5 Quick Questions for Dennis Shull

Though Dennis is a teacher and librarian, I know him through his role as director extraordinaire of local church community theater productions. His interests are quite varied, as you will see below.


1. What do you do for a living and what do you like best about your job?

I'm a "retired" teacher, who spent 20 years teaching English, Speech & Drama, and Shop at the junior high level, then became a librarian and technology coordinator at the high school level for the last 10 years. At present, I still work for the same school district part-time, taking care of the adaptive technology needs for the blind and disabled kids in the district one day a week, and trouble-shooting technology needs at the district's new high school one other day. The rest of the week I work for a company that produces decorated sportswear, maintaining their line of sample garments, and manning the Help Desk for their sales representatives. As you might have guessed, I'm only content when my work environment is busy and varied. The thing I like best about my work is that every day is different, and each day usually brings a new challenge.

2. Besides for simple information, why do you read?

I love the seclusion and and introspection that reading allows... I delight in discovering a character who thinks and feels as I do, and then traveling down the literary road with him to further self-discovery...
And there's nothing more exiting than jumping on the magic carpet of imagination and following a complex character through a richly-textured adventure.

3. What did you read when you were a teen?

These are the names that come to mind, because at some point in my life, I read one book—and then wanted to read anything else by the same author:

Robert Heinlein
John Steinbeck
Mark Twain
Kurt Vonnegut
C.S. Lewis

And yet, the books that truly changed my life were often times one-hit wonders, like To Kill a Mockingbird, Watership Down, or Flowers for Algernon.

I also read a lot of comic books. ( I'm a firm believer that reading is reading: teens should read whatever level of literature appeals to them. They'll get to the "classics" when they're ready.)

If only these Young Adult authors had been available back in the Dark Ages when I was a teenager, I know I would have devoured every word they penned:

Robert Cormier
Chris Crutcher
Will Hobbs
Lois Lowry
Chris Lynch
Norma Fox Mazer
John Marsden
Gary Paulsen
Katherine Paterson
Philip Pullman
Cynthia Voigt

4. What book(s) do you wish you had read as a teen?

I really have no regrets. (See my "comic book" note above.)

5. What are you working on now?

It's been a dry spell. I've read lots of books in the past six months,but these are the only ones I'd recommend:

Our Story Begins, a new anthology of short stories by Tobias Wolff, Lush Life by Richard Price (dark, violent, and full of raw language), The Night Gardener by George Pelecanos (also dark, violent, and full of
raw language), Birds in Fall by Brad Kessler

Thank you, Dennis!

Dooley Takes the Fall -- Norah McClintock

Seventeen-year-old Ryan Dooley has been trying to walk the straight-and-narrow. His uncle's strictness chafes, but Ryan's been going to school regularly, avoiding drugs and alcohol, and generally just trying to stay out of trouble. He was on his way home from work at the video store when he found the body.

"I thought I recognized him," Dooley said, which was true. "But his head was kind of smashed up, so I wasn't sure" which wasn't true, but it sounded a lot nicer than saying was he was actually thinking (It couldn't have happened to a more deserving person), which would only have annoyed his uncle. "Anyway, I didn't know that was his name and the cops didn't tell me," which was also true. He glanced at the picture in the newspaper and this time recognized the face right away--Mark Everley, his longish hair combed back, posed in front of one of those gray-blue screens that school photographers use, smiling at the camera, looking like your average high school student, which was a whole lot different from looking like a broken doll. The newspaper picture of Everley triggered another one in Dooley's mind, but this one wasn't from school. Dooley's dominant impression: Mark Everley was an asshole.

What with his past, it isn't long before Dooley becomes a prime suspect in what might be a murder investigation. And it isn't just the cops and his uncle who suspect him of having something to do with the death -- it's also Mark Everley's sister, a girl who Dooley's been curious about for ages.

