a couple of lines

from Here, There Be Dragons...

"Astraues," Aven called out. "God of the four winds and friend to sailors. Say a little prayer when you look at him, so he will give us what we need to keep on our course."

"A little prayer?" said Jack. "To a constellation?"

"To what it represents," said Aven.

"But I don't believe in what it represents," said Jack.

"Prayers aren't for the deity," said Aven. "They're for you, to recommit yourself to what you believe."

"Can't you do that without praying to a dead Greek god?"

"Sure," said Aven. "But how often would anyone do that, if not in prayer?" (p. 218)

"The Summer Country is a land greater than any in the Archipelago of Dreams, because it has within it everything to be found in the Archipelago, and more. But where someone like Ordo Maas could find it anywhere, the Winter King would never find it at all. Because to him, it is always just out of his reach--when, in truth, he had it in reach all along."

"It sounds," John said, "as if you're talking about our world."

"Yes," said Bert. "Your world is the Summer Country." (p. 310)

The Finish Line

Here's the summary of my 48-hour book challenge efforts:

I read 7 books, including all four (to date) in The Alchemyst series, and the first in "The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica," Here, There Be Dragons. I can't wait to read some more in that series! All the books I read were fantasy (not a big surprise). I'm particularly intrigued by the overlaps in the two latter series--I want to think more about that, maybe after I read the rest of the Imaginarium Geographica books.

I read a total of 2778 pages.

I put in 16.75 reading hours, and 3 hours of social networking, for a total of 19.75 hours.

Thanks, MotherReader, for putting this together again! It was a weekend well spent!

and one more...

The last book I read for the 48 hour book challenge is another series book, Here There Be Dragons, by James A. Owen. What a great way to end! It's a terrific quest story, with a similar mix of characters and motifs as the Alchemyst books has, but put to entirely different effect--more comic, and more directly intertextual. There's great pleasure to be had in trying to puzzle out the references and connections, some of which come as quite a surprise at the end--though, really, they shouldn't, now that I know what they are. And there are three more books in the series, so I have plenty of fun to come...

(Nick told me I'd enjoy this one. Why is he always right?)

is this it?

OK, I've finished my 6th book in the challenge, and put in 2 more hours and 389 more pages. So here are the updated totals:

2454 pages

14.75 reading hours

2.5 blogging/networking hours

6 novels

And now I've caught up in The Alchemyst series and I'm seriously annoyed that The Warlock is not yet available for me to read. The little teaser at the end of The Necromancer is pretty tantalizing...

There are other books on my TBR stack so I may pick up another one, but I have to say, I'm pretty close to done. And I'm still kind of stuck in The Alchemyst's world--and liking it--so I'm not sure I'm ready to break that spell. On the other hand, there's still plenty of reading time left this evening. I don't expect to do much tomorrow morning--my time is up at 10:30 and I'm headed to church at about 8:45. So this may be it. But I'll check in again tomorrow morning to confirm the totals, one way or the other.

The Prophecy

Dawn Miller's The Prophecy has a great cast of characters and a complicated plot--probably not the best choice for my first read-as-fast-as-you-can entry in the 48 hour book challenge. But it was at the top of my TBR list and it's YA, so there you go.

So, there's a war between good and evil (um, angels and fallen angels) but there are some humans who are really important to that war. So far, so good--though it did take me some 100 pages to figure that much out, at least with any clarity. The characters, though, make it: Sam, the martial arts instructor/painter, and his younger brother Jonah, the screw-up; J, the criminal; Jenna, who at 19 has a 5-year-old son (as she says at one point, "you do the math"); and red-headed Carly, whose small size belies her ability to get out of a jam, and fast. They are intriguing characters, and the slow pace of the novel (there are nested flashbacks, which keeps a reader on her toes but, again, slows her down) gives us time to try to get to know them.

