What I'm Reading: Roundup

I've fallen behind on updating the blog. I have a couple superhero movies to add, but let's start with the reading I've been doing lately--a pair of middle grade novels.

The Unwanteds This is the first in a series of seven by Lisa McMann. It's a favorite book of my kids' and we listened to the book on tape during a recent car trip. In this book, the highly-militarized kingdom of Quill every year sorts its thirteen-year-olds into three groups: the Wanteds, the Necessaries, and the Unwanteds. The Wanteds move to various desirable positions in the Quillitary or the government administration, the Necessaries take on menial labor jobs, and the Unwanteds are driven to a spot just outside the barbed wire-surrounded Quill territory where they are supposedly to be executed.

The main thing that makes someone Unwanted is to have shown creativity. In the hierarchical and rigid society of Quill, creativity is considered a threat, while a sort of Spartan disregard for one's own feelings and others' is admired. When Alex Stowe and this year's batch of thirty or so Unwanteds (the biggest group ever!) arrive at the place of execution, the executioner, Mr. Today, leads them off...and into a hidden magic kingdom named Artime, existing side-by-side (but invisibly) with Quill. Artime is  a place where creativity and imagination are valued. All the kids are assigned artistic specialties to study, such as painting, drama, or singing. What's more, in Artime, they learn to use their artistic skills to perform magic--perhaps singing a spell to put someone to sleep, or painting a door to escape through. This will prove very useful, for if Quill ever discovers that Artime exists, it is sure to declare war on the nearby threat.

I got a strong Harry Potter-vibe from the Unwanteds. Kids at the beginning of their teenage years whisked off from their mundane existences to a fantastic land where they study the magic arts? Yeah, sounds familiar.  However, where I had mixed feelings about Harry Potter--finding it to have a subtle humor and charm in its writing style and a fun first half, but a by-the-number fantasy plot in its second half (I reviewed the first Harry Potter book here)--the Unwanteds struck me as fresh throughout. Harry Potter relied on well-worn fantasy tropes like trolls, dragons, and magic mirrors, while the Unwanteds consistently came up with original and interesting magic creatures, spells, and so forth. I liked its use of art as a basis for magic, and its healthy encouragement of creativity.

So, if your kids (or you) like Harry Potter, here's a book that's similar in a lot of ways, but that I found to have fresher ideas and a nice over-arching message. Having said that, I didn't like it so much that I feel the need to read the whole series.

Elephant Secret This book, by Eric Walters, is just fantastic. It's truly when of the best books I've read in the past year for any age group. It's aimed at middle schoolers but I think anybody who likes animals would enjoy reading it.

Sam Gray is thirteen years old and lives with her dad at a 200-acre elephant sanctuary with a herd of a dozen elephants. There's tons of work and not much money involved, but that's okay, because Sam has grown up with the elephants and relates better to them than to other humans. Still, it would be nice if the sanctuary had the funds to buy a new tractor, because the old one keeps breaking down and when it's on the fritz, that means Sam and her dad have to exhaust themselves pitching the hay out of the barn by hand. Maybe the sanctuary's mysterious new backer, who provides a much-needed infusion of funds every few months in exchange for being allowed to have the sanctuary's female elephants artificially inseminated, will be willing to spring for a new one.

Sam has some other problems too--like her father's girlfriend, a lawyer who he's getting serious about, much to Sam's dismay. Or the sanctuary's newest arrival--an abused elephant who is currently in the isolation pen because he killed man at the private zoo where he previously lived. And after the elephant Daisy Mae dies giving birth (in the saddest scene I've read in a long time), Sam and her dad are so busy bottle-feeding baby elephant Woolly every couple hours there's hardly even time to move Daisy Mae's carcass.

Still, it's pretty special having a baby elephant. And when the mysterious back finally shows himself one day, he reveals that Woolly is even more special than they thought.... Okay, I'll stop here. This is a book that's tough to discuss too much because giving away the main twist would really spoil it. Suffice it to say, if what I've written so far sounds at all intriguing, you are likely to love this emotionally powerful book.

What I'm Reading: Ten-Seven

Ten-Seven is the second Penns River Crime Novel I've read by Dana King (I reviewed the first one, Grind Joint, here) and it's a special pleasure for me to read it not only because Dana is a fellow member of my writer's group, but because he has one of the sharpest eyes and ears of any author I've ever read.

Penns River is a decaying old industrial town north of Pittsburgh, short of jobs and money, but not, unfortunately crime. "Doc" Dougherty is a skilled homicide detective who could easily have moved to a bigger city but has too much pride in his hometown to leave. He takes it as a personal affront when a murder is committed in his town, and lately, he's been affronted a lot. At the beginning of Ten-Seven, an apparently random shooting has just taken place in the parking lot of the casino, and Doc is determined to chase every wispy lead until he catches the perpetrator. This time he has help: Teresa Shimp, a young officer trying to prove she really deserves to be on the force, and is more than simply a hire to keep the department from being sued for discriminating against female police candidates.

Through the course of the novel, we also check in with the crime-associated friends we've met in previous novels: Mike Mannarino, the head of the small-time local mafiosi; and Wilver Faison, a black teen-ager on the rise in the local drug-dealing business. They have less to do directly with the plot this time around than they did in Grind Joint, but I like how Penns River is such a small town that the criminal element almost can't help rubbing against each other. The interdependence of drugs, muscle, and weapons means that one can't act without it affecting everybody else in the web.

As usual, Dana's eye for detail is what really makes the novel for me. In my review for Grind Joint I wrote that that book was as much a sociological study of a dying mill town as it was a crime novel, and that continues to be true. However, I do think the focus has shifted a bit--we get a better look this time around at the police force: new hires like Teresa Shimp and how they're fitting into the culture; the machinations of deputy Jack Harriger, who's gunning for Chief Stan Napierkowski's job when he retires; the daily work life of patrol cop Sean Sisler, who also has a secret which could endanger him but actually ends up leading to an important break in the case.

I'm not much of a mystery or crime fiction reader myself, but it's hard for me to believe this wouldn't be one of the best such novels even a hard core fan would come across this year. But this would be equally as good for anyone interested in reading a closely-observed portrait of a town that's hurting, and the crime and law enforcement institutions that play such an important part in corroding and sustaining that town.