Meet the FitzOsbornes, The Crawleys of YA: FitzOzbornes in Exile Review

Downton Abbey fans you need to be reading this series! The FitzOzbornes in Exile is the second in an unique YA trilogy about a group of young royals from a fictional island nation off the coast of France in the 1930s and early 1940s. Told in diary form from the perspective of sensitive and observant Princess Sophia, it has a distinctly Downtown-esque vibe and is the kind of YA adults of all ages can also (thoroughly) enjoy, which is why I included the series in my Top Ten Under-Sung Series post .I am so thankful for Shelf Elf, who loves this series and convinced me to read it.

Warning! This review contains some spoilers.

After narrowly escaping the bombing of their beloved home by Nazis, the FitzOsbornes are thrown into society life, Sophie and Veronica preparing for the first season in London. Sophie is thrilled at first, but the presence of Veronica’s would-be-assassin Rebecca, the arrival of orphaned Basque children, and trouble brewing in Europe keep her attentions divided.

Author Michelle Cooper seamlessly weaves the fabricated history of Montmaray with real historical events and people to the point where I found myself thinking wait, IS there such a place as Montmaray? Is my memory of world geography just that bad? But no, there are helpful notes in both books that clarify what is true and what is fictional. Veronica, a ferocious feminist and loyal subject and one of my favourite YA characters, is forever immersed in history and politics and I found myself enjoying her political debates with Simon Chester, illegitimate son of the King and her chief rival. I don’t normally go in for heated political debates about Spanish history and communism versus fascism  but Cooper imbues her characters with such passion and clarity of speech that one can’t help but be equally fascinated.

It is gratifying to see how Sophia matures, getting over a girlish crush on Simon and taking interest in a quiet young aspiring veterinarian, having her first piece of writing published. and coming to Veronica’s rescue in innumerable ways. Veronica is a formidable character but instead of standing in her shadow, Sophia is finally learning to stand apart while still loving and admiring her cousin. She learns a few hard lessons about love and marriage, and this book is particularly feminist in its approach to women’s issues and politics, but in a way that seems plausible. At the end of the book both Veronica and Sophie have amazing, character-defining moments that made me want to stand up and cheer. Alas I was reading in my office and despite working in publishing that sort of thing is generally frowned upon.

I am fascinated by how Sophia approaches and accepts her brother Toby’s preference for men, which feels progressive for the time and yet is a bit reserved in a way that seems natural. In fact she approached all matters of sex and relationships with this curious open-mindedness that is refreshing and distinctly contemporary.

The language is this book is period without feeling complex or too flowery and even in dire situations there is so much hope and humour in Sophia’s voice that you are laughing in life or death situations. How does the author do this? Genius, methinks. Veronica and Aunt Charlotte, who reminds me very much of the Dowager Countess, have some fantastic one-liners.

This book is heavier on the politics than the first, which makes sense as it leads into WWII, but it also features a number of assassination attempts, a few parties featuring some amazing dresses and jewels, a bit of mystery, and a cross-country train race that elevate the series even more. Fans of historical fiction,war novels, and books such as Code Name Verity, Anne of Green Gables or I Capture the Castle will eat this series up. I cannot wait to see what Cooper does in The FitzOsbornes at War. I have a feeling no matter what happens, I will be sobbing at the end.

Hey BBC, miniseries please?!

The FitzOsbornes in Exile is available now in paperback.

I laughed, I cried, I read: My Favourite 2012 Reads

Like Audrey, I also like to read next to a stack of ball gowns.

Looking back at my year in reading is always a fun and enlightening trip down memory lane. I review less than half of what I actually read, due to pesky time-consuming things like work and my own writing. I try to give space to new authors, trends, interesting work, and my personal favourites. In retrospect, 2012 was a year of great YA but not enough middle grade.  Let 2013 be a year of great middle grade! I also seem to be developing a taste for steampunk…

MIDDLE GRADE

Susin Nielsen finally gets the literary cred she deserves with her Governor-General award for the wonderful The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen. The topic of bullying is approaching saturation point in children’s books (it’s so widespread it has become it’s own sub-genre, one that I have written in myself) but Nielsen balances the bullying with friendship, awkward almost-romance, and humour.

