What I'm Reading: Roundup

Let's do some of the books I've been reading lately, hitting the comics this time.

Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid The latest in the long Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney, about a middle-schooler named Greg who keeps a journal. My kids love this series--if we don't have all of them, we're pretty close. And I've been known to pick up copies left around the house and giggle my way through big chunks of them. Greg is always getting himself into ridiculous situations, usually because he tries to find the easy way out of a chore or homework assignment or a quick way to make money, only to find his shortcut has backfired on him.

This is the latest one, and is a little different than the others in that it's supposed to be written by Greg's best friend, Rowley. Rowley's a smart student in school, but not so much when it comes to reading other people--he always believes they have the best of intentions, and others, especially Greg, are always getting the better of him. I don't think this book worked quite as well as the books from Greg's point of view. In those books, we know what Greg's thinking, and he comes across as sympathetic. Here, he mainly comes across as manipulative, always trying to take advantage of his friendship with Rowley to get Rowley to do his homework or take the fall in their latest misadventure. Still, there were several funny scenes. If I were to recommend a book in this series, though, I think it would be The Long Haul, when Greg's family goes on vacation. Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid would probably be near the bottom of the list.

Batman in the Forties A collection of Batman stories from the 1940s (duh). Part of a series of Batman decades--the seventies one is probably the one I'll get next, if I do get another. It's amazing to me how much more readable stories from Batman's first decade are than various Batman stories I've read from the 1950s. The Comics Code, imposed in 1954, really did a number on the comics industry--just ripping the heart out of depictions of evil, and thus, adulterating the heroism of the protagonists as well. Here, even though these stories are aimed at kids or early teens, there's no shortage of gruesome murders and ruthless gangsters, plus those great macabre Batman villains. The introduction of Robin (from Batman #38) is surprisingly violent. It's easy to see why kids loved this!

The early Catwoman story titled Your Face Is Your Fortune (because Catwoman has disguised herself as a beautician to rob high society women) is probably the best one here, with Alfred, Armchair Detective, a close second. Lots of other good stuff too, though.

Detective Comics #1000 The anniversary issue, just out last month! Not a book in format, as it's the regular "floppy" comic style, but thick enough to be a book with 96 pages. Also, I feel compelled to point out, it's not really a Batman anniversary, as he didn't appear in this title until issue #27. No matter, it's the title he's been associated with since 1939.

I also picked up Action Comics #1000 a few months ago and found a few good stories, but a lot of filler, too. Not 'Tec #1000. Nearly every story in here is solid, with some great creative teams at work. I'm not normally a fan of writer Brian Michael Bendis, but I think his contribution was the best, with an elderly Penguin, who we learn has known Batman's secret identity for decades, using this knowledge for a final act of revenge against the frail, wheel-chair bound Bruce Wayne. However, Bruce Wayne still has a final counter-stratagem of his own....

Another good one was Batman's Longest Case, by Scott Snyder, about a case Batman has been following for years. Whenever he gets some free time, he'll work on the latest clue, which inevitably leads him to some exotic new location--an archeological dig in Egypt, a plane wreck in the Amazon--until finally leading him back to an abandoned tenement house in Gotham, where he discovers the source of the clues is....but that would be spoiling it.

A highly satisfying anniversary issue, entirely worthy of the Dark Knight.

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: Roundup

How to Be a Pirate We listened to this, the sequel to How to Train Your Dragon, on a recent car trip. It follows Hiccup, a Norse boy of around 9-10 years of age, who's rather sensitive and small for his age, and not at all the great Viking warrior his father, the chief of their tribe, envisions as his heir. Similarly, all the men and boys in the tribe have dragons, and Hiccup's dragon is Toothless, a wispy, cowardly, and not-at-all-fearsome creature--more of a winged lizard, really.

On this adventure, the Viking band comes across the coffin of their fearsome ancestor, Grimbeard the Ghastly, only for a character named Alvin to pop out of the coffin, claiming to have found a map with directions to Grimbeard's legendary treasure. If you guessed Alvin might not have the best of intentions at heart, you guessed correctly.

