Kidlit Tuesday: Kids On Their Own

Since I'm about three months late, I'm trying to group some of the kidlit I've read into loose groups. This weeks batch is books about children, almost exclusively girls, left without parental support for some reason. For some reason I haven't read books lately where the boys are orphaned. Maybe I just read more books about girls? After all, we are more interesting, right?

In some of these, the plot is an adventure and the parents are gone mostly so the kid can act heroically. Although there is some worry about the lost ones, clearly they need to be out of the way. Zita doesn't seem to trouble about her worried folks back on the home dimension, and Leanne, friend of the Cyborg,  doesn't have a personality as much as a plot purpose, so her worries about her arrested mom come and go depending on what the plot would prefer. My kids never worry about the missing parents in these books either, which concerns me a bit. I ask them if they'd notice if I were gone, and they say probably, although if magic or robots start appearing they might be too busy. Fair enough.

In increasingly emotionally complex books, the parents are removed in a more realistic way. In Summer of the Gypsy Moths, two twelve year old girls desperately want to avoid foster care and so they conceal the death of their elderly guardian and survive alone in a house for a summer. May B.'s parents and employers manage to abandon her in a lonely sod house on the Kansas prairie with no way to get out or call for help. These last two are a good contrast, as May is capable of all the tasks she needs for survival, but is unwillingly alone and desperately lonely, while the lesser skilled Gypsy Moth girls not only have each other for support but could end their isolation at any time by admitting the truth. So while May cooks and manages and desperately tries to contact anyone, the Gypsy girls constantly fend off well-meaning adults to keep their isolation going while scrambling to feed themselves.

Cyborg: Clone Wars 2, Patricia, Frederick, & John McKissack. The writing is uneven enough to make me wish the author above had been pushier with her coauthors -- the characters' motivations and actions were often inexplicable (why didn't Houston tell anyone their ally was lying? Why did Leanne suddenly decide to give herself up without discussing it with her friends? Why did Toby suddenly show up a few pages before his help was essential?) It's like they think story doesn't matter if you are doing SF, especially SF with a message.

Legends of Zita the Spacegirl, Ben Hatke.  My kids and I reallly like these graphic novels, with their attractive art and fast moving story lines. I found it interesting that Zita makes some big mistakes (stealing a spaceship) although my kids agree with her that it was just necessary. I also worry about her parents back home, which doesn't trouble the boys at all. We'll keep looking for more Zita.

The Summer of the Gypsy Moths, Sara Pennypacker. Classic story in the tradition of My Side of the Mountain, the Tillerman cycle, and other independent child tales, with two young girls fending for themselves after their foster parent dies. As an adult, I found the dead body creepier than my younger self would've, but the authentic voices of the girls and their often hilarious attempts to cover up their solitude more than made up for it. Very different from the Clementine books, but still good.

May B., Caroline Starr Rose. RML. Ooo, I strongly dislike poem novels. So I got mad when she did something silly even though she was only a kid. I liked that she went off on her own, even though only a coincidence saved her life.

Reading My Library Status

I've continued working my way around the beautiful Renton river library, ignoring the prospect of the library's move, which is supposed to happen sometime in the future. There is a group organized to save the library, but all their literature is about how beautiful the library is, which no one disagrees with, and doesn't address the structural or environmental issues that made the city decide not to upgrade the current site. So who knows?

Meanwhile I'll keep going and peeking at the fish through the windows.

I've rounded the M's in children's literature, and continue through the second half of the alphabet. I'm trying to average about a book a week, but not promising anything to myself. It's fun how sometimes there's a dozen books I'd like to read and sometimes I'm choosing among the least of evils. And I get a fuzzy warm feeling of double accomplishment when I find a book on my to-read list or that fits one of my other challenges -- set in a hard to find American state or even better, a South American country.

Recent reads were:

A Friendship For Today, Patricia McKissack. School integration from a black girl's point of view, in contrast to the The Lions of Little Rock (another RML book). An author's note says that McKissack used some of her own memories to guide the story, which is cool. In standard kid-lit expectations, the girl whose parents are openly against integration is the one who becomes our protagonist's friend.

