tuck Everlasting, The Hobbit, and Watership Down. Each formed new friendships as I settled beneath our mountain ash tree and lost track of time. How I cried for the Tuck family–living forever brings more curse than joy to that family.

In books I’ve found myself, lost myself, and found my way back; I’ve loved and cried and raged against unfairness. I’ve rooted for rabbits, believed in a hobbit’s courage, trusted Anne McCaffrey’s dragons could save Pern from disaster.

My reading roots run as deep as my mother’s love; as true as my sister, forever looking out for me; as wondrous as the cousin who’s gone on to teach hundreds of kids over the years—but I was one of the first to sit, enchanted, at her feet as she read.

It turns out it’s not about the list of 10 books, 50, 100. It’s about the reader, and where we were born, and who joined us on the journey.

Tell me—what’s your story as a reader? I’d love to hear about it.

 

Keep Reading:

Picture Books

Middle Grade Books

Young Adult and Up Books

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Book Review: How to Ride a Dragon’s Storm

The Details

How to Ride a Dragon’s Storm, Cressida Cowell (Little, Brown and Company, June, 2011 American printing)

Polar Ice Dragon on an ice flow while Hiccup swims beside it

Cover design by Kristina Iulo; Cover © 2010 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

Book 7 in How to Train Your Dragon, the Heroic Adventures of Hiccup the Viking, 255 pp. At the time of this review, 3/7/2017, it holds a 4.7-star review on Amazon.

Genre: Middle Grade (grades 3-7), Fiction

Book Obtained by: Christmas Present

My Chocolate Rating: 4 Ghiradelli Salty Caramels (just shy of perfection)

 

From the jacket:

“Hiccup has three months, five days, and six hours to win the annual Intertribal Friendly Swimming Race—which he must do by coming in last. Along the way, he’ll have to discover America, battle Polar-Serpents, defeat his nemesis Norbert the Nutjob, and get back to the Isle of Berk. It’s a tall order for a short Viking. Can he do it?”

 

Review

How to Ride a Dragon’s Storm continues Cressida Cowell’s tales told by Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third’s tales of growing up the son to famous Viking chieftain Stoick the Vast, leader of the Hairy Hooligans who live on the dragon-infested isle of Berk. He’s a scrawny lad, but not so bad off as his best friend, Fishlegs. He’s every bit as valiant as Camicazi, the daughter of Big-Boobied Bertha, chieftain of the Bog-Burglar Tribe.

If you’ve seen the How to Train Your Dragon movies, you have to understand that they are loosely built from the early How to Train Your Dragon books. And by loosely, I mean more loosey-goosey like, Hiccup is true to the book, but Toothless?  In the books, Toothless is a tiny, not-so-valiant, not-so-dangerous dragon who’s about the size of an overweight housecat. Toothless does help Hiccup now and again, at those critical moments, but not without priceless cat-like attitudes, like telling Hiccup, “Say, I am a big, wingless idiot and T-T-Toothless the handsomest, cleverest k-k-kindest dragon in the WHOLE WORLD,” before the dragon will help his master defy death.

It’s fine if you have not read the previous books. You will still follow along with Hiccup’s adventure, but it’s fun to know the previous run-ins Hiccup has had with the Norbert the Nutjob. The usual Viking friends (and here, I use friends even more loosely than the loosey-goosey of the books’ relationships to the movies) populates the beginning and the ending of the book—Dogsbreath, Snotlout, always picking on him; his father’s friend Gobber, and even grandfather, Old Wrinkly—who can sometimes tell the future, and sometimes not. But mostly, this story belongs to Hiccup & Toothless, Fishlegs & Horrowcow, and Camicazi & Stormfly, and Norbert & his Viking crew.

Set sail on a good, old-fashioned Viking adventure blended with references parents may recognize, like a ship named the American Dream 2. It’s a fast read, because the print’s larger for newer readers, and the line drawings scratched out every few pages offer a laugh—this is, after all, Hiccup’s memoir, so one can hardly fault him for doodling as he recollects the harrowing life-and-death challenges he’s survived, or the sincerely crazy Vikings he lives among. A scholar (speaking dragon, and writing about them—two most un-Viking traits if ever he saw), Hiccup figures out how to survive the dragons that interrupt his swim.

