Moving Day!

I decided to keep this blog over on WordPress instead. Please fix bookmarks accordingly:

aandthe.wordpress.com

Or

evelynpollins.com

Newbery Project #2: 2012's Dead End in Norvelt

I was excited for this one! I really like Jack Gantos. I think Joey Pigza has actually made me a better person. That character taught me how to empathize with the student who is doing something so insane it makes me want to throw them out a window. I loved that his memoir, Hole in My Life, gleefully demolishes the stereotype of the sweet-little-old-lady children's book writer. He is funny and insightful and honest about how just about anyone is capable of making some pretty gigantic mistakes. I bought Dead End in Norvelt long before this project started, I would have eventually read it, self-imposed challenge or no.

Also, it's a welcome counter-argument to my theory that the Newbery tends towards the sad and serious, and only on my second book!

BUT I ended with some mixed feelings!

Dead End in Norvelt is a semi-autobiographical novel that takes place over one summer in 1962. Jack gets himself grounded for the entire summer, and is allowed to leave the house only to help his elderly neighbor, Miss Volker, the town obituary-writer, historian, and medical examiner. Luckily, Miss Volker needs a lot of help and the help she needs, given her many occupations, is pretty interesting.

The book is autobiographical in that the character's name is Jack Gantos, he's Gantos's age as he was in 1962, and he lives near where Jack Gantos spent a good deal of his early childhood. It's difficult to determine how much more of this is autobiographical. If wikipedia is to be believed, the superficial details of his family are not the same in real life as in the book. Book Jack is an only child, Real Jack is not. His parents seem to have different jobs. As far as I can tell Real Jack never even lived in real Norvelt, just nearby. And as for the events in the book, well, ack!

Newbery Project #1: 2013's The One and Only Ivan

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate

The One and Only Ivan is about Ivan (duh), a gorilla, and his motley crew of animal friends who are all stuck in a remarkably sad, ethically questionable mall-based mini-circus/sideshow. Told in the first person by Ivan, over the course of this relatively short story we learn about how he and all his friends happened to arrive in these pretty miserable circumstances, and about their day-to-day lives. We also get to know the few humans who interact with the animals: the owner of the side show, Mack, and the custodian and his young daughter, George and Julia. Julia is an artist who also sneaks art supplies to Ivan so he can join her in her drawing and painting, and who sympathizes with the animals and forms a bond with each of them. An afterword lets the reader know that the whole story is actually based on true events and Ivan is a real gorilla. Namely, this gorilla who lived at the Atlanta Zoo until just over a year ago.

After the break, my review, and how I think The One and Only Ivan fits into this whole Newbery thing...

New Year, New Project

It seriously took me over a month to finish Allegiant. It's hard to write a book blog when it takes you over a month to read a book.

My thoughts on that soon, but in the meantime, I have an idea. I'm going to read every Newbery Award Winner, in reverse chronological order. 

I wrote a whole thing about the project, along with ground rules I plan to follow, and made a tab for it at this top. Since it will dominate the blog for the next two years, I wanted a quick link to an explanation. You can read my plan here!

First up, 2013's winner, The One and One Ivan by Katherine Applegate. Check back on Monday, January 6th!

"Where'd You Get That Can of Peas?" Questions I Have about Divergent

This is Chicago today. I imagine it with no cars, a lot of broken down buildings, and a whole bunch of bloody kids making out to picture Divergent Chicago.

Basic spoiler warning: I'm about to reference stuff from all over the first two Divergent books. Honestly, if you haven't read the books at all, not a whole lot will be ruined for you by reading this. The specific things that I mention probably won't make sense to you, and the broad things I discuss aren't really "spoilers" per se in that they don't give away anything really secret or surprising. That said, if you don't want to know much about what happens before you read, you should probably avoid this.

So, I'm rereading Insurgent, and about halfway through there's the scene when the Candor guy is meeting with Jeanine's "representative" and the representative tells the Candor leader "your faction is disposable" and I thought, "Wait, yeah! What the hell is the point of Candor anyway?!"

Which led me to wonder, "What, what is the deal with any of this?" And it took me until now to realize how badly I wanted more world building in the Divergent books.

Questions I asked the book, to no avail, while reading or rereading, after the jump:

Allegiant Is Out! I'm Not Reading it Yet

Veronica Roth's Allegiant came out two weeks ago and I still haven't started it.

I bought it, and I started reading it, but the first thought as I read the first paragraph was "Who's that?" That was also my second thought, and my third thought. I could not for the life of me remember who Edith or Christina or Will or even EVELYN was. I couldn't remember the character that shares my (until-recently-very-uncommon) name. So I went back to the beginning. I reread Divergent (which I had to do before I read Insurgent for the same reason) and now you can see I am about half way through Insurgent for a second time. I remember who most of those people are now.