Dooley Takes the Fall is fantastic. FANTASTIC. This isn't just a simple murder mystery. Dooley has that aspect of the story to deal with, but the reader has more: Dooley's past -- What He Did before coming to live with his uncle and his history with Mark Everley -- spools out slowly, and it, more than the actual mystery*, kept me entranced from the first page to the last. One of the real strengths of this book was the lack of expository dialogue -- I felt like Dooley and the other characters acted and spoke realistically throughout, never explaining things to each other just for the sake of explaining them to me. Norah McClintock has respect for the reader's intelligence, trusts the reader to be an active participant. I love that.

Dooley himself is a great character. He's a classic noir hero type -- troubled past, problems with addiction and unlucky in love, sometimes has a hard time getting out of his own way -- which I always find appealing. And he's got great taste in movies:

Dooley said he liked some of the British stuff better. "You mean, Guy Ritchie and what's-his-name, the guy who did The Limey?" Mr. Fielding had said. No, Dooley said. Some of the quieter stuff, the stuff they showed on TV there but that you could rent here. He said he liked Robbie Coltrane, the character he played, he drank too much, he ate too much, but he always figured out the case without breaking a sweat, and you know what? The guy didn't even own a gun. Yeah, Dooley liked him a lot.

He's talking about Cracker! Cracker, if you haven't watched it, is outstanding -- if I hadn't already been hoping that all would go well for Dooley by that point, that passage would have won me over. Speaking of hoping things would go well -- until the very end of the book, I really didn't know which way things would go. There was no element of predictability -- yet another thing I loved about the book.

Highly, highly recommended to people who are disappointed by the lack of crime novels in the YA section, to people who liked the movie Brick, and to people who like their mystery novels to be more than simple mysteries with quick quips and chases scenes, but stories with depth and heart. Dooley Takes the Fall is a crime novel, yes, but it's also a story about trust and redemption. I loved it unreservedly.

I am so grateful to the person who nominated this title for the Cybils. Up until now, Norah McClintock hadn't been on my radar. Now I'm planning on going back and reading her entire backlist while I wait for the second book in the Dooley trilogy to appear.

(cross-posted at Bookshelves of Doom)

_________________________________________________________

*That said, the mystery was strong, too.

Now we are blaming the fathers

Is it open season on teens and reading this week or what? There was all the Caitlin Flanagan fun a few days ago and now we have School Library Journal telling us that mothers read too much to their children and that is why boys stop reading. Or alternately they feel compelled to stop because of some need to separate fully from girls and all things they think girls like and thus can no longer read after elementary school just like they can no longer be friends with girls.

I'm not making this up, and here's the proof:

Boys loved being read to when they were tots. Now, as teens, they still like somebody reading to them. But somewhere between third and fifth grade, there was a disconnect between boys and books. Aha! Isn’t that when gender consciousness bursts into full flower? When the lines are drawn between the sexes? Sure, before then, in the schoolyard, boys played with boys and girls with girls. But back at home, in the neighborhood, things were different: young boys and girls still played together. In fact, some were best friends. But by the time boys hit third grade, those who played with girls became the butt of other guys’ jokes. So instead, they did boy things—and reading wasn’t one of them.

Someone's going to have to tell me just what that magic button is that gets pushed in the third grade because I bet a lot of parents would like to dodge that "girls bad" bullet.

Here's the other fun part:

Moms frequently read to their young sons at bedtime. Elementary school teachers and media specialists, who are primarily women, read to their classes. And in movies and on TV, it’s women or girls who are typically rushing off to their book clubs. Men don’t read—instead, they do. For instance, men don’t read books about hunting, they hunt. They don’t devour novels about race-car driving; they go to drag races—and often take along their sons. For many boys, reading becomes a chore that prevents them from pursuing manly things, like playing sports, fishing, rock climbing, and, later, chasing girls. Testosterone keeps guys running and gunning, and if they don’t see members of their own tribe reading—trust me—they won’t deem it important.

Leaving aside the cliches about what men and women like that are thrown out in this paragraph, (Okay I can't leave them alone - men hunt and race cars while women read books? Did Sarah Palin leaning over that bloody moose carcass and the ten zillion pictures of Barack Obama with a book in his hand show us anything about modern gender roles at all??) This argument - and lord knows we have all heard it before - does not work for me because if it was true there would be thousands (and thousands) of more female writers in this country then male. Men would not grow up reading and thus they would not pursue writing careers. And yet, we know that is not true. This makes me wonder then where all the male writers come from in America. (Europe? Canada? Are they secreted across the borders at the age of 18?)

