Amalee by Dar Williams

Yes I definetly should have read this before Lights, Camera, Amalee.  It develops Amalee's father's friends better, and would have helped me like them a bit more the second time around.  Still, I feel like having four of them is unneccessary.  One part I loved is when she recounts the story of when her mom left when she was an infant.  Her dad felt like she deserved a stable home to be raised in and considered adoption, but those friends assured him that he could do it, and they would fill in the gaps.  So that was sweet.

What I liked most about this book is the main character Amalee.  At 11, she is younger than most protagonists I read about coming of age.  But she doesn't reach some unrealistic maturity in the course of this book..  In fact she goes on to grow more in her second book, but she learns some important things about herself and her friends in this story.  I thought this aspect was thoughtfully written, and it felt familiar to how I remember feeling in 6th grade.

"I didn't mind what we were studying, even, but I was in middle school now, which meant less colors, less friendliness, and more meanness.  And there was another problem.  I was meaner, too.  Or I felt meaner."

The subtle examples Amalee gives about her new meanness center around not sticking up for other kids, going along with mean girls, and just not being brave enough to speak her mind.  I can really remember those couple of years when I felt that way.  Where the fear of drawing the negative attention to yourself is so real, that you let things slide that you really don't want to. 

"I wasn't sure if I'd make it through the day.  I decided to pretend I was a river rock, letting the river of whatever hard words I heard today wash over me."

I thought this was a good book.  I'd recommend it for 12 and up.  Probably mostly appeals to girls.
You can read it in an afternoon, it's only 180 pages, pretty large type.

Plus I think Dar Williams is cool and she did a good job turning her lyric writing skills into young adult novels.  Woohoo!

The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry

OH Lois Lowry.  When I was little I loved her Anastasia series, in college I read Number the Stars, and in book club, The Giver.  What a range of successful books!  Of course she's written a million more. And, I loved this one too. 

The Willoughbys is a fun story about four "old fashioned" kids who are very aware of the archetype of orphans in literature.  The whole thing is written satirically, but its really light and fun!  I think it is hilarious, and my 10-year-old loved it too.

There are four Willoughby siblings.  The oldest is Tim, and he creates these games that his siblings play unwillingly. 
"The Willoughby children were seated on the front steps playing a complicated game to which only Tim knew the rules."  It involves having to move down a step for asking a question, being a dodo, or disagreeing.  Another game is this abstract awarding or deducting of points.  We have a running joke about that with our kids, so I thought it was especially funny.

Next are twin brothers who share the same name and have only one sweater between them.  When they mention to their mom that they might like another sweater, she says, "It's disgusting the way children today all want their own sweaters."  At the same time she is knitting a sweater for the cat.  And finally, sweet little Jane who gets the brunt of it all.  When her parents leave them with a nanny, they forget to mention they even have a 4th child.

I love this sentiment, "Let us not waste time with tears and useless expostulations," Nanny told them. "What if this were a story in a book with a well-worn maroon leather binding? What would good old-fashioned people do in this situation?"  Awesome.

I loved how Lois Lowry uses big words, but includes her own glossary in the back. I wish she mentioned it at the beginning because I bet kids won't look at it.  Here's an excerpt:
"MALEVOLENT means wanting to harm others or having an evil influence.  Even though if you glance quickly at the word, it may look like "male violent," this word has nothing to do with males.  It is actually pronounced mah-LEV-oh-lent.  Some females are very malevolent."

She also includes a little bibliography of "Books of the past that are heavy on piteous but appealing orphans, ill-tempered and stingy relatives, magnanimous benefactors, and transformations wrought by winsome children."

Read this, you'll like it.

Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermeister

I liked Joy for Beginners for the same reasons I liked The School of Essential Ingredients.  The writing is pretty, the characters interesting and each chapter leaves you feeling like you've learned something about them and life in general. 

The premise this time is that Kate has gathered her friends for a victory party and to thank them for their support as she fought breast cancer.  "Kate looked at the women around her.  It was an incongruous group--it reminded Kate of a collection of beach rocks gathered over time."  As they encourage her to white water raft the Grand Canyon with her daughter, she challenges each of them to do one thing that they are afraid of,that she picks out.  At first it seemed a little cheesy that she would know what specific thing they need to do to grow or overcome.  BUT if you think about the hours they spent visiting with and supporting her, it feels real that she would have a sense of what they need.

I enjoyed several of the chapters.  I liked the way the characters intertwine, and you figure out how everyone is connected as you read their stories.  There are romantic ones, sad ones and funny ones.

There are sentences that ring so true with me, like a comment on pulling a book down from the bookshelf to re-read, "Open the pages and be caught in the memories of the person she had been when she first read it."  I know exactly how that feels.  It's hard for me to revise my feelings about a book when I read it again because the first impact is always the most powerful.