I am trying to reread with a supportive mindset. I've come to appreciate the idea that there's really no reason to read a book looking for things you don't like about it, and it's a lot more interesting and enriching and helpful for everyone to read a book looking for the things to like about it. BUT! I keep having issues with these books! I really want Tris's shoulder to stop hurting, or at least for her to stop reminding us that it hurts. I also want her to stop making out with Four so much. Sorry, everybody. I'm cranky. And I really want everyone to stop shaking so much. By everyone I mostly mean Tris and Four, since those are the only people whose bodies get described in any detail. But geez, guys! Are you getting enough potassium? Do you have Parkinson's? What's with the CONSTANT SHAKING?!

I'm going to go pretend to be Tris and run a few miles and try not to shake or think about how much my shoulder hurts and then come back and finish this so I can finally start the book all of you finished weeks ago.

Obligatory "I've Boon Gone A While" Post

I am astonishingly bad at blogging. When will I learn to stop trying? Probably never.

Review: Junonia by Kevin Henkes

Kevin Henkes clearly gets kids. His picture books nail various aspects of kid-dom straight on the head. Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse is a perfect portrait of the first time you get in trouble. When parents came into the bookstore asking for my-kid-is-getting-a-sibling books (and in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, they came in looking for that a lot) I always recommended Julius, the Baby of the World first. Which was why I was so surprised that much of Junonia didn't seem to understand kids at all.

Junonia is the story of Alice, a trip to Florida, and her tenth birthday. It is a big one. It's the last time you will be able to count your age on your fingers. It's the first time you're in double digits. But the birthday/vacation starts to quickly fall apart as more and more things that Alice loves about their yearly Florida trips are changed or taken away. At its core I love this kind of story: a simple coming-of-age story where kids deal with very everyday problems. They usually make for the sweet, quiet, touching story that adults who love kids' books gravitate towards. And therein lies this problem: I think this is a book for adults who like kids books.

The first half of the book is just buried in things that are glaringly un-kid-like. "At that moment, Alice loved her mother so completely she thought they might fuse together and melt away." Parents hope that their children feel like this sometimes, and on some level most kids do feel this at some point, but they do not articulate it, and I would go so far as to say that they do not want this sentiment articulated for them. This kind of love for parents is not something kids want to be self-aware about. Same goes for "How could she ever be as old as Mrs. Wishmeier? she wondered. It seemed impossible. What would she look like when she was her mother's age?"

The summer before I started high school I had a lengthy summer reading project to do for school. One of the books I had to read was Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine. I hated it. It became clear when it was time to discuss the novel in class that I was not the only one. The book is a nostalgic portrayal of childhood summers. Our teachers could not believe we did not see the beauty in its descriptions and sentiment. We were children who had to read this book over the summer instead of doing the things described in the book. We were not nostalgic for childhood summers yet. The whole point of the book was lost on us.

There are worse things in the world than being compared to Ray Bradbury. But the first half of this book was that experience all over again. Kids are not nostalgic for their summers in Florida searching for seashells.

But then it starts to turn it around. Alice is deeply stung by a comment one of the older characters makes. When talking about Mallory, the younger, vaguely-obnoxious new vacation neighbor, he says "That little blond one sure is a screamer, but she is the prettiest girl I ever saw." All of us realize we are not the prettiest or smartest or funniest or nicest girl ever. Such a thing does not really exist. But it still hurts in a very special way when someone else is singled out for being especially pretty, smart, funny, or nice over you. And Alice's lingering reaction to this comment was genuine and touching. There are a couple more moments that stood out for me in the same way. Following the "prettiest girl" incident, Alice's father asks if she would like a little "bed supper." This is the greatest idea in the history of sullen child parenting. It's the most comforting thing I can imagine and I want someone to make me bed supper. There was also the walk through the cemetery, which some authors might have painted as creepy or depressing, but here Kevin Henkes just says she was bored. Which is exactly what most kids feel when they're made to walk through a cemetery. It's so boring.

The letter from the publisher at the beginning of this galley positions this book squarely in the early chapter book market, hoping to bridge the gap between the Wemberly Worried and Olive's Ocean sets. Other than the fact that this book is so startlingly short, though, it has no business being there. The language is flowery with difficult vocabulary. The sentiments, I mentioned already, are distinctly un-7-year-old.

In the beginning I thought this would be a two-star book, but some of the later genuine kid moments bumped it up to three. It's released tomorrow, May 24th. Give it to an especially precocious 7-year-old or your grandmother who used to be a children's librarian who is now retired and lives in Florida. They'll both love it.