Milagros: Girl From Away, Meg Medina. Nifty magic realism in a kidlit, with imagery reminiscent of Like Water For Chocolate. It was hard for me to read about the violent events, as well as the young girl consumed by selfishness and meanness.

War Horse, Michael Morpugo. If this is a true story, great. If not, then the author killed off a girl in a sentimental trick, which is annoying, especially in a Black Beauty knock-off. I haven't seen the movie, but at least now I have the option (I hate seeing movies if I haven't read the book).

Bringing the Boy Home, N.A. Nelson. Cunningly constructed tale of two boys from an imaginary Amazonian tribe, both old enough to face their manhood ceremonies, but one boy has been adopted by an American. Tribal beliefs and religion are treated as true, but the adoptive mother isn't as ready to let her twelve year old son risk his life on a dangerous quest (I can emphasize with that). Good read. And set in Brazil -- bonus!

Ways to Live Forever, Sally Nichols.  My kids are too close in age to the protagonist for me to enjoy this book about a young boy's hospice months as he dies in leukemia. Tears kept leaking out as Sam's live shrunk around him even as he worked his way through his juvenile bucket list. I doubt my kids would go for this, but I'll try it on them. (No joy.)

Dance Your Troubles Away: The Grand Plan To Fix Everything

Uma Krishnaswami's small book The Grand Plan To Fix Everything offers a light travel itinerary and cosy little problems with cute solutions to the elementary crowd.

Dini, the main characters, has cute problems but doesn't seem to feel things deeply. She's sad when her planned Bollywood dance summer camp visit with her best friend is canceled, and a bit disconcerted to learn that her family is immediately moving to India for two years, but she accepts it as the way things are. She is delighted to learn that her favorite Bollywood movie star is also likely to be in her same village, and naively plans to meet her immediately. She clearly recognizes what kind of book she's in, because of course their paths do cross.

The side plot with the poor but enthusiastic postal deliverer, also a fan of filmi star Dolly, links them first with the chance to deliver the poorly address fan letter, and then unites them in a vacation to the same small Indian town. Everyone's problems (from the loneliness following a drastic move to the broken engagement of Dolly herself) has a quick fix that Dini can fit in her planned movie script of real life. It's a lightweight but warm hearted story that doesn't offer much to an adult but should work well with third grade kids (Dini is eleven, but reads as a few years younger to me).

Award Winner: Parrot in the Oven

Well, I've officially fallen behind in my summer goal; I decided to get to sleep at a reasonable time and then I spent a day driving and didn't finish my assigned book.

I did read some library books that were falling due, but that doesn't count. Phooey. I still hope to catch up this week, and then we'll keep trying.  Today I finished Parrot in the Oven by Victor Martinez, a novel in short stories about a boy growing up in a Mexican American family, struggling with academic ambitions that are left unsupported by his school and peers, an alcoholic father and a generally abusive family, a peer group that values fighting and theft, and the general prejudice of whites against anyone brown or black.

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Martinez's stories have a delicate flavor to them, wrapping the feelings and senses of the moment carefully up and then leaving quietly so the reader is left alone with the emotions. It was a powerful book that I didn't manage to read quickly enough on the drive home.

Interesting History: Dragonwings

Dragonwings is another book that I might have read as a kid, but I'm glad to have it on my shelves. It's also possible that I just read about it, since the plot seemed familiar but I didn't recognize the tone. Laurence Yep's book imagines what it might have been like to be a Chinese immigrant building an airplane in the early 1900's in San Francisco.

The story is told through the memories of Moon Shadow, a young boy sent out to live with his father, the aviator. Although Yep admits in the author note at the back that he made up most of the story, the core element is probably true, and mainly he succeeds in his attempt to make the lives of the Chinese community into a vibrant story. I really liked the voice of the narrator and found all the characters sturdy and believable, from Uncle to Mrs. Whitlaw.

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It also gave a vivid depiction of the San Francisco earthquake and its aftermath, which I liked and which will help me keep the details straight. I do like getting my history from historical fiction, especially when I trust the author to keep the details straight while placing his believable characters into realistic situations.

I'll leave this around for the boys, although it doesn't really hit any of their obvious buttons.

