Dropping in with Andy Mac

Dropping in with Andy Mac: The Life of a Pro Skateboarder

This is one of those books you semi-reluctantly pick up thinking, “This can’t possibly be very interesting.” But it IS interesting. In fact, I find myself continuing to think about it.

I was already a fan of Andy MacDonald, but that didn’t necessarily mean I needed to know his life story. For one thing, he’s younger than me. How much life story can he have?

Plenty, as it turns out.

When you see Andy on TV, he seems like this nice guy who just happens to be able to dial in insane tricks -- so much so that they no longer look insane. The real story is that the tricks took lots of work, getting a chance to work on them took work and that, yes, the tricks are insane and Andy probably is, too:

“I do admit that from the earliest age, I’ve had a fascination with anything that can result in bodily harm…”


As with most books about a world-class athlete, a big chunk of it is about determination. This insane desire to “make it” “against all odds.”
The odds against Andy Mac are an interesting assortment, many specific to the sport of skateboarding. Any kid with a basketball can follow that dream down at the playground. But a kid who wants to be a Skateboard Vert champ is going to need a Vert ramp and back in the day those were hard to come by. I was stunned to find out the lengths MacDonald was willing to go to. (I.e. midnight missions in black clothes and blackened face to steal plywood.)
Even when he hit the big leagues, money was still a problem. Another shocker: he skated conservatively -- aiming at placing, rather than winning -- because he needed the prize money to get to the next competition. He literally couldn’t afford to take big risks.

Risking his life, however, didn’t seem to bother him. The story and picture of his world-record-setting jump from an preposterously dangerous 4-story ramp make me wish someone had stopped him. It was just plain crazy.

The book’s not perfect. One glaring omission is “the letter.” Early in his career, Andy wrote an outrageous letter which leaked out and made him the laughing stock of the skating world. It took him years to overcome it and it’s one of the most interesting things in the book. Except that the letter itself isn’t in the book.

Obviously, I think this book would be a great read for young skateboarders. But I’m not a skateboarder -- nor young -- and I got something out of it, too.

Tiger Tale Burns Bright

An admission: these days I'm a bit tired of fantasy adventures that take please in some Western European country. Or America. I mean, I'm in NJ and since GuysLitWire doesn't pay us bloggers to venture out into the world to find new books, I can't afford plane trips to exotic locales. Thankfully, I can pick up a book to explore. You can, too. Go on. Oh, wait, I haven't given you your itinerary yet.

India.

Early 20th century India, when it was still a colony.

Gods. Demons. Magical bloodstones. Talking tigers.

Sure, there are humans. A girl who is telling stories to save her life. A boy thief promised a better life.

And one hell of a story.

Let's talk about Tiger Moon by Antonia Michaelis. I love books about people telling stories. Yeah, yeah, I'm a writer, so I'm biased. But everyone tells stories. Some of us do it with texting, and some do it with tigers.

Raka has definitely more problems than any girl in any high school you know. For one, she's betrothed to a vile old man. Not so good. She's not even to be the first, or the second of his wives, but his eighth. Oh so not good. And when he discovers that Raka is not a virgin [*gasp*], well no self-respecting man in early 19th century India could marry a woman, let alone his eighth woman, who has already parted her sari... so when her future husband discovers this she's be condemned to death. Ask any cheerleader is she has such problems!

To escape some of the fear, Raka tells a story to her only friend in the household, a eunuch named Lalit. Okay, guys, relax over the eunuch thing. Trust me.

Her story involves one of the fresher of the boy thieves that are so often found in YA books (don't they all owe Peter Pan a debt?). His name is Farhad, who is not having such a good time also because the Hindu god Krishna has decided that poor Farhad is just the guy to rescue Krishna's daughter from an evil demon. And yes, the evil demon plans on marrying Krishna's daughter. Farhad is not only a thief but a damn good trickster. If you don't know what a trickster is, well you better Wiki it, cause it's a world of fun. But I figure you're smart since you read this blog, so I won't say more.

