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Jumbo: This Being the True Story of the Greatest Elephant in the World, by Paul Chambers
I think it's pretty safe to say this is the first animal biography I've ever read. There's Modoc, of course, but that’s really more of a reconstructed memoir than standard non-fiction. Modoc is still my personal favorite as elephants go, but I have to concede that Jumbo surely is the more famous pachyderm. (I'm not even getting into a who's-the-"greatest"-elephant debate.)
But as books go, Jumbo is a fine biography. The research is solid, and the text itself, if not as emotionally compelling as Modoc, gives a much better overall impression of authority and reliability. Paul Chambers is at pains to alert the reader when he's speculating, and is also careful to mention sources that strike him as dubious (an especially helpful tactic when P.T. Barnum is a key player). I particularly enjoyed getting the lowdown on Jumbo's dedicated yet volatile keeper, Matthew Scott, and also learning about Jumbo's humble beginnings. Believe it or not, once upon a time that giant elephant was a runt!
(Available in March)
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By the Shores of Silver Lake, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Here’s when the Little House books begin making a slight shift in tone. Things have been tough for the Ingalls family, and despite the years Laura skipped in her narration, the wear and tear on the family peeks through the good cheer – especially when you step back and think of what Ma's endured since the end of Plum Creek. (She must have been an awfully good-natured woman to put up with all that moving around and leaving behind and so forth.) On the other hand, this is the most musical of the books so far, and the audio edition is brimming with fiddling and singing. Even the short fiddle interlude that marks the end of each disc is a different, livelier tune than the previous recordings. All in all, you just can’t keep the Ingalls family down, and I'm soldiering happily on with my Little House-a-thon.
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Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's, by John Elder Robison
Think a guy who has trouble expressing his emotions and interacting in social situations might not be terribly likely to write an engaging memoir? Think again. Between Robison's recollections of his lifelong pranks and struggles and his first hand insights into the Aspergian mind, I'm pretty sure you’ll keep turning the pages. (Besides, how can you resist someone who calls his little brother "Varmint"?)
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Hero, by Perry Moore
Am I allowed to post books I didn't finish? Hope so....
I'm beginning to think I’ve got hype allergies. I hear about a book people like a lot, give it a shot, and it doesn’t do nearly as much for me as it seems to do for everyone else.
That said, there's nothing really *wrong* with Hero. I thought the premise was a hoot, and I liked the notion of a plot where being gay isn't the kid's big problem. It just didn’t hold me though, and I don't know why. (Sheesh, how can anyone be lukewarm about a book starring a gay teen superhero?) Apparently I'm not the superhero sort – I gave it 200 pages and decided to mosey along. Ah well – everything isn’t for everybody, after all, and I hope other folks will try Hero in spite of me.
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The Braid, by Helen Frost
The story all by itself is full of things that appeal to me – Scotland, immigrants, multi-voice narration – but the form knocked me out. Once I caught on, that is. Click here to read all about it.
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The Long Winter, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
I think I'm going to start referring to The Long Winter as "Little House, the Gary Paulsen edition." Of course it's not so rough and tough as that, but still, things get pretty dire out there in De Smet. This is one of those times when re-reading a book brings out a lot of undertones I missed as a kid. I knew things were bad, but I don’t know if I realized just how much strain Ma and Pa dealt with though that ordeal. I'm also intrigued by how much suspense I felt even though I knew darn well that everyone would be ok in the end.
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The Boy Who Dared, by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
In some ways, this is a difficult book to rate fairly. I'’m discovering that third person present narration is possibly my least favorite tense, and that just so happens to be the tense of choice for The Boy Who Dared. As a result, although I think the story of Helmuth Hubener is important, I didn’t connect closely with the characters. That said, I appreciate very much Susan Campbell Bartoletti’s research and approach to her subject. Helmuth Hubener was a real young man who defied the Nazi government, and Bartoletti’s end notes prove that she was as true to the real Helmuth as possible.
Aside: am I the only person who had no idea there were Mormons in Nazi Germany? Well, why not? It just never occurred to me, I guess. Anyhow, I found it interesting to see how Helmuth processed his feelings about the Nazi government in the context of his faith. I also found it eye-opening to realize through the example of Helmuth's older brother, Gerhard, that not every soldier in the German army believed in the doctrines of the Nazi regime.
Yes, this is certainly a valuable, tragic story. It shows that even young people can take a stand and work for change and justice. But when all is said and done, I have a feeling I would have enjoyed The Boy Who Dared much more if it had been presented as non-fiction. Susan Campbell Bartoletti’s awfully good at non-fiction, you know. So even though I'm going with a rather sheepish 3-leaf rating, try this book when it comes out in February – there's a good chance you’ll enjoy it more than I did.