Chuckles: School of Fear

Book two of Gitty Daneshvari's School of Fear series, Class Is Not Dismissed, continues with the lighthearted lampooning of the previous books. The four camp returnies are mostly cured but still need a bit of a refresher and the chance to drop some one-liners on each other.

One new camper is added, but her misery is kept comic and cartoonish so that we never wince with anyone's pains.  The cover reflects the truth that not all kids get equal time -- Theo, Madeline, and newcomer Hyhy get the bulk of the pages. The third book may balance things out for Lulu and Garrison, and it seems it starts immediately after this one.  There are no unexpected turns but a gentle continuous laugh track that kept me amused as I dipped in and out.

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Since I spent most of the day having a great time and eating delicious food, I was pleased to have a witty but uncomplicated book to read in my off moments. Now I shall go to sleep and dream of beautiful dinners.

Lonely girl Weedflower

Cynthia Kadohata won a Newbery medal for a previous book, so when I hit her shelf on my Reading My Library browsing I grabbed another of her titles: Weedflower. This one is a historical book set during the Japanese interment
during World War II. The orphaned protagonist and her little brother live with her uncle's family, and when the men are sent to a prison camp and the rest of the family rounded up and sent to an interment camp she feels the loss of her home all over again.

Weedflower's camp is the one located on a Indian reservation, and she meets some of the people who are displaced to make room for the Japanese. We also watch as the fabric of her family is slowly frayed away -- children no longer show respect and the families tend to live parallel lives that rarely intersect.

As an adult, I can see how Kadohata hits educational points about World War II: the Japanese interment as well as the injustices on Indian reservations; the life and stress of the camps as well as the prejudices against the Japanese even before the round-up, the conflict between traditional Japanese culture and the different standards of American life. But although I would have soaked up these facts and impressions as a child, my attention would have stayed on the girl whose garden won a prize, who helped her friend learn about farming, who wrestled with her fears both for the cousin who wanted to enlist and the one bitter about white prejudice. Although not as powerful as Kira-Kira, I still enjoyed this selection.

Angels In LOOOOVE: Angels' Flight

Nalini Singh gathers four stories from her Guildhunter series together to look at action and sex in Angels' Flight.

The first, "Angels' Pawn", actually skips the sex to leave the couple in a state of high Unresolved Sexual Tension. She's a vampire hunter, he's a vampire whom she often hunts, and together they fight crime help the archangel keep order among his minions. In between solving the case, they admire each other's bodies.

"Angels' Judgement" gives us the backstory on secondary character Sara as she ascends to leadership of the Guild and acquires her ginormous lover Deacon. It's interesting that the woman in both these stories has more power in the relationship and in their professional life. This time the story is long enough for them to have sex, and I like the way that Elena walks away from him because her job is more important. Luckily Deacon quits his job so they can be together again -- HOT.

"Angel's Wolf" has the first male lead, as a traumatized vampire comes to work for a powerful but lonely angel, and they heal each other. How sweet, and rather dull. I had read this one a few weeks ago in a shared anthology, so I didn't bother rereading.

"Angels' Dance," the longest story, has one of the strangest conflicts -- it's nonexistent. Jessamy is a crippled angel whose wings don't work, Galen is a buff guy who doesn't like to wear shirts. They fall instantly in love but then Galen worries that she only feels gratitude because he flies her around. So they don't talk to each other for a year or so, despite living in the same large building. They don't even argue, they just spontaneously start ignoring each other so they can be depressed in alternating story sections. Then for no reason they get back together and live happily ever after, including some spectacular sex-in-flight (that's the title dance). As an anthropology-style slice of angel community, it's interesting, but as a romance it's rather pointless.

Month Two: May Best of Books

So, I've just been toying with the Best of the Best Challenge, and suddenly I find that finishing is actually a possibility. Of course, I've been clearing off the long-hanging fruit, so the eight books remaining might be harder to finish, but on the plus side I do have Mother Reader's 48 Hour Book Challenge to help me along. Also, the three audio books I have going should complete in the next week, so that will give me a big jump as well.  Hmm.  Anyway, here's what I've got:



Sugar Changed the World, Marc Aronson & Marina Budhos. The history of sugar, from its discovery to its spread through its role in colonization and slavery, as well as its indirect effects on industrialization, science and republic-building. The authors do a good job in balancing personal details (both of their families were directly affected by the sugar business) and the facts, which helps in comprehending the sometimes horrific events chronicled.

