First – yet more pictures of the Rocket, mostly from a trip to the Paragon Carousel.  With which she was completely unimpressed.

Also in the imagery line – a collection of covers of vintage men’s magazines. Which taken as a whole seem to exhibit some deep–seated fear of being eaten alive – flesh ripped – by wild animals.

Light reading: a brief essay on Tolkien, by noted scifi author Gene Wolfe.

I missed noting John Wayne’s birthday, although Red covered it more than ably. I will point out these two anecdotes by Dick Cavett concerning his meeting the Duke.

Spinelli, Jerry (2000). Stargirl. NY: Random House. 186 pages.

Evaluation and summary: Leo Borlock is an unremarkable guy at an unremarkable high school. In fact, pretty much everyone at Micah High School is unremarkable, and they like it that way. No one really gets excited about sports or any other extracurricular activities, and most importantly, no one is different enough to stand out – until Stargirl arrives. She is very different, from her unusual garb, to her penchant for singing ‘Happy Birthday’  to anyone and everyone (while playing the ukelele), to her habit of attending the funerals of complete strangers. Leo falls head over heals for Stargirl, but will their relationship survive their classmates’ shunning of Stargirl?

When choosing the titles for this series, I tried to mix up the types of books I selected, varying the genres and picking some books that weren’t to my personal taste in reading material.  Based on a classmate’s book talk I chose Stargirl, along with Heavy Metal and You, as books about romance and relationships, as opposed to my usual fare of ray guns, sword points or flintlocks. And maybe it’s because the book is not my usual fare, but I didn’t much care for Stargirl, despite the pile of awards it won.

My cool reaction to Stargirl is due to the characters. Stargirl herself is entirely too good to be true, saint like in her regard for others. Just as David Levithan created an ideal world (or at least an ideal town) to make a point, Spinelli created an ideal character to make a different point. Leo, while a little more believable as a real person than Stargirl, is a lot less likable.  The only character I found appealing never spoke a word: Dori, Stargirl’s friend who remains loyal throughout all the events of the book.

Booktalk hook:  I can see the appeal but I personally wouldn’t try to convince anyone to read Stargirl.  The book did won loads of awards, so this may be just a matter of taste.

Gaiman, Neil (2007). M is for Magic. NY: HarperCollins. 260 pages.

Evaluation and summary:  On the face of it, a book of short stories for young adults seems like a fine idea.  The notion certainly has a distinguished pedigree, going back to (at least) Mr. Kipling and Ms. Potter.  The format is ideal for those who want to sample a genre or an author without committing to a whole book, and the short time needed to finish a story must have an appeal to reluctant readers. Granted, short stories seem to have largely vanished from popular culture along with the pulps and slicks they once populated, but the idea still seems workable.

Neil Gaiman agrees with me, noting in his introduction to M is for Magic that his enjoyment of short stories as a young sprout inspired this collection. The Gaiman has a knack for self-promotion* and inspires near cult-like devotion in some of his fans; I’ve enjoyed much of his work but regret to say I found this collection  little lacking.  No doubt part of my disappointment is due to having previously read some of the selections (“Sunbird,” “How To Talk To Girls At Parties,” and “October in the Chair,” all of which are in Fragile Things), selections which were among the strongest stories in the collection.  Some of the other stories left me cold. “Don’t Ask Jack” seemed like a synopsis of a story to be fleshed out later, while both “How To Sell the Ponti Bridge”  and “The Price” ended rather abruptly for stories with such a lengthy buildup.

I did enjoy the last story in M is for Magic.  “The Witch’s Headstone”  features Nobody Owens, ‘Bod’ for short, an orphan who lives in a graveyard and is raised by an assortment of ghosts. The story went on to be included in The Graveyard Book, which I’ll get around to reading eventually.

Booktalk hook: I would booktalk M is for Magic by recommending The Sandman or Fragile Things.

*This is not intended as a slam at Gaiman. If you’ve ever heard one of his readings it’s obvious he put quite a bit of time and effort into his public speaking (reading?) skills.

Krovatin, Christopher (2005). Heavy Metal And You. NY: Scholastic. 186 pages.

Evaluation and summary: Sammy Markus is a high school student who really likes two things: heavy metal music, and getting fall-down drunk with his friends.  All is well in his world, until he encounters something, or rather some one, else that he wants – Melissa. Pretty soon Sammy’s life is filled with conflict.  He spends most of his time with Melissa, who convinces him to quit drinking and smoking. She doesn’t much care for his friends. Sammy’s friends in turn don’t much like Melissa; they she’s not only stolen their friend away, but turned him into some one he’s not in the process.