Also, why - FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WHY - do people feel so comfortable making huge sweeping statements like this? In my house my father read as much as my mother (if not more according to my brother) and my brother is still a voracious reader. All the guys at the comic shop I frequent are just that, guys. I worked with guys at the bookstore in Fairbanks, I went to grad school with many many guys (all of whom had to read tons of books just to stay in there) and most of my teachers in college were - wait for it - guys.

Men read. Can we just acknowledge this once and for all? Men read.

Having written all that, yes I do know that girls seem to read more than boys in the teenage years. There are studies and I did read them and part of that was why Guys Lit Wire was created in the first place - to find a way to get teenage boys reading more. However, I have a critical difference of opinion with this article. I do not think that boys (or girls) read or don't read because of what other people do (or don't do) in their homes. My parents, as I mentioned above, were huge readers but they each came from parents who never read anything when they were growing up beyond the local newspaper (and even that was not a given). So why did they become huge readers? Who knows - but they did. And they aren't the only kids who grew up in houses without reading parents who still managed to crack open a book.

Should we encourage more teenage boys to read? Yes - in any way, shape or form (and that includes comics) just as we should encourage teenage girls. But blaming it on the parents this way? Saying one reads too much to their kids and one reads too little? How does that help exactly? Why not just suggest taking the kids to the bookstore for a treat? (My parents did that.) Or taking them to the library and letting them get whatever they want (and hanging out perusing the books yourself and waiting for them and making it a family thing)? (My parents did that too.) Or letting them grab an Archie comic at the check out stand? (Yep - my folks again.)

You don't have to be a reader to raise one, you just have to be an interested parent who encourages your kid to read. And you know what else? I graduated from high school with a close friend I made in the first grade - and one from the second - and several from the seventh and the eighth and all of them, a dozen or more, were boys. Some of them were readers and some weren't but all of us managed to still enjoy going out for pizza, watching movies and hitting the beach to surf in spite of the fact that we weren't the same gender.

Will wonders never cease?

He Said, She Said- Soulless by Christopher Golden

Welcome to He Said, She Said, a feature for GuysLitWire in which a guy (Book Chic, a recent college graduate) and a gal (Little Willow, a bookseller), discuss books that will appeal to both genders.

In October, we talked about Poison Ink (link) by Christopher Golden. Then LW got BC to read Soulless, Golden's newest YA novel. We're both crazy about this spine-tingling zombie tale.

Times Square, New York City: The first ever mass séance is broadcasting live on the Sunrise morning show. If it works, the spirits of the departed on the other side will have a brief window -- just a few minutes -- to send a final message to their grieving loved ones.

Clasping hands in an impenetrable grip, three mediums call to their spirit guides as the audience looks on in breathless anticipation. The mediums slump over, slackjawed -- catatonic. And in cemeteries surrounding Manhattan, fragments of old corpses dig themselves out of the ground....

The spirits have returned. The dead are walking. They will seek out those who loved them in life, those they left behind...but they are savage and they are hungry. They are no longer your mother or father, your brother or sister, your best friend or lover.

The horror spreads quickly, droves of the ravenous dead seeking out the living -- shredding flesh from bone, feeding. But a disparate group of unlikely heroes -- two headstrong college rivals, a troubled gang member, a teenage pop star and her bodyguard -- is making its way to the center of the nightmare, fighting to protect their loved ones, fighting for their lives, and fighting to end the madness.

LW: It's true - The dead travel fast. The book was extremely fast-paced, and I whipped right through it. Total page-turner.

BC: I agree with Little Willow. While I wasn’t enamored with Golden’s prose in his other teen book this year, Poison Ink, I really enjoyed this one and can see why LW loves Golden so much!

LW: While I enjoyed Poison Ink, I also loved Soulless.

Do you like zombie stories (books, movies, etc) as a general rule?