Actually, if you guessed anything about this book, you probably guessed correctly, because it's highly formulaic. I was not a fan of this. The humor was obvious and dumb, the characters flat, the plot paint-by-numbers. It's not just because I'm an adult and this is a book aimed at fifth graders--I recently reviewed The Reptile Room, a series book aimed at the same age, and found it full of sly humor with admirably-drawn characters.

If you are looking for a book for a late elementary-aged kid in your life, I recommend avoiding the How to Train Your Dragon series. Instead, if the child likes humor, try the Series of Unfortunate Events books, of which above-mentioned Reptile Room is the second, or the Incorrigible Children series. Or, if the child you have in mind prefers high adventure and for some reason won't read The Hobbit, even the Ranger's Apprentice series is better than this dreck.

Angelic On the other hand, this kid-appropriate graphic novel is one of my absolute favorite things lately. It follows Qora, a brave and curious pink monkey who lives in the ruins of a human city in a future world where humans no longer exist. Her band of monkeys speaks in a devolved English patois and follows a rigorous religious code that forbids exploration outside of their territory and requires girl monkeys of Qora's age to have their wings clipped and become good, obedient wives to a male they are assigned to.

Qora can't stand it! She's too curious, too smart, too full of life for that crap, and after an altercation when her antics get the tribe in a fight with their mortal enemies--robotic dolphins and bubble-encased flying manatees--she flees and finds herself paired with a fellow outcast from the manatee society. Together they search for a missing piece to the manatees' robotic god/leader so they can get some answers as to why their bizarre world is the way it is.

Written by Simon Spurrier and beautifully drawn by Caspar Wijngarrd, Angelic is a highly imaginative tale and Qora is a compelling (and adorable!) girlmonk who has too many asks to be anything but a naughtybutt. My son loved it and I have sent copies to a couple people I think would enjoy it, but really anyone who likes high-quality, all-ages fantasy should check out Angelic.

What I'm Reading: Roundup

A quick roundup of some the things I've been reading:

The Reptile Room The second book in the Series of Unfortunate Events series. I read the first one but it must have been before I started this blog as I couldn't find an entry for it.

The series follows the Baudelaire children--14-year-old Violet, who loves inventing; 12-year-old Klaus, who's read thousands of books; and infant Sunny, who has really sharp teeth. The Baudelaire children are orphans and must fend off the dastardly Count Olaf, who wants to worm his way into the great fortune the children are due to inherit when they come of age.

In this book, the children go to live with their kindly Uncle Monty, a herpetologist (snake researcher!). Unfortunately, Uncle Monty has hired a new assistant, Stephano, who is really Count Olaf in disguise, though nobody believes the children when they try to explain this. When Uncle Monty turns up dead of snakebite, it's up to the children to prove Count Olaf is the murderer.

The series specializes in black humor, when horrible things happen to the Baudelaire children with such regularity that it becomes humorous. Maybe it sounds morbid for a kid's series, but my third-grade daughter loves it. It helps that the children are brave and plucky and polite, despite all their misfortune. I think it's great--the author, Lemony Snicket, strikes just the right balance in tone so it's not too scary but not too tame for late elementary-schoolers.

Silman's Complete Endgame Course--The latest book I'm reading in my not-especially effective quest to become a better chess player. This, by Jeremy Silman, is the recommended book for learning about endgames.

What I like about this book is that chapters aren't organized thematically, but rather progress according to your rating level. The first couple chapters cover endgames beginners are mostly likely to encounter, with each succeeding chapter increasing in sophistication. It makes a lot of sense-- you don't have to waste a lot of time early on learning about weird endgame situations you'll hardly ever run into unless you're a grandmaster. Kind of a dry subject, but written with a lot of humor to make it easier to read.

Complete Peanuts: 1989-90 Oh my, Schulz was getting soft in his own age. This volume has tons of sentimental strips with Charlie Brown sitting under a tree with Snoopy or just holding him in his lap, deciding at one point he wants to give up school so he can stay home and keep his dog company. Of course, this doesn't work out. Charlie Brown also finds a girlfriend in this volume! He meets her at summer camp. Unfortunately, he's so nervous when he first meets her he introduces himself as Brownie Charles. Later, at home, he's disappointed when she doesn't write him any letters. But actually, his sister Sally has been telling the postman to take the letters back because no one by the name "Brownie Charles" lives there.