I grabbed this one from the shelf because of the title and  it made me feel old.  I was a teenage metalhead, so I figured I’d get the musical references.  Not so much. For one thing, I was a teenage metalhead over twenty years ago, and was never really much into thrash, unlike Sammy. The only band we shared fondness for is Judas Priest. I also noticed  Sammy’s tendency to cry, something I don’t recall the male protagonists doing in the YA books I read when I was actually a YA.  Maybe things have changed and young men in YA literature are more sensitive?  Or perhaps the crying was just a result of this author’s vision for the character? Either way, it pointed out the fact that I come from a generation with different social mores when it comes to male displays of emotion.

Booktalk hook: I didn’t dislike this book, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to recommend it.

McCaughrean, Geraldine (2005).  The White Darkness. NY: Harper Teen, 369 pages.

Evaluation and summary: What can I say about The White Darkness without giving away too much away? My professor has obviously read the book – she assigned it to the class. But the rest of you haven’t, as far as I know, and I don’t want to ruin it for you.  Because I really like The White Darkness and highly recommend you read it yourself. Really, it was excellent – neck and neck with Montmorency in the race for my favorite read of the semester.

So I will say this concerning The White Darkness. The main character is Sym Wates, a fourteen year-old girl who is clumsy, shy and obsessed with Antarctic exploration, especially Captain Lawrence ‘Titus’ Oates.  Captain Oates, it should be said, is Sym’s imaginary friend and they converse frequently.  Anyway, Sym sets off on a trip to Paris, courtesy of her Uncle Victor, and I don’t have to tell you that things quickly get out of hand from that point. Go read and it and find out what exactly happens.

I don’t think it gives too much away to discuss here my extreme dislike of Uncle Victor. Actually, scratch out extreme dislike and insert intense hatred: Uncle Victor got on my nerves quickly and remained there for the entire book. It was his many eccentricities that did it to me. Everybody has their own little quirks. Me, I like to sleep on the cold side of the pillow, and I’m sure you have your own peccadilloes. Uncle Victor on the other hand – what with his special diet, sleeping upright in a special chair, sleeping upright in a special chair facing a certain direction to align his brain neurons and thus gain IQ points – is a crashing bore.  And like Dr. Franklin, Uncle Victor too has his real-life compatriots, a whole host of people who are unable to deal with reality and so take refuge in conspiracy theories and other idiotic notions. You know them: the people who think there was a plot to steal the election for Bush; the people who think there was a plot to steal the election for Obama; the Birthers; the Truthers; and so on and so on. I’m sure much of my visceral reaction to Uncle Victor is due to the fact I since avoid folks like him in real life, encountering his ilk in fiction is all the more aggravating.

I did grow quite fond of Captain Oates, who made for a much more interesting imaginary friend than did Tony Hawks in Slam, perhaps because Captain Oates, to my way of thinking, had a much more interesting life. Serving in Ireland, Egypt and India, he was the kind of adventurous and insanely brave young man that formed the backbone of the British Empire, nearly winning the Victoria Cross with the Inniskilling Dragoons prior to his gallant but futile self-sacrifice on the Scott Expedition. In short, Oates is almost a picture perfect version of the stiff-upper-lip-play-up-play-the-game British gentleman.  The imaginary Oates who spends so much time with Sym, is aware that by dying in 1912, to such great acclaim, he avoided the anonymity that waited for him in the muck of Flanders:

“I told you before : I’m the luckiest of men! Think! Two years more and it could all have been ours: the Great War! Lice and rats. Drowning in mud. Shrapnel wounds.  Mustard gas. One among millions known only unto God. Would that have been somehow preferable?

Too true, too true, although there can be little doubt that Oates would have been one of those mad bastards who went over the top kicking a football.  (He also gives another reason he feels fortunate to have died in Antarctica, but I’ll let you discover it for yourself, as it’s part of The White Darkness’s grim charm).

Booktalk hook: Reading aloud the scene with the ponies and the killer whales would be a pretty effective attention grabber.

Myers, Walter Dean (1988). Fallen Angels. NY: Scholastic. 309 pages.

Evaluation and summary: Seventeen year old Richie Perry can’t afford to go to college, so he takes another way out of Harlem: he joins the army. The army promptly sends him to Vietnam where, despite a medical profile for bad knees, Perry is assigned to a combat infantry unit.  There are rumors of an upcoming truce for Tet, the Vietnamese New Year, but Perry and the other members of his squad are seeing more and more combat…

Maybe it’s because I was a teenager in the ‘80s, when movies about the Vietnam war – Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Casualties of War, Hamburger Hill and Born on the Fourth of July to name a few – seemed to crowd the cinema, but the plot of Fallen Angels seemed very familiar . Raw recruit becomes a blooded veteran while witnessing the horrors of combat, experiences both brotherhood and racism in the ranks, and realizes the futility of the war. This is not a criticism of the author but an observation of how thoroughly I absorbed the tropes of the ‘Vietnam story’ without realizing it. I certainly enjoyed Fallen Angels, especially the character of Peewee Gates:

“You guys think we’re going to have a race problem over here?” Lobel asked.
“Not as long as everybody over here got them a gun,” Peewee said.
Lobel stood up. “Well, just in case we do,” he said. “I want you to know you got the Jew on your side.”
“Who’s the Jew?” Peewee asked.
“Me, I’m a Jew.”
“You ain’t no Jew,” Peewee said. “You too tall.”
“Fuck you, Peewee.”
“There you go with them promises again,” Peewee said.

