Month: August 2012

Review: Good News Bad News by Jeff Mack

| Tasha

good news bad news

Good News Bad News by Jeff Mack

So much depends on your point of view in this jaunty picture book that is written in a very limited vocabulary of just four words.  The book opens with the good news of a shared picnic.  Then the bad news of rain arrives.  Then the good news of the rabbit’s umbrella.  Bad news carries the rat off on the wind.  Filled with lots of energy and action, this picture book dashes along at a breakneck speed as readers look forward to the inevitable next twist in the tale. 

Mack manages to create a cohesive story with great pacing using just four words.  Reading like an animated short, the interchange of optimism and pessimism is sure to delight both sorts of personalities.  It gives us all a chance to laugh together as the poor rat is constantly disappointed and the rabbit doesn’t reach his breaking point until almost the end of the book.  By that point, the ups and downs of the story will have everyone ready to burst.

Good news!  The book is wonderful and is out now!  Good news!  It’s a great pick for new readers!  Good news!  No bad news at all.  Appropriate for ages 2-4.

Reviewed from copy received from Chronicle Books.

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Review: Small Damages by Beth Kephart

| Tasha

small damages

Small Damages by Beth Kephart

Kenzie is not the sort of teen who gets pregnant.  She has college plans, a boyfriend who is headed to Yale, but she took risks.  Earlier in the year, she lost her beloved father and now her mother just wants to move on.  Her mother wants to do the same with the pregnancy.  Kenzie decides to keep the baby and her mother creates a plan to keep the pregnancy a secret: she sends Kenzie off to Spain for the summer.  Staying with a friend of her mother, Kenzie is taken under the wing of Estela, a small, fierce woman who cooks for the ranch where they raise bulls for bullfighting.  Estela guides Kenzie through learning to cook, making sure that she also takes care of herself and the baby.  Kenzie meets the couple who will adopt her baby and also a young man who works on the ranch with the animals.  She slowly comes out of her shell, building relationships with those around her.  This book is an homage to Spain, an exploration of choice, and a delight of a read.

As always, Kephart writes with the voice of a poet.  Her language is especially effective here as she recreates Spain for the reader with all of its colors, scents and sounds.  There is a wonderful space to the novel, a quietness that is profound and amazing.  It too speaks of a foreign country, of being cared for by another generation, and of having time to contemplate and decide.  This book is also complex.  Decisions are made and reconsidered, lives are changed, and there is no surety to the final decision until the last page is turned.  It is a compelling dance between quiet desperation, beauty and real family and belonging. 

This is a book that you want to curl up and read and read as long as your eyes will let you.  It is a trip to Spain filled with all of the warmth, personality and impressive history of that land.  The play of the modern American teen against that timeless background is pure genius, giving a story that could have been straight forward a real depth and power.

This is an exceptional teen novel that will also be enjoyed by adult readers as a crossover title.  It is elegantly written and gloriously beautiful.  Appropriate for ages 15-18.

Reviewed from copy received from Philomel Books.

Review: The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan

| Tasha

brides of rollrock island

The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan

Released September 11, 2012.

Rollrock Island is remote and isolated with only one ferry connecting it to the mainland.  It is also a place of magic, magic that is less sparkles and fairy dust and more ocean currents, sealskin and lust.  It is where Misskaella the witch lives, a woman able to peel away the skins of seals and gather their energies together into a woman who is beautiful and biddable.  In this way, Misskaella takes vengeance upon the women of the town who never accepted her.   She charges the men for the honor of having a wife from the sea, taking not only the money they have gathered now, but future wages as well.  These men are just as dazzled and tamed by the magic as their once-seal wives.  The desperation and quiet horror of the selkie story builds steadily as the book continues, leaving it to the next generation, the children of these unions, to see if they can resolve this, or not.

I have long disliked stories based on selkie myths, so I read this because of my love for Lanagan’s work.  But Lanagan gets at the nastiness of these relationships, the sandy dirtiness of them that will not wash away.  Her writing is by turns ethereal and wondering and then turns to the baseness and cruelty of what is happening.  There is a strong sense of place woven into the story.  It simply could not take place anywhere else.  From the seals at the base of the cliff to the tiny town that is simple yet enticing, Rollrock Island is unique and astounding yet also grindingly normal.

Lanagan plays with contrasts throughout the entire book.  The women who rise from the ocean are compliant yet wrenchingly miserable, longing for a world that they have lost.  The men are dazzled and yet absent.  The children beautiful, part sea and part land, yet also unable to see the truth until it is forced upon them.  It is as much Misskaella’s story as it is the selkies.  Their destinies intertwined thanks to her magic.

Told in a series of short stories that show the different points of view, though never the point of view of one of the selkie women, this book is pure richness and beauty.  Lanagan takes a timeless myth and exposes it, yet leaves the reader hopeful in the end.  This is a glorious read.  Appropriate for ages 15-18 and a great crossover read for adults.

Reviewed from digital copy via NetGalley.

Blog Anniversary!

| Tasha

nine

Thank you everyone who has made this such an amazing nine years of blogging.  I’m so happy to be part of the growing children’s literature blogging community.  I love all of the passion, the debates, and even the moments of drama that demonstrate how seriously we all take both blogging and children’s literature.

Over the years, this blog has changed and hopefully grown.  It’s been hosted on three platforms (anyone else remember Greymatter?) and had two names.  Personally, I know that I write now with greater confidence than I used to.  I’ve been part of debates over the years and have continued to blog in my own way, with no negative reviews (who has the time?) and focusing on book news and great reads.

I’m sure that I’ll continue to evolve, since I have no intention of stopping blogging any time soon.

Again, thank you for reading, for giving me of your precious time and attention.  It’s been a great nine years!

Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/lwr/4507500068/