LW: I like well-written horror stories and ghost stories, and thus I can enjoy well-told zombie stories, but I don't actively seek them out. Though I haven't seen any of the staple zombie films, I think this book would make an excellent film.

BC: Generally, no. Anything remotely horror I completely avoid. I’m very easily scared and then I’m up all night and I don’t get sleep and then I can’t go job hunting because I look like a zombie and I’ll frighten off prospective employers. And that’s not good.

Why did you get this book?

LW: I read anything and everything written by Christopher Golden. The man truly has the Golden touch. He writes intriguing, inventive stories, and he's a great storyteller. In Soulless, he effortlessly balanced everyone's backstories and plotlines, then wove them together tightly.

BC: I got this book firstly because the cover and synopsis intrigued me. I know I said that I avoid horror-type stuff, but what can I say? I can be a masochist sometimes. I’d heard about it earlier this year and wanted to get a copy of it at some point. Secondly, LW really wanted me to read Golden (actually, I’m not really that special; she wants everyone to read Golden, not just me).

(LW starts cracking up, then nods enthusiastically.)

LW: It's true - There's a Golden book for everyone! Okay, continue.

BC: I had gotten Poison Ink randomly in the mail and figured that would be a good start. Once I finished that, she helped me get in touch with Christopher so that I could get a review copy of Soulless.

What did you think of the cover?

LW: I think it's gorgeous. Quite eye-catching. I know the eye on the cover is dominant, but I swear that I didn't intend the pun! I'm just going to go stare at the cover some more now . . .

BC: Ha ha, puns rock!

LW: Yes, yes, they do.

BC: I love the cover and it’s quite honestly the first thing that drew me to the book. I saw it somewhere (maybe on Cynthia Leitich Smith’s blog?) and was like “WOAH. Me. Want. Now.” See, when I notice a book with a REALLY good cover, I tend to lose that whole sentence-forming part of my brain and I become very similar to a caveman.

LW: I researched the tagline and discovered that "the dead travel fast" was used in Dracula, and, subsequently, various films inspired by or related to the book. Apparently, Bram Stoker was inspired by a folk ballad by Gottfried August Burger entitled Lenora, or Lenore, in which it is said (or sung) that "the dead ride quick." Stoker used "the dead travel fast" again in Dracula's Guest. The internet has provided me with the following phrases in other languages:

Denn die Todten reiten schnell. - from the novel Dracula

Pentru că morţii umblă repede! - from the 1992 film version of Dracula

BC: Wow, that’s really interesting! I didn’t know that at all. I learn something new every day, despite being out of school.

Soulless had a big cast. Who was your favorite character?

LW: Tania, the pop star, was my favorite main character. Derek, her bodyguard, was my favorite supporting character. I liked all of the main characters. Each brought a different flavor to the table. I liked how diverse the cast was, and I liked that each person and plotline was important.

BC: I gotta agree with Little Willow - I really enjoyed Tania too (who, by the way, has the same name as the pop star in the Heather Wells mystery series by Meg Cabot; I’ve never seen that name before and then, wham! It's in two different books, but both are pop stars) but that's kinda because I really enjoy reading about pop stars, even though her fame had little to do with her story. But I really enjoyed all the characters; like LW said, each was different and unique, so you had something to look forward to in each section.

Have you ever participated in a séance? If not, would you? Do you believe that mediums can communicate with ghosts?

LW: I have never participated in a séance or spoken to any clairvoyants. I'd have to be a part of a séance or a discussion with a medium to believe it myself. In other words, I couldn't just be an audience member or a bystander, because I wouldn't know if they (the mediums and/or their living 'clients,' if you will) were speaking the truth.

BC: I have not participated in a séance before, unless I’m blocking it out because of how scary or traumatizing it was. I’m not sure if I ever would participate in one, but I’m learning toward ‘no’. As for the belief, I guess anything’s possible, but I don’t think mediums can communicate with ghosts. I could be wrong though, as it’s not like I’ve done much thought or research about it.

