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Middle Grade Monday Book Review: The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchet

The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett, illustrated by Stephen Player

A nightmarish danger threatens from the other side of reality . . .

Armed with only a frying pan and her common sense, young witch-to-be Tiffany Aching must defend her home against the monsters of Fairyland. Luckily she has some very unusual help: the local Nac Mac Feegle—aka the Wee Free Men—a clan of fierce, sheep-stealing, sword-wielding, six-inch-high blue men.

Together they must face headless horsemen, ferocious grimhounds, terrifying dreams come true, and ultimately the sinister Queen of the Elves herself.

Three things for a kid to like

1. It’s hard to beat Terry Pratchett for humorous fantasy. On a bookshelf full of gloom and doom alternate worlds this story is set in a place that holds all the thrills and chills a kid is looking for and is genuinely hilarious besides. It will work particularly well for fans of British humor. If you’ve got a young reader who is driving you crazy quoting Monty Python and Dr. Who, this is the book for him.

2. Dream worlds are tricky to pull off in a story and it’s an element that made this a challenging read in the original edition. The pictures here do much to enhance the dream world Tiffany enters without overtaking it entirely and leaving nothing to the imagination. In my opinion the illustrations are just scary enough but not so vivid as to be daunting to a tender-hearted reader.

3. There is amid all the boogymen and monsters, some really thoughtful elements about the nature of dreams and the problems associated with getting everything you ask for. Plenty to inspire good conversation.

Something for the writer to think about

I’m seeing more illustrated work for middle grade readers all the time and I’m very happy about the change. I love it that there is more work for the many working artists I know. I think it makes a challenging text more inviting to a struggling reader and more accessible to an immigrant child who often comes to the page with little context for the stories he finds at school. In my own work I’ve been thinking a lot about how I can, not so much beg my publisher to put art inside, but create a story in which the images are integral to the plot and therefore necessary to the finished book.

The most recent two Newbery winners will illustrated and I’d love to hear your recommendations in the comments for other illustrated middle grade books you think were particularly well done.

How I came to review this book.

I first read this book aloud to my kids many years ago and loved it then. Recently I found a beautiful illustrated edition at my library and gave the book a re-read. Not every book I like stands up to re-reading but this one did.

Celebrating my Paperback Birthday and Indy Bookstores

Today is the book birthday of the paperback edition of Written in Stone. I’m so grateful for all the support I’ve gotten for this book from teachers and librarians and independent bookstores. My book has been honored by the Junior Library Guild. It was on the Mock Newbery list at Anderson’s Bookshop and on the Amelia Bloomer list for books with significant feminist content. It was placed on the 100 Best Books for Reading and Sharing by the New York Public Library and most recently on the Bank Street Center for Children’s Literature Best Books of the Year list.

It’s never easy to find a market for a book with a non-white main character. Historical fiction doesn’t usually get the kind of buzz that goes to fantasy and science fiction. Middle grade books are often overshadowed by their larger and more glamorous cousins in the young adult market. And yet this little story about a Quinault and Makah girl trying to hold onto her culture in the face of huge social and economic change is chugging along just fine because independent bookstores have chosen to feature it and teachers and librarian’s have advocated for it in their schools.

There is a well-publicized battle afoot between Amazon and one of the largest publishers in the country, which is reminding me a little bit of my character Pearl and her struggles for the survival of her culture. So I thought I’d spend a moment today to remember things that independent bookstores (and libraries) do for their communities that Amazon will never do.

Amazone will not post your local school’s summer reading list in the store and promise to stock those books all summer long.
Amazon will not provide a meeting space for your book club.
Amazon will not bring balloons to your book launch party.
Amazon will not bring your favorite author to town to chat about book and music and going to college with your avid reading teen.
Amazon will not hold the book that author signed for your teen behind the counter so that she can pay for it after her next lawn mowing job.
Amazon will not donate anything to your local fund raiser, certainly not a basket full of carefully chosen and beautifully wrapped novels.
Amazon will not organize writers’ workshops in your neighborhood.
Amazon has never read a picture book out loud to a circle of eager preschoolers or given their mothers a place to shop where children are welcome to touch things and talk out loud and sing if they feel like it and pet the cat if they are gentle.
Amazon does not make window displays that encourage foot traffic to nearby businesses. It doesn’t organize the neighborhood shops to provide a safe trick or treat zone for kids at Halloween. It doesn’t join the local small business association and work on projects that boost the economy of the entire neighborhood.
Amazon does not carry your grandpa’s favorite newspaper and have it ready for him every morning and stand around and chat politics with him for a few minutes every day. And on the cold icy morning when your grandpa doesn’t come to the shop like usual, Amazon does not call him at home to ask if it can drop off the newspaper at the end of the day.

