The Exiles: so much better than the cover!

Dear Annie,

Spring is finally arriving, but it's fall book ordering season in my world.  I've been reading lots of books about Santa and dreidels the past few weeks.  By chance, in the middle of all that, I discovered that a book that I'd believed to be long out of print is alive and well.  Well, but cursed with what may be The Worst Cover Ever for a children's book.

The Exiles is another four-sister book, this one by Hilary McKay, author of the wonderful Saffy's Angel and sequels.  Even more than Saffy, this one is all in the characters.  The Conroy sisters are sent to the seaside for the summer to live with their grandmother while the parents renovate their house.  The two older sisters (Naomi and Ruth) find it difficult to do anything but read books constantly; the younger two (Phoebe and Rachel) love a good book, but also manage some imaginative mischief. 

Their grandmother -- called by all Big Grandma -- puts them on a regimen of outdoor activities, chores, and no books.  The girls are not enthusiastic.

There were plenty of reasons why she should be called Big Grandma.  For a start she was very tall and muscly, and she ate a lot.  Also, she wore men's pajamas and drank whiskey at bedtime.  In a lot of ways she was huge.  Her house was very big, too; even the toilet was higher than ordinary people's toilets.  It had a wooden seat which always felt warm, and by Monday morning Naomi had decided that the only thing she really liked about Big Grandma's house was the toilet seat.

Big Grandma sees the girls' escape into reading as anti-social, and she's determined that they find other ways to engage themselves.  Slowly, of course, they all adapt to country life even as they resist it.

All by herself Phoebe [age 6] had acquired a new hobby.  It was her own invention.  Nobody had helped her, nobody but Phoebe would even have thought of it.  You filled a bucket with water, tied a bit of string on the end of a stick, held the stick over the water, and there you were.  Fishing in a bucket.  The total hopelessness of the activity was very soothing.  It was the perfect sport.  Without the emotional stresses of success and failure, she was entirely free to enjoy the pleasure of the moment. 

After a hike in which she is immobilized by fear of heights, Naomi (11) sneaks back to the high spot, willing herself to overcome the fear, and falls and breaks her arm.  She trudges back to the house and the swirl of breakfast conversation around her as she repeats four times, "I've broken my arm" before she is heard, distills the chaos of the family.  The reader feels her pain, but still has to laugh.

McKay creates completely believable characters all of whom can be intensely annoying and yet children one would want as friends.  The sisters' constant search for reading material -- cookbooks are read and re-read, Shakespeare is the only volume that's rejected -- continues through the summer.  Slowly the reader takes in that it's all a grand plan on Big Grandma's part. 

Big Grandma becomes more likable, but maintains her crusty aspects.  The night after Naomi breaks her arm, Big Grandma sleeps in her room:

  "D'you mind if I put the light on and read?"
  "Very much indeed," said Big Grandma.  "Try counting sheep jumping over a gate."
  "I don't know what sheep look like jumping over a gate.  I didn't know they could jump."
  "Try it."
   Naomi tried it for a few minutes.  "They keep bashing their knees," she said eventually.  "Big Grandma?"
  Big Grandma dragged herself awake again.
  "D'you think this house is haunted?  Ruth does."
  Big Grandma made an enormous concession, recognizing that if Naomi did not have something to take her mind off her broken arm she was quite liable to lie awake and talk all night.
  "I suppose it might be a little bit haunted!"
  "Is it?"
  "Perhaps a bit," repeated Big Grandma grudgingly.  "In a manner of speaking.  A rather flamboyant manner of speaking, and not strictly true."

It's a delightful book, and a perfect summertime read.

Love,

Deborah

After Harry Potter: good (and different) books

Dear Annie,

Funny you should be writing about the BabyLit books now.  Just last week a customer came in saying her 6 year-old insisted on being Anna Karenina for Book Character Day because she loved reading Will's favorite BabyLit book to her baby sister.  Go figure.