How They Croaked (reviewed)

Geektastic, ed. by Holly Black & Cecil Castellucci. I loved the explanation for this anthology, that Black and Castellucci wanted to collaborate on a Klingon/Jedi short story and the only way to sell it was to make the anthology it belonged in, and I enjoyed most of the other short stories describing different teenagers with varying passions. Lyca's story left a terrible taste in my mouth, though, involving the protagonist getting away with a horrible and illegal example of cyberbullying. Being a geek doesn't make it OK to violate other people, even if they are more popular than you.

Chain Reaction, Simone Elkeles. I'm too old to really appreciate this YA novel, with its short, alternating boy/girl chapters and the universal assumption that sex should start as soon as you TRULY love someone. Probably several years before you've heard of birth control.  I found the poor choices of both protagonists depressing, even though the author protected them so they'd grow up to have children like themselves.

My Boyfriend Is a Monster #1, Evonne Tsang: Very fun graphic novel about a sport jock and a geek who find romance over their egg-baby. Just as they admit their mutual liking, a zombie apocalypse strikes the city and they must run for their lives (as one does).  The words and graphics both respect the characters but never take themselves too seriously. My older son and I are eagerly awaiting more from these writers. I actually tried this on my NOOK, but I couldn't read the text and felt I couldn't really appreciate the pictures. My device is not really made for pictures.

Where Things Come Back, John Waley.  Two brothers in a family unique in its own happiness and unhappiness know without speaking that they are united together as they face the world. This story tells of the summer when one disappeared, leaving the other always one step off, not knowing how to react or how to trust anything. It was almost unbearable to read, even when the second story about the college boys crazed with religion caught up and revealed the answer to the disappearance. The ending left me miserable, because I don't think it was real. But I hope my sons are as close as those brothers were.

Daybreak, Brian Ralph. I read this twice, because my library system had the first volume but I felt the ending couldn't be right, so I ordered it from Seattle Public Library and found out the ending.  My favorite part is how the book speaks directly to the reader, although you are relegated to a following role so that you don't make many decisions, except at the very end. I'm impressed that now I've enjoyed two zombie stories, including this definite horror version.

Pavement Chalk Artist, Julian Beever. I read this while my fifth graders browsed the pictures, admiring the technique and special effects as well as the visuals.  It's a fun description of fascinating ephemeral pictures.

Infinite Kung Fu, Kagan McLeod. This martial-arts graphic novel enthralled my seventh grader but only barely kept my interest. I suspect it lost me on some of the fight scenes, which he loved but which left me cold, especially since I could never tell who was winning so they didn't actually advance the plot at all. I kept forgetting who was who, mainly because I couldn't remember what the main characters looked like.

The Influencing Machine, Brooke Gladstone. A very interesting meditation on what reporting is and isn't, and its inherent weaknesses -- since reporters are people, news can never be without bias, and pretending or attempting to be balanced brings in its own biases. The cartoon format enhanced and underlined its points, keeping the book interesting, although not enough to get my seventh grader to read it.

Sing it: We Are America

The last Cybils Poetry finalist did not really work for me. Walter Dean Myers and Christopher Myers put together a beautiful book, We Are America: A Tribute From the Heart, that combined Walt Whitman-like verses with painterly art depicting scenes from American history, concentrating on the common people who built this country.

Unfortunately, and this says a lot more about me than about the book, I couldn't really connect. I always felt like I was reading in a cathedral or a museum, with constant reminders to be quiet and reverent. Strong immigrants stood proudly next to victims of prejudice or oppression, and the need to be educated interfered with my ability to appreciate the words or the art. I also couldn't keep my fifth grader interested; I believe he also sensed an attempt to force learning on him and he squirmed away with more than his usual distaste for poetry. So it's undoubtedly a beautiful book, but shallow me could not appreciate it.

I'll go back to Lear nonsense or something.