Or, "Adults need to have fun so children will want to grow up." I love that.  We want our kids to think that their life will just keep getting better, instead of showing them a bleak future in our unhappiness.

And in reference to returning home after sitting with Kate during her cancer treatments, "Afterward, Sara would go home and hold her children, as many as she could fit on her lap, as long as they would stay."  Even re-reading it makes me cry.

"Hadley entered the living room; Sara saw her and merely nodded, any personal need to apologize for the bedlam of her household long gone in the fog of her exhaustion."  I'm grateful that I've passed those years of tiny baby-no sleep craziness.

"Her daughter's voice came across the line, lit with excitement. 'I'm going to have a baby!' But you are a baby, Marion opened her mouth to say. I'm still holding you in my arms."

I also like Bauermeister's use of the English language: "Clarity broke like a plate on the floor."  It is such a perfect simile because the shocking thing is said over dinner in a restaurant, and you can almost image that someone hearing it might drop their piece of china.

And, "The little girl was talking happily, the flow of her words bright and shiny, like candy falling from a pinata."

I think the final chapter of Kate taking the rafting trip with her daughter was meant to be cumulative, to be the big finish that ties it all together.  But for me it was my least favorite chapter.  It felt too forced, too trite.  The other chapters felt more original and fresh.  And the swimming part was just too obvious and stereotypical. 

I can't decide which of these two Erica Bauermeister's books I liked the most, but if you like one, I'll bet you'll like the other.

Underdog by Marcus Zusak

So this is the first book Mr. Zusak wrote, and I think it's OK.   It's recently been released in the US with the next two books that resolve around the same brothers.

For me it really feels like a short story.  It follows an obvious literary format,  climax, denoument, etc. But overall it's not a super eventful action-packed story.

Cameron is a loser, he tells his story in a self-deprecating way.  He and his brother are bored, poor, and end up getting into trouble without even trying very hard.  He wants to do better, to be better.  He says at the beginning that, "A happening was looming.  It was out there somewhere beyond the regular enclosed life that I had been living."

I like his writing style, it feel efforless and smart, but it's definetly stream of conscious, so if that bugs you this will too.  Several chapters include dreams.  I think they are poetic and that teenagers would love to try to interpret them, but they didn't add a lot to the story for me.

"The pages and words are my world, spread out before your eyes and for your hands to touch."

I'm interested enough to read the next one, but it didn't amaze me.

Lights, Camera, Amalee by Dar Williams

So I was in the Juvenile section of my library and this little gem was propped up with it's cover facing out, and I got excited to see Dar Williams as the author!  I hadn't thought of her much since college, but a woman who can write an awesome song like The Babysitter's Here, must be able to tell a good story, right? (Although for the record, I like your version best, CCW).

This is the story of the summer between 7th and 8th grade when Amalee decides to make a movie about endangered species.  She was inspired by English teacher, and their end of the year project. He says, "You have many stories ahead of you.  Tell them with creativity, clarity, and integrity."

Maybe it was just my mood, but I did kind of fall for this book.  I found the adult friends of Amalee who are supposed to be these amazing people who have helped raise her to be very annoying.  There were 4 and it was hard to keep track, and to really feel like they were all necessary.  BUT I found out after I finished that there was an original Amalee, and maybe if I had read that first I would have been attached to these characters.  You know how sometimes the second book kind of assumes stuff?

It took me a while, but at about 100 pages in I was taken with Amalee and I think we can all relate to that 12-year-oldness where you feel these big grown-up emotions but you don't really know what to do with them.  Or who your real friends are, and you want to be cool and pretty and smart, you know what I mean, right?  So that part felt very Dar Williams, and I did buy into it.  I liked it.

I thought the writing was good, not amazing.  Here are some sentences I liked:

"It was like Mr. Chapelle's assignment; their silence had a language of its own."

"Thanks, Kyle," I said, trying to sound close to sixteen.

"I'd stopped being friends with Ellen and Hallie--or maybe they had stopped being friends with me-- but they still visited my mind from time to time when I was wearing pants that felt too tight or I had an idea that felt stupid."

"From what I could tell, she didn't stand out in her classes for being smart.  She wasn't an athlete, she definitely wasn't funny, and she probably still wasn't particularly nice, but I wanted her to feel like she fit in the world, because who was I to say she didn't?"

 
My favorite part of the book is how the movie she is making gives her the chance to repair old insults, strengthen her friendships, and really figure out some things about herself.  At the beginning it felt forced how all the adults jump on board and give her advice and guidance, and even the research at first feels too tidy.  But like I mentioned before somehow it all came together for me and worked.