Farhad is promised a better reincarnation if he succeeds. That's pretty cool - wouldn't we all want to come back as rock stars or rich son's with sports cars? Of course, I think having a best friend who is a talking white tiger is much better than a white Porsche (though if it could talk like K.I.T.T. I'm good with that).

So the book goes back and forth from Raka to Farhad. Things get more and more dire.
Meanwhile we get a tour (maybe even a tour d'force) of India in a distant time when it was a British colony. So there is a lot on the culture and traditions of India, as well as the bitterness of being occupied by foreigners, but learning is part of reading, didn't your teachers drone on and on about that? It's true. True and with tigers!

Man vs. Weather by Dennis DiClaudio

So here's the deal with me and weather.

I grew up in Hawaii distrusting the weatherpeople on the news because it seemed like they were wrong more often than they were right. All their talk about low pressure systems and fronts and other things I knew nothing about didn't seem to improve the accuracy of their predictions. I went to college in Ohio, where I was initially impressed by the weather forecasts (it rained when it was supposed to! And stopped when they said it would!), before deciding the weatherpeople on television news, at least, really were idiots, it didn't matter where you were, because they'd say things along the lines of "Stay indoors if you can because of the windchill" while reporting from...outdoors. Watching other weatherpeople broadcasting live on location from the outdoors in the midst of some hurricanes a few years later did not improve my opinion of them. (Meteorologists who didn't forecast weather on the news, though, they were okay.)

In other words, my meteorological literacy was next to nil and I was therefore the perfect audience for Dennis DiClaudio's Man vs. Weather: How to Be Your Own Weatherman.

DiClaudio is a comedian, not a meteorologist. He's the kind of guy who writes things like "Do you know how many different gases make up our atmosphere? Do you have any idea? I personally do not. But I have a feeling it's a whole, whole lot. Anyway, we're going to focus mainly on the important ones that people care about. The other ones can suck it." (p. 14-15) Acting as a sort of tour guide, and anthropomorphizing things like water molecules, he begins by leading readers through the water cycle and atmosphere, knowledge you need to understand, well, weather. Or, Weather, as DiClaudio writes it. Because you need to know about the water cycle and how wind impacts it, and how the atmosphere affects the wind, and therefore the water cycle, before you can move on to things like fronts and hurricanes and so on. And although DiClaudio's chart of the Fujita Scale for measuring tornadoes claims that, in addition to "devastating damage," during an F4 tornado, you can expect "cows turned into deadly projectiles; portal to Oz beginning to open," there is a lot of actual scientific knowledge to be found in the pages of Man vs. Weather.

Weather turns out to be just as complicated as it seemed before I read Man vs. Weather, and, yes, it only makes sense that weather forecasts sometimes are not accurate. It operates on different scales (in an air circulation kind of way, though I suppose the phrase does apply to things like the metric system), does weird things, and there are still weather events scientists don't fully understand. The humor occasionally wore thin, especially in the latter chapters, but DiClaudio does a good job explaining things, and doing so in a logical order. He acknowledges that Weather is complicated and confusing, so certain sections may require multiple readings before things really start to make sense.

The one disappointing thing about the book is that it lacks both a glossary and an index. Seriously, for a book that comes across as a slightly demented version of the Magic School Bus for older readers, with a sarcastic Mr. Frizzle teaching the class without a bus—and I mean this as a compliment because the Magic School Bus rocks—a glossary and index would come in handy.

Book source: public library.

Cross-posted at The YA YA YAs.

John Marsden's Hamlet

As soon as I saw that John Marsden had written his own prose version of Hamlet, I knew I had to check it out. You know John Marsden, author of the hugely bestselling Tomorrow Series and The Ellie Chronicles? Yep, that John Marsden. The man knows how to write a good story, so bring him on board with one of the most known Shakespearean plays, and I had a hunch that good things were in store for readers.