May Is Religion Month: Child of Dandelions

The cover of Shenaaz Nanji's Child of Dandelions gives very little hint about the contents of the book, and since it's been over two years since I placed it on my to-read list, I had to just trust long-ago-me and start reading. The bangles around the wrist of the girl on the cover belong to Sabine, an adolescent in 1972 Uganda, soon after the rise of Idi Amin. My memories of history in the '70s told me that he was a bad guy, but they don't actually get more nuanced that that.

The tension in this YA/older middle grade book grew quickly, as Sabine hears that the Indian community will be expelled. She and her father consider themselves Ugandan citizens and assume that the decree doesn't apply to them, but I knew they were underestimating the situation. Nanji does a good job of showing the complexity of the situation through the connections between Sabine and her ethnically diverse circle, starting with her best friend Zena, ethnically close to Amin who trusts him to restore the country and including Indian relatives and store keepers as well as the family servants, all African.

Things rapidly get worse for Sabine and her family and the mother begs to leave immediately. Secure in their wealth and citizenship, Sabine and her father laugh at the crazy orders of the government, but the danger quickly mounts as army officers shoot people at traffic stops and burst into shops demanding bribes and respect. The disparity between Sabine's wealth and Zena's poverty shows how resentment grew, and even though Sabine learns how her family has discriminated against blacks (the servants eat off separate plates, she never thought to ask after the chauffeur's real name or family), her small steps do nothing to avert society's plummet of a cliff.  Although the worst atrocities happen off-stage, Sabine sees the loss of all safety and barely manages to escape with the her life and her little brother.

I enjoyed the taste of events almost unknown to me, and the story should be exciting enough to get my seventh grader to read it as well, but the cover will be a tough sell, since the passive and relaxed arms show nothing of the dangers and actions taken by the main character throughout.

I've just read some discussion of religion in YA books; despite the prevalence of vampires and demons, apparently very few books actually show kids practicing religion. So I thought for this month I'd pay attention to see it that was try for the books I read, especially the YA and children's book.  In this one, although Sabine is a practicing Muslim, she doesn't spend much time thinking about her religion or praying; she respects the Hindu faith of her mother's friends, many of whom do pray for help. So it's part of the background but not in the forefront of her concerns.

Family of Refugees: The Porcupine Year

Although I still haven't finished The Birchbark House (I'm reading it now), I found the third book in Louise Erdrich's series abut the Ojibwe family during the mid 1800's while grabbing books for my Reading My Library quest.  So I scooped up The Porcupine Year as a guaranteed good book, and was not disappointed.

Omakayas is a little bit older now, more responsible for her youngest brother and more aware of her male cousin, but still secure in the care of her parents and extended family, especially her grandmother Old Tallow, whose fierce nature and strong dogs provide protection for the tiny clan. At first things go easily because of their knowledge of the land and skills, with only childish (but dangerous) adventures, but the betrayal of their white uncle abruptly leaves them facing winter with no supplies or equipment.  Suddenly the family faces starvation, and the true effects of their expulsion from their birchbark house looms over them.

I liked the sense of realism -- there are real consequences and dangers, and the family expects that but doesn't let it devour them. Louise Erdrich has a good touch in these children's books just as she does in her adult works.

Slovakian Heroes: Dragon Castle

Our elementary school book club started the year with Skeleton Man, a Joseph Bruchac book that features  an Abenaki girl who uses the strength and knowledge gained from her family's folk tales to defeat a scary creature. Other books I've read by him also feature children proud of their Native American heritage. But in the Cybils Science Fiction and Fantasy (Middle Grade) finalist Dragon Castle, he turns to his father's people, the Slovakians, for inspiration and tone. The American kids put a huge emphasis on knowledge and competence; the Slovakian one trusts more in intuition and guidance. The feel of their interior lives is very different.

Not that Prince Rashko eschews competence; although he values his intellect highly (especially since he views himself as the only member of his family with a functioning brain) he also lets the reader know that's he's a big, strong, athletic swordsman, just like his simple-minded brother. And despite his towering intellect, he also rarely sees through to the meanings of the folksy proverbs scattered about by his father and other mentors.