Now I've got to go look up the first book!

As Easy as Falling Off the Face of the Earth By Lynne Rae Perkins

I don't remember how I came across this title, but I suggested it to my 12-year-old who needed to find literary devices in a novel.  It is full of metaphors, hyperboles, similies, etc.  When I talked to him about it he said he didn't really like it.  He thought it was kind of boring.  But we both agreed that there are so many mysteries you want to finish the book.

The story begins with Ry, who is travelling on a train to summer camp.  His parents are vacationing in the Caribbean, and his grandpa is housesitting.  Of course they have just moved into a new house, so he doesn't really know his neighbors or have friends at his new location.  He has just discovered that the camp is no longer going to be held, and he is desperately trying to get in touch with someone to figure out what to do.  While he's trying to get a cell phone signal, the train leaves without him, and the adventure begins.

I think Lynne Rae Perkins has a unique writing style.  I liked her clever chapter titles and intermittant illustrations.  But the story was kind of too much for me.  Everything that could go wrong does.  Ships sink, cell phones are left, cars break down.  And ultimately, Ry makes decisions over and over again that I think are crazy!  As a partent it's hard to get past him accepting rides from strangers, sleeping in crummy conditions or cutting of his lifejacket!  I would have thought it would be more appealing to younger readers, but as mentioned above, my son found it boring too.  She won a Newberry medal for another book she wrote, so I might pick it up sometime out of curiousity to see if it was just her subject that bugged me.

Has anyone else read this?  I saw some glowing reviews that kind of surprised me.  I think it's one to skip.

My Name is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira

Mary Sutter is a midwife, who has been trained by her mother, and is the best around.  She also wants to be a surgeon, but no one will accept her to medical school or let her apprentice.  But the civil war has just begun and so she leaves to be a nurse.  What follows is an informative story about the horrible conditions and lack of supplies medics worked under during those times.

The book is also the story of the Sutter family who is grieving the loss of their father.  Their interactions and decisions move the story.  Mary, her twin sister Jenny, younger brother Christian and her mother Amelia live in Albany together.  Mary is a like able character, and you do empathize with her family members.  But it almost felt like there was just too much going on to really pick favorites or decide which character you liked best.

The story is told by an omniscient narrator, which allows you to have insight into the thoughts and motivations of several characters.  I liked this, but again, I felt like I had a lot of information, and I didn't fall in love with anyone.  Even so, I enjoyed the book, I liked the characters, and I felt compelled to keep reading.

Mary is spunky, as she challenges a doctor who won't apprentice her, "In your opinion, is there a limit to how much knowledge one person is allowed to accumulate?  Have I reached my quota?"

I love it.

As Mary reflects how after the hard work of birth, she doesn't remember the horrors, but "the gasp of love when at last the mother encircled the infant in her arms."

If you like historical fiction, I think you'll like this book.  I remember reading little books about Clara Barton and Florence Nightengale when I was a kid.  This is a great expansion of those little snippets I learned.  I love the glimpses into the doctors who were really figuring things out.  Trying to solve the mysteries of the human body and to save lives. 

I liked the choices that Mary made.  She had been brought up in comfort, but had worked tirelessly as a midwife.  She didn't take no for an answer, or accept her current life as the only one available to her.  Instead she worked hard.  She did what no one else wanted to do, and ultimately it paid off. 

One complaint about the story....men keep falling in love with Mary.  She's not pretty, they are quick to point out, but there's something about her.  I think this is kind of annoying.  I'm starting to feel like it's a common theme.  Remember how Jane Eyre is like that?

This is my current theory.  The women who write these books, and maybe those of us who read them, want to believe that being clever, skilled, educated, all of these things is more attractive to men then outward beauty.  Which I think is true in real life.  But the way it is written, it feels phony, in the same way falling in love at first site feels forced.

There's a great conversation, which is kind of a turning point because the Doctor is taking her seriously instead of being delicate around her.  He says, "You want to be a surgeon?  To be a surgeon is to look a man in the eye and tell him the truth.  If you can't do that, then get out of here.  Go home.....It is all butchery. Every bit of it."  Then, "Choose who you are, choose who you'll be."

The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister

I'm just going to preface my review with the fact that I read this entire book in sunny, sunny California.  Most of it while sitting or laying in the sand by the ocean, with NO kids.  It was the perfect setting for this book.  I totally believe in books fitting your mood, and maybe if I was in my normal life chaos, I might not have been as taken in.
That being said, I really liked this book!  The premise is very creative, and allows the book to read more like short stories than a novel.  Each chapter follows one member of a cooking class.  Not just any cooking class, but these amazing ones taught by Lillian who gets food, and seeks to teach her class about "Essential Ingredients."  The first chapter gives us a glimpse into her sad childhood, and perspective into her love affair with cooking.  "It was the cooking that occurred in her friends' homes that fascinated Lillian."

