Guest blogger: Hedgehogs and Mice

Dear Aunt Debbie,

Helen Oxenbury's illustrations are so joyful!  We're Going on a Bear Hunt has inspired a number of happy moments of charging forward in our family, too.

As I charge on with my portfolios, here's our regular guest blogger Holly, mother of Eleanor's good friend Ian, on their current adventure reading:

I prefer to wait out a series -- tv, movie or book -- until it is complete and then have a wonderful binge. You would think I would have learned from the rollercoaster of emotions I feel toward George RR Martin not to dabble with unfinished series again, but we seem to have fallen for two children's series which have left us uncertain about the fates of several small mammals we've become attached to.

The first series is The Six Crowns by Allan Jones, illustrated by Gary Chalk. I was dubious at first because the verse that describes the titular six crowns is really lame: 

Six are they, the Badgers' crowns.
If power ye seek, they must be found.
Crystal, iron, and flaming fire --
Gather them, if ye desire.
Ice and wood and carven stone --
The power they give
Is yours
Alone.

However, once you work out the bizarre cosmology of the Sundered Lands (islands floating in air, Six Crowns of the Badgers of Power) it becomes a very fun, never a dull moment adventure quest led by a fabulously morally questionable but terrifically gutsy girl hedgehog, Esmeralda, and the reluctant homebody hero hedgehog, Trundle. Here's how she gets him what she has decided is his hero's sword:

Esmeralda came to a skidding halt, leaning back and hefting the cobblestone. She let it fly. There was a chime and clash of smashing glass, and almost before Trundle knew what was going on, she had reached in through the broken window of Honesty Skanks Gold Star Pawnshop and had grabbed hold of the sword. ... Esmeralda pushed the sword into Trundle's hands "I should have thought of this from the start! It would have saved us a lot of bother!"

There are really nasty pirates and lots of fighting and explosions. I wouldn't have thought that Ian would be able to take the scariness level but we zoomed through all three of the series that are available so far. Maybe when hedgehogs are in danger it's less of a deal breaker?

Our family fell for another furry hero in the book, The Song of the Winns: The Secret of the Ginger Mice by Frances Watts. The first book is all we can find, although it seems like the others may have come out in Australia.

The main characters are four young mice living in a world where due to a complex political backstory they find that they are sought by the Queen. The kids are allied with an underground resistance movement, FIG (Free and Independent Gerander) which would likely lead to some interesting discussions of real life politics in an older child than Ian.  What gripped him was the Huck Finn feel of the book -- two of the mice actually escape down a river on a raft. On the journey you feel you actually get to know each character and watch their relationships to each other develop. So often in kid's adventure books I find I have to differentiate the characters myself by giving one a funny voice. Even the villians are complex and interesting. This is a book I looked forward to reading every night and which Ian agreed with us upon. I look forward to Book Two and Three as well!

Holly

And love from me,

Annie

Don't judge a book by its cover

Dear Aunt Debbie,

Believe it or not, I had never heard of the Moomintrolls before reading your post earlier this week.  I read it at work (Election Day professional development!), made some comment aloud, and was pounced on by my friend and colleague, and our guest blogger, Mark.  Mark fervently loves the Moomintrolls, and has promised to bring in some of Tove Jansson's books for me to borrow.  I'm looking forward to it.

Back home, we're deep into another wild, gripping chapter book which you sent Eleanor quite a little while ago, but which we hadn't picked up until this week: Eric Linklater's The Wind on the Moon.

The reason we hadn't yet read it is mildly embarrassing, given that I'm a big reader and an English teacher to boot.  It was because of the cover.

It's not like it's a bad-looking cover.  It looks...sweet.  Looking at this cover, you might imagine that the long novel it encases is a young coming-of-age story, perhaps about a girl who yearns poetically for something.  The title does nothing to combat this impression.  Of course I knew that you had sent us the book, which meant it was going to be good, but we haven't really been in the mood for sweet long novels.

Turns out that "sweet" is just about the last thing The Wind on the Moon is.  It's a strange wild romp of a book, surprising at every turn, full of adventure and mystery and animals, not shying away from conflict or violence.

The story focuses on two sisters, Dinah (that's her on the cover) and Dorinda, who try not to behave badly, but can't quite help themselves.  Their father, the Major, goes away at the very beginning of the book to fight a war in a far-off country, and leaves the girls with these words:

"There is wind on the moon....I don't like the look of it at all.  When there is wind on the moon, you must be very careful how you behave.  Because if it is an ill wind, and you behave badly, it will blow straight into your heart, and then you will behave badly for a long time to come."

The "bad behavior" the girls exhibit starts out on the Paddington Bear level: they try to help their father pack his suitcase, and end up rolling up all his clothes so they're wrinkled, and putting dirty boots on top of white shirts.  Then the Major leaves, and Dinah and Dorinda's bad behavior expands.  They decide that being greedy is one of the best ways to be naughty, and immediately start eating extraordinary amounts of food.  Here's where the narrative starts to get surprising:

They got fatter and fatter.  They got so fat, and quickly got fatter still, that every three or four days they burst their frocks and split their vests, and were quite unable to pull their stockings over their fat round legs.  So every few days their mother had to buy new clothes for them.  But if she bought them new dresses on a Tuesday, they were sure to burst the seams by Friday, or Saturday at the latest....By and by they grew so fat they were almost completely round, like balloons.  And one day they found they could hardly walk, so they rolled downstairs and bounced into the dining-room, just as if they were balloons.