Yes, I know, I’m being a little sarcastic here. Amazon does some things very well. Mostly its good at making books cheap. But even there the books you get at Amazon will never be free. For free books, you have to visit your public library!

I’d love to hear from readers about what they love about their local indy booksellers or libraries. At the end of the week I’ll give away 5 copies of my paperback to people who comment. I know some of you don’t have an indy bookseller nearby. On all my book pages there is a button to link you to either Powells or an indy bookstore near you who will ship you any book you want. And as always, if you want a signed copy of any of my books please give my local bookseller a call. They’ll set aside a copy for me to sign and ship it wherever you’d like. They are Annie Blooms Bookstore at (503) 246-0053.

Letters About Literature

This spring it was my great pleasure to serve as a judge for the Letters on Literature program which is sponsored by the Library of Congress. It’s a nation wide reading and writing contest for students from 4th to 12th grade. In this contest students are asked to reflect on a book, poem, or speech that influenced them personally and then write a letter to that author (living or dead) to describe how that work of literature affected them. It’s one of the largest writing and reading programs in the country. Tens of thousands of students enter every year.

My role in this process came after the letters were sent in to the Library of Congress and after they’d gone through the preliminary screening. The Oregon State Librarian then received three batches of letters by grade school, middle school, and high school writers. She then assembled a team for each level with a public librarian, a school librarian and an author. We each got our batches of letters, 87 in my case, and a couple of weeks to read them. And then we had a very long conference call to choose a first, second, and third place winner and any letters we wanted to give an honorable mention. Each state winner goes on to a national competition. The winning letters are posted here on the Library of Congress website. http://www.read.gov/letters/ The 2013 winners have just been posted and are well-worth a read.

Here’s what I loved about the process of reading and selecting the winning letters. It reminded me yet again what an individual experience reading is. Every reader brings their whole self to the page and takes away their own unique experience of the story. What is for one reader overwhelming and scary is thrilling to another. What is utterly foreign for some readers will be as familiar as family others. And sometimes a reader will see something in a story that the author never intended, or even knew was there. One of the most surprising and moving encounters of my professional life was a meeting I had with a young Iraqi veteran. He had read my book Heart of a Shepherd in his adult English language class and told me that he felt my main character, the son of an army officer deployed to Iraq, was just like him. “He doesn’t have a heart for war but war seeks him.” he said. I was astonished that this man, who had fought against American forces would be open hearted enough to find a kinship with a child of an American soldier. This is a reader I never imagined would even find the book much less feel a connection to it.

And that is the beauty and I think the unique strength of story, it’s a participatory art in a way that performance-based arts seldom are. A book invites a reader to walk for a while in the world view of the story character. It asks a reader to use his or her imagination to fill in all the details not explicitly on the page. And best of all it invites a conversation not just with the author as happens with the Letters About Literature contest but also a conversation with friends and family and classmates and even a whole community of readers who’ve shared the experience of the book.

If you are a teacher, I hope you’ll consider encouraging your students to give Letters about Literature a try next year. If you’re an author I hope you’ll consider volunteering to judge at the state level.

If you are lucky enough to live in Washington DC, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, or West Virginia there is a summer writing contest called A Book That Shaped Me sponsored by the Library of Congress and the National Book Festival. It’s an essay contest for raising 5th and 6th graders. All the details are here: http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/kids-teachers/booksthatshape.html There are cash prizes for state winners and finalists and the grand prize winners will be sent to the the National Book Festival to present their essays at a ceremony at the end of August. Best of luck to all you avid readers and writers who will enter this summer.

Middle Grade Monday Book Review: Open Mic: riffs on life between cultures

Ten authors — some familiar, some new — use their own brand of humor to share their stories about growing up between cultures. Henry Choi Lee discovers that pretending to be a tai chi master or a sought-after wiz at math wins him friends for a while — until it comically backfires. A biracial girl is amused when her dad clears seats for his family on a crowded subway in under a minute, simply by sitting quietly between two uptight women. Edited by acclaimed author and speaker Mitali Perkins, this collection of fiction and nonfiction uses a mix of styles as diverse as their authors, from laugh-out-loud funny to wry, ironic, or poignant, in prose, poetry, and comic form.

