Girl Detective

#53 in my book challenge for the year was The Explosive Child, which our pediatrician recommended at Drake’s 3-year checkup after observing his interactions with us, and noting he had an “oppositional” personality. I like our doc; his approach is very factual and scientific. He’s definitely old school, though, so I take his advice with that in mind. From other parents and my own observation, most three year olds are oppositional, with low flexibility and frustration points. They’re testing boundaries, and learning how to share and compromise. I think the book is directed at parents of older children who still exhibit the type of tantrums more typical at three. As the doc warned, the parent and child examples in the book are extreme. Nonetheless, I found the book useful for its advice and reminders. One of its themes is that children do well if they can, so if they’re not doing well, it’s likely a lack of ability to handle frustration, not an unwillingness to behave. That’s why sticker charts and timeouts are not universal solutions. It also broke down parent/child negotiations into three types: parent enforces will, parent and child collaborate on problem solving, parent decides not to pursue issue. The case studies were a good reminder that many blowups happen when both parent and child are being inflexible, or when a parent is rushing a child through a transition faster than the child can adapt. The book’s focus is for parents to learn, and teach their children, collaborative problem solving. This requires both parties to bring a concern to the discussion. While I can certainly lay the groundwork for this, getting my 3yo to articulate his concern is far beyond where we are right now, which is largely just “No” on his part. The book was quick to read, and it made some good points that I still recall a week later, so it was worth the investment in time, even if it’s not exactly suited to where our family is right now.

Guilty Pleasures:

The Superficial
Go Fug Yourself

Guiltier Pleasures:

Perez Hilton
D Listed

If I don’t lay off the celeb gossip soon, my head may explode. Then I really wouldn’t get anything done.

Did you notice? President Bush’s summer reading list contained almost no books by, or about, women. By contrast, my summer reading list had 18 books by women and 10 by men. The books were about boys, girls, men, women, a baby, a pseudo-hermaphrodite, plus a china bunny, more than one mouse, a dog, and a tiger. Unlike me, he read non-fiction. I finished 28 books, one more than he did, though my list was about 3/4 young adult titles, so my books were likely shorter than his.

At the start of the year, I gave myself a book challenge–at least 50 books, with most of them from the backlog at home, instead of new purchases or library whims. At the start of the summer, I gave myself a challenge within a challenge, since I thrive so well on these arbitrary goals. I joined the forum at Amanda’s Weekly Zen, though I was too late to join the official group on her site, fantasized about a big goal, then whittled that down to a more realistic one that centered on young adult novels, and I started to read.

Between June 1 and August 31, I read 28 books. I read the twenty books on my original list, plus eight extra. I learned a few things from this summer challenge. If I set a reasonable goal, I can stick to it and keep focused. Without it, I would have gone down different reading paths. That wouldn’t have been bad, but it wouldn’t have contributed to my dual hopes of reading some of my home library and reading a lot of YA. In the end, I read twenty children’s/YA novels, and eight adult novels. I found that good children’s and YA books differ mainly from their adult counterparts in length and vocabulary. Bad YA is poorly written, or plotted, or has a contrived or unearned ending. There’s a publishing boom in YA right now, and I think the prevalence of trashy, poorly written,or even just slightly sloppy, books contributes to the incorrect perception of YA as an inferior subcategory of novels. I also learned that while it’s fun and interesting to join in different online book discussions, it takes up time and diverts me from my goal of reading more of the unread books gathering dust on my shelves.

Post summer, I’m going to cut back on the YA, and I’m going to re-commit to reading things already on my shelf. I’m also going on some of the reading tangents I wanted to this summer, like Jane Eyre-related books. At bat: re-reading Bangkok 8 by John Burdett. On deck: Bangkok Tattoo, the sequel. In the hole: Persuasion by Jane Austen. Pinch hitter: The Last of Her Kind by Sigrid Nunez.