I thought right.

I imagine a plot teaser isn't really necessary for this one, because Marsden sticks very close to the events as they happen in the play, just one reason why high school students everywhere will be cheering. Certainly, this retelling of the play will be the saving grace for many an English student who needs a little 21st century language to really get the Dane, in all of his half-crazed glory. I confess that it's been a while since I've read Hamlet, but I couldn't identify any grand departures from the original plot in Marsden's book. You get into the minds of the characters differently, of course, compared to the insights you get through the bard's poetry. I felt this especially with Horatio and Ophelia. I had greater understanding of their motivations and character though Marsden's book, though they were true to the way I remembered the characters in the play. He also succeeds in capturing the intense moodiness and sense of foreboding from the play. Even though most readers will know what's coming, you will feel tension from the first chapter.



Marsden's style seems made for telling this kind of intensely dramatic and bleak tale. His description is outstanding. Take this passage that comes just after Hamlet has climbed down after looking out over the land from the castle tower:

Against the rich green grass and the close horizon, the lowering clouds, pregnant with storm and snow, against the white windmill and the stone tower, Hamlet was all that moved. His white hair and white shirt held the eye; a line could be drawn between him and the windmill and the dark tower, the last two heavy and immovable, the other too light, too bright: nothing to hold it down to the earth. He slipped in the mud and rolled down the hill but was up again as he spun, flitting, flying. He was alive and hopeless.

There are many passages as good as that. The writing feels charged and direct, just the right fit for the story being told. Another impressive accomplishment is the way that Marsden weaves in lines from the play in such a convincingly seamless way that they feel a natural part of the dialogue. You'll recognize some of the more famous lines scattered throughout the text. There's a strong erotic element to the novel as well. It's pretty sexy, which might not work for everyone, but in my view, it didn't feel out of place in the novel.

I feel compelled to mention that the US cover is nothing to the cover on my copy, purchased in Canada, which is called Hamlet & Ophelia. Take a look:



That just says dark and brooding and rotten to me. Don't you think? I vote for this one rather than good ol' Yorrick. Either way, definitely read this book. Your English teacher might even ask you if she can borrow it.

Published in Canada by Harper Collins, and in the U.S. by Candlewick

Neil Gaiman is Coming to Town!

Okay, I have to brag. Little Shop of Stories, the bookstore where I work in Decatur, Georgia (it's a town right next to downtown Atlanta),has won a visit from Neil Gaiman. Yes, THE Neil Gaiman.

Here's the deal: Neil wanted to offer independent bookstores a chance to get a visit from him. As I understand it, his line of reasoning was this: giant chains like Barnes & Nobles or Borders have every opportunity to have an author signing from an author of his stature, but for independent books that is an impossibility.

So he had a contest. The best Graveyard Book-themed Halloween party thrown by an independent, community bookstore would win a store visit. And guess what? We (along with McNally Robinson Booksellers in Winnipeg, Manitoba) won!

We're excited, and thrilled, but there are some dark clouds on the horizon. What follows after the jump is a meditation on the awesomeness of your local bookstore, and the dark vagaries of the book business...


Here's a little history about me and Little Shop of Stories. Several years ago, after my son was born, my wife got a job here in Decatur. I was a stay-at-home dad for that first year, taking care of him and our daughter, and I tried to get the kids out and about as much as possible. Somehow (was it the Decatur Book Festival? Was it storytimes?) I discovered the store, and it was awesome! The bookstore is focused on kidslit, and has fantastic sections of picture books, chapter books, board books, YA, etc etc. But it also has adult books, and the adult book section is unlike any I'd seen before: rather than having the NYT bestsellers, or shelves devoted to every subcategory of book you can think of (half a shelf for philosophy, two shelves for history, three for self-help, another for mysteries, and on and on)--instead of that, it was just divided up into nonfiction and fiction, and it felt like the most awesome personal library I'd ever seen. Little Shop's "grown-up" section is one of the clearest indicators that the bookstore only carries books that somebody in the store loves.