There's a lot going on here, and I don't want to give it all away. In a quick read, I give it about three out of five stars: the plot points all do work out, and there's a satisfying conclusion (with a hint that the story could continue without making the reader feel cheated). And, as I said, there are some intriguing characters here, though some are better developed than others. Jonah's at the center, which is fine, but I wanted more of Carly and Jenna, myself--Jenna's story, in particular, is tantalizingly hinted out but remains undeveloped. So, all in all, a fine way to start out the 48-hour book challenge. More to come.

[edited to add: I received this book from a publicist some time ago and just got around to reading it...]

48 Hr book challenge

I haven't participated in Mother Reader's 48-hour book challenge in a while, but I'm trying it this year. I'm home alone today with no car--perfect way to start out!--and I warmed up with three picture books this morning. But now I've got two novels sitting by my right hand and a bunch of other things I've been meaning to get to--so here goes!

Keeping Score

So now that the list is out, it looks like folks are trying to see whether they've kept up with their reading. Like Tea Cozy's Liz B, then, I'll bold the ones I've read. How'd you do?

100. The Egypt Game - Snyder (1967) [honestly? This one I hadn't even heard of...]

99. The Indian in the Cupboard - Banks (1980)

98. Children of Green Knowe - Boston (1954)

97. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane - DiCamillo (2006)

96. The Witches - Dahl (1983)

95. Pippi Longstocking - Lindgren (1950

94. Swallows and Amazons - Ransome (1930)

93. Caddie Woodlawn - Brink (1935)

92. Ella Enchanted - Levine (1997)

91. Sideways Stories from Wayside School - Sachar (1978)

90. Sarah, Plain and Tall - MacLachlan (1985)

89. Ramona and Her Father - Cleary (1977)

88. The High King - Alexander (1968)

87. The View from Saturday - Konigsburg (1996)

86. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - Rowling (1999)

85. On the Banks of Plum Creek - Wilder (1937)

84. The Little White Horse - Goudge (1946)

83. The Thief - Turner (1997)

82. The Book of Three - Alexander (1964)

81. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon - Lin (2009)

80. The Graveyard Book - Gaiman (2008)

79. All-of-a-Kind-Family - Taylor (1951)

78. Johnny Tremain - Forbes (1943)

77. The City of Ember - DuPrau (2003)

76. Out of the Dust - Hesse (1997)

75. Love That Dog - Creech (2001)

74. The Borrowers - Norton (1953)

73. My Side of the Mountain - George (1959)

72. My Father's Dragon - Gannett (1948)

71. The Bad Beginning - Snicket (1999)

70. Betsy-Tacy - Lovelae (1940)

69. The Mysterious Benedict Society - Stewart ( 2007)

68. Walk Two Moons - Creech (1994)

67. Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher - Coville (1991)

66. Henry Huggins - Cleary (1950)

65. Ballet Shoes - Stratfeild (1936)

64. A Long Way from Chicago - Peck (1998)

63. Gone-Away Lake - Enright (1957)

62. The Secret of the Old Clock - Keene (1959) [I must have--I had a serious Nancy Drew habit at one point--though I really couldn't tell you anything about it now...]

61. Stargirl - Spinelli (2000)

60. The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle - Avi (1990)

59. Inkheart - Funke (2003)

58. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase - Aiken (1962)

57. Ramona Quimby, Age 8 - Cleary (1981)

56. Number the Stars - Lowry (1989)

55. The Great Gilly Hopkins - Paterson (1978)

54. The BFG - Dahl (1982)

53. Wind in the Willows - Grahame (1908)

52. The Invention of Hugo Cabret (2007)

51. The Saturdays - Enright (1941)

50. Island of the Blue Dolphins - O'Dell (1960)

49. Frindle - Clements (1996)

48. The Penderwicks - Birdsall (2005)

47. Bud, Not Buddy - Curtis (1999)

46. Where the Red Fern Grows - Rawls (1961)

45. The Golden Compass - Pullman (1995)

44. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing - Blume (1972)