Here is the Summer 2006 list. All have reviews listed in the 2006 Book Challenge link at right. I have starred my favorites. The two I disliked most were The Finishing School and The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

*King Dork by Frank Portman
Sense and Sensibility by Austen
Catcher in the Rye by Salinger
Scott Pilgrim, Vols. 1-3 by Bryan O’Malley
The Abbess of Crewe, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and The Finishing School by Muriel Sparks
*The Prop by Pete Hautman
I Am the Cheese, and We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
Tam Lin by Pamela Dean
*Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Because of Winn Dixie, *The Tiger Rising, The Tale of Despereaux, and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo
*Magic or Madness, and Magic Lessons by Justine Larbalestier
Baby by Patricia Maclachlan
*Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Intuition by Allegra Goodman
Monkey Island by Paula Fox
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Steven Chbosky
Satellite Down by Rob Thomas
Sloppy Firsts, and Second Helpings by Megan McCafferty

#52 in my book challenge for the year, and #28, the final book of my summer reading challenge, was The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Twin Cities author Kate DiCamillo. I re-read her first three novels earlier in the summer. I am pleased to have read them in order, because I see a clear progression in her work, from the bittersweet, rather slight story of a girl and her dog in Because of Winn Dixie, to the concentrated sadness tinged with darkness of The Tiger Rising, to The Tale of Despereaux, which was longer, and true to fables in its darkness and its addresses to the reader. Despereaux had several complicated characters who were neither entirely good nor bad. It went beyond sadness to show aspects of evil. The story did not end happily ever after. But it did end much more happily than it began, and with growth and increased self-knowledge for most of the characters.

Edward Tulane is DiCamillo’s saddest, darkest book yet. Like all her books, the writing is lyrical and the ending redemptive. Edward is a china rabbit and the favorite plaything of his owner. Proud and vain, he has no idea of his good circumstances until he loses them, when he goes overboard into the sea. Edward’s fortunes rise and fall, and he is found by a series of people who give him different names, and from whom he learns different lessons. The circumstances of some of his owners are terribly sad, and even worse are some of the things done to them by others. Yet what sustained me as a reader, and Edward, through the story was hope. And both Edward and I were rewarded in the end.

I admire that with each book, DiCamillo is stretching. In Edward, she created a non-sympathetic main character, who is transformed through adversity. Just as Desperaux could be read as both a story and a fable, Edward Tulane is both a story and an allegory with religious undertones. Edward’s tale is marvelously complemented by Bagram Ibatoulline’s detailed paintings and pencils; they set a tone of depressed realism different from the calculated make-believe of Desperaux. Edward Tulane is not a story for the very young, or for someone looking for a light read. It is a book that respects its readers by showing a range of human behavior and experience. Like some of the other well-written books for children I read this past summer (like I am the Cheese and We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier, Baby by Patricia MacLachlan, and Monkey Island by Paula Fox), Edward Tulane does not pretend the world is happier or less challenging than it is. But it reminds readers that happiness and meaning often are learned, not given.

Interestingly, DiCamillo has also recently written chapter books about a pig named Mercy Watson. Mercy Watson to the Rescue and Mercy Watson Goes for a Ride are easy readers that are funny, and decidedly silly. My three-year-old son Drake loves them, and we’ve read them many times. I wonder if perhaps the humor of the Mercy Watson books helped DiCamillo to counter some of the darkness required in the writing of Edward Tulane. So if a tale of suffering redeemed doesn’t sound quite right at the moment (or ever), check out the Mercy Watson books for an entirely different reading experience.

#s 50 and 51 (woo hoo! I hit my goal of 50 books) in my reading challenge for the year, and #s 26 and 27 in my summer book challenge (so I read more than half my books for the year this summer), were Megan McCafferty’s first two Jessica Darling novels, Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings. McCafferty is most notorious lately because several sections of these books were plagiarized by Kaavya Viswanathan. I have decidedly mixed feelings about these books. Some parts I love. But other parts nagged at me, and made me feel guilty for tearing through the books at a breakneck pace, and putting off other things. (”Mom, play with cars with me.” “In a minute, honey.”)