So I started to find excuses to take the kids to the bookstore--any chance I could get we would visit. You know, "for the children's sake." Then I'd find excuses to go without the kids. Then, Diane, one of the owners, asked me if I wanted to work there, and I jumped at the chance.

I had worked in bookstores and libraries before, so I know what to look for when I go into an independent--Does the store have a clear idea of what they're about, who their customer is, do they know their identity? Does the store have a vibrant, strong connection to the community? Do the employees love introducing books to customers, or are they book snobs? When I discovered Little Shop of Stories, I discovered a bookstore that has this in spades.

I've worked for the store going on three years now, and the store has only grown better over that time. This despite the downturn in the economy, downturns in the book business, the end of Harry Potter, a move to a bigger location that stretched our budget, the opening and closing of another bookstore two blocks away...

In that time, we've been able to get some really cook authors and illustrators to come to the store: Doreen Cronin, Robert Sabuda, Rick Riordan, Mo Willems, Laurie Halse Anderson, Jeff Kinney. And this is a great thing, because we're not able to offer the kinds of discounts that you can find on Amazon, or that's offered at B&N or Borders. What we have to offer that draws our customers to us is the fact that they know they can come in looking for a good book, and we will help them find one. We make suggestions, we go on hunts, we provide service that isn't necessarily out there. We bring authors to the store and to the local schools so that kids get to meet great writers.

And this isn't something that Little Shop of Stories is alone in providing. After all, we share the prize with McNally Robinson. I've been to awesome shops all over, in every city or community I've lived in or visited, I've tried to find a good local bookstore. My wife and I did it on our honeymoon in Bermuda. There's several great local bookstores within a few miles of us (hey Eagle Eye! Hey Books Again! Hey Blue Elephant!) that each have their own special ways of serving this great bookloving community.

I have a friend who loves Amazon. He doesn't have time to go find books in a bookstore. But he still asks me for recommendations for books for his kids. He still looks to me for book news. And the big guys look for ways to horn in local bookstore awesomeness: At the signing we had for Mo Willems two years ago, a B&N employee showed up with 50+ books from their stock to have signed and sell at their store. When we brought in Kate DiCamillo for the Decatur Book Festival this past September, Amazon had her sign books for them so they could sell them for an extra $10 on their website.

What then, at the end of this, is the take-away? Your local bookstore is awesome, but they can't be awesome without your help. Shop there, talk to the employees and owners, let them know what you want to see from an independent, help them know about opportunities to engage the community where they are, where you live. If they don't listen, if they don't engage, then they deserve to fail. But if you love your local bookstore and show up at a signing with a book you bought on Amazon or at B&N because it was cheaper, then you're killing them. Really. If you go to the store find out about a book that sounds great, but go home and order it online because it's cheaper, then you're driving that local shop, that great resource, that wonderful thing that gives your community life, right out of business.

A terrible beauty is born: The poetry of Wilfred Owen

Last week, people around the world celebrated Veteran's / Armistice / Remembrance Day. With that little lump still in our hearts, I thought it'd be a good time to talk about Wilfred Owen, a British poet who died too young, but not before finding his voice in the muddy trenches and madness of the first world war.

Owen was the oldest of four children. He grew up a quiet, intelligent kid, often taking care of his younger siblings. After graduating college, he was unsure what to do. He worked as a English and French tutor and dreamed of being a poet, but doubted if he could earn a living from it. The few poems he had published were heavily influenced by the Romantics and John Keats in particular. While they were proficient, they were fairly unremarkable. In a letter to his mother, Owen wrote, "My heart is ready, but my brain unprepared, and my hand untrained. I quite envisage possibility of non-success."