Eleanor bounced on the couch next to me in delight.  Neither of us expected this!  We were even more thrilled when, a few pages later, Dinah and Dorinda drink a magic potion and turn into kangaroos in order to take revenge on some nasty village children.

That's right, kangaroos.

They remain kangaroos for about 100 pages, with a plot involving a private zoo inhabited by a variety of animals with fabulous names: the ostriches Sir Bobadil and Lady Lil, the grizzly bear Bendigo, the giraffe detective Mr. Parker.  There's a mystery about the theft of ostrich eggs, and a plan to free the beautiful wild Puma and Silver Falcon.  We're about halfway through the book, and I have no idea where it's going next.

I have a feeling this is going to be the birthday present all of Eleanor's friends get for the next year or so.  I'm about to become an evangelist for this book.

Love, Annie

Guest blogger: Adventure and peril in early chapter books

Dear Aunt Debbie,

It was an unexpected pleasure to read Grandpa's letter on trains.  Made me miss him all over again.  Thank you.

Classes end for the semester on Monday, so although I'll still be knee-deep in grading during finals week, I'll be back to blogging then.  Here's our last guest blogger for this round: my good friend Holly, mom of Eleanor's friend Ian, who has written for us before about outer space and map books:

I’ve just finished The Hunger Games, and it is no great testament to my cleverness to say that from the beginning I had high expectations that the heroine would survive, despite seemingly insurmountable odds to the contrary. However, for Ian, who is four and a half, reading books where a beloved character is in peril usually brings tears and certainty that they will die, despite all our best arguments and assurances. It reminds me of Eleanor worrying that the bad guy would win at the end of the Muppet Movie. How cool to be so new at all this that you really don’t know how it all turns out!

Maybe it sounds a bit cruel that I inflict this kind of suspense on my sensitive boy, but believe me he loves nothing better than a good swordfight. Also, if I have to read one more Beverly Cleary book, I’ll cry.

One of the first chapter books where we drag Ian onward a bit was How to Train Your Dragon, by Cressida Cowell. The antihero, Hiccup, heir to the Viking Hooligan tribe, and his hapless friend Fishlegs, manage to be in danger of certain death on every page. The following is typical:

“I mean,” continued Fishlegs, “so far today we have narrowly escaped being 1. Torn to pieces by Skullions. 2. Eaten by Cannibal Outcasts. 3. Burned to death on board ship. 4. Drowned at the bottom of the ocean. … And now here we are, trapped in an inaccessible underground cavern facing DEATH BY SLOW STARVATION. … It’s just been a REALLY BAD day.”

Throughout the eight (yes, even the existence of sequels fails to reassure Ian) books they encounter dragons and villians each more [superlative] than the last. I was almost dissuaded from reading them by opening randomly to a page involving a character named SnotFaced Snotlout. There is a bit of gross out going on but the stories are fast paced, the characters flawed and charming and despite the swords, explosions, dragon fire, daring escapes and narrowly averted apocalypses no lives are lost (except one dragon -- I admit we edited that a bit).

The other series with great illustrations, fun characters and constant danger that we sailed through with Ian is The Spiderwick Chronicles, by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black. Twin brothers and their older sister (who is amazingly cool) discover a Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You. It opens up a dangerous and exciting world co-existing with our own where goblins, ogres and faeries try to gain control of the powerful book. Carried forward by the beautiful illustrations, we literally read straight through the series in a matter of days, despite one of the main characters being abducted by goblins and hung from a tree, etc. A few goblins do die actually, but I think I skipped that sentence -- kids don’t seem to bothered when bad guys die, but I sort of am. The future of the world is at stake, of course. Luckily, Mallory, the big sister, has a sword and the twins are brave and clever.

And you’ll have to take my word for it, everything turns out ok.

Thank you, Holly!

Love, Annie

Mirrors & windows 2

Dear Annie,

I think I may have oversimplified Mitali Perkins’ mirror/window analysis in my last post. You talked about a book being able to be both: a reflection of the reader with which s/he can identify, and a way to see new places and have new experiences. Which of course Perkins was intending with the concept too. I really want to read her Bamboo People. Here’s her May 27 post on that BEA breakfast. I love her description of how Cory Doctorow entertained himself while others were speaking.

I’m so glad Eleanor took to Babies Can't Eat Kimchee. It acknowledges the ways in which a newborn can be disappointing (can’t play yet, cries inexplicably, etc) while still celebrating the relationship between siblings – and reminding the older one of her many accomplishments. The window element of the book -- introducing three year-old Eleanor to little bits of Korean culture – is such a great thing to be able to do within the context of everyday reading.

You ask about Lizzie and Mona and the window/mirror stuff. At some point in their chapter book lives, they each gravitated to different kinds of books. Their reading wasn’t exclusively one kind. But Lizzie definitely got very involved in adventure and fantasy books. Treasure Island, The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, and The Hobbit were books that she revisited frequently. I think she loved worlds which were very different, yet at the same time she could imagine herself an adventurer in those worlds. Window?

Mona, a year and a half younger, grounded herself in what we referred to as “domestic fiction,” Beverly Cleary’s Ramona books being the best example. Real life for kids. As you know, they’re among my favorites for taking the trials and tribulations of growing up so seriously, while presenting them with such a gentle sense of humor. Mona has always been interested in the interpersonal dynamics around her, and many of the books she chose gave her more reflections of her world. It’s funny, the last books we read aloud with Mona, when she was a high school freshman, were The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. She was already a strong feminist, and I think the biggest attraction of those books was Mma Ramotswe’s perception of human relations, and Mma's own strong sense of self. So does that make it a mirror? Am I pushing this concept too far?
Love,

Deborah