Jessica is a smart high school girl who is devastated when her best friend moves away. In Sloppy Firsts, she tries to come to terms with this, as well as with her growing crush on bad boy Marcus Flutie. She also navigates the typical American high school obstacles like nagging parents, friends who aren’t friends, and a demeaning summer job. Second Helpings continues the story, picking up the relationship between Jessica and Marcus that ended so abruptly in the first book, and continuing the story through high school graduation.

What doesn’t work: While the first book has a satifying story arc for Jessica and her absent friend Hope, it leaves the reader completely hanging about Marcus. This is not an ending, but an open door for the sequel. The second book is not plotted as tightly as the first. Her sister coming home for her pregnancy was not explained and seemed to be a plot device, as was the commitment of her grandmother to a retirement home, which was stereotypically full of sassy, smart seniors. Jessica and Marcus, over the course of the two books, follow a predictable relationship arc: good girl and bad, experienced, older boy meet cute, tension builds, they fight about something stupid, the separation is drawn out because of misunderstanding, and they get together in the end. And while these books are shelved with adult books in a bookstore even though they are young adult novels, when Jessica finally does have sex with Marcus, the details are coyly omitted, though there has been frank talk about the sex life of others throughout both books. The device of writing monthly letters to her friend wears thin over the two books. I, like her friends in the book, just wanted her to get over Hope’s departure and move on.

What works: Jessica’s voice is strong, smart, and funny. The romance between her and Marcus may be cliche, but I liked it anyway and was glad to see them get together. Jessica grows and changes over the course of the book, most notably in relation to her parents and to some friends at school. The inclusion of a brother who died of SIDS provided good grounding for the characters. These were believeable and complex characterizations and didn’t feel gratuitous. Her acerbic observations are dead on, whether she’s analyzing herself or others, especially at a summer program for “gifted” students. Her resurrected friendship with a childhood friend, her changed friendship with a footballer, and her encounters with her crush Paul are all funny, touching, and real. There is a great deal of sharp social commentary as well on high school life.

In the end, they felt more like guilty pleasures than substantive reads. I will read the third book, but I’ll get it from the library first.

or, Why I Shouldn’t Ask for Books Before I Read Them. Drake’s third birthday was last weekend. I told his grandparents that he would enjoy the new Olivia book by Ian Falconer and the new Lilly book by Kevin Henkes. I thought these were sure things. In one way, they were. Drake loves them both. I, however, only love Lilly’s Big Day.

Don’t get me wrong. Olivia Forms a Band has many of the elements that make our previous favorites, Olivia and Olivia Saves the Circus, so wonderful: the pencil drawings, the imaginative inclusion of real images, the humor, the spare use of color. But this time I found some of the photorealism a little creepy when Olivia puts on lipstick and sports a coquettish smile full of teeth. Of course, Drake loves these pages and wants to linger over them. Also, I didn’t enjoy the pages that didn’t move the story forward (the first two about red socks and the lipstick pages) and I found the ending predictable. This is a book I’m happy to own, but I would be just as happy to return it to the library, as we did with Olivia’s third adventure, Olivia and the Missing Toy.

Lilly’s Big Day, though, made me laugh. I don’t enjoy all of the Henkes mouse books. I think Lilly is too mean in Julius, Baby of the World, and I was appalled by Wendell’s behavior in A Weekend with Wendell. Lilly’s Big Day, though, reminded me pleasantly of my favorite, Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse. It has a finely balanced story, with some nice in-jokes for the adult reader. Lilly’s teacher Mr. Slinger is getting married. She wants to be a flower girl, but he’s already asked his niece. Lilly is spirited and charming, and the ending was not predictable. While the book isn’t preachy, Lilly, unlike Olivia, learns something about herself by the end.

I am reminded yet again that the library, not the bookstore, is where I should browse for books.

#49 in my book challenge for the year, and #25 in my summer reading challenge was the YA novel Satellite Down by Rob Thomas, the writer/creator of the shows Cupid and Veronica Mars. I didn’t expect to like this book, as I was feeling rather fatigued after my run of high school boy books. But when I started, I was immediately drawn to the character of Patrick and his sudden switch from a student in small town Texas to a reporter for a fictionalized Channel One. Patrick’s adventures in LA, and his changes and insights are engaging and sympathetic. But in the last 70 pages, the book takes a sudden turn, and winds down to an even more abrupt ending that feels either tacked on, or like the author or editor just decided to stop the book at a certain page number. I really enjoyed the first 230 pages of this book, but the last 70 left me surprised and disappointed.