The Peculiar was a beautifully told, harrowing tale of changeling children being hunted in a re-imagined Victorian Bath. With political undertones and visceral prose, it also marked the arrival of a hot young talent in Stefan Bachmann.

Middle grade graphic novel Drama deepened my love for author/illustrator Raina Telgemeier. Her work is always frank, funny, and positive without feeling cheesy or too after-school-special-y. I wish someone would give her animated TV series already.

Splendors & Glooms defies categorization. I’d love for people to read it and tell me what THEY thought. Middle grade? YA? Gothic horror? Fairytale? It is masterful, haunting, and yet another feather in Laura Amy Schlitz’s impressive literary cap.

YA

Code Name Verity knocked my socks off and took me back to my youth when I couldn’t get enough novels set in WWII.  An excellent, page-turning mystery that is also a beautiful novel about female friendships.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post was so flawless I couldn’t believe it was a debut novel. It is probably the novel I have recommended the most to a vast range of people this year. I meant it when I said it was a new classic, right up there with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn . I cannot wait to see what author emily m. danforth does next.

Masque of the Red Death was an unexpected gem. I don’t go in for love triangles, but this one was hard to resist. I loved the decrepit Paris meets New Orleans setting, and the vaguely steampunk-ish elements were well developed and made for some excellent escapist reading.

Mister Death’s Blue-Eyed Girls by middle grade horror author Mary Downing Hahn is the kind of book that leaves you unsettled after reading it. Based on a true incident in the author’s past, it examines the after-effects of a shocking murder on a group of teens in the 1950s. Part true-crime, part coming-of-age, part-period piece, this novel stuck with me for a long time.

And of course Sorta Like a Rock Star, which was not a 2012 release but I read it this year and loved it so much I could not exclude it from the list. I have since forced this miracle of a book on many friends and coworkers and all of them felt just as strongly as I did. Read it! You won’t regret it.

I also read quite a few adult books. You can check out some of my favourites on Goodreads:

The Uninvited Guests by Sadie Jones

The Emperor of Paris by C.S. Richardson

How To Be a Woman by Caitlan Moran

Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carla Rifka Brunt

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

Stray Love by Kyo Maclear

Above All Things by Tanis Rideout

Magnified World by Grace O’Connell

The Power of Why by Amanda Lang

The West End Front by Matthew Quick

A Gothic Masterpiece: Splendors & Glooms review

Be prepared- this review contains spoilers and incessant gushing.

A Drowned Maiden’s Hair remains one of my favourite contemporary middle grade books and I could not wait to read Schlitz’s next book Splendors and Glooms, which seemed perfectly Victorian and gothic and creepy. The wait was worthwhile, and this book has vaulted into my best books read in 2012 list (post coming soon!)

Clara Wintermute is lonely. After a cholera outbreak takes the lives of her four brothers and sisters, she is the sole child left in a sad, mourning household. But Clara is determined to have a good birthday, and so she begs her father to allow Gaspare Grisini to put on a puppet show for her guests. Clara is enchanted by the puppets, but also by the two children who work with the puppeteer, Lizzie Rose and Parsefall. She hopes to befriend them. Little do the three children know that Grisini has a dark past steeped in magic and horrors involving a curse and a series of kidnappings.

Set in London and Northern England in the 1860s, this is a masterful gothic fairytale from one of my favourite contemporary writers. Something about the tone and structure of this novel reminded me of  old-school fairytales, particularly The Snow Queen. It is dark in the same way fairytales are dark, which is to say there is an element of fantasy or disbelief employed that keeps the reader from crying throughout the whole book. We believe we are reading a fable and therefore we are affected but not traumatized by the story. There are many people who disagree with me, especially on Goodreads, where I made the mistake of browsing some of the reviews and came across a number of angry adult readers who found the book too disturbing for children.