LW: I've read many, many books and seen many, many TV shows and films that include ghosts and psychics. I enjoy The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by R.A. Dick (both the book and the film), The Ghost Wore Gray by Bruce Coville, The Doll in the Garden by Mary Downing Hahn -- Oh, stop me before I name a dozen things! Anyhow, I was a huge fan of The Dead Zone television series (not so much the film, and I haven't read the book), in which the main character, Johnny Smith, was psychic. I loved how Johnny (Anthony Michael Hall) spoke with and saw people, dead or alive. He had such a gentle way about him and conveyed such empathy. I rather think that he would have worked well with Phoenix's dad.

Are you spooked by the idea of ghosts or zombies?

LW: I'm not. If I met a zombie and he or she attempted to harm me, I'd certainly fight back and kindly ask that my brains not be eaten. I'd like to think my cats are still hanging around, walking beside me, and that I'm making my ancestors proud. My grandfather passed away a decade before I was born; I would have liked to have known him.

BC: Very much so. As mentioned earlier, I’m easily spooked by a lot of things. So, in my daily life, I try to avoid thoughts about ghosts, zombies, bogeymen, etc. because otherwise it’s hard for me to fall asleep or walk around without lights on.

If there were a sequel, would you read it?

LW: In a heartbeat.

BC: Totally.

Visit the SOULLESS website:
http://www.christophergolden.com/soulless/

Little Willow's review of SOULLESS:
http://slayground.livejournal.com/412431.html

Book Chic's review of SOULLESS:
http://guyslitwire.blogspot.com/2008/11/book-review-soulless-by-christopher.html


That's it for this edition of He Said, She Said! Little Willow and I have a couple more books in mind for future editions, but we're always open to suggestions of books GLW readers want us to discuss, so feel free to suggest away when you leave a comment on this entry!

Going Old School

The two books I'm reviewing this month might be the two books I have read most frequently in my life. They aren't classics of literature, and most likely you have never heard of them. They are unabashedly genre fiction and guilty pleasures, but they are great reads all the same. And they are the kind of book that I never see any more.

Whip by Martin Caidin is a World War II flying novel. Based on true events, it tells the story of a crackerjack bomber unit in the Pacific and their commander Captain "Whip" Russel. It takes place during the early months of the war and the Americans and Australians are facing a looming Japanese assault.

Facing defeat at every turn "Whip" and his men mount extra firepower on their bombers turning them into flying gunships, adopt low-level daredevil tactics, and take the war to the Japanese. The action is fierce and non-stop and Caidin excels at aerial combat descriptions. The characters don't fare as well, but enough time is spent on the main characters so that you care about their fates.

The Last Dogfight tells a similar story, this time about fighter pilots stationed on a Pacific island away from the main fighting. Led by ace Mitch Ross, the American forces suffer from worn-out airplanes and low morale and are little match for a disciplined and clever enemy.

After a devastating surprise attack decimates the American forces, Ross becomes an almost mythical hero to his men and thus begins a showdown with the Japanese and their master pilot, Shigura Tanimoto. The novel culminates in a riveting one on one duel between Ross and Tanimoto in the closing days of the war.

These books were published in the 1970s and might be difficult to find, but are well worth the effort. I have read each one at least half a dozen times and will re-read them again.

Who's funniest: Plato, Descartes, or Sartre?

Multitasking has been getting a lot of bad press lately. You’re not even supposed to talk on your cell phone while you drive anymore. They say it causes accidents. Well, here is a multitasking project that you can do safely. Suppose you’ve been hired to MC a Moose Lodge event. Suppose at the same time you are about to appear on Jeopardy and one of the categories, you’ve been told in advance, is Western Philosophy. You can get jokes for your event and information for your game show appearance at the same time if you read Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar . . . : Understanding Philosophy through Jokes, by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein. Neat, huh? Just don’t do it while driving.

In fact, by reading this book you can simultaneously become educated in philosophy and expand your joke repertoire even if you have no game show appearances or MC gigs in the near future. Why put together jokes and philosophy? Besides being a more enjoyable way to learn philosophy than Western Philosophy for Dummies, the authors contend that philosophy, which is an attempt to understand the incomprehensible through language, and jokes, which use language to make you laugh, very often use the same central ideas to get to their separate ends. Plato and a Platypus supports this thesis well. Plus, it’s really funny.