The bad guys were suitably menacing, from the casual cruelties of the retainers to the magical attacks of the visiting prince and his beautiful daughter. Although I suspected from the first that Rashko severely underestimated the comprehension of his relatives, I liked how the entire family loved, trusted, and respected each other even when using vastly different tactics. The frequent intermissions to show the legend of Prince Pavol and the founding of the castle help build the themes of the story without slowing down the suspense.

My seventh grader also liked the book; the dragon and castle cover with its gently creepy color scheme enticed him to pick it up a few weeks ago. I'll see if the fifth grader wants to try it. (Nope)

Cowboys Against the Man: Ghetto Cowboy

After a rocky start, I managed to fall completely into the story G. Neri spins in Ghetto Cowboy, a Middle Grade Fiction Cybils finalist.  Cole, a part-time seventh grader, falls into the world of Philadelphia urban horse fanatics when his mother dumps him on his absentee father at a moment's notice. This gives Neri the chance to explore this culture from the bottom up, since Cole is initially as disbelieving and cynical as the most curmudgeonly reader.

Actually, I enjoyed the sense of history the most -- as Neri explains in a final author's note, he based this story on real stables and events in Philadelphia, so the feel of the community's struggles to keep their horses, both because they love them and because they provide one of the few alternatives to drugs and failure for their kids.  The city authorities either ignore or actively undermine their efforts, withholding services capriciously and suddenly remembering long abandoned property rights.  Cole's story itself has a few giant leaps for me -- did his mom really have to plow down someone else's horse on her way out the door?  Was it necessary for Cole to immediately bond with a skittish horse? I suspect child-me wouldn't have blinked at either the melodrama of the love-at-first-sight between the city boy and Boo the wonder horse.  

Anyway, I recommend this book, but I can't help wishing I was reading it in the nonfiction finalist section instead.  I'll pass it on to the boys for their reaction.

Good Auntie: Bindi Babes

Nobody needs to feel sorry for Geena, Amber, and Jazz in Narinder Dhami's Bindi Babes; they have the best stuff, their teachers love them, and they pretty much get to set their own schedule.  OK, their mom died last year, but they don't think or talk about that.  Everything is going just fine, until their Auntie arrives from India and forces them to go to sleep on time, eat home cooked dinners, and maybe even talk to their dad on occasion.

This was a fun book that was more transparent to me as an adult than I would have noticed as a kid.  It was immediately obvious that the girls' father had retreated in his grief and that the three of them had bonded together in their dedication to looking good because they couldn't bear to admit how awful their mother's death made them feel.  It was an untouchable wound.  Likewise, their ingenuous plots to get rid of their Auntie were as obvious to me as to her, but not in a condescending or mean way.  The last chapter paid off particularly well, as several of the chance encounters that showed Auntie was more than she seemed came together in the high-stakes chase scene that had the girls racing down her well-marked path to keep her from flying away.

The shoes on the cover led me to pick this book from the shelf as part of my Reading My Library quest, and I hope they entice my niece as well; I'll offer this book to see how she likes it.

Diversity Club: Half World

The second book for Rachel Manija's permanent floating YA diversity book club was Half World by Hiromi Goto, which I got from the library on my NOOK.  Unfortunately this made it hard to share with my in-house YA, since he's not keen on electronic books and anyway I was hoarding my NOOK in a frantic effort to read books from all 50 States and from each continent and with authors and titles filling in every spot in the alphabet.  December is a crazy month for the Silly Reading Challenge addict.

Anyway, once the new year started I was free to read what I wanted, so I called up Goto's story and started reading.  For some reason I thought the main character was male, and I was pleasantly surprised to find Melanie the one called to save the world.  The mythos seemed very Roman Catholic -- people live in the world of flesh, and when they die they more to Half World where they process their worst experiences (sounds like purgatory) and then they ascend to Spirit World.  The pope probably wouldn't approve of the spirits eventually getting reincarnated back to Flesh world, though.  But something severed the worlds, and Melanie is the only one who can fix things.

She's a reluctant savior, bullied and neglected, and she only goes in to save her mother, who has been fading for years and finally dragged back to Half World.  Melanie has a few gifts to aid her: a magic 8-ball and a jade rat figurine that comes to life when needed.  The creatures in the dream-like Half World are straight out of the Narnian Island of dreams -- nightmarish and terrifying.  And the destruction of Glueman struck echos of Meg Wallace defeating IT with her love, although Melanie has the harder task of avoiding anger at the evil guy and eventually even finding compassion for him.