Schlitz and I share a love of prickly protagonists. Maude (from A Drowned Maiden’s Hair) and Flory (from The Night Fairy) have a lot in common with Parsefall the pickpocket-turned-puppeteer. Orphans and fairies tend to be sympathetic, hard-done by, sweet characters, but not so in Schlitz’s work. All three of these characters are independent, selfish, conflicted, and damaged, but not so far-gone that they can’t experience transformation.I have a friend in social work who finds a lot of children’s literature frustrating because the protagonists seem untouched by the horrible and often traumatic situations they have to deal with (Harry Potter comes to mind. There is a kid who in the real world would need some serious therapy). I think she would appreciate Schlitz’ s work, which is more realistic in terms of the psychology of her troubled characters.

Parsefall, for example, is impulsive, selfish, and slow to trust others,  but his loyalty to Lizzie Rose and especially to Clara, when she is turned into a puppet, is touching. Lizzie Rose’s desire to be good no matter what is heartbreaking and inspiring.  The combination of complicated characters and truly striking prose is what makes Schlitz stand apart from the crowd.

This book has an interesting denouement, which is bit longer than most middle grade or even YA novels. It’s very spiritual and cleansing in a way, and Schlitz takes great pains to explain the actions of her villains, if not exonerate their guilt completely. The children’s goodness and forgiveness lightens the heavier aspects of the book and I finished the book with a sense of catharsis that happens to rare these days. A true masterpiece.

Splendors and Glooms is available now in hardcover from Candlewick Press, distributed by RandomHouse in Canada.

BSC Forever: Reflections and a Round-up

After the announcement that Ann M. Martin’s beloved The Babysitter’s Club series would be available in e-book format, the interweb has been buzzing about the BSC, which has made it a good week on The Twitter for me. The BSC remains one of my all-time favourite middle grade series. As a kid, I devoured these books and even read The Babysitter’s Little Sister series about Karen, even though I was really too advanced to be reading that series at that point. I just wanted more of that cozy, relatable, addictive world. I strive to capture even a little of Martin’s magic in my own books. Along with Judy Blume, she is a major writerly inspiration.

What’s not to like? Girls being independent! Girls helping each other out! Girls expressing their individuality! Girls being entrepreneurs! In this rather bleak and unfriendly girl-hating climate that leads to tragedies like Amanda Todd’s death and the proliferation of Todd Akin’s ignorant theories, we could all use a little more BSC in our lives.

As a certified fan, I own the movie (a faithful adaptation in my humble opinion), the board game (well, one of a few boardgames) and just about died with happiness when Raina Telgemeier was hired to adapt the series into graphic novel form.

In celebration, here are some of my favourite BSC links, guaranteed to make you laugh and distract you from whatever it is you SHOULD be doing right now:

Texts from The Babysitter’s Club

Ann M. Martin Picks her Top Ten Babysitter’s Books

12 Facts About the Babysitter’s Club That Will Blow Your Mind

The Babysitter’s Club: Where Are They Now?

The Babysitter’s Club: Which Babysitter Are You?

BSC forever!

Lois Lowry Keeps On Giving: Son Review

Warning- this review contains spoilers, not just for Son, but also for The Giver. If you have not read The Giver, get thee to a bookstore or library NOW!

The Giver lives in my permanent top ten. It is a little slice of literary perfection. The ending, which may be too ambigious or open-ended for some, is an excellent example of how the end of a book should blow the world open for the characters, not tie everything together neatly. So I wasn’t craving a sequel (or ‘conclusion’ according to the book copy*). That being said, I think Lois Lowry is a master at her craft and will read anything she writes.

Son opens with a captivating scene of a girl, referred to by her watchers as a Vessel, being blindfolded before ‘the process’ begins. The process is birth and the girl is Claire, a first-time Birthmother. She has been told little about ‘the process,’ but becomes even more confused as things get complicated and ‘the product’ (the baby) has to be surgically removed. After the process Claire is reassigned, but she can’t stop thinking about her baby. She finds a way into the Nurturing Centre, where all the babies are kept until ready to be assigned to family units. Claire finds her child and from that moment forward her live changes.

Her child, of course, is Gabe, the baby who comes to live with Jonas’ family in The Giver.

