Wow

"Open thine eyes, and thou shalt be satisfied with bread."

Proverbs 20:13

So There's This Girl...

And Tolstoy is on her ipod for months. She grows to love the Rostov family ... Moscow ... the holy images. And two weeks after she finishes War and Peace, she gets an offer to go to Russia. As a nanny. Expenses paid. Two weeks (at least) in Kiev. And she says YES!

Heroes: Eva Ibbotson

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

The Star of Kazan. Ibbotson, known for ghost-and-witches tales, produced a glowing sport when she wrote Kazan, a novel worthy to be compared with The Secret Garden. Beautifully-written and delightfully-plotted, it's replete with long-lost mothers, Russian jewels, gypsies, castles, despicable villains, Lipizzaner stallions and unforgettable characters. Its virtual obscurity is a disgrace. Circulate this story among all the children you know--but read it yourself, first!

A Countess Below Stairs. This is a curl-up story about a Russian girl whose family must flee their homeland during the Revolution of 1917. In England, Anna hires herself out as a maid to the household of Lord Rupert, a young man just released from an army hospital. The characters who inhabit their neighborhood are a delight. Yes, plot lines are somewhat fudgy, but A Countess Below Stairs is a fairy-tale you can't help loving.

Dickinson Friday: 167

To learn the Transport by the Pain
As Blind Men learn the sun!
To die of thirst — suspecting
That Brooks in Meadows run!

To stay the homesick — homesick feet
Upon a foreign shore —
Haunted by native lands, the while —
And blue — beloved air!

This is the Sovereign Anguish!
This — the signal woe!
These are the patient "Laureates"
Whose voices — trained — below —

Ascend in ceaseless Carol —
Inaudible, indeed,
To us — the duller scholars
Of the Mysterious Bard!

Scoop of the e-e-evening: The Adoration of Jenna Fox

Wow.


Outside first. Just holding this book, you know you have something good. Its dimensions are smaller than most hardcovers. A beautiful kind of small. Not old-book small, but almost.

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Now inside.

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Seventeen-year-old Jenna has been told that is her name. she has just awoken from a year-long coma, and she’s still recovering from the terrible accident that caused it. Her parents show her home movies of her life, her memories, but she has no recollection. Is she really the same girl she sees on the screen? Little by little, Jenna begins to remember. Along with the memories come questions—questions no one wants to answer for her. What really happened after the accident?

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The writing was much sparser than I expected. But it only took a few pages and I forgot my discomfort. I was in.

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Books you are certain of rereading before you’re even halfway through are so far between. Mary Pearson delivers such a book.

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Books with a true, hearty laugh-out-loud moment are hard to find. Pearson delivers the paragon of moments with a mistaken vocabulary word.

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And she can write. “Silence threads though the house like a lace pulling tight.”

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Did I mention she seamlessly weaves a future world, replete with unaltered life, and replete with change, without once sounding like a conspiracy theorist? Always just the right amount of progress and “progress.”

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The epilogue was slightly dissatisfying, but I think that’s because it confirmed the novel’s inevitable bittersweet qualities. One thing readers won’t run short of is passages for discussion!

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Things that weaken most writing only enhance Pearson’s. For example, she doesn’t flesh out Jenna’s old friends. They are names, and not much else. Your mind begins to dismiss them as stock characters and then you stop. You stop and realize that Jenna feels the same distance, the same emptiness of color, background and endearment. She, too, is missing the million pieces that knit friends into our hearts.

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Another example. Very few authors can pose enormous philosophical questions without sounding pompous and obvious. Pearson creates a girl who knows nothing—of self, of human interaction, of mortality—and suddenly, enormous philosophical questions are vital. The reader soaks them in. “The question that twists inside me again and again—am I enough?—I realize for the first time, is not just my question, but was the old Jenna’s question as well.”

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It is everyone’s question. We all wonder at the weight of a sparrow.

I'm up at Novel Journey Today

Check out my interview with Gary Schmidt over at Novel Journey.

Prince Caspian

Two words: smash hit.

We die-hard Narnia fans might not have a cool name (though "Narnighters" is an option), but when it comes to fierce passion for The Books, we're there. We want faithful adaptions just as much as the next reader and frankly, the Prince Caspian trailer should be burned. It gave fans like me zero hope for a good movie. I mean, seriously, when Ben says "I am Prince Caspian" in that my-name-is-Inigo-Montoya voice, how can you not smash your forehead into the keyboard?

But it was all a set up. Because the movie is such the best.

Yes, the plot was shuffled like cars on a rush hour board, and yes, there is an out-of-nowhere assault on Miraz's castle, and yes, there is a slight romance between Caspian and Susan. However, in my opinion, Prince Caspian, as a film, is better than The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Heresy? Go see the movie.

The pacing is much better. The beach locations are amazing. The comic relief is not so corny. The entire Telemarine flavor is delicious. It is a grounded world, it is true to the essence of the novel, and what's more, Adamson kept lines. DLF, oh bother, must I sit on your head? Very satisfying.


If you're interested, visit this site for documented proof of the De Vries Family Narnia Obsession.