The ending was satisfactorily messy -- Melanie doesn't get her parents back, and she does end up with a lot of extra burdens, but she did save the worlds.  So she can go on, even if it wasn't fair.  This ending probably would have annoyed my YA, and his insomnia is bad enough without some of the images in this book, so I'm not too sorry he missed this installment, but I enjoyed it.  The writing impressed me, and I saw enough of the illustrations to realize that my NOOK was not the best platform to read this on.

2012 First Book: Archangel's Blade

After my last minute charge to finish all the challenges I signed up for in 2011, I turned today to a library book that had drifted overdue in that scramble.  The fourth book in Nalini Singh's Guild Hunter series, Archangel's Blade crosses the line back over from urban fantasy to paranormal romance, which I gather is Singh's usual nesting ground.  Previous books have followed guild hunter Eleni through her transformation into an archangel, complete with wings and a relationship with the top male archangel around.  I found those interesting as they stuck with Eleni for three books, exploring both her problems with her metamorphosis and the world with angels who can turn humans into ageless vampires, but only do so under strict legal contracts enforced by tough leather-wearing hunters like Eleni and Honor.

Honor, the new lead in this story, is recovering from a horrible kidnapping and torture fest that dragged on for months and has not yet regained her sexy edge.  Luckily Dmitri, the razor-sharp second-in-command to Eleni's mate, understands that it's time to stop coddling her and instead shock her into facing the world again, mostly by succumbing to his irresistible man-wiles.  Oh yeah, and hunting down all the vampires involved in her abuse and with a little side-line in capturing a serial killer distantly related to the evil lord who made Dmitri a vampire while destroying his family.  See -- she's helping him while he helps her, so they are partners. This combination of sex and violence helps Heal Honor's Wounds, but doesn't tell me a lot more about this society and also doesn't really give me interesting characters to care about, instead offering me a rather bland relationship and rather stock violent bad guys to horribly conquer.  There will probably be more Guild Hunter books, but I'll only read them if they jump out at me from the library New and Interesting Shelves, which I'm not even going to look at for the next four months anyway.

I did notice that the first book I've read has an alphabetical title (A_B_), tempting me to read a C next, but unfortunately library due dates determine my next few choices, so I can't read the alphabet this year.  It's a thought, though...

Alphabetically Scrambling to Finish off 2011

Things have been quiet around here as I try to finish up my last challenges while still celebrate the holidays with my family.  Now I'm holed up alone in my room chasing down the last few pages.

The A-Z challenge had a few leaves that were hard to shake from the tree, but I've finally knocked them down.  Coincidentally they also helped me round out the Global Reading Challenge, which was looking a bit anemic. During the holidays I've read the following on my NOOK, completing the A-Z challenge:

• Jasper Jones, Craig Silvey.  An Australian coming-of-age story where the narrator learns about the fronts put on by everyone around him, proving that he doesn't have to doubt himself if his own courage and self-confidence aren't always bone deep.  The twin mysteries of his parents' marriage and the murder of a school mate implicating the notorious Jasper Jones provide the lens focusing these revelations, as well as the minor bits of plot that accompany the journey of interior growth.  I also learned a lot about cricket.
• Wife of the Gods, Kwei Quartey.  Darko is a police detective in Ghana, where modern investigative techniques run parallel to rougher, simpler modes of justice, with magic and witchcraft lurking in the corners.  Darko's sense of fair place and justice stem from his own mother's disappearance, and the chance to solve a murder in his mother's home village also gives him the chance to peer into his own family's secrets.  An interesting glimpse into Ghana culture as well as a detective story.
• The Space Between Us, Thrity Umrigar.  Rich Parsis and poor Hindu workers may think that their friendship can transcend an employee-worker relationship, but the rich will betray the poor every time.  Poor and uneducated people always lose, and it's because their poverty leads them open to bad choices based on smaller understanding.
• One Man's Bible, Gao Xingjian.  Another book translated from Chinese that felt like it was written behind glass -- somehow I've never been able to connect with any I've tried.  It didn't help that women in this book were considered alien creatures there to either inspire lust or to fail miserably in that purpose.  The tricks with pronouns didn't illuminate much to me; the whole book felt false so the changing identities didn't resonate deeply.  The parts set in the past at least gave a sense of setting and reality, as opposed to the much vaguer parts in France or other western cities.  As a "fictionalized account" of the cultural revolution it worked better than as a "meditation on exile" and "the essence of writing" (from the B&N description.)