The book is divided into three distinct parts. Part one happens simultaneously as The Giver, only we are experiencing the story through the very limited and unaware perspective of Gabe’s mother, Claire. Part two takes place in another community, where Claire struggles to regain both memory and strength before she is able to continue to search for her son. Part three takes place some years later in a third community that has achieved relative peace, with the exception of a dark force known as The Tradesman who stands between Claire and her son.

Each section felt like a complete novella. The middle section reminded me of classic historical fiction that takes place in fishing villages or small hunter-gather communities. It is here we meet my favourite character, Einar. He is the strong, silent type, crippled from a meeting with The Tradesman (a truly horrific and frightening creature). Einar is a gentle soul who trains Claire for her dangerous climb out of the village. Their love story is unusual and unrequited and beautifully rendered.

Like many other final books in series, Son dips into philosophical waters and Lowry makes eloquent statements about desire versus love, service versus sacrifice, and destiny. This often divides readers. Some people get caught up in the concept, story, and world-building of the first book in a series and are unsettled when the final book rocks the boat in terms of spirituality or social commentary. (Think of The Amber Spyglass, Mockingjay, and to some extent, Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows). Fortunately, Lowry’s great strength is her subtlety. The book is simultaneously sophisticated and accessible. Like a well-written fable, it appeals to all readers, regardless of age, though I do think some of the themes will resonate more deeply with readers who have read the previous books in the series and are in that 11+ range. The whole book is a great display of craftsmanship, but some paragraphs (the final one in particular) moved me to tears. Her language is full-bodied: rounded, sharp, salty. I would love to have this book read aloud to me.

Son will be available in hard cover from Thomas Allen publishers in Canada on October 2nd 2012.

*Though it is not necessary to read these books in order (The Giver, Gathering Blue, The Messenger, Son), I do strongly recommend it. When characters like Kira and Matty pop up, knowing their histories add so much more depth to the novel. Those moments are little gifts to the reader, something you don’t want to miss out on.

Camp Read-aloud Classic: Kneeknock Rise Review

After the most beautiful long weekend ever, I am kicking my summer reading into high gear. Summer reading makes me think of camp and how I would spend hours carefully choosing the right book to read aloud to my girls in the cabin at night. Some books were made to be read aloud.  Natalie Babbitt is an expert at crafting memorable, rich read-alouds. Tuck Everlasting and The Search for Delicious are two of my all-time favourites, but I had yet to read Kneeknock Rise until I found it while happily browsing the shelves at McNally Robinson Saskatoon.

The people of Instep have the misfortune (or perhaps good fortune) of living near Kneenkock Rise, a mountain that is home to a mysterious creature called the Megrimum that no one has seen, but everyone has heard. When it rains the can be heard wailing as if in pain or in terrible anger. A great carnival happens once  a year, attracting people from all over who come to enjoy the sites , sounds, and of course, hope for a glimpse of the creature. Young Egan is one of these people. When he is dared by his cousin to climb up and discover the mystery for himself he is confronted with the surprising truth.

The heart of this story is about faith. Is knowing the absolute truth more important than holding onto a legend and everything that comes with the legend (imagination, industry, something to rally around, etc)? Babbitt asks these questions and more. She is careful never to be too moralistic, but instead presents various sides of a question and allows the reader to make his or her own conclusion.Throw in a missing person, a loyal dog, and one excellent stormy night scene* and you have a perfect camp read aloud.

How do you pick a great summer read aloud? First of all, pick a book YOU love. The kids will pick up on your enthusiasm and you will all look forward to storytime. I’ve always found that books with an element of mystery (but not too scary, lest homesickness rear it’s ugly head) are popular, and you can ask them what they think will happen after each chapter. Sometimes more philosophical questions and themes work for older campers. Tailor your choices to the group. Going on a canoe trip? Consider something outdoorsy, like Jack London or Gary Paulsen. At an all girls camp? Consider Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares) to inspire camaraderie or Matilda (Roald Dahl) for leadership. Short chapters are convenient for limited camp sessions, as are short story collections.

If you’re a camp counselor or parent looking for a great read aloud this summer,  or perhaps you just want some solid old-fashioned storytelling, be sure to check out Kneeknock Rise. While you’re at it, check out all of Babbitt’s backlist.

