Review: The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall

This was a totally delightful children's book, complete with a lovely old-fashioned feel. Like many of the children's and YA books floating around the house, I read a description of this one and decided that my crew needed to have it always available to them in case reading inspiration should strike. And like any other book I have waved enticingly under their adorable noses, they have snubbed this book without a second glance. So I had to read it. And I am so very, very glad that I did because it is simply charming. Now I just have to come up with an underhanded and completely sneaky way to get the intended audience to read it too. Even if they don't, I want the sequel!

The Penderwicks are four sisters, a father, and one large, scruffy dog. The book opens with the family driving into their rented summer cottage tucked at the back of the estate of the rather snobbish, intolerant Mrs. Tipton and her very lonely son, Jeffrey. The bulk of the novel focuses on the madcap escapades of the girls and Jeffrey as they traipse through the summer, annoying Mrs. Tipton and causing their absent-minded botanist father to emerge from behind his policy of benign neglect. From 12 year old Rosalind's crush on the young gardener to 4 year old Batty's love of wearing butterfly wings and refusal to speak to strangers, from budding writer Jane's tendency towards melodrama to Skye's enmity, competition, and friendship with Jeffrey, this novel has the feel of being the latest entry in the beautiful children's literature of yesteryear.

The conflict here is, of course, Mrs. Tipton's blindness towards what makes the rather sad Jeffrey happiest and her desire to impose her strict and joyless life even on the free-spirited Penderwicks. The plot is more a series of connected scenes than a novel in the strictest sense but in this lighthearted book of adventures, this works. The childrens' characters are all nicely defined and while the adults are more stereotypical, they are by no means the focus of this sweet chronicle of friendship. I highly recommend this book for the young and young at heart, especially those who like a nostalgic feel to their children's literature.

Review: The Shakespeare Stealer by Gary Blackwood

When I saw that this book was going to be my daughter's 6th grade summer reading book, I was pleased as punch. As an English major dork, I adore Shakespeare. I have been known to read the plays for pleasure. And I thought that exposing kids to Shakespeare in a roundabout way was sheer genius. All this before I even read the book. So it was delightful to discover that the book was fun and entertaining too.

The premise of the book is that Widge is a lowly apprentice who has been taught a version of shorthand by one of his masters. He has never known family or caring, just having been a means to an end in the indentured servitude that has comprised his entire young life so far. His latest master, a genial seeming man, has ordered Widge to steal Shakespeare's Hamlet by attending the play and transcribing it as it occurs. And to make certain that Widge does as he's bidden, he sends the rather scary Falconer with Widge as a sort of enforcer. But Widge doesn't manage to write down the play because he is too engrossed in the pageantry and wonder of the world of imagination. In failing to steal Hamlet, Widge somehow ends up as an apprentice in the Globe theater, falling further and further under the spell of acting, becoming a valued part of the theater family, and escaping the menacing Falconer. But he can't escape his task forever.

Blackwood has created a credible cast of characters and set them in a nicely rendered London in the time of Shakespeare. He has provided an intriguing and easy entry into a world that helps to define the literary world today and has done it without condescending to kids or under-estimating their intelligence. The tension that Widge feels about whether or not Falconer will come to claim him and punish him for his master is conveyed nicely to the middle grade reader. Blackwood's real triumph here though, is in weaving the underlying threads of right versus wrong (embodied here by the idea of intellectual property) and the importance of family (natural or found) in with such a meticulously drawn historical world. He imparts little asides about the times in almost every scene of the book but these instructive bits are so well integrated into the story that they never seem forced or out of place. Really, this is the sort of book I would have loved as a middle grade reader.

When I asked R. what she thought about the book, she gave me a long plot summary and then said, "I liked that he [the author] made them talk like they would and that there were secrets that some people didn't tell." She says she recommends it and so do I.

Review: Time Stops For No Mouse by Michael Hoeye

A middle grades book that is rated "Not Too Scary," I bought this book in hopes that it would intrigue any one of my children. Somehow it managed to stay on the shelf so I thought I'd take it down, read it, and see if I could recommend it to them. I am pleased to say that this was indeed a cute book that is liable to appeal to all of the residents under five feet here.

Hermux Tantamoq is a mouse who works in a watch and clock shop. He takes great pride in his work and so is a little put off when daredevil aviatrix Linka Perflinger leaves her watch to be repaired, admonishing Hermux that it must keep perfect time, and them fails to return to pick it up. He knows something is wrong when a less than savory rat asks for Linka's watch and so this mild-mannered mouse decides to follow the rat and see where he goes. This plunges him into a kidnapping mystery with a biological bent. The characters surrounding Hermux are eccentric and fun. The evil villains are ruthless and sneaky. The plot zips along at a good clip with revelations, both expected and unexpected, coming fast and furious. Hoeye leaves a trail of clues for an astute reader to solve the mystery but I must admit I'm not that reader, even when the book is written for children less than half my age. But even though I didn't figure out the entirety of the whodunit, I thoroughly enjoyed this adventurous and delightful novel. It reminded me of nothing so much as the wonderful, from-my-childhood movie The Rescuers in tone and flavor. The first in a series, I hope to convince the kiddos to read it while I move along to the second.

Review: Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins

Suzanne Collins' newer series is the biggest buzz book of the YA book world right now (at least as far as I can tell) but in a rare show of fiscal prudence, I didn't rush right out to buy it. Instead I decided to settle in with the first book in her Overlander series, which we conveniently enough already owned. It is fascinating to me that I will accept fantasy in children's books but shy away from it in adult books. There must be some bit of charm or magic that loses its potency for me when making the leap from kid to adult writing. And while charming and magical are perhaps not the best words to describe this particular book, I was happily engrossed in Gregor's world for the better part of a couple of hours and hope I can convince one of my fledgling readers ("No, I don't like to read," says one child who then has to be told to put the book down and finish dinner so the rest of us can escape the table and go about our evenings) to read it because I think they'd like it, not that they'd ever admit it to me.