The food is described romantically.  I can't think of a word that fits it better.  "The flavor opened like a flower across his tongue, soft and sweet."  And, "the sauce, an untouched snowfield, its smell the feeling of quiet at the end of an illness."  See what I mean?  And I love this description, "he was full of philosophy, his favorite class of the previous term, reciting passages of Plato and Kant as if they had just been written and he the first to find them."  I love that kind of passion for knowledge or litereature.

As the characters cook with each other, they support and love one another.  This can sometimes feel contrived, but I bought into it.  They pass on the things they know to each other.  "Life is beautiful.  Some people just remind you of that more than others." 

Isabelle, the oldest student, is dealing with losing her memory.  She describes, "Our bodies carry our memories of them, in our muscles, in our skin, in our bones.  My children are right here.' She pointed to the inside curve of her elbow. 'Where I held them when they were babies.  Even if there comes a time when I don't know who they are anymore, I believe I will feel them here.'  She's talking to a younger man who is grieving, and I thought it was a sweet exchange.

I liked it from the beginning.  The writing is smart, and the characters are interesting and real, if a little romanticized.

Erica Bauermeister lives in Seattle, and this book is set in the Northwest, without disclosing a specific city that I remember.  If you live here too, you know how true this is:  "It was a clear, cold evening in early February, the end of a miraculously blue day blown in from the north like a celebration.  People in the Northwest tended to greet such weather with a child's sense of joy."  That's exactly how it was here yesterday!

Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons

This is a short little volume that is told in a unique narrative style.  Ellen is the main character and as she tells her tragic life story, she switches from present to past, to a more recent past and around and around.  As a reader you're not sure of the timeline and how long different periods last.  There are two Christmases, but I imagine the whole story takes place over about 18 months.  It is set in the rural South, I would have thought in like the 1950's, but then there is a reference to the 60's, so my best guess is mid 1970's.

I liked it pretty well.  I think maybe it would be better suited for studying in school where you could discuss how the narrative added to or distracted from the story.  You could have students create their own timeline and piece together what is going on.  I can imagine good book club discussions about it.

The story itself is very sad.  Ellen is 10 then 11 and her mom dies first, her father is a monster and alternately treats her horribly or just neglects her.  She is of course a resilient character and works hard to make things work out.  Every family member who takes her in is bad to her. 

"Everything was so wrong like somebody had knocked something loose and my family was shaking itself to death.  Some wild ride broke and the one in charge strolled off and let us spin and shake and fly off the rail."

Ulitmately, she saves herself and it has a happy ending.  In such a short time you do see growth and more understanding in Ellen.  I liked her as a character. 

"Have you ever felt like you could cry because you know you just heard the most important thing anybody in the world could have spoke at that second?"

 
Has anyone else read it?  It's only 126 pages long, and I read it in just a couple hours.

Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George

I can't remember how I found Bookshop Talk, but I've found some good book recommendations there.  They have a really good variety of books reviewed, and most of the time I have never heard of them.  One review I read was for Princess of the Midnight Ball, and Jessica Day George is one of the hosts of the website.  So I was curious, and ready for something quick and easy after The Winter Sea and Jane Eyre.

I enjoyed this book!  It is a re-telling of the Grimm fairytale of the Twelve Dancing Princesses.  All I know about the story I learned from the Barbie movie that my daughter has checked out from the library a few times.  So I don't know how much is fairytale and how much is the author's imagination.  Either way I think this was a fun, simple story.  It is written for upper elementary grades, so there isn't a lot of character development, and many of them are stereotypes.  But that's what I expect in a fairytale.

Galen is the hero of the book.  He has just fought in a war and lost his whole family.  He travels to a relative's house where he is employed to work as an undergardener at the palace.  The princesses mysteriously wear out their dancing shoes during the night, but can't tell anyone why.  As a reader, we are slowly let in on the curse that binds them.  I like how it is revealed a bit at a time.

I like Galen's character.  He adapts quickly to his new situation and does his best to help others.  "Here, though, was an intriguing new word.  A world of thinning, mulching, bandaging, grafting, and pruning--it was like building fortifications against an enemy invader."

I liked Jessica Day George's writing style, "She held the flowers to her stuffy nose and tried to breathe in some of the scent.  Only the faintest trickle of the flowers' perfume came through, so she gently stroked her cheek with the soft petals instead, savoring the exquisite feeling."

If you like fairytales, I would recommend this book.  I think my daughter will love it in a couple of years.