There are a number of editions of Kneeknock Rise, but the one I read is published in paperback by Squarefish.

*Ms. Babbitt clearly has a thing for thunderstorms. You may recall the thunderstorm/jailbreak scene in Tuck Everlasting, which is one of my favourite scenes in all of children’s literature.

Porcupines are the New Penguins: Picture Book Trend

A few years ago it seemed like every other picture book featured penguins, and why not? Penguins can be cute, funny, resourceful, family-oriented, quirky, survivors, or figures of environmental tragedy. Think of Tacky the Penguin, Oliver Jeffer’s Lost and Found, Karma Wilson’s Don’t Be Afraid, Little Pip and many other books featuring penguin protagonists. Thanks to movies like Happy Feet and March of the Penguins, you couldn’t help but see them everywhere.

Lately I feel like I’ve been seeing less penguins and more porcupines. I get it- porcupines, at least when rendered in children’s book illustration- are adorable. I mean look at that image of Pearl! So cute, so joyous! So perfect for picture books!  There is much fun to be had with the prickly/difficult to love aspect of the porcupine, and not being able to give or receive hugs is especially tragic to the under 6 set.

From Paul Schmid we have the adorable Hugs from Pearl, the protagonist featured above, soon to be followed by Percy’s Big Idea:

A sketch from the up-coming Percy's Big Idea

New Canadian Christmas classic A Porcupine in a Pine Tree by Helaine Becker replaces the stuffy old partridge of 12 Days of Christmas Lore with an almost cuddly looking porcupine, as rendered by Werner Zimmerman:

Mr. Prickles: A Quill-Fated Love Story (Kara LeReau and Scott Magoon) is the story of two porcupines who find love despite trials and tribulations (in the form of some mean-spirited woodland creatures) along the way:

All of these recent books owe much to the 1989 classic A Porcupine Named Fluffy, interestingly enough brought to you by Helen Lester and Lynn Munsinger, the same team who created the Tacky the Penguin books. Clearly this duo has a magical ability to create picture book trends:

Fluffy is rocking some rad hair in this cover

And just in case you were concerned that the cute factor of porcupines was being misrepresented, here is a video of a young porcupine with the hiccups that will put your fears to rest. Why are animals infinitely more adorable when they have the hiccups?

New Classic Alert: The Miseducation of Cameron Post Review

I am in love with this book, which falls under my favourite category, Poignant Coming-of-age Story. Cameron Post is the mother of all coming of age stories. I have been unable to stop talking or thinking about since I first read an advance reading copy in September. I have thrust it into the hands of everyone I know who loves books, whether they’ve read YA before or not. The Miseducation of Cameron Post transcends YA. It holds it’s own against adult reads such as The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle, Goldengrove by Francine Prose, and classics such as Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Obvious parallels are made to to Annie on My Mind, and while part of the reason I love this book is how honestly it deals with a young girl coming to terms with her homosexuality, this book is more than an issue book.

When 12 year old Cameron Post’s parents are killed in a car accident her first feeling is relief; relief that they will never know that hours before she was kissing a girl. But when her conservative Aunt Ruth comes to look after Cameron, this relief disappears and instead Cameron learns to hide things about herself, like her attraction to girls. But then beautiful, popular, and talented Coley Taylor comes to her high school and against all odds, the unlikely pair strike up a close friendship. Just as Cameron thinks their friendship will develop into something more, her secret is blown out of the water and Aunt Ruth sends her to a sexual conversion facility in order to “fix” Cameron once and for all. It is here, in this unlikely place, that Cameron finally learns to grieve her parents, finds a circle of true friends, and ultimately comes to terms with herself.

So much goodness here. First of, all the subject matter is important and dealt with in a way that is never sensational but honest and emotionally authentic. I hate books that talk about sex and sexuality without actually addressing it. Why skirt the issue? Teens especially need insight, reassurance, and information when it comes to sex, so why confuse the whole situation with vague euphemisms? Cameron Post is not one of these books- it has some of the most honest observations on sex and sexuality I’ve ever come across in my reading in both YA and adult fiction.  Much ballyhoo will be made of the fact that the author visited a sexual conversion facility undercover in order to accurately portray Cameron’s experience, and indeed that is an incredible story, but at the heart of the matter, The Miseducation of Cameron Post is an incredibly well-written and moving book with many literary and reader-ly merits.