There are some who enjoy philosophy and can vigorously debate such questions as free will versus determinism through the night and well into the morning. There are others who find philosophical arguments complex and jargon-ridden, and there are still others who ask “what does it matter” and simply don’t see the point in having a philosophical discussion at all. Cathcart and Klein are not unsympathetic to any of these positions, and their humor often reflects the absurd nature of philosophy as a discipline. If you love to indulge in the knots of existential thinking, they have a joke for that. But if you’re confused and befuddled by questions of reality and observation, they have a joke for that, too.

The jokes do have a certain similar tone throughout. Most seem to have been inspired by vaudeville comedians like Buddy Hacket and George Burns Here’s an example:

“My Grandfather knew the exact time on the exact day of the exact year he would die. “
“Wow! What an evolved soul. How did it come to him?”
“The judge told him.”

Ba-da-dum.

Really, the book ought to come with its own rim-shot kit. There are a number of jokes which take place at the gates of heaven, several involving psychiatrists, several which include (apparently Jewish) mothers, and a couple of travelling salesman jokes. You have to really enjoy that kind of humor to fully appreciate the book. And you have to wonder if other types of humor would so easily tie work with a discussion of philosophy. Here’s another one:

Salesman: Ma’am this vacuum cleaner will cut your work in half
Customer: Terrific! Give me two of them.

Some of the jokes illustrate the tenets of logic, some of them illustrate logical fallacies or the limits and failures of particular philosophies and some, are, well, just jokes that are inspired by a particular philosophy. If the book has a flaw, other than that all the humor is all pretty similar in tone, it’s that sometimes the jumps between explaining a philosophy and the jokes are a bit sudden. Cathcart and Klein, although committed to the task of relating in sensible terms the history of philosophy, simply can’t pass up a good opportunity to tell a joke. “That reminds me of a good one. . .” could introduce any number of jokes in the book.

Of course, that’s some serious nitpicking. Really, would you want to have it any other way? I mean would you want a guy who was telling you a perfectly good travelling salesman joke to interrupt himself and say, “That reminds me of a great essay by Foucault about knowledge and power?” No, you would not.

The book does clarify a great deal about philosophy for me, mostly because it simplifies many of the more difficult ideas, and it has given me a number of new jokes to try out on my family and friends. My wife was handy on several occasions as I read the book, so I tried some out on her. Unfortunately, I had to go through a half dozen before I got her to laugh at one. Like I said, this humor isn’t for everyone (or maybe there’s something to the talent of the joke teller). But here, from the book’s section on religious philosophy is her favorite:

If you have an ice cream cone, I will give you an ice cream cone.
If you need an ice cream cone, I will take your ice cream cone away.
That is an ice cream koan.

In which another adult says silly things about teen readers

I really think Caitlin Flanagan (and The Atlantic) jumped the shark with this ridiculous article about teen fiction, "What Girls Want". Here are my biggest eye rolling quotes:

1. "Divorce in a young-adult novel means what being orphaned meant in a fairy tale: vulnerability, danger, unwanted independence. It also means that the protagonists must confront the sexuality of their parents at the moment they least want to think about such realities."

(News to Hilary McKay, Barbara Shoup, Cecil Castellucci and hundreds of other authors who have written realistic novels about kids from broken homes who do not live like the children in fairy tales.) (And really - when did we decide it was still okay to make sweeping statements like this about any facet of society, let alone literature?)

2. "I hate Y.A. novels; they bore me."

(Which explains why you are writing an article on YA novels, of course.)

3. Twilight is fantastic.

(Sweet Jesus.)

4. "After a friend (toward whom Bella has gently been directing one of her own admirers) finally goes on a big “date” (a lost world right there, in a simple word), she phones Bella, breathless: “Mike kissed me! Can you believe it?” It was a scene that could have existed in any of the books I read when I was an adolescent; but in today’s world of Y.A. fiction, it constitutes an almost bizarre moment."

(Because apparently modern YA fiction is full of porn. I'm sure this will be news to Sherman Alexie, John Green, Chris Crutcher and pretty much every other YA novelist on the planet.)