(Available in February)
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Little Town on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Since I began with These Happy Golden Years, this ends the Ingalls family portion of my Little House audio marathon. I'm awfully sad to have to leave Laura and her family behind, but thankfully I still have Farmer Boy to wean myself with. I can honestly say that the Ingalls family did not once get tiresome in 40+ hours of listening. That's quite a feat, considering that with my measly 20-minute commute, my usual audiobook attention span tops out around eight, *maybe* ten, hours.
I think what most amazes me about Laura Ingalls Wilder's writing, aside from the fact that it’s first-hand American history, is how she somehow makes you feel so satisfied with so little. A pig's bladder becomes a marvelous once-a-year plaything. Laura and Mary get pennies for Christmas, and you think you've just won the lottery. Oyster crackers with supper? What a treat! An orange on every plate at a party – unbelievable!
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The Unheard, by Josh Swiller
Swiller's insights into deafness just stopped me cold in a couple instances. Nobody (himself included) realized he was deaf until he was four years old. Just imagine that for a minute – four years old. As he says, "It had not yet occurred to me that the silence of things was an absence." Wow. It’s fascinating to see how he copes with the mainstream hearing world – and how he can also shut it out at will.
Oh, and there's also that whole Africa thing, which will regularly leave you blinking in disbelief. Besides the outright culture shock, it's pretty interesting to see how different the experience of deafness can be in another society. Not only that, the writing is remarkably witty and conversational, especially considering this is a guy who’s had to struggle his whole life to follow spoken language.
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The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
I know this is a powerful book. Cam, who runs the shop where I work, can hardly talk about it without tearing up, which is why I picked it up in the first place. Lots of other folks whose opinion I respect think it's tremendous. It's certainly well-written, vivid, and compelling. But moving? Not so much, for me.
Oddly enough, the bleakness of the story didn't bother me. I actually feel silly talking about the petty little things that did give me trouble in this book. For starters, the fragmented sentences wore on me. (Take a scroll through my blog and reading journal to see why that's a ridiculous criticism coming from me.) Also, the characters are only identified as "the man" and "the boy" with the occasional “Papa” thrown in. So I’m embarrassed to admit that on a fairly regular basis I had a rough time figuring out who “he” referred to. Last but not least, the lack of quotation marks, apostrophes, and hyphens bugged me, too. (Said the girl who loves Angela's Ashes.) All in all, The Road is indeed a good book, but it didn’t affect me as intensely as I'd been prepared for.
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Parade of Shadows, by Gloria Whelan
I like Gloria Whelan's style, I really do. The writing itself is often lovely to read. But… I wish like the dickens that when she writes about other times and/or cultures she'd include more information about her research. Take Parade of Shadows. This latest book by Whelan is set in the Middle East at the turn of the century, yet it includes no bibliography, no indication that the book has been vetted, and the brief epilogue is only a summary of the politics immediately following the timeline of the book. All this begs the question: How does an author who admittedly conducts all of her research in a library in northern Michigan ensure that she is accurately portraying cultures and eras she has not personally experienced?
I ask partly because as ignorant as I am myself about the Middle East as it was a century ago, a few of the details in Parade of Shadows did snag my attention as possibly not-quite-right. I wondered, for example, if a 16th century copy of the Qur'an really would have been engraved with images of animals? I also arched an eyebrow when our heroine, a sheltered British girl of the Edwardian age, put her hand on a male character's bare chest as a gesture of parting. And so forth, until I ended the book feeling that perhaps this is more likely someone's idea of the time and place it portrays than an authentic picture. I've also come across similar concerns in reviews of Homeless Bird by people with firsthand knowledge of contemporary Indian culture. So as much as I enjoy the way Gloria Whelan uses language, without the inclusion of supplemental material to address my questions, I can't help being somewhat cautious of the impressions her books create of other cultures.
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The Boy Who Ate Stars, by Kochka
This is a sweet, introspective little book about autism. Despite being a translation, it reads smoothly and naturally, which I think is impressive all by itself. It's short, but does a fine job of creating a warm, thoughtful mood. I particularly liked the way 12-year-old Lucy "adopts" Matthew as a sort of project, yet never loses sight of the fact that he's a person with cryptic feelings of his own. I suppose some readers might find Lucy’s ruminations on autism a little much for a girl her age, but I sure bought into them. As a strange sort of proof, it's amusing to see how Lucy's parents don’t seem to get how much Matthew has affected their daughter.