#48 in my book challenge for the year, and #24 in my summer reading challenge was We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier, a recommendation from Michael Cart’s history of YA, From Romance to Realism. We All Fall Down is a tightly written, hard to put down novel about the effects of violence. A family’s house is trashed, and a daughter is left in a coma. The novel switches views among her sister, one of the trashers, and a witness to the event. Each character is troubled in realistic ways, and the ending manages to be both redemptive and dark. There was a surprise that I was expecting, though, so that wasn’t effective for me. The strong plot, writing and characters all contributed to a novel that I’d recommend for older audiences, not just for young adults.

These quotes from Helene Hanff, excerpted at Mental Multivitamin, resonated with me:

It’s against my principles to buy a book I haven’t read, it’s like buying a dress you haven’t tried on (84 Charing Cross Road)

I despair of ever getting through anybody’s head I am not interested in bookshops, I am interested in what’s written in the books. I don’t browse in bookshops, I browse in libraries, where you can take a book home and read it, and if you like it you go to a bookshop and buy it. (The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street)

This year I’m trying to make a dent in the books I’ve purchased over the years but not yet read. Progress is slow. After I acquire a book, some of the thrill is gone; reading it feels like an obligation, not a joy. Space is limited. So is time. I run afoul of the reserve system at the library, too. The ease, and the free-ness of it are seductive. But if I use the library carefully, and thoughtfully, and with Hanff’s habit in mind of reading a book first to audition it for the home collection, I can be the reader (and consumer) I aspire to be.

#47 in my reading challenge for the year, and #23 in my summer reading challenge by The Perks of Being a Wallflower. If I were in a different, more generous mood I might like this book more. But I’m not, and it struck me as precious. The main character, Charlie, is so stunted emotionally and socially that he reminded me strongly of the main character of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The ending, which purported to explain some of Charlie’s behaviors, felt contrived. Also annoying was the conceit for the structure, which is Charlie writing letters to a stranger, and supposedly hiding people’s identities. So is his real name Charlie? Do the other characters have different names, or details than what is included in the story? The idea of the anonymous letters is more than awkward; it defies belief. If you’re looking for a high-school-boy book, King Dork, Catcher in the Rye, and Black Swan Green are all more worthy of your time.

#46 in my book challenge for the year, and #22 in my summer reading challenge, was Monkey Island by Paula Fox. It’s a short, spare novel about a young boy forced to live on his own. The prose, like the story, is simple and stark. The story doesn’t pull punches, and the ending is redemptive but not at all artificial. Like Baby by Patricia MacLachlan, Monkey Island is a book for kids that is well written enough for all ages. It deals with dark stuff, but in truthful ways that are never cheap or gratuitous. A lot of popular young adult novels or novels for older kids are poorly written. There’s a common, not undeserved, perception that children’s and YA novels are not good enough to be marketed to adults. Books like this show what a reductive understanding that is.

#45 in my book challenge for the year, and #21 in my summer book challenge, Intuition by Allegra Goodman, was recommended with reservations by a member of my writing group. Interestingly, she didn’t tell me what her reservations were, so I read with extra awareness to how it was written. I found it a good book, worth reading, but with some significant problems as well. I was also reminded that in nearly every book I read, there is some very small thing that I quibble over, even if I love the book, so I’ll leave that for the end.

What works: Intuition is the story of group of postdocs, once of whose work begins to show results. The positive results are a mixed blessing, though, as tensions begin to arise among the various strong personalities. Goodman has written a huge cast of characters, most of whom are complexly drawn, and all of whom interact in interesting and believable ways. Their various experiences and points of view give the reader multiple views into the plot, as in Rashomon. The plot clips along at a strong pace, as events seem to take on a life of their own. At the end, everyone is both better and worse off, and two of the main female characters are perhaps the only ones to gain significant self insight.