5. "This is a vampire novel, so it is a novel about sex, but no writer, from Bram Stoker on, has captured so precisely what sex and longing really mean to a young girl."

(I've heard Bram Stoker credited for many things but never that he was attempting to capture what "sex and longing" meant for young girls.) (And really - ew.)

6. "As I write this, I am sitting on the guest-room bed of a close friend, and down the hall from me is the bedroom of the daughter of the house, a 12-year-old reader extraordinaire, a deep-sea diver of books. She was the fourth person through the doors of the Westwood Barnes & Noble the midnight that the series’ final volume, Breaking Dawn, went on sale, and she read it—a doorstop, a behemoth—in six hours, and then turned back to page one as though it were the natural successor to the last page."

(This would be the part where we see why Flanagan is qualified to write this article - she knows a 12 year old! Of course she thus knows every single thing there is to know about teenagers and books!)

And the one that particularly addresses our concerns here at GLW:

7. "The salient fact of an adolescent girl’s existence is her need for a secret emotional life—one that she slips into during her sulks and silences, during her endless hours alone in her room, or even just when she’s gazing out the classroom window while all of Modern European History, or the niceties of the passé composé, sluice past her. This means that she is a creature designed for reading in a way no boy or man, or even grown woman, could ever be so exactly designed, because she is a creature whose most elemental psychological needs—to be undisturbed while she works out the big questions of her life, to be hidden from view while still in plain sight, to enter profoundly into the emotional lives of others—are met precisely by the act of reading." (emphasis mine)

(No comment from me - just the sound of my head hitting the desk over and over again.)

[See Finding Wonderland and Miss Rumphius for more discussion of this truly inane piece of journalism.]

The Secret History of Moscow

Ekaterina Sedia's The Secret History of Moscow evokes two distinct, vivid worlds unfamiliar to mainstream US readers. First is Moscow of the 1990s, with Communism dead, gangsters staking their claim to the beginnings of democracy and most people keeping their heads down and getting by. Second is the underworld beneath Moscow, where storybook creatures, Pagan gods and disposessed humans live an eternal life of...well, getting by.

Random Muscovites are disappearing, and eyewitnesses swear they turn into birds and fly away. Galina, a young woman who has always seen things fluttering at the edges of her vision, loses her sister in this way. Yakov, a weary young policeman fully aware of his pointless job, tries to help. Fyodor, a reprobate street artist, has the clue they need: he's seen swarms of birds fly in and out of the underworld. These three pilgrims enter this strange but sweetly mundane spiritual realm hoping to find the reason for these transformations, and a way to help Galina's sister.

Sedia (author of The Alchemy of Stone) uses a prose style that is brisk, strong and clear. She doesn't waste a lot of time on subplots or needless description, nor does she scrimp on background. She keeps the characters' relationships, even the non-human ones, refreshingly realistic. Even immortal deities and creatures who inhabit nightmares speak with distinct personality and without any of that faux-formal talk so often used to designate otherworldliness. The underworld itself avoids the accepted cliches of faerie, becoming a distorted mirror-image of the society above it without lapsing into either blatant politics or satire (there is a lot of commentary on what it's like to live in Russia both past and present, but it never comes across as didactic). And most delightfully (to me, at least, as a reader weary of such things) it's not the first of a trilogy or a series. It's a self-contained one-off tale that sets up its characters and themes, then resolves them beautifully. In fact, the perfectly-judged conclusion brings the story close to being an actual folk-tale itself.

But it's the vivid oddness of this Muscovian underworld that really sets it apart. Russian folklore, with its mixture of European and Asian influences, gives her a wide canvas, and the human characters knows these strange figures just as Americans would know Snow White or Little Red Riding Hood. Further, some of the characters encountered in the underworld are historical figures on their way to becoming folklore, such as Elena, one of the "Decembrists' Widows," whose status in Russian history has become almost legendary.