43. Ramona the Pest - Cleary (1968)

42. Little House on the Prairie - Wilder (1935)

41. The Witch of Blackbird Pond - Speare (1958)

40. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - Baum (1900)

39. When You Reach Me - Stead (2009)

38. HP and the Order of the Phoenix - Rowling (2003)

37. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry - Taylor (1976)

36. Are You there, God? It's Me, Margaret - Blume (1970)

35. HP and the Goblet of Fire - Rowling (2000)

34. The Watsons Go to Birmingham - Curtis (1995)

33. James and the Giant Peach - Dahl (1961)

32. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH - O'Brian (1971)

31. Half Magic - Eager (1954)

30. Winnie-the-Pooh - Milne (1926)

29. The Dark Is Rising - Cooper (1973)

28. A Little Princess - Burnett (1905)

27. Alice I and II - Carroll (1865/72)

26. Hatchet - Paulsen (1989)

25. Little Women - Alcott (1868/9)

24. HP and the Deathly Hallows - Rowling (2007)

23. Little House in the Big Woods - Wilder (1932)

22. The Tale of Despereaux - DiCamillo (2003)

21. The Lightening Thief - Riordan (2005)

20. Tuck Everlasting - Babbitt (1975)

19. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Dahl (1964)

18. Matilda - Dahl (1988)
17. Maniac Magee - Spinelli (1990)

16. Harriet the Spy - Fitzhugh (1964)

15. Because of Winn-Dixie - DiCamillo (2000)

14. HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban - Rowling (1999)

13. Bridge to Terabithia - Paterson (1977)

12. The Hobbit - Tolkien (1938)

11. The Westing Game - Raskin (1978)

10. The Phantom Tollbooth - Juster (1961)

9. Anne of Green Gables - Montgomery (1908)

8. The Secret Garden - Burnett (1911)

7. The Giver -Lowry (1993)

6. Holes - Sachar (1998)

5. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler - Koningsburg (1967)

4. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - Lewis (1950)

3. Harry Potter #1 - Rowling (1997)

2. A Wrinkle in Time - L'Engle (1962)

1. Charlotte's Web - White (1952)


Looks like I've read 83--B-, but still that feels pretty reasonable. Maybe I'll work on the rest over the summer!

late to the party

I know Louis Menand's piece on the creative writing workshop (ostensibly a review of Mark McGurl's book, The Program Era, which sounds fascinating) has already been discussed all over the place. After all, it came out three weeks ago, and in internet time that's an eternity. But I am getting to my New Yorkers late, and I have a bizarre aversion to reading them online, so I just finished the piece this morning.

As someone who occasionally teaches a creative writing workshop (in nonfiction, I hasten to add!), I suppose I have a dog in the fight--though, as Menand presents it, in the end it's not much of a fight. Creative writing workshops are doing something, and they're not going away, so whether or not creative writing itself can be taught actually turns out to be sort of beside the point. But there's almost a throwaway line in his piece that I found very helpful, actually: "Creative-writing courses follow naturally from the 'learning by doing' theories of progressive education: they add practical, hands-on experience to traditional book learning" (109). I've been thinking a lot about progressive education lately, and this rings true to me. It also suggests that maybe in literature courses we ought to be making our students, say, write a sonnet or attempt some fiction. (I think this might be the Bennington approach--Terry?) It's an approach I have to admit I've resisted, because it's 1) not the way I was taught and 2) therefore would have me teaching something I'm not sure I know how to teach. Always a tricky thing.

But, as Menand's next-to-last paragraph reminds us, workshops can "teach [us] about the importance of making things, not just reading things"--and that is, I think, an increasingly valuable skilln(112). Matt Crawford might not think of fiction-making as the same kind of soulcraft that he identifies in manual labor, but there is a satisfaction to making, even making sentences and paragraphs, that I think it's important to acknowledge. And sometimes when students try to write something themselves, they gain an awareness of their reading as made object; they start to be able to look into the craft of it. And that, in turn, can improve their writing as they pay more attention to their own craft.