Then when he was 22, he enlisted and went to war. At first he was eager, caught up in the pageantry and pride of the military. After awhile on the front lines, though, he grew disillusioned, sickened by the grinding slaughter of trench warfare.

"For twelve days I did not wash my face, nor take off my boots, nor sleep a deep sleep," he wrote in another letter. "For twelve days we lay in holes, where at any moment a shell might put us out. I think the worst incident was one wet night when we lay up against a railway embankment. A big shell lit on the top of the bank, just 2 yards from my head. Before I awoke, I was blown in the air right away from the bank! I passed most of the following days in a railway cutting, in a hole just big enough to lie in, and covered with corrugated iron. My brother officer of B. Coy., 2nd Lt. G., lay opposite in a similar hole. But he was covered with earth, and no relief will ever relieve him, nor will his Rest be a 9-days-Rest."

Soon after, Owen's mental state deteriorated rapidly. He was admitted to a hospital for post-traumatic stress syndrome, then known as "shell shock." While recovering, he returned to poetry. Stripping away the Romanticism and melancholy that had influenced his earlier stuff, these new poems were full of brutal scenes from the front lines, anger toward the old men who send young men to war, and a naked desperation to make people understand.

"Anthem for Doomed Youth"

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -- -
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

This poem mirrors Owen's own experience with shell-shock, but viewed from a much different perspective.

"The Dead-Beat"

He dropped, - more sullenly than wearily,

Lay stupid like a cod, heavy like meat,

And none of us could kick him to his feet;

Just blinked at my revolver, blearily;

- Didn't appear to know a war was on,

Or see the blasted trench at which he stared.

"I'll do 'em in," he whined, "If this hand's spared,

I'll murder them, I will."
                               A low voice said,

"It's Blighty, p'raps, he sees; his pluck's all gone,

Dreaming of all the valiant, that aren't dead:

Bold uncles, smiling ministerially;

Maybe his brave young wife, getting her fun

In some new home, improved materially.

It's not these stiffs have crazed him; nor the Hun."

We sent him down at last, out of the way.

Unwounded; - stout lad, too, before that strafe.

Malingering? Stretcher-bearers winked, "Not half!"

Next day I heard the Doc's well-whiskied laugh:

"That scum you sent last night soon died. Hooray!"

After about a year of recuperation, first at the army hospital and then in Scotland, Owen returned to service. His hatred of the war and the people who glorified it didn't negate the sense duty he had toward his men.

Owen died on November 4th, 1918, one week before Armastice Day and the end of the war. The message telling his mother about his death was delayed, and apocryphally, she learned he had died while the church bells were ringing to celebrate the new peace.
In 1919, Owen was posthumously awarded the Military Cross. The citation describes his final hours during an attack on an entrenched German position: "On the company commander becoming a casualty, he assumed command and showed fine leadership and resisted a heavy counter-attack. He personally manipulated a captured enemy machine gun from an isolated position and inflicted considerable losses on the enemy. Throughout he behaved most gallantly."

But a greater honor came later that year when Sigfried Sassoon, Owen's friend and fellow soldier-poet, put together a small volume of Owen's poetry. While his body of work is tiny--only about forty poems and a few fragments, most written during his recovery from shell shock--he's come to be seen as a great war poet whose images still have the power to jolt ninety years later.

"All the poet can do to-day is to warn," Owen once wrote. "That is why the true Poets must be truthful." And we who've never been to war--who can barely imagine what is like--will always have a duty to listen and remember.

"Futility"

Move him into the sun—
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds—
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved,—still warm,—too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?

(Cross-posted on my blog.)

After the Moment by Garret Freymann-Weyr

I really enjoy books that drag up a variety of emotions from me and After the Moment by Garret Freymann-Weyr does just that. I have some mixed feelings about this book but it is a novel with great character development that deals with a lot of issues.

Looking at the cover and even the blurb is quite misleading. The marketing of teen books has been discussed a lot (including on this blog) so I will not rehash that here. Still, making a novel about a teen guy and his roles models look like a romance was a strange move.