Gregor is minding his two year old sister Boots when she falls through a grate behind a dryer in their apartment building. Of course he has to follow her but instead of an air duct, they find themselves falling down a long way into the Underland. Discovered by giant cockroaches, they are taken to the humans where they learn a bit about the world into which they've fallen. This is a world where there exists an uneasy detente between giant spiders, bats, roaches, rats, and humans. But Gregor and Boots' advent, long prophesied, will lead to all out war. Gregor wants no part of the Underland until he learns that there is a possibility that his father, missing for more than two years now, might be alive and trapped somewhere in the Underland. And with that knowledge, Gregor will lead the quest that holds the fate of all the creatures in the land. There is adventure, morality, and entertainment galore in this middle grades book.

Gregor is well drawn as a conflicted kid who wants to escape to save his mother the heartbreak of another disappearance but who wants to charge to the rescue of his beloved father, if the rumors of his capture and survival are true. He is a lucky and thoughtful boy, both traits which will come in handy on his quest and he is loyal beyond all accounting. None of the characters are drawn as unquestioned heros, with all of them having flaws and weaknesses. They are recognizable as kids first and foremost and as warriors on a quest secondarily. In addition to good, complex characters, the book offers some moral commentary on the nature of war but it is done so well and so subtlely that it won't bore the reader, instead inspiring thoughts about when and why war might be justified and when and why is isn't. Some readers probably won't pick up on the subtext, choosing to read this purely as an adventure story but the more sophisticated will at least notice the undertones.

If the much raved about Hunger Games is as subtle and interesting as this book for the younger set is, it is probably a very worthwhile read.

Review: Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett

I had been coveting this children's book since it was released in hardcover, trying to convince my children that they wanted to read it, thereby granting myself permission to buy it. I haven't managed to convince them yet but when it arrived on the table at the school book sale, it was my duty to buy it to support the school library, right? And now that I've read it, I will be pushing the kids even harder to read it. A truly delightful and inventive tale, this had overtones of From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler or The Westing Game. Calder Pillay is mourning the loss of his best friend, who has moved out of state, when a strange book about unexplained happenings brings Calder together with Petra, a fellow student with a keen eye for coincidences. Petra and Calder build a friendship as they try to unravel the several mysteries: that of an elderly neighbor, that of their teacher's sudden nervousness and distractability, and of course, that of the missing Vermeer painting to which they feel a kinship connection. As the mysteries unfold, Calder and Petra race to find the painting before it is too late as they also seek to explain the other more minor mysteries. The plot abounds with leads, intuitions, and wrong turnings and the reader delights in following these endearing, slightly eccentric kids as they work their way through the clues, both intentionally and unintentionally uncovered. Everything about the book is meticulously done and the puzzle pieces are slotted together so expertly that I only figured out the connections slightly ahead of the characters, which either points to my thickheadedness or their genius (or both). But the true genius here is Balliett, in drawing such an appealing and engrossing story for both boys and girls, one that celebrates intelligence and friendship and perserverence and all those things that can easily cause a less accomplished book to come across as moralistic and dull. This book is anything but that and should be recommended to any and all children in your orbit.

Review: Bunnicula by Deborah and James Howe

I think I may have read this as a child as it was familiar but I picked it up this time to read it when my daughter read it for AR points at school. It is a cute story with just enough mystery and spookiness to keep a child reading along. Harold the dog and Chester the cat are at home when their family arrives back at the house with a small rabbit they'd found at the Dracula movie they went to see. Christening him Bunnicula, the family decides to keep our bunny and that is when things around the house start getting a bit strange. Chester the cat becomes convinced that the new bunny is in fact a vampire rabbit and goes to great lengths to try and convince the more skeptical Harold. But when vegetables in the family's refrigerator start turning up limp and white and drained of their juices speculation turns to a certainty of sorts.

What Chester and Harold do about this strange new member of the family and how they each react to the mysterious little bunny forms the bulk of this short children's chapter book. While the book is a children's book, it does a good job of being engaging enough to not have any adult readers (or perhaps it would be better to say adults reading aloud to children) avoiding the nightly reading. Harold is a loveable doofus while Chester is a more intelligent character and their interactions (Bunnicula never speaks) drive the story along. This really is a great book for the middle grades, never being too scary but having a slight element of suspense that should keep the most jaded 8-10 year old reading along.

Review: The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley

This Victorian children's morality tale is one that I've not heard many other people mention and that is a shame. It is more sophisticated than many elementary school-aged books written now and yet still sweet. Tom, a little chimney-sweep who is smacked about by his master, is cleaning a chimney at a great house when he is mistakenly thought to be a thief. He is terrified and runs off, all the while trailed by the queen of the fairies. After encountering huge obstacles in his path and overcoming them, he faces more mistrust and so wanders off to bathe in the river. He falls in and is transformed into a water-baby. As a water-baby, he has many adventures and learns to be a better boy than he had ever been when on land. This story owes much both to Gulliver's Travels and to The Odyssey. There are many strange creatures who instruct Tom in what is right and good during his quest and he has a loyal girl waiting for him to come home to her during his strangest adventure. The language would probably be a bit tough for elementary school readers today, either because they didn't understand it or simply because it is quite ornate and descriptive, unlike today's books, but the creativity of the land in which the water-babies live and the creatures that populate it might help children overcome these difficulties. There were pockets of the story that were a bit tedious in their insistence on moral lessons being pointed out in case the reader missed the significance of Tom's experience but this is very much a hallmark of the literature of the time and didn't ultimately detract from the overall loveliness of the story.