Sally's not impressed

I liked the introduction of a new relative of Snoopy's, Olaf. (Not related to Count Olaf from The Reptile Room, presumably.) There's an ugly dog contest, and Lucy tries to get Snoopy or Spike to enter it, but they refuse. However, there's another brother who just may fit the bill:

Is this dog ugly enough to win?

There's another good sequence when Marcie is about to crack from the pressure her parents put her under to get good grades in school, and spends a few days at Charlie Brown's house. Still, it seemed like this edition didn't have as many longer story arcs as recent volumes. And, as ever, we're in the slow decline from the strip's heyday that's been going on for at least 15 years. Still, Peanuts on a bad day is better than most comic strips at their best.

What I'm Reading: Roundup

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Cincinnati Reds Over spring break we went on vacation to Cincinnati. Hey, don't laugh, we had a great time! One of the things we did was take in a Reds game (lost to the Brewers 5-1), and I picked this book up in the great Reds Museum attached to the ballpark. This book was exactly what I was looking for, more or less a primer on the history of Reds baseball, written in a fun, accessible style.

The Reds were the first professional baseball team ever, dating from 1869. Those first couple "seasons" they traveled around the country playing local clubs, factory teams, and so forth, and going more than 80 games without defeat until they lost to the New York Atlantics in June 1870. While they haven't always been the winningest club since then, they've been to the World Series nine times and won five of those visits, most recently in 1990.

I was pretty familiar with the glory days of the Big Red Machine in the 1970s, but other aspects of team history were a surprise. I think I liked best learning about Ted Kluszewski, the Reds mountainous first baseman in the 1950s. Kluszewski was widely considered the strongest man in baseball, but was a gentle giant with a humble disposition. There are numerous stories of his feats, both tape-measure home runs and more irregular occurrences. For instance, a game with St. Louis nearly broke out in a brawl. When St. Louis shortstop Solly Hemus ran out of the dugout to join the developing fight, Kluszewski lifted him off the ground entirely and asked where he was going. "Nowhere, Ted, nowhere," was the answer, cutting the brawl short before it could spread.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone We listened to this in the car on the way to and back from Cincy. I had always had the impression that Harry Potter was little more than a mish-mash of well-worn fantasy tropes with the cliche-ridden writing typical of the genre and was not looking forward to hearing this. After actually listening to it, I'll admit I've upgraded my opinion a couple notches, although I still don't think it's nearly as great as its reputation.

As far as writing-style, it does use that high fantasy style, but adds a winking irony and subtle humor. Holy cow, J. K. Rowling is in on the joke! Parts of this book are pretty funny, and on a line-by-line and page-by-page level, the writing has a great deal of charm and is quite listenable/readable. The world-building, too, is remarkable. I think the main thing readers like in this book must be all the various details we see as we accompany Harry on his first visit to Hogwarts, the magical classes and teachers and stores and even candies. Plus, the great sequences with Quidditch, that comically complicated, high-speed broomstick-riding sport Harry excels at.

Once we actually settled into the plot of the book I was somewhat less thrilled, however. As we move on from Harry's initial encounters with a world whose existence he had never suspected, we enter a fairly by-the-numbers adventure in the second half of the book. Oh, trolls, dragons, and a magic mirror. Yawn. Plus, while I won't give away the ending (as if there's anyone besides me who hasn't read this yet), it was very much a deus ex machina-type resolution to the conflict.

Whether I recommend this book is beside the point--every kid who likes reading has already picked it up, I'm sure. It's definitely a fun read, but I don't think Hogwarts is going to join Middle Earth or Narnia as a place that kids will still be visiting in their imaginations decades from now.

What I'm Reading: When I Was a Young Boy

When I Was a Young Boy is the translated title of Erich Kästner's 1957 book Als Ich ein Kleiner Junge War. Erich Kästner was a German author for children from the 1930s to 60s, probably best known for his book Emil and the Detectives. It would be an understatement to say Kästner was beloved--he was the German equivalent of a Beverly Cleary or Roald Dahl. This book is a memoir of his youth, up to about age 15, written in a style appropriate for late elementary or middle school.