Sometimes in my children's lit class I've had students do a project taken from Molly Bang's Picture This! How Pictures Work, in which they have to make a picture that tells a story, using cut paper in only four colors. They laugh at themselves for enjoying such a kindergarten assignment so much, but it does give them some insight into what the illustrator's craft requires. I may have to revive that one, and maybe play around with some other hands-on assignments, this time through.

Famous Fictional Characters

The Guardian books blog poses the question today: who is the most famous fictional character? Apparently Penguin is promoting a new edition of the Sherlock Holmes stories this fall, and, according to The Guardian--"Sherlock Holmes," it is claimed on the promotional material, "is not only the most famous character in crime fiction, but arguably the most famous character in all fiction."

That's a big claim. The comments section over there suggests some interesting alternatives (Satan? God?), but I thought I'd bring it over here. I've long thought that children's lit provides many of the most famous fictional characters--Peter Pan, Alice, Mr. Toad, Winnie the Pooh. The nineteenth century offers us some important ones: I'd add Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, and Scrooge to Peter and Alice, for example.

It seems to me, too, that "famous" here means "detachable from their original context." That is, many of us encounter these most famous characters long before we ever read their stories--if we ever do. So while Wilbur or even Harry Potter are obviously well-known, I'd say they're not as famous as Peter Pan or Alice in Wonderland, whose names have become bywords. Wilbur and Harry still come in their original contexts, with stories attached, even if we meet them first in film rather than literature.

watch the president read

Self-Promotion

I'm just back from a meeting with some fabulous librarians about a program I'm doing for them next month. They've planned a wonderful opportunity for adults to talk about children's books, and I'm delighted to be facilitating the discussions. There are three of them, at three different branch libraries--here are some details.

“A Family Affair: Children’s Classic for Adults”
“A Family Affair: Children’s Classic for Adults” Dr. Libby Gruner, Associate Professor of English, at The University of Richmond will lead our discussion based upon the selected books: Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis, The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place by E.L. Konigsburg, A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park, and Becoming Naomi León by Pam Muñoz Ryan **Registration is required.**

The sessions are from 2-3 on three successive Saturday afternoons: March 7, 14, and 21 at the Belmont, Ginter Park, and West End branches of the Richmond Public Library. There are details here, along with a number to call for more information.

Critics Say Newbery-Winning Books Are Too Challenging for Young Readers - washingtonpost.com

Critics Say Newbery-Winning Books Are Too Challenging for Young Readers - washingtonpost.com: "'I can't help but believe that thousands, even millions, more children would grow up reading if the Newbery committee aimed to spotlight books that are deep and beautiful and irresistible to kids,' said Lucy Calkins, founding director of the Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University's Teachers College and a professor of children's literature."*

OK, that's the money quote, and I think it's already (rightly) been ridiculed. As if one award is single-handedly preventing kids from becoming readers? In a culture where reading is not valued, where celebrity children's books and TV tie-ins dominate bookstore shelves (how many children have Madonna, Jenna Bush, and Jeff Foxworthy turned off reading?), how can the Newbery be keeping millions of children from becoming readers? It just doesn't make sense.

On the next page some actual teen readers get their say--briefly--and they note that one thing that dampens their enthusiasm for reading is having it assigned. While this annoys me, I think it may also have some truth, and of course there's an overlap between assigned reading and the Newbery, though it's by no means the only criterion teachers and curriculum developers use.

This semester some of my students spent a few hours working with middle school students at an innovative private middle school for girls. The girls they worked with have almost no specific assigned reading; rather, they are assigned a number of hours of reading a week. They write journal entries and book reviews, and they discuss the books with each other and with their teacher; they are thoughtful about their reading choices, and many of them challenge themselves with books like Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, and The Life of Pi (though, yes, others spent many hours last year working their way through the Twilight series). In a larger school the logistics of such a program might be daunting, but it clearly works: the girls read a lot, and they're articulate about their reading choices.