Reluctant readers might be drawn into the How to Train Your Dragon series the same way Captain Underpants Tails lure them—body jokes, adventure, best-friends surviving un-survivable odds, a dragon who might or might not come to your aid (but at the end of the day, Hiccup is the one who feeds him, so you’re pretty sure Toothless will help), and bullies who never get to have the last laugh, Hiccup is the most unlikely hero to cheer on. C’mon, there’s even an Axe of Doom, Norbert the Nutjob’s weapon of choice, and a fight-to-the-death (maybe) challenge on the mast.

 

More about the Author

Learn more about the next volume of Hiccup’s story, How to Break a Dragon’s Heart, a free chapter at the end of this book.  Learn more about Cressida Cowell at her webpage. Find other reviews of How to Ride a Dragon’s Storm at Amazon or your favorite book-review site. Find more of Cowell’s books at her Amazon page, and the inside scoop on Hiccup at her How to Train Your Dragon page—downloads, videos, and other “fun stuff.” Where did her inspiration for these books come from? A father’s stories, and her own life on an island.

 

Keep Reading

Have you read How to Ride a Dragon’s Storm? Did you wonder how Hiccup would help the captured boy Bearcub, and his tribe the Northern Wanderers? Have you ever done something for your best friend, though you knew you couldn’t do it—the way Fishlegs is willing to enter a swimming competition to keep his best friend, Hiccup, company?

What’s your favorite book in the middle grade range?

My book reviews also live on Amazon and Goodreads. If you found the review helpful, I’d appreciate a “like” or “it was helpful” tick-mark in whatever medium you visit.

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Book Review: Ash & Bramble

Picture of Pin, fleeing Story

Cover art, Harper Teen book

The Details

Ash & Bramble, Sarah Prineas (Harper Teen, Sept. 13, 2016)

449 pp. At the time of this review, 3/3/2017, it holds a 3.5-star review on Amazon.

Genre: Romance, Fantasy, YA

Book Obtained by: Purchased from Amazon.com

My Chocolate Rating: 4 Ghiradelli Salty Caramels (just shy of perfection)

From the jacket:

“A PRINCE. A BALL. A GLASS SLIPPER LEFT BEHIND AT THE STROKE OF MIDNNIGHT

The tale is told and retold, twisted and tweaked, snipped and stretched as it leads to happily ever after.

But it is not the true Story.

A DARK FORTRESS. A PAST FORGOTTEN. A LIFE OF SERVITUDE.

No one has ever broken free of the Godmother’s terrible stone prison until a girl named Pin attempts a breathless, daring escape. Buut she discovers that what seems like freedom is a prison of another kind, one that entangles her in a story that leads to a prince, a kisss, and a clock striking midnight. To unravel herself from this new life, Pin must choose between a prince and another—the one who helped her before and who would give his life for her. Torn, the only thing for her to do is trade in the glass slipper for a sword and find her own destiny.

Review

Ash & Bramble launches a fairytale retelling unlike any I’ve enjoyed before. Story drives this world, whether the “characters” in the story know it or not. Imagine being plucked from your village, your life, your family, and set into a Story. So that the Story may play out as it has countless times before it, the Godmother makes you forget your Before. It is Nothing. Maybe you’re permitted to remember a shred of something from your old life because you have the potential to be a Storybreaker; or you have enough survival instincts to feel in your bones that something is off. People disappear, but those around you seem not to notice. Or you have a headache when you try to remember the day before this one, but you think harder, and instinct screams an unnatural force has played with your life.

Godmother places you into a role, such as Shoemaker or Seamstress or Jack (Jack of all trades, the makers of a stack of mattresses for the Princess and the Pea test) or any number of the background characters I never considered in the fairytales of old. In this telling, their roles scream of unfairness, brutality, horror.