Hi, I'm back from a hiatus of sorts.  The always-interesting Cyd has sent us a question I couldn't resist.  Rebekah -- 7 years old?  almost 8? -- plowed through all of Harry Potter recently.  So Cyd wants to know:

...what to read next?  What can I give her that won't feel like a huge let-down after those enormous HP volumes, that fully realized world? It doesn't need to be fantasy - in fact, she's not particularly into fantasy - but I want something just as rich. I think of some of the things I loved at her age - Edward Eager, E. Nesbit, - but they feel so much less compared to HP. I think she's a little young for Cynthia Voigt; I have read her all of Frances Hodgson Burnett; I have read her all (yes, ALL) of Louisa May Alcott; I am reading her much of L.M. Montgomery. She really likes historical fiction and for Hanukkah I bought her a 30-volume set of My Story books, which is the British version of the My America books (which she had already ripped her way through), and they are decent books but they're not Harry.

When one's child is doing amazing things -- in reading or any other endeavor -- she doesn't have to have a steady diet of the same kind of amazing.  Just as adults vary what they read, kids like to do that too.  As you know, we read the unabridged Les Miserables to Lizzie (at her insistence) when she was in second grade.  The following year she fell in love with the Animorphs series and charged through about 12 of them before abruptly dropping them and moving on to other things that I'm sure her parents liked better.  Variety is a great thing in all our lives.

So Cyd, I'm interpreting your query as looking for good stuff Rebekah can immerse herself in next.  So here are a bunch of authors worth sampling.

These four, like J.K. Rowling, wrote series in which one returns to beloved characters in successive books, seeing how they're growing up and their worlds are changing.

Hilary McKay wrote Saffy's Angel and its sequels.  Plots and themes abound in these books, but what makes them special is the four children of the eccentric Casson family.  One goes on to book after book to find out how these friends are doing.

When it came out, I wasn't immediately taken with Jeanne Birdsall's
The Penderwicks.  It felt like it was trying a little to hard to have an old-fashioned feel: a family of four girls (oh. you probably already know this one, Cyd) having wholesome adventures on summer vacation while still missing their dead mother.  But talking with kids over the years, and seeing how many come back for the sequels -- #4 is due out on Tuesday -- has changed my mind.  I gave an advance copy of the book to a wonderful family one of whose children dressed at The Penderwicks: the book for Halloween.  They talked with me about the excitement of opening the book and catching up with the characters, who are now old friends.  It sounded so much like our family's experience with the Harry Potter books -- it was really moving.

Madeleine L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time and sequels has more of what Cyd calls the "fully realized world."  You did a lovely blog on them here.

Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons books feature children from three different families who have summertime adventures in England and Scotland in the 1930s.  They have everything to do with kids and boats and elaborate games of imagination.

I would encourage Cyd and Rebekah to pick up E. Nesbit and Edward Eager again.  They're both delightful, and they spend a lot of time -- with a heavy dose of humor -- on siblings in large families.  Eleanor loved the Half Magic series almost four years ago, but if she were to revisit those books now, she'd get lots more out of them.  Just as Rebekah may end up with the thrill of discovery all over again if she picks up Harry Potter when she's 12.  E. Nesbit is viewed as a seminal writer of 20th century children's literature because she wrote about realistic relationships among family members.  My favorite of her magical books is Five Children and It, in which everything that can go wrong with a wish does.  But the one our entire family loved best was
The Railway Children, the story of city children who move with their mother to the countryside after their father is falsely accused of spying.

The Prydain Chronicles -- starting with The Book of Three -- by Lloyd Alexander could be a lot of fun for  Rebekah.  They're loosely based on Welsh mythology.  Harry Potter incorporates elements of lots of mythology of the British Isles -- she might find some familiar stories.  The current Book of Three paperback has a scary image that I've found turns some kids off.  The book isn't as creepy as the picture.

And while we're adventuring, don't forget Robert Louis Stevenson.  Treasure Island is still a great read.

Moving closer to the twenty-first century, I suspect Rebekah would connect with Sharon Creech's books.  Walk Two Moons is her best-known, and spectacular -- it has a lot to do with characters telling each other stories.  Mona and Lizzie's favorite was Bloomability, about a lower-middle class girl who ends up in a Swiss boarding school for a year, completely out of her element, and figures out what's important in people and in life.

 And last, there's some contemporary historical fiction.  Has Rebekah tried any books by Karen Cushman yet?  Here's a complete list: most of them are set in medieval or Elizabethan times.  She's probably best known for The Midwife's Apprentice, which won a Newbery medal.  Most of her main  characters are children who have been rejected by the people who should be caring for them.  They learn to make their own way in the world, often with the help/supervision of unlikely adults.

I hope there are some surprises in this list.  Enjoy!