For guys, the biggest recommendation I can make is that the story doesn't feel like it's written for girls. Magical realism as a genre tends to skew toward a very feminine view of things; I don't mean this as a value judgment, and I've written some myself so I know it's not a function of the writer's gender. But there's something about faerie tales, otherworlds and the like that speaks to the feminine aspect of both men and women, possibly because it requires a kind of sensitivity that our culture considers feminine. Whatever its source or cause, Sedia avoids it completely. There's a fair bit of action, a lot of humor and just the right amount of suspense, making The Secret History of Moscow a tour through two worlds, above and below, that are both wonderlands to Western readers.

Sad news....

As many of you will recall, GLW welcomed "Dewey" to the site in October as a new scheduled poster. She came to us as an English teacher on medical leave for a year who maintained a cool lit blog and wanted to become more involved in reviewing for teens in particular (which made sense as she had a teenage son at home). Last week, on the day she was scheduled for her second post here, Dewey passed away. I spoke with her husband James on Thursday and he wanted to make clear how much she loved being part of this site and helping to recommend good books to young readers. Dewey felt like she had found a home here and as someone who exchanged several emails with her, I can certainly say that she fit right in. She will be missed by all of us.

Control issues

There are a couple of ways I know a novel has worked for me. One of them is being so caught up in the story and invested in the characters that I don't notice any of its flaws or question any of its plot points until after I've finished the book. And even then, these problems don't end up detracting from my enjoyment of the book. Matt de la Peña's Mexican WhiteBoy is a perfect example of such a book.

Danny knows he sticks out in National City, where he's spending the summer. Half white and half Mexican, his skin is lighter than everyone else's, he gets good grades at the pricey private school he attends, and he speaks no Spanish. Not that he speaks much to begin with. Ever since his father left, he hasn't spoken much at all. Danny is sure he's the reason his father decided to leave, that he's too white and too much of a disappointment to his Spanish-speaking Mexico-born father. He'd looked up to his father as a kid, still looks up to him although he's gone, even became a pitcher because of him.

When Danny was a kid, his father told him being a great pitcher is better than being a great hitter. The guy on the mound controls the entire game, he'd said. Controls the pace. Who sees what pitch. Who has to dive out of the way to avoid taking one in the back. And then he dropped it. Never brought it up again. But Danny always remembered. That night he put down the bat down and decided to become a pitcher, what he is today.

Secretly, though, it still makes him feel alive to crush something with a bat. Almost as much as striking somebody out. (p. 19)

The guys in National City are shocked when they see Danny, dressed like a surfer and never talking trash—never talking, period—play ball. Especially Uno, whose African-American father wants Uno to join him and his new family in Oxnard. But Uno needs to earn some money first, and the $30 and $40 pots from the neighborhood home run derby competitions may no longer be his to win now that Danny's around. Still, though, Uno can't help becoming friends with the guy. And maybe there's a way for Uno to make the $500 he needs, after all, now that he's seen the way Danny can pitch.

Overall, I really liked Mexican WhiteBoy. I liked the way the story flowed, how everything and almost everyone seemed so real. The relationships and Danny's growth felt unforced and natural, and I could practically hear the characters speaking as I read. That said, there were some unresolved plot points and I had more than a few questions after finishing the book. Take Leucadia Prep, the school Danny attends, for example. In spite of his natural pitching ability, Danny has control problems when he's facing batters, which is why he was cut from his school's baseball team. The way I read the book, he didn't play baseball at all for his school, which later struck me as odd, because I would have thought Danny would at least have been offered a spot on the JV team. Did the school not have a JV team? (I'd think they would, since the school is in Southern California and one of the top high school players in the country was on the team.) Did Danny not make the JV team, assuming there was such a team? (But the coach told him he had "great stuff," and wouldn't JV be a good place to work on his control?) Did Danny choose not to play on the JV team, assuming, again, there was a JV team? (Always possible, but not mentioned at all.)

Does this matter? Well, maybe it will to some. And I will acknowledge that if I am judging Mexican WhiteBoy not by how much I liked it but on less subjective criteria, then, yes, the flaws do matter. But I also have a feeling that this book and Danny and Uno are going to stick with me far longer than books that may be technically "better."

This book is a Cybils YA Fiction nominee.

[cross-posted at The YA YA YAs]