As the novel opens, Leigh seems defined by those around him. Following a family tragedy, he moves to Washington D.C. to comfort Millie, his step-sister. While there, he meets and begins falling for the infamous Maia. He decides to spend his senior year there leaving his girlfriend, Astra, behind.

Leigh thinks a lot about his future and about being a man. In his new surroundings he basically acts as the head of the household because his own father is so incredibly aloof. Back home, his mother is getting more serious with a successful, soft-spoken man that Leigh greatly respects. Leigh studies the two men often just acting the opposite of how his father would act. Leigh feels like he is successfully taking care of his family and friends but is baffled that he can't figure out his future even though it seems easy for his peers.

Maia is someone that alters Leigh's path in life. In some ways she seems fragile and in other ways she seems perfect. Leigh desperately wants to give her anything she needs, but when things get rough can he still put her first?

It is incredibly intriguing to follow Leigh make his decisions to try to become the person he wants to be. Ultimately, however, it takes a long time for the book to get anywhere. Also by time the "moment" takes place, it is kind of a letdown.

Freymann-Weyr has crafted a challenging yet accessible novel. She writes guys very well and captures the never ending questioning of what it means to be a man in the modern world. Readers who enjoyed Funny How Things Change by Melissa Wyatt will also want to read After the Moment.

Light and Dark: a Study in Strongmen and Spiders

I'm going to come right out and say it. Are you ready? Okay, here goes: I do believe that this book here is Alan Moore's finest work since Watchmen. Tom Strong is a mental and physical marvel of the old-fashioned variety. His origins owe a great deal to his direct forebears Tarzan and Doc Savage, and like them he captures a sense of awe and adventure that has by-and-large disappeared from comic book storytelling these days. The irony is that the guy who heralded that disappearance (the aforementioned Mr. Moore with the aforementioned Watchmen) has given us the thrill of a pure hero who relies on his intelligence and his skill, and put him in a world of gee-whiz wonders that befits his title of "science hero." At the same time, Moore's intellectual rigor is not capable of producing a one-note narrative and, not surprisingly, Tom Strong's adventures are laced with all sorts of unexpected secrets and hidden depths (examine his origin story closely and consider carefully just who you think Tom's father really is). This gorgeous hardcover compilation, Tom Strong Deluxe Edition Volume 1 (by Moore and Sprouse) includes his origin and, among other adventures, an invasion by future “Aztechs” and Tom's meeting with a super-hero coalition from another world. All the tales feature Chris Sprouse's bright, muscular, dynamic art and breath-taking art deco designs which support Moore's wild flights of imagination stroke for stroke.

On the opposite end of the tonal spectrum is Spider-Man: Noir (by Hine, Sapolsky and Di Giandomenico), which places the webslinger in the darkest days of the Great Depression and onto the violent, morally compromised streets. Donning a darker appearance to go with his grim motives, Spider-Man contends with a ghastly array of re-imagined foes including the Vulture, Kraven and, of course, the Green Goblin (are you even allowed to re-imagine Spider-Man without the Green Goblin in tow?). At the same time, much of the supporting cast shows up here too, in slightly tweaked characterizations that feel both fresh and surprisingly deep for a fairly short book (check out the crusading and principled J. Jonah Jameson, for example). Spring for the full-sized Premiere Hardcover version over the digest-sized version if you can, as it shows off Di Giandomenico's super-detailed and expressive art to best effect.

So you caught me going on about pulp-inspired tales once again. Their influence still runs strongly through comics today. These two pull off the homage with real intelligence and style.

Winterdance - You Just Gotta Wonder About People Sometimes

Maybe he's just crazy. I mean, that would explain it, wouldn't it? "The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod" is the subtitle of Gary Paulsen's Winderdance. I don't know about "fine," but yeah, I'd agree to the madness part. Racing with a team of dogs for 1180 miles across the Alaskan snow and ice. Gary! What are you, nuts???