Love,

Deborah

My First Kiss

Dear Annie,

The other week, as I was walking down the street near the store, a customer greeted me warmly and gave me a kiss.  "Saffy's Angel!" she said. "Thank you for her" -- gesturing to her ten-or-so year-old daughter -- "and thank you for me."

I've been selling kids' books for more than ten years now, but this was the first time I've ever received a kiss for a good recommendation.  And
Saffy's Angel is a spectacular book, definitely worthy of such high praise.  It's one of those books aimed at "middle grades" -- third or fourth to sixth or seventh grades.  But as the mother in question amply proved, it's a wonderful book at any age.  Written by Hilary McKay in 2001, it won the Whitbread Children's Book Award in England -- their Newbery Medal equivalent.

It's a very moving story, but the thing that makes it so special are the wonderful eccentric characters, each lovingly portrayed.  There's plenty of real emotional turmoil, and there's also a fair amount of hilarity.  Eve and Bill Casson have four children, named Cadmium (Caddy), Saffron, Indigo, and Permanent Rose.  Saffy has always been told their names come from the color chart that hangs on the kitchen wall (both parents are artists).  But when she's eight and finally reads it, she discovers saffron isn't there.  This leads to the long-overdue revelation that she is actually her siblings' cousin, daughter of the mother's twin sister who lived in Italy and was killed in a car accident when Saffy was three.  Saffy trudges on through life feeling slightly detached from her loving family, and with a fairly sizable chip on her shoulder.

The main action of the book takes place about five years later.  Rose is in kindergarten, resenting its structured days, Indigo spends much of his time sitting in his second-floor window, trying to overcome his fear of heights, and Caddy has a crush on Michael, her driving instructor.  Our family first discovered Saffy's Angel on audio.  The CD is out of print now, but I strongly recommend finding it in a library -- it hits all the right notes.  Driving lessons were especially well read.  In this one, Indigo and Rose have come along:

     "Which way  at the rotary?" Caddy asked peacefully.
     "Right.  Sorry, I was forgetting.  You're in the wrong lane!  Signal! Don't barge in front . . . there . . . missed the road . . . take no notice of him honking . . . you can't stop here!  Go round again!"
     Caddy went around again and managed to take the right road the next time, frightening Michael, Indigo, Rose, and a truck driver in the process.
     "I can't believe you just did that," said Michael.
     "That was very, very brave," agreed Rose, unclamping her fingers from the edge of the seat.  "Zipping in front of that enormous truck.  I'm sorry I screamed."
     "Perfectly natural reaction," said Michael.  "Have you seen those cyclists ahead, Cadmium?"
     "No. Oh, yes.  Sorry.  Shut my eyes for a moment."
     "Can you drive with your eyes shut?" inquired Rose, with great interest.
     "No. No, I can't.  Missed.  Good."
     "Missed what?" Michael asked.
     "The cyclists."
     Michael put a hand on the steering wheel and said Caddy should take the next turn on the left and then pull up and park.
     Caddy pulled into a bus stop and thirteen people waved her away.  Rose waved back.

They're all a little daffy, but they all understand the important things in life. Their beloved but addled grandfather dies, and a note on his will leads Saffy on a quest to find a stone angel.  She finds a new friend who ultimately helps with the search.  But the moment of making friends is one Saffy wants to keep to herself:

     She knew quite well what would happen the moment she let Sarah meet her family.  She would lose her.  Sarah was just the sort of person that Caddy and Indigo and Rose would like.  They would make friends immediately.  Then Eve would come out of her shed and be sweet and useless and friendly, and she would like Sarah too.  And sooner or later Bill would reappear from London and be efficient and handsome and make excellent jokes.  Sarah would be swept away on a wave of Casson charm.
     Saffron had lost her grandfather only the week before.  She had lost her family twice -- the first time in Italy, and the second time when she discovered her name was not on the paint chart.  She seemed to have been losing people all her life, and she had no intention of losing the first proper friend she had ever made.

Sarah and Saffy end up going in one direction to solve the mystery of the angel, and Saffy's siblings try something else.  Ultimately the search is what heals her, and pulls her back into the family again.  It's great.

McKay has written four sequels to Saffy.  They're all quite good, and the reader has that wonderful warmth of being back with characters one knows and loves.  But Saffy is without doubt the best.

Love,

Deborah