Electric Wind: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

William Kamkwamba grew up fearing magic and ghost planes while working on his father's farm.  He planned to start working hard at school as soon as he made the secondary grades, but unfortunately this meant his grades on the selection exam were poor and he was assigned to a low rated school.  Since Malawi is a poor country that struggles to supply even the top rated classes, this meant few textbooks and crumbling facilities.  When famine struck the farmers in 2002, school fees became impossible as the family gave up eating more than once a day or the chance of growing a cash crop.

 Refusing to relinquish his dreams of an education, William turned to a local library in hopes of learning at home until he could return to classes.  Finding books on electricity, he decided to build a windmill to provide power to light his house, and eventually to bring irrigation to his family's farm.  Enduring ridicule as he picked through junk yards and trash heaps for materials (even a few feet of copper wire overpowered his minuscule budget) he slowly assembled both the windmill (never before seen in his village) and the generator to transform the wind into electricity.  Soon his household was the only one with a steady source of light, and his cell phone charger because a neighborhood attraction.  Fame and (very modest) fortune followed a TED conference appearance; the last few chapters detail the difference this has brought to his family and village and prospects.

Brian Mealer helped write The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (William barely spoke English as he taught himself physics from a British science book), but the voice sounds authentically young.  Brian's website talks about how he worked to bring William's story to life, even mentioning how he took notes and charged his laptop with the titular windmill. The story of William's Edisonian efforts to find scraps to fit the needs of his invention is inspiring and real, making look at my own slacker kids with jaded eyes.  (Good thing I can't look at myself with those eyes!)

Short takes

Some books I've read but don't really have much to say about, so I'll pile them all in together to make a Friday post:

Slave Empire: Prophecy by T.C. Southwell reads like a NaNoWriNo novel; it never looks back even when it detours, clunky passages remain, and emotional detours don't make sense.  It's offered as a free teaser so I tried it on my NOOK, but I won't go back for more.

Y:Last Man 3: One Small Step by Brian Vaughan:  If someone is telling me a story, I want to trust in their choices of character and details.  This whole book is about people who don't really matter  -- the male astronauts who end up dieing trying to return to earth.  It looks like I could have skipped it and not missed anything important to the Last Man story line.  Humph.  But my kid is now into these, so I'll order up the next.

Summer's Crossing (Julie Kagawa): Barnes and Nobles had this in their free-for-the-NOOK section, and I've been eyeing the Iron Fey series for a while.  I bounced off some earlier books by Kagawa so I've been hesitating, and this novella seemed a good way to stick my toe in.  I liked the fey court described and the interactions between Robin Goodfellow and his friends and/or enemies, and I think I'll go after the longer books now.

Effective Curriculum for Underserved Gifted Students, Tamra Stambough: This thin book written for teachers discusses the problems with recognizing and then effectively teaching gifted children from poor or ethnic families.  Gifted programs in general tend to under-represent children from African American, Hispanic, immigrant and Native American populations, and in a related fashion also see fewer poor kids than expected. Chapters also address various curriculum and the research that show their effectiveness for gifted children, especially for the children from unorthodox backgrounds.  The vocabulary and phrasing definitely aim this book at teaching professionals rather than laymen, and I found it more useful as an overview of the field than for any specific recommendations or practices.  Thanks to LibraryThing's Early Readers for sending me a copy.

Night World 2, L.J. Smith: I'm never sure to whether to count this as one book or three -- the three books included are clearly separate novels set in the same world.  Anyway, all three books (Dark Angel, The Chosen and Soulmate), features strong women facing hard decisions complicated by finding their True Love, who tends to have a minor defect like being an evil vampire or something.  But these girls are tough enough to find a solution.  Good books to sit next to the Twilight stories, with less adult squeamishness about "the message."