At the end of the semester I ask my (college) children's lit students to write a research paper. One option for that paper is for them to revisit a book they loved as a child. I haven't worked out the statistics (hey, I'm an English professor, remember?), but my sense from doing this for many years is that the students split their choices fairly evenly between books assigned for school (books like To Kill a Mockingbird, The Giver, Catcher in the Rye) and books they picked up for pleasure (this year, Redwall, The Phantom Tollbooth, and James and the Giant Peach, for example). I guess I'll have to start keeping records on the awards won by the books they choose. In the meantime, I'm really not going to worry about the Newbery award. Those librarians know their business.


*MotherReader takes the piece on here, with a hilarious list of fake controversies.

Why I do what I do

Sometimes my students ask me if authors really think about "that stuff" (symbolism, metaphor, allusion, intertextuality) when they write their books. Here is the unequivocal answer: yes.

John Green rocks.

YA books for adults

The line between YA and adult books is, for me, very blurry. And apparently for some publishers, too, which is why (for example) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is only one of many books published in both categories. Now the School Library Journal blog (link from Kids Lit) takes up the question, listing nine books for teens from the last year that would be equally at home in adult reading rooms. I've only read two (The Graveyard Book and Octavian Nothing, II) but I wholeheartedly agree about them. Then again, I'm an adult who routinely reads YA fiction, so I would, right? And Pratchett (another listee) and Gaiman already cross over all the time between children's, YA, and adult fiction, so they're no surprise. My husband thinks Octavian Nothing is categorically not for teens (we have these arguments periodically; they're fun); it is, certainly, a denser read than many books we typically think of as YA. But now I need to read the rest of the books on the list and figure out why they're there and not, say, Paper Towns, which was one of my favorite YA books of the year and far more engaging than, say, Prep, which also has a teenage protagonist but was published for adults.*

Categories are hard. Necessary, I guess, but hard.

*One (cynical) reason is marketing. It's also true that Paper Towns has few if any interesting and well-developed adult characters--they're just much less important to the story--while The Graveyard Book and Octavian Nothing each has several. For my money Prep** has no interesting characters of any age, but that's maybe just me.
**Yes, I'm aware that Prep didn't come out this year and the other books I'm talking about did. I couldn't think of a more recent "adult" fiction title with a teenaged protagonist.

Pre-reading Favorites

The Guardian Book Blog, one of my favorite reads on my feed reader, poses a fabulous question: What were your favorite books before you could read? I actually mentioned two of mine in my last post: Madeline, and Nomi and the Lovely Animals. I think that my dad began reading The Hobbit to me before I could read, too--I was just a week shy of my fifth birthday. I don't remember any others, but those are still lodged somewhere deep in my memory. When all is else gone, I expect those will still remain.

Favorite Childhood Reading

I mentioned in my last post that we've been discussing favorite childhood reading on the child_lit listserv, so I thought I'd repost here the message that I sent. (I've made some tiny edits.)

Like another reader, some of my favorite books (especially in fourth grade) were biographies. My earliest reading memories, though, are of my father reading me Madeline and, my very favorite, Nomi and the Lovely Animals, a book I haven't thought of in years though I can recite large parts of it by heart (and I had no idea, until just now, that it was by Louis Slobodkin). My father also read me the entire Lord of the Rings series, though I only really remember him reading The Hobbit; later I read them all myself and virtually inhabited that world for a while. The Chronicles of Narnia, the Little House books, the Streatfeild "shoes" books, and anything by Madeline L'Engle were also favorites that I read over and over again. There was also a collected Twain and a collection of similarly-bound Alcott novels in my grandparents' house, where we spent some summers, so I read those over and over as well. And does anyone else remember Thee, Hannah? That was another one from my grandparents' shelves...