Kästner was born in 1899 and lived until his teen years in Dresden, so much of the interest for the modern reader is in how life was lived in pre-World War I Germany. There is plenty of detail about the street cars, horse carriages, food, and clothing of the time. His mother was a hairdresser and his father worked in a factory, so he was not especially privileged, but his parents sacrificed a great deal for the son's education when he proved to be a good student. They also took in boarders in their apartment, by coincidence all of them teachers, so young Kästner grew up with the goal of becoming a teacher himself.

I think my favorite chapter was the one where he described he and his mother's increasing love of wilderness hiking when he was an early teenager. They would take the train from Dresden out to the end of the line and hike all over Saxony, their trips advancing from afternoon excursions to day- and then week-long trips as they grew more experienced. They would hike all morning  through Saxon hills, meadows, and valleys, and stop at a village pub for ice cream and beer in the mid-afternoon (yes, this is Germany, where a teen drinking a beer with his mom is not a big deal!).

There are also interesting stories about how his Uncle Oscar became a millionaire and what it meant for the family, how he learned that a hated teacher at his middle school wasn't such a bad guy after all, and how he discovered the solution to the bizarre mystery of the woman who hired his mother to do the hair styling for a wedding, only for the address she gave to prove to be an abandoned house, with none of the neighbors knowing the woman or having heard of an upcoming wedding.

Kästner's writing achieves a sort of beauty through simplicity, and he sometimes wanders off into later, sadder periods, only to write the German equivalent of "but that's neither here not there." A page or so when he laments the fate of Dresden in World War II, when the world-historical Baroque-era city center was reduced to rubble by Allied bombing campaigns, is especially moving. (Note he was anti-Nazi and was questioned by the Gestapo several times, though he was lucky enough never to have to flee or spend time in a concentration camp. But that's neither here nor there.)

Unfortunately, I don't believe this book has ever been translated into English (although Emil and the Detectives has been), so it's not really accessible to non-German readers. But for me, it was a lot of fun. This is the first German book I've read in I think three or four years, so this was a good way to get back into reading with a book that's not too difficult. Kästner was a great author with an interesting life, so if this ever did appear in an English edition I would not hesitate to recommend it to others.

What I'm Reading: Roundup

Some of my recent reading:

The Little Prince  My son read this book in his fourth-grade class this year for a class project, and since the book was lying around I picked it up. I probably haven't read it since I was his age! If you're not familiar with it, it's a child's fantasy book written by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, a Frenchman, and has a definite French flavor to it. It concerns the Little Prince, a boy who is visiting Earth on a visit from his own planet, a very small asteroid, and the man he encounters here, an airman who has crash landed in the Sahara desert. The boy is confused by the strange ideas of the man and some other adults he encounters, who busy themselves with figures, or drink, or ruling over others, when in his view the important things in life are flowers, sunsets, and friends. Quite a charming book and with a good message communicated to the reader in a subtle way. I had forgotten the ending is so sad!

Harrow County  Emmy just turned 18 and lives on a farm with her father. She has never traveled far from her homestead and has little idea about the world beyond a handful of distant neighbors, but she is intimately familiar with the woods and marshes around her farm. Now that she's of age, mysterious men start visiting the house and talking in hushed tones with her dad. She's seen people hanging out by the big scary old tree she's supposed to avoid out on the edge of their property, too. And her dreams the past months have become vivid and frightening, full of witches and dead children. Out on a walk in the woods one day, she follows a path she's never seen before and discovers a "haint"-- something like a ghost. She's scared at first but when she realizes it's only the lost spirit of a little boy, she picks it up and takes it home. Harrow County is a new comic series written by Cullen Bunn and beautifully, and so, so creepily, drawn/watercolored by Tyler Crook.

What I'm Reading: Roundup

Another round-up, this one covering my family's recent car trip from Virginia to Oklahoma, and back.  As you might imagine, we listened to a lot of audiobooks, and I got in some reading too.

Sandman, Vol. 6: Fables and Reflections: Now this is more like it.  In my review a couple weeks ago, I found Volume 5 of this graphic novel series to be my least favorite of Sandman.  Volume 6 collects several one-issue tales, reading like a collection of short stories, and I found this volume to be much more entertaining.  As always, the tales involve the Sandman, also known as Morpheus, or Dream. This is the guy who visits you at night and gives you all those stories in your head. He is the king of the Dreaming, a land made up of all the various nighttime places we go to and people and creatures we see there.