If the Godmother appears with a gorgeous dress, full of opals and other jewels, and stitches “must be no bigger than a grain of sand.” Blood and pain make these dresses gorgeous, the labor of Seamstresses of all ages, hunched more and more over their precious silks as they stitch these magical gowns without sufficient light.

Through Prineas’s descriptions, I’ve felt the Overseers whip. She’s the woman who derives malicious joy in whipping a seamstress whose pace falters, who pricks herself and blood that then stains the silk.  “Sahhhh” she hisses, and “with a forked tongue she licks her lips.”

Prineas paints the soldiers, the taskmasters, the guards, all with animal features sufficient to figure out which poor animal got jerked out if its life to serve Story. They play their parts with no hint of remorse.

One bit of the storytelling took me a few chapters to get into: Pin’s story is her voice, first person present, and made wavering because she does not know her Before. But she somehow knows, she must keep her thimble safe, hidden, even when she’s punished for the audacity to try to remember, to show kindness to other Seamstresses—it is her one possession from Before.

When the story flips to Shoe’s point of view, the potential love interest, Prineas writes in third-person present. It has just as strong a voice as Pin’s, but before I can settle into his rhythm, we’re back to Pin’s POV.

Although this book is named a romance, don’t expect a book filled with love and romance and kisses and sighs. Story drives this book, and story wants only the artificial Happily Ever After without giving a fig what the people wanted before Godmother pulled them into Story. I don’t ever want to cross the Godmother.

More than romance, this book sizzles as a tale of survival, of finding yourself when you’re lost, and of friendship—the bonds that strengthen through adversity, finding others Pin and Shoe cherish more than themselves.  I enjoyed the questing nature Prineas made of the pursuit of love, because she made both characters work at figuring out what they wanted. However, In reviews I skimmed, it seemed Prineas’s treatment of the romance resulted in some of the lower stars, so I’m sharing my view.

Prineas pulled me in with her sensory details and even the hum-drum of the day, with characters stuck in their drudgery, or scheming to get out of it. The author did hit my pet peeve, the filtering language of “see,” “smell,” “taste,” and so on, instead of the stronger details—for example, I don’t need Pin to say she “can hear the clock chime.” I want my body to vibrate from its thunder. Those are the moments that bumped me out of the tale that had me curled up, enjoying however much of the chapter I had time to read. I delighted in her pacing, speeding and slowing, deepening the risk, showing me what Godmother could do with her magic, what happened to those who dared to break out of Story—because I know the story, the details from various tellings, and I’d wonder what roadblock Prineas would add, and how Pin or Shoe would puzzle through it.

When the story line moves on to the wicked stepmother, the wicked step-sisters, Prineas gives me the details to make me hate the steps here, gulp and pity them there—for they are under Story’s spell as surely as Pin and Shoe. And Story has ground centuries of its players into dust.

But them that knows resist, and provide aid to Pin and Shoe. Even the poor Prince had a Before—but was he ordinary, or a prince, in that Before? Does he love Pin for herself, or because Story compels him to?

If you’ve read your share of fairytale retellings, and enjoy a different spin, then grab Ash & Bramble. I never wanted to put it down; and now that I have, I’m itching to get my hands on the sequel, Rose & Thorn.

More about the Author

Learn more about the next volume of Story, Rose & Thorn, at the author’s webpage, her Amazon page, or buy Ash & Bramble, as it contains a chapter of Rose & Thorn. Find other reviews of Ash & Bramble at Amazon or your favorite book-review site. Find the author also on Facebook and Twitter.

Keep Reading

Have you read Ash & Bramble? What elements of it did you enjoy, or what bugged you? Did you hunger for the characters to break out, or did you think they should stay in the world Story gave them? Did you imagine yourself in Pin’s or Shoe’s shoes?

I’m always looking for YA fantasy authors. If you’ve got a new book or an old favorite you’d recommend, add it to the comments. I thank you, and I’m sure my followers will thank you!

My book reviews also live on Amazon and Goodreads. If you found the review helpful, I’d appreciate a “like” or “it was helpful” tick-mark in whatever medium you visit.

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