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Farmer Boy, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
After listening to eight volumes of the Ingalls family's experiences, Farmer Boy leaves me with one over-riding impression: the Wilders were RICH. The food those people had, the livestock, and the land! They had wallpaper, horsehair furniture, painted china lamps, and a parlor to show it all off. They had a whole barrel of store-bought white sugar! After growing up like that, it's no wonder Almanzo wanted to be a farmer. (Of course, they weren't really rich, but the contrast sure is noticeable.)
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Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury
Every now and then, I run across a Bradbury book I really like. I enjoy his style very much – he reminds me a smidgen of Julius Lester sometimes – but Martians and other sci-fi trappings just don't do it for me. I'm a Dandelion Wine kind of a girl. This, however, was just enough strangeness to feed my Halloween craving without going over the top. Thanks to Becky at Becky’s Book Reviews for cajoling me into trying it.
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The Earth Dragon Awakes, by Laurence Yep
As a chronicle of the Great San Francisco earthquake of 1906, this works pretty well. The facts are in order and give a perfectly clear picture of how the events of the quake unfolded. As a novel? Not so much, I'm afraid. (Too bad for me, because I was hoping for a closer, more personal look at the Chinese experience of the quake.)
Overall, I got the feeling that this book doesn't know quite what it wants to be – fiction or non-fiction. Though the chapters rotate from the point of view of a well-to-do family, their Chinese houseboy's son, and the earthquake itself, the focus is clearly on the earthquake, not the characters. In spite of sometimes characterizing it as the Earth Dragon, the chapters about the earthquake have an unmistakably factual tone – right down to plate tectonics. Conversely, the people in this book are fictional, but they seemed almost like accessories in the sense that they provided an excuse to take the story into particular homes and neighborhoods.
I did very much enjoy the personification of the earthquake and the fires, to the point that I wish the author had developed those "characters" even further. It would have taken away from the non-fiction feel of many of the chapters.
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Trouble, by Gary D. Schmidt
What should I say about this book that isn't going to be available for another five months or so? To avoid spoilers, I'll restrain from revealing the plot until the publisher's blurb makes its way into the world. Let's start with this: Trouble is very good. It's also a good deal heavier than Wednesday Wars. There's tragedy and prejudice, and a family strained almost to breaking. But it's also funny. I marveled that in the midst of some of the bleakest points, I laughed out loud.
I would imagine some readers might find this particular set of circumstances and occasional coincidences hard to believe. I didn't. The feelings are true, and that's enough for me. Gary D. Schmidt is gold.
(Available in April)
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Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
I am, officially, done with my Little House audio marathon.
Why am I ending with the first book in the series? Well, it's like this: I've listened to Big Woods many times before, so I skipped it to get to new territory. (Think of it as the Pa Ingalls approach to audio books – har har.) But after making my way through the other eight books in succession, I found I wasn't quite ready to leave the Ingallses, and so I came back to my old standby.
It's still my favorite.
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Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Woman Behind the Legend, by John E. Miller
Parts of this biography are worthy of five-star ratings. I ate up the history of the Ingalls family, and the examination of Laura and her daughter Rose's collaboration in writing and editing the Little House books is fascinating. However, the middle third of the book dragged for me, for two reasons:
One review called this a "fact-clogged" biography. While I find that remark overly snotty, I have to agree there's some truth in it. I do believe social and political context is essential to understanding history, but to my mind Miller's facts and figures often reached beyond the realm of relevance, sometimes for pages at a time.
I also found myself growing impatient when the author's focus shifted almost completely to Rose near the middle of the book. Granted, Rose was captivating in her own right and she left far more written material behind than Laura Ingalls Wilder for biographers to comb through, but again, I felt that Miller conveyed far more information about Rose than was necessary or relevant to the subject at hand.
Despite those complaints, this is an interesting and solidly researched biography, and I enjoyed it. But let's just say it's not an ideal starting place for the Laura Ingalls Wilder novice.
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Pippi Longstocking, by Astrid Lindgren
Lauren Child is THE perfect illustrator to take on Pippi. I'm sure I don't have to convince you of that. Just think about it for a minute. See what I mean?
Not only that, the pages are big, the paper is thick, and every now and then some fun text-effect jumps out at you. One particular line might be drawn out across the page to follow the tightrope, curved like the ringmaster's whip, angled like the beam of the burglars' flashlight, or scattered like drops from a watering can. It is a lovely gift edition of a classic story, right up there with the Helen Oxenbury editions of the Alice in Wonderland stories and Raquel Jaramillo’s Peter Pan.
The translation seemed quite good to me, though I can't compare it to the old one because – gasp! – I'd never read Pippi Longstocking before. I know, I know, what kind of a children's bookseller am I? (Will you forgive me if I tell you I've been to the little island in Florida where The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking was filmed and stood outside Villa Villekulla itself?)
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