There are more, of course, but I'll stop after mentioning the Moomin books, which I also remember reading over and over at around the same age (somewhere under 12).

Some of my old books are at my parents' house and I've enjoyed introducing them to my children as my mother must have enjoyed introducing her old books to me. What a pleasure to remember all of these!

Edited to add: here's a piece from the Times Online with some writers' favorite childhood reads.

'tis the season

As the holiday gift-giving season approaches, articles about children's books to give and receive are sure to start turning up. An early entry is this one by Joseph Bottum in First Things (I got the link from Neil Gaiman's blog), which I expect to see discussed in the kidlitosphere or on the child_lit listserv pretty soon.

I don't at all disagree that this is a golden age of sorts for children's literature, and I like his idea that we read some books (the Harry Potter series, for example) simply because others read them. Or as Bottum puts it: "their sharedness has become their most important quality." While I disagree with his judgements about certain books (Winnie the Pooh, Little Women, Summerland) I'm enjoying thinking about how living in a certain cultural moment can make good writers better. Is this what happened around the turn of the 18th-19th centuries with the Romantic poets, perhaps?

I'm also just delighted to see someone else sing the praises of My Family and Other Animals, a book I loved while growing up and should really read again. We've been talking on the child_lit listserv lately about our favorite childhood reading, and that's one I'd forgotten to mention. But I adored it at the time.

Don't forget!

Nominations for the Cybils open today. For those of you who missed them the last two years, the Cybils are the kidlitosphere's own children's book awards. (Cybils, as Little Willow helpfully explains, is a loose acronym for Children's and YA Bloggers's Literary Awards.) Cybils will be given in nine categories this year:

Poetry
Fiction Picture Books
Non-Fiction Picture Books
Easy Readers
Middle Grade/Young Adult Non-Fiction
Middle Grade Fiction
Young Adult Fiction
Graphic Novels
Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Last year I served as a Sci-Fi/Fantasy judge, and it was a blast. I didn't volunteer this year because, much as I loved it, I simply couldn't figure out how I'd have time. (I am already on the Children's Literature Assocation's Book Award committee, and I can't do two book awards in one year when I'm not on sabbatical.) This year's panelists and judges look fabulous, and I'm sure they'll have a great time sorting through the wonderful books that have been published this year.

Check out the FAQs for the Cybils here, and then go back to the Cybils blog to nominate books in your favorite categories. Remember, you can only nominate one per category, so choose wisely!

Getting out

Can this be? I just added the first movie to my viewing list since we came back from France in July. There have been movies I wanted to see, certainly--and I have gotten out of the house every now and then--but the movies somehow just aren't happening.

Oh, I lied. Or, more likely, repressed. We did take a bunch of kids to see Star Wars: the Clone Wars for Nick's birthday, which I somehow forgot to list. (And, well, I slept through the middle of it, so maybe it doesn't count?) OK, so one movie since the third week of July. What have I been doing instead?

The reading list isn't much better. I did get a bunch of ARCs and read some of them at the end of the summer, but since school started in August it's been all re-reading, all the time. This weekend it's the Twilight series, since I have an idea for a talk--and an abstract due on Tuesday. But otherwise I'm re-reading for classes. And that's all fine--I don't teach things I don't like--but it still cuts into the time available for new books.

So, to recap: I don't get out much, and from August to May I don't take in much that's new, either. But it was fun to go out last night and laugh at the silliness of Get Smart.

Today's update

When I'm teaching, everything revolves around the books I'm immersed in, and the books start speaking to my present reality. Right now I'm moving on from Frankenstein to Wuthering Heights in one class, and from Alice in Wonderland to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in the other two. And somehow Frankenstein made it into my Mama, PhD blog entry over at Inside Higher Ed today.

In other news, I'm working at home today while I wait for the Verizon installers. The question of the day is, will I finish my grading before they arrive?

(cross-posted at the other blog)