At 336 pages, this is a big book, but I would have read 200 more pages of emily m danforth‘s glorious writing if the editor felt it necessary. I was instantly sucked into the hot, dusty world of Montana in the 1990s. Once you start the book, all you want to do is read it, partially because you are so invested in Cameron as a character, and partially because danforth’s prose is so magnetic it’s hard to look away. She takes such care crafting Cameron’s world and the people in it, that months later I can conjure up images of even the most secondary of characters in my head. I also appreciated how even the reprehensible characters are subtly fleshed out in a way that didn’t necessarily make me forgive them, but shed light on their decisions.Writers of coming-of-age fiction take note, this is a book to love and learn from!

Because of the sophistication of the book, I really do feel it could be shelved in adult fiction, but I’m glad that the YA world can claim this masterpiece as its own. It’s not dense or challenging to read and I wouldn’t hesitate giving it to a solid, 13+ reader. Some teens may be daunted by its size, but after a few chapters they’ll be so invested I doubt they will notice or care. This is a book people will read again and again in their lifetimes. I’m attempting to think of more comp titles, but to be honest there is nothing quite like The Miseducation of Cameron Post. Look out for this one- expect it grace many 2012 best of lists; it certainly is at the top of mine.

Check out the awesome trailer and then stop by frenzy to find out how the trailer came to be:

The Miseducation of Cameron Post is available February 7th from HarperCollins Canada.

Gorgeous Heartbreak: A Monster Calls Review

A Monster Calls is a gorgeously rendered piece of literary art. A compact, powerful novel, the best way I can describe it is Skellig by David Almond meets J.K. Rowling’s “The Tale of Three Brothers” from Tales of Beedle the Bard. This book is a love letter to Siobhan Dowd, a rising YA star who died young of breast cancer. Keeping this (and Patrick Ness‘ exquisite letter about how this book grew out of an idea of hers at the beginning of the book) in the back of my mind made the story all the more tragic.

Conor’s mother is sick, but he doesn’t want to think about that. He has other things on his plate- like the kids at school who wait for their teacher’s back to be turned and then attack, both physically and with words, cruelly taunting him about his mother’s illness. And now there is a monster that comes to him in the night- a monster that seems to be made of the Yew tree in his backyard and claims to have three stories to tell him. When he is finished telling his stories, then Conor must tell the fourth.

I imagined the monster as the faun from Pan’s Labyrinth, monstrous and humanoid but made of a tree, and was rewarded by Jim Kay’s eerie illustrations, which basically depict him in the same way:

Like the faun, you’re unsure if he is a monster with bad intentions or a somewhat aloof and frightening guardian angel. His stories do nothing to clarify this.  The tales told by the monster are folkloric and allegorical: a prince who runs away from an evil step-mother with the baker’s daughter; a preacher who begs an apothecary for help when his daughters fall ill; an invisible man who wishes to be seen.

Though the stories seem straightforward and traditional, the monster reveals a twist in each one that is unsettling. The function of the stories is to show that good and bad- like right and wrong- have little to do with truth, which lies somewhere in the hazy gray space between these opposites. All of this helps Conor tell his story, which allows him to forgive himself and experience catharsis. You will be experiencing catharsis too, by this I mean bawling your eyes out.

The story of the invisible man, and how Conor internalizes it, was one of the most effective sections of the book. In this story the two narratives- the midnight fairytale magic realism section(monster) and the stark daytime reality section (bullies)- blend, ending in a vicious attack that leaves Conor visible to everyone in his school, but not in the way he wanted.