What didn’t work: The cast was so big that there was no way to adequately characterize all the characters, and some of them appeared conveniently, then disappeared. The omniscient point of view was sometimes dizzying and distracting, as the narrative would swoop among several characters within a chapter. Additionally, there was a great deal of narration of what each of the characters was feeling or thinking. Sometimes this felt like good characterization, other times it felt like “telling”. The characters and the story might better have been served with more narrative and less character description.

The tiny thing that annoyed me a lot: The font of the pages numbers was different from that of the text, and it was hard to read–a poor design choice.

#44 in my book challenge for the year, and #20 in my summer reading challenge, was Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Since it’s been sitting on my shelf for about four years, it’s a good reminder that I should not buy books on impulse. It is appropriately epic in scope, for a sprawling tale of Calliope/Cal Stephanides, a genetic boy raised as a girl. (Calliope is the muse of epic poetry.) It is touching, frequently funny, and crowded with memorable characters. It’s a family history as well as an investigation into identity, sex, gender, and history. There’s much to enjoy while reading, and much to ruminate on once it’s done. The non-linear narrative helped make the long book go quickly, though a few times it made me wonder at things that didn’t quite match up.

I’m likely to hit my minimum yearly book and movie goals of fifty, perhaps for books even by the end of August. After we had our first son, Drake, I found I was reading less often, and seeing movies hardly at all. Both reading and movies felt too important to become casualties (even temporarily) of parenthood, so last year and this I set movie and book challenges, with a hope that, at minimum, I’d be reading one book and seeing one movie a week. These challenges are reminders to myself (and perhaps to readers) that there IS time to read and to see movies. I make time for these things by not doing other things, like housecleaning and yard work, or doing them less often. Mental Multivitamin re-posted this entry on how she makes time to read/write/live/learn. Her post is a good reminder: time is limited and distractions many. My challenges help me focus on my priorities. My summer reading challenge has helped me focus on the reading list I set, rather than haring off whenever something new catches my eye, or comes in at the library. I’ve still departed from the list, but much less frequently, and with more deliberation, than I would if I had not set a reading list.

#43 in my reading challenge for the year, and #19 in my summer reading challenge, was Baby by Patricia MacLachlan, a recommendation from Michael Cart’s interesting history of YA literature, From Romance to Realism. Baby is a bittersweet, spare story of a vacation island family that takes in a child left at their door at the end of the season. As the story unfolds, we learn the sadness that lurks for each of the family members. This has beautiful prose, memorable characters, and challenging ruminations on loss and memory. Short, powerful, and emotional.

#42 in my book challenge for the year, and #18 in my summer reading challenge, was Magic Lessons, the second book in Larbalestier’s Magic or Madness trilogy. After re-reading, and again loving, Magic or Madness, I was disappointed in the sequel. It didn’t feel as tight, either in editing (there were many extraneous and unnecessarily repeated sentences) or in plot. Reason Cansino, the 15 year old protagonist, goes back and forth between New York and Sydney and tries to avoid Jason Blake, just as she did in the first. But the introduction of a new character creates more questions than it answers, and I’m not sure that was intended, even while there is more than a little deus ex machina element to him. Some of my dissatisfaction may be unfair–this may be a typical second book in a trilogy, that begins to answer some of the intruguing questions raised in the first part, but doesn’t finish the story. I will certainly read the next book in the series, but I may get it from the library rather than purchasing it, as I did this book, based on the strength of the first.

As a recovering bookstore junkie, I greatly appreciate both the selection and reserve system at my local library. A recent trip turned up interesting results. Drake enjoyed all three books, but I did not. I think the true mark of a book’s success is if I like to read it, and Drake’s likes to hear it, and we both like to look at it. Since he often insists on hearing books dozens of times, books weak in story or art get very annoying, very fast. Borrowing from the library, rather than buying, allows us the luxury of test driving these books at home, to see which books we both enjoy.