Most of the stories here have a mythological bent, placing Morpheus into familiar stories but giving them a twist.  We read the tale of Orpheus visiting the underworld, Baghdad during the time of the Arabian Nights, Revolutionary France, and Imperial Russia, among others.  I think my favorite story was August, about the Roman emperor Augustus in his final days.  He decides for one day to disguise himself as a beggar and sit in the streets of Rome with a companion, a dwarf and actor named Lycius.  Lycius wonders why Augustus would debase himself so, and the reader learns at the end what has driven Augustus to this.  Not surprisingly, Morpheus had something to do with it, although I won't give away what.

Ruins of Gorlan: This is the first novel in the Ranger's Apprentice YA fantasy series.  This is one of my eight-year old son's favorite books, so I was interested to hear the audio version on our trip.  Alas, I wasn't so impressed as my son.

The series follows Will, an orphaned teenager who has been taken on as an apprentice by the ranger Halt.  Halt teaches his young charge the ways of the Ranger order: tracking, knife-throwing, moving silently, etc.  I think my son enjoys the high adventure of the series, and the clear and detailed battle scenes.  I was more intrigued by the setting of the book, which seems to be a lightly fictionalized northern England during the Middle Ages, with references to a people like the Scottish to the north, and something very like Viking raids on the coastline.

However, I found the thing pretty dull, overall.  The plot was generic, the dialogue strictly what was necessary to advance the action, and the writing style, while clear, had no special tone or wit.  It lacked the drama of better-written fantasy, say The Hobbit or any of a hundred others.  This series is one I don't especially care to re-visit.

The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place:  Another audiobook, and a complete and refreshing contrast to the Ranger's Apprentice.  It follows Miss Penelope Lumley, a graduate of the Swanburne Academy for Poor, Bright Females, whose first job after graduation is as a governess at Ashton Place, a huge manor house.  When she arrives, she discovers the three children mentioned in the job description were actually raised by wolves, and only recently caught by Lord Ashton, an avid hunter.  It is Miss Lumley's job to use her superior Swanburne education, especially the extensive collection of useful aphorisms coined by founder Amanda Swanburne herself, to teach her charges to behave as proper English children and to ready them, if possible, for a civilized appearance at the Christmas Ball, which the Ashtons host every year.

As you can probably tell from my summary, the tone of this book could best be described as arch.  The writing is an exquisite send-up of 19th century English novels, the various situations Miss Lumley finds herself in are hilarious, and the entire book is a delight.  Best of all are the wolf-raised children themselves--ten-year old boy Alexander, eight-year old boy Beowulf, and four-year old girl Cassiopeia--who despite their wolfish habits are really quite charming.  Their pure, good-hearted natures contrast with the polished but spoiled Lord Ashton and Lady Constance, and their rich friends.  I highly recommend this to anyone with a love of English literature.  I'm not even sure I can say it is written for children; although superficially at their level--and my children did enjoy it--the various jokes and asides can only be fully appreciated by adults.

What I'm Reading: Rare Beasts

Rare Beasts, a children's book by Charles Ogden, concerns Edgar and Ellen, twins who live more or less by themselves in a big house out on the edge of town.  The twins have rather nasty dispositions and the only thing they enjoy more than bedeviling each other is playing cruel pranks on the other children and residents in the town.

In this particular book, they steal all the town's pets and decorate them with paint, glitter, sticks, etc. to look like undiscovered rare animals that they hope to sell for great profit to collectors.  However, none of their potential marks, er, customers work out, and in the end their plan is disclosed publicly and the twins get their comeuppance.

I liked the amusingly cynical narration and humorous little details that are really for parents and may go over a lot of reader's heads (I'm assuming most readers of this are probably 8-10).  For instance, the absence of the twins' parents is explained by an off-handed remark that "they had long since departed on an extended 'around the world' holiday.  At least that's what it said in the note they left behind."  It reminds me of Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events books, which I suppose was probably an inspiration.

My son hasn't read it yet so I can't get his opinion, but I think he'll probably like it.  It's got a kind of morbid but immature humor he'll enjoy and is scary, but not too much.