Excuses, 13 Little Blue Envelopes, and Divergent.

The item "blog post" has been showing up on my teuxdeux list every day for something like three weeks. I keep ignoring it.

I refuse to blame "being busy" because I firmly believe that if you want to get something done, ask a busy person. Busy people know how to fit all kinds of stuff into a day. I know how to fit one thing into a day. I am not a busy person.

I did manage to busy myself reading 13 Little Blue Envelopes, which I had ignored until Maureen Johnson decided to give it away for free on Kindle, which is a testament to internet marketing. Although I'm not sure it was 100% successful as it did not quite motive me to buy the sequel yet. I also read Divergent. Everyone I talked to who read it was pretty much ambivalent about it, but for some reason that did not stop me.

13 Little Blue Envelopes is actually delightful, and I should really find new words to describe children's and YA books that I like besides "delightful." I loved the premise, that Ginny's aunt wrote her 13 letters before she died that would lead her on a trip across Europe. It managed to deftly walk the line between trite and touching, and between too-high-concept and plausible. Ginny was believably flawed and relatable. The descriptions of Europe were nice and atmospheric. In the end, though, I flipped through (clicked through?) the excerpt from The Last Little Blue Envelope and couldn't get myself excited to read it. I couldn't spend THAT much time with Ginny. [SPOILER ALERT highlight to read] I am curious to find out how the hell some kid in England wound up with Ginny's letter that was stolen in Greece, but not quite curious enough to read a whole book just yet. A wonderful train read at least. And made me want to take a trip around Europe.

Divergent was everything everyone said it would be: pretty exciting with an interesting premise but ultimately not that remarkable. The idea of seeing a futuristic dystopia of a city you actually know is pretty cool, so anyone who has spent a decent amount of time in Chicago will like hearing about what has happened to the city. I actually wish there was more detail on that front. Maybe because Veronica Roth went to Northwestern and she now lives "near Chicago," as her author bio describes, so she's not that into the geography of the actual city? Just kidding. That's my U of C vs. Northwestern bizarre rivalry rearing its head. Maybe she wrote it and her editor cut it, I don't know. I would have read it and liked it if there was more local detail is what I'm saying.

The premise is fascinating but clearly unrealistic. The people of Chicago have divided themselves into five factions: Abnegation for the self-less citizens, Dauntless for the brave ones, Erudite for the academics, Amity for the friendly, and Candor for the honest. It's fun to imagine a society divided so drastically by personality traits, but I found it very hard to believe that anyone would have believed that this kind of arrangement would actually work without conflict. Also, that such a large percentage of the population would so clearly fall into one group. (Although I'm pretty sure I'd be Erudite, which made me sad when they were painted in such a negative light. Maybe that's how all the kids who identified with Slytherin felt?) ALSO, that any teenager would choose Abnegation at the choosing ceremony. I can see why adults could join Abnegation. They seem a very noble and peaceful people. I do not know a single 16-year-old who is selfless, though. It seems like it would be a hard sell.

The book also features a very prominent and detailed romance plot-line, which I cannot handle reading in YA as an adult reader. I do not care about teenagers in love or like. In my goodreads review I called it "barf-inducing." There's not actually anything wrong with this part of the story, I just personally had no desire to read about it. At all.

And I could not quite get behind the ending. Also: does ANYONE write stand-alone dystopian/post-apocalypic books these days? They're all trilogies. Just let me finish the story in one book for once.

Other people's complaints about this book did not stop me from reading it, and in the end, I don't think any of these complaints should keep anyone else from reading it. It's a fun, exciting read and I happily finished it.

Coming up tomorrow: a post I wrote a long time ago when I was still in writing mode about Kevin Henkes's new novel, Junonia. Let's all cheer for post-dated posts!

leave it on a bookshelf to evaporate

It's Spring Break! Which means, of course, that it is 37 degrees outside and raining. That also means, though, that this is how my cat insists on sitting as I type this, which is adorable.

I am spending my break reading and writing because going outside would be a depressing exercise. Things I can recommend that I have consumed or found in the past few days while locked in my apartment:

• Tina Fey's Bossypants. I'm something like the 8-billionth person on the internet to recommend this this week, but I read it and it is good. It contains this sentence: "I had definitely never heard of anyone peeing in a cup and leaving it in their own office on a bookshelf to evaporate and be absorbed back into their body through the pores on their face."
• This poster of the world's cats.
• This video of a baby porcupine who has the hiccups and is also eating a banana.
• This typographic map of the world, which was by far my favorite piece in the Typeforce show I saw a couple months ago and you can apparently now make your very own, as long as that lady restocks her etsy shop.

I'm going to go back to being cold now.