But he did it. He finished the race, and went back to do it a second time. A committed dude, that Paulsen. And if he isn't, he ought to be committed -- to an asylum. I know, that's an old joke. Sorry.

He trained the dogs, and the dogs saved his life. This is that kind of story. And Paulsen is such a story teller.


"Without thinking I jerked at the skunk to pull it away from Devil. This was risky in itself. Devil considered the skunk to be food, was in fact trying to swallow the skunk whole, or so it seemed, and grabbing Devil's food amounted to suicide.

But worse, I grabbed the tail, which had the effect of swinging the rear end of the skunk around to aim the potent business end at me, at my face.

Whereupon the skunk let go.

His firepower was somewhat diminished, as he'd dumped some of it on the dogs, but there was still a hefty load and it blew, like the winds of death, directly into my face.

'Gaacck!"

It was exactly that sound. I have never heard it duplicated by another person, and it was accompanied by projectile vomiting, walking in circles in the ditch, trying to rub it out of my eyes, and a sudden and sincere wish to become an investment banker, or any other job that would never put me close to a skunk's ass again.

It took a half hour to get some vision and ability to breathe right, and another half hour to sort the team and untangle them and get them ready to continue on.

It was bad, it was vile, it was in some way green and bilious, but we had overcome it and, I thought, could now finish the run -- stinking, perhaps, still queasy and sick, but none the worse for wear in other ways.

We hit the second skunk within a mile.

The results were almost exactly the same except that this time the skunk somehow got away from the dogs on his own and I tried to help it by kicking it down into the ditch, out of the way, so it could escape.

Rule one: don't grab a skunk by the tail and pull.

Rule two: Don't kick a skunk."

You know, I wanted to give you a little of the flavor of the book, so I opened it at random to that part. The whole story is that engaging. Think you might want to race the Iditarod someday? Even if you don't (You're not crazy, right?), Winterdance is great fun.

The Storm in the Barn by Matt Phelan

If you're looking for a page-turning graphic novel that is both educational and kid-friendly, look no further than The Storm in the Barn by Matt Phelan. This riveting story of one family's struggle during The Dust Bowl is not to be missed.

Kansas circa 1937 is shown through the eyes of an eleven year old boy named Jack Clark. While a bunch of bullies swings at him with their fists and their harsh words, a dust storm blows through town, and Jack runs off. Soon, we meet his family: Pa is gruff, Ma is sad, his sister Dorothy is sick, and his littlest sister, Mabel, has never seen rain. Jack overhears the doctor telling his father that Dorothy's condition is called "dust pneumonia," and that a new trend, "dust dementia," has started to spread. After seeing an odd face in the abandoned Talbot farm, Jack begins to worry that he too has been made ill by the storm.

Using pencil, ink, and watercolor, Phelan has created stark, dusty images of distinct, proud characters that will certainly stay with the reader. As Jack's level of courage goes up and down, so does his posture: sometimes he is slouched, and he often hides his eyes under the brim of his hat, but when push comes to shove, he stares, he shouts, and he stands straight up. There are wordless panels which express a great deal, such as the two panels on one of my favorite pages (199, which comes towards the very end, so don't you dare skip ahead!)

With her songs and and her smile, little sister Mabel steals every single scene - rather, panel - that she's in. Whenever she was shown skipping around with her umbrella, I thought of the Morton Salt Girl. Her natural curiosity and happiness nicely countered the sadness expressed by other, older characters.

Phelan also weaves in the power of storytelling: While bed-ridden Dorothy reads Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum, Ernie down at the General Supply tells young Jack tall tales which always star a courageous boy named Jack.

I'm certainly not the only GLW blogger who loves this book. Kelly Fineman praised it as well. Click here to read her post.

To learn more about the origin of this book, read my recent interview with Matt Phelan.