Three things for a middle grade reader to love

1. As the editor of this collection Mitali Perkins says, “humor crosses boarders like no other literary device. Shared laughter fosters community and gets us talking about issues that might otherwise case division or discomfort.” Here are ten wonderful jumping off places for family and classroom conversation.

2. I’m delighted to see the graphic novel format represented in a short story collection and I think Gene Luen Yang has something particularly valuable to share: the experience of speaking out against a film he felt represented his race unfairly. The unexpected happy ending was an invitation to write a better story himself from Dark Horse Comics. (Hurray for my hometown comics publisher!)

3. I found the most poignant story the one Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich wrote about her own experience as a high achieving student applying for college. Perhaps because one of my children is a senior this year and is in the throes of college acceptance drama, it struck a particular chord. In some ways it is the most YA of the stories as it deals so directly with college admissions but I think the experience of high achieving minority students is fraught with this particular brand of prejudice long before senior year.

Something for myself to think about as a writer

My godparents gave me a book of short stories when I was 8 years old. I remember because it was the first “grown-up” book I’d ever received as a gift. I’ve always loved short stories and this collection made me think about why I love them so much. The truth is, the story Rhuday-Perkovich wrote about college admissions could have been a whole novel. Most high schools have that pack of kids who take AP classes and compete on the debate team and get involved in music or drama. She could have written a novel. The story Francisco X. Stork wrote about a brother and sister enfolding their younger gay-but-not-out brother in that unwise but fiercely protective love siblings have for each other, could have been a novel too. But I love the impact of the shorter form. It forces the writer to sift through a multitude of ideas and information about a character and present only the most powerful moment. Concentration. Focus.

I’ve just finished a full novel revision and am engaged in that lengthiest of ping pong games, the editorial process. I think, what ever else I accomplish in February I want to write at least a half dozen short stories, just to see what new story ideas will bubble up in this new year.

Middle Grade Monday: See you at Harry’s

Middle Grade Monday Review for See You at Harry’s by Jo Knowles

What it’s about

Twelve-year-old Fern feels invisible. It seems as though everyone in her family has better things to do than pay attention to her: Mom (when she’s not meditating) helps Dad run the family restaurant; Sarah is taking a gap year after high school; and Holden pretends that Mom and Dad and everyone else doesn’t know he’s gay, even as he fends off bullies at school. Then there’s Charlie: three years old, a “surprise” baby, the center of everyone’s world. He’s devoted to Fern, but he’s annoying, too, always getting his way, always dirty, always commanding attention. If it wasn’t for Ran, Fern’s calm and positive best friend, there’d be nowhere to turn. Ran’s mantra, “All will be well,” is soothing in a way that nothing else seems to be. And when Ran says it, Fern can almost believe it’s true. But then tragedy strikes- and Fern feels not only more alone than ever, but also responsible for the accident that has wrenched her family apart. All will not be well. Or at least all will never be the same.

Three things I liked about this book

1. Loved seeing a larger family in a story. It’s seldom that you see a family of more than 2 or 3 kids, so it was nice to see 4 kids in a realistically chaotic household.

2. I also enjoyed reading about siblings who are not deep in conflict or preoccupied with petty bickering. Fern has the normal amount of friction with siblings that you’d find in a family of this size, but she clearly loves her brothers and sister and when trouble comes they form an alliance which is good for everybody even their beleaguered parents.

3. I also enjoyed seeing a story where the gay character is not the viewpoint character but the sibling and he has a happy resolution. The story makes it pretty clear that gay bashing is more common in the parent’s generation and that plenty of high school kids meet their gay classmates with genuine warmth and friendship.

Something to think about as a writer: There are two major plot threads here, the one with the baby brother Charlie (I’m avoiding spoilers here) and the one with the gay older brother Holden. Of the two I like the Holden thread better. Which made me wonder if the story would have been okay without the Charlie thread. It’s a tough balance to get enough but not too much happening in a story. I’m always asking myself in my writing, do I really need all these characters? Could I make it a little tighter? And yet perhaps without the Charlie thread the story would not have felt substantial enough.

So what do you think readers? How do you know when you have enough “stuff” to carry a whole novel? How do you know when you have too much?