Good: Bailey Goes Camping by Kevin Henkes Some Henkes books are particular favorites: Kitten’s First Full Moon, Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse, Sheila Rae the Brave, and Chester’s Way. Some I have actively disliked (Julius, Baby of the World, and A Weekend with Wendell). Others I found only OK (Chrysanthemum and Wemberley Worried). Bailey Goes Camping falls into this last category. The blurbs on the back call it “cozy” and “comfortable”. I found it boring. Bailey’s older brother and sister go camping. He wants to go but is too young, so his mom helps him do camping things at home. The story is simple, the art is deliberately old-fashioned, but I found neither particularly memorable.

Better: Too Big by Claire Masurel, art by Hanako Wakiyama. I’d liked the art from The Best Pet of All (see following) so I decided to give this a try. Charlie is small and brings home a big toy named Tex. No one wants him to take Tex anywhere because of his size, but when Charlie has to go to the doctor, Tex is loyal and ready. I had a few problems with this book. First, I think Tex’s size is supposed to be a contrast with Charlie’s smallness, typical of a kid, but that’s a subtle inference for a child. Second, when Charlie needs to go to the doctor, all his regularly sized toy friends hide. The illustration for this was good, since a child can find them, but why they hide is unclear. Are they afraid of the doctor, and the author didn’t want to make this explicit? Is it so that Charlie finally takes Tex? Without explanation, it seems cruel and arbitrary that his friends hide from him. Finally, while I liked the retro look of the art, the dad had red hair (like Charlie) on several pages, but black hair on another. I found this lack of continuity confusing. Drake, though, liked the book just fine.

Best: The Best Pet of All by David LaRochelle, art by Hanako Wakiyama. We have checked this book out before, and I was reminded that it is a great blend of story and art. A little boy wants a dog; his mother says no. The boy counters that he’d like a dragon. The mom OKs that, little expecting the boy to bring home a dragon. Both are understandably upset with the dragon’s bad manners. The end is charming and funny, and turns on understanding something from the illustration, not just the text. While my husband jokes that he finds the mom “uncomfortably hot” for a storybook, the art is retro yet kid-accessible. While all three books had very good reviews at Amazon, this is the one book of the three that I liked as well as Drake did, and it’s the one book that I will consider adding to our permanent library, though I also like the idea of having old favorites at our public library that we check out and re-read.

#41 in my book challenge for the year, and #17 in my summer reading challenge was Magic or Madness by Justine Larbalestier, which I re-read as preparation for the more recently published second book in this trilogy. Reason Cansino, a fifteen-year-old Australian girl, has been on the run for all her life with her mother, from her grandmother. When her mother is institutionalized, Reason is returned to the grandmother, who Reason’s mother has warned her is an evil person who believes in magic. In a more conventional novel, Reason would come to terms with her grandmother, and discover that magic isn’t evil and neither is the grandmother. This book, though, takes a darker, more complicated route, and is hugely entertaining because of it. Reason discovers that magic is real, but using and not using magic both have terrible consequences. As Reason struggles to learn more, she must determine who to trust, since most of what she’s been told all her life has been a lie. I raced through this book, and am eager to begin the sequel, Magic Lessons.

#40 in my book challenge for the year, and #16 in my summer reading challenge, was The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo. Kate gave a reading last weekend, which prompted me to re-read her previous books before picking up her newest one. The Tale of Despereaux won the Newbery award, and it’s a sad, lovely story with beautiful pencil illustrations. Despereaux is a tiny but large-eared mouse, who is exiled from the mice because he won’t conform. He goes on to endure many difficulties as he struggles not only to survive, but to restore both soup and the princess to the kingdom. The book is not only sad, but frequently delves into disturbing portraits of perfidy (which the author exhorts the reader to look up) and evil. One character, Miggery Sow, endures so much that no happy ending can really redeem all that she has suffered. Throughout, the author addresses the reader in the same manner as Charlotte Bronte did in Jane Eyre. I felt this was a way to remind the reader that while dark things are happening, the reader is not alone in the darkness. The contrast of light and dark, and its reflections both in character and in events, is present throughout, as are reminders that this is a story. Despereaux is longer and more complex than DiCamillo’s previous books, Because of Winn Dixie and The Tiger Rising. I don’t think it’s as charming as the former, or as moving as the latter, but it is a compelling story, well told.