I have never felt sadder for a character than I felt for Conor. His beloved mother is dying, his grandmother is cold and bossy, his father lives in America and can barely stick around for a weekend, he’s being targeted by bullies and he’s turned away from his only friend, Lily, because she told everyone about his mother’s illness in the first place. There are lots of beautiful and sad observances about grief and love, but the bullying stuff was just as powerful to me. Heavy stuff, yes, but somehow after finishing the book I didn’t feel weighed down. Such is the genius of Patrick Ness that you are able to experience extreme emotion and catharsis just as Conor does, and walk away from the book not totally depressed. In lesser hands the book would feel melodramatic or depress you so much you would be unable to get out of bed for days.

So who will read this book? Children’s literature nuts like myself will of course adore it, but it is a dark story that will make the reader feel dark things. Not all children are ready for this at the same age. It is middle grade, although it has that rare quality of truly classic stories that seem to exist outside an age range. I’m not sure it would alleviate grief, but it strikes me as a great book for angry children. Anger is addressed extremely well in the book, as is grief, guilt, and absolute first class storytelling.

A Monster Calls is available now in hard cover from Candlewick Press.

New Covers, Old Favourites: The Bronze Pen

Loving This New Look...Thanks, S&S!

 

So this book itself is not all that old, but Zilpha Keatley Snyder was one of my favourite childhood authors, and she is among a handful of authors whose work stands up to critical re-readings as an adult. She is a warm, compassionate writer who writes with great ingenuity and empathy. I first came across her novels when I bought a box of books at a garage sale, in which there were a number of ZKS titles, including The Egypt Game, The Witches of Worm, The Changeling, and The Famous Stanley Kidnapping Case.* I am so pleased that Simon and Schuster has given her books a make-over, because the stories themselves feel classic rather than dated, and now with a snazzy new look, they are being introduced to a new generation of lucky readers. Many of her books feature protagonists who want to be writers, which of course struck a chord with the bookish child that I was (and to some extent, still am!) The Bronze Pen fits this category.

Audrey Abbot loves to write stories, but for the most part, this is a secret she keeps to herself. Although her parents are loving, they are unhappy. Her father is in a wheelchair with a severe heart condition and her mother works long hours at a job she hates. Audrey spends most of her time with Beowulf, a slobbery Irish Wolfhound, tucked away writing or walking through the woods. It is a fairly lonely, uneventful existence, until one day a beautiful white duck leads her down a steep path to a mysterious cave. In the cave is a strange old woman who presents Audrey with an unusual bronze pen. Audrey doesn’t think  much of it, until the things she writes with her bronze pen start to come to life around her.

This story reminded me of classic Edgar Eager, particularly Half Magic, in which wishes aren’t granted in full. Audrey’s stories don’t always come true in the way she had planned. It turns out that magic, like life, is unpredictable. In ZKS’ books, magic is never the solution to problems, but acts as a catalyst or means to discuss greater issues at hand. At the end of The Bronze Pen, it is up to the reader to decide whether or not it was magic that brings about a happy ending, good luck, or something else entirely.

There is so much emotion in this book. I don’t mean that it’s weepy or angsty, but the Abbotts are having a bit of a rough go of it, and ZKS is honest in her portrayal of disappointment, frustration, love, and hope. This isn’t a heavy book at all, in fact it’s rather charming. Audrey’s loneliness is palpable, even if she doesn’t realize it at first. One of the more wonderful aspects of the bronze pen is that it brings in together with zany Lizzie, a fast-talking artist.**

The Bronze Pen is one of ZKS’ more recent titles, and I should note that I did not read this one as a child, but as an adult. Regardless, I still got the same feeling I had reading her books as a nine year old, which is testament to ZKS remarkable ability to connect with her readers.

The Bronze Pen, along with many other wonderful Zilpha Keatley Snyder books, is available now in paperback from Simon and Schuster.

*I have since wondered if the books in this box were once owned by a children’s librarian, or perhaps some sort of book fairy godmother. I discovered many wonderful authors, including E.L. Konigsburg, in this same box of readerly delights. Sadly, many of the books are now out of print, including Snyder’s fantasy Below the Root, which inspired me to write my own underground fantasy story, which will never see the light of day. Pun intended.

**Note to new Snyder readers: there is always at least one “zany” character in ZKS novels, sometimes a whole family! Please see the Stanley Family Series for more zany family hijinx.