It’s not hard to see how this book could be challenged due to profane language. Granted, I think banning or burning books is horrid, but why someone would want to ban a book because it contains the word fuck, while overlooking the scenes of graphic brutality (like children being machine-gunned along with their mother) is beyond me. Oddly enough, Fallen Angels is mentioned by one of the characters in Tomorrow, When the War Began, as an example of how ugly a guerilla conflict can become, and indeed the violence in Fallen Angels is an order of magnitude far worse.

Booktalk hook: The scene in which Perry and Peewee are cut off from their unit, crouched in a spider hole, on the verge of being discovered by ‘the Cong’ would be a great one to read aloud.

Marsden, John (1993). Tomorrow, When The War Began. NY: Houghton Mifflin Company. 286 pages.

Evaluation and summary: Ellie and her best friend Corrie plan a camping trip into the wilds of rural Australia, and invite along five more of their friends. They pack up the Land Rover and drive it into ‘the bush’ and then hike deep into a remote valley in the mountains known as ‘Hell’ by the locals. After a week of camping, Ellie and company pack up and return to their homes in the small town of Wirrawee, – but something has happened during their absence, something awful. Ellie arrives home to find the dogs are dead, the power and phones out, and her parents missing.  Things are no different at her friends’ homes.  Soon they learn that the seemingly impossible has happened: Wirrawee has become the staging ground for an invasion of Australia. Ellie, Corrie and company take to the hills – and soon they turn to resisting the invaders.

In a lot of YA books parents are removed as protagonists through some contrivance or plot twist. In Dr. Franklin’s Island Semi, Miranda are on a trip abroad when their plane goes down; in Peeps Cal Thompson is in New York ostensibly to attend college; and in Boy Meets Boy and Weetzie Bat the parents remain agreeably off-stage for the most part, much like Ms. Othmar in Peanuts (except for Weetzie Bat’s dad, who conveniently removes himself from the storyline).  Seen in that light, having your main character’s parents interned by invading soldiers is an effective way of removing them from the action while setting up the story to come.*  John Milius thought so too, as anyone who has seen Red Dawn can attest, and as I read the book I couldn’t help compare it to the movie.** Tomorrow, When The War Began is not nearly as ‘gung ho’ as Red Dawn, although there is certainly plenty of action.  What the book lacks is any sort of political subtext. The invading country is never identified and there are no clues to its identity presented in the story; we are only told that the enemy envied Australia’s wealth and prosperity.  Nor does Marsden use the book to promote any sort of personal political ideology.  He focuses on the character’s efforts to survive, as well as their efforts to cope with the after-effects of they violence they witness and are a part of.

On a side note I should mention that this title (or at least my wife’s copy) is an ‘import’ and as such is full of Australian slang.  The slang terms are easily understood in context and add to the overall flavor of the story. I have no idea if there is a bowdlerized American edition but I hope not. I don’t have any use for such ‘Sorcerer’s Stone’ nonsense.

Booktalk hook:  I would think this story would kind of sell itself – I might read one of the more exciting passages out loud to drum up interest.

*I’m trying to think of other YA books in the ‘resisting invasion’ genre and can only come up with two other series – Lloyd Alexander’s Kestrel books (which also deals explicitly with the effect of violence and combat on soldiers) and John Christopher’s Tripod series.
**Tomorrow, When The War Began is being made into movie, scheduled for release in 2010. I think you could combine it with Red Dawn for interesting double-bill.

Halam, Ann (2002). Dr. Franklin’s Island. NY: Dell Laurel-Leaf. 246 pages.

Summary and evaluation: Semirah Garson is shy and not at all good with people. So she is somewhat surprised find herself  on an expedition to Ecuador with fifty other British Young Conservationists. Even if she has a tough time, Semirah, who goes by ‘Semi,’ is determined to enjoy trip.  Very soon she realizes making friends will be the least of her problems; the plane carrying the expedition crashes and Semi, along with Arnie and Miranda,  is cast ashore on an island, an island belonging to the Dr. Franklin of the title.  And the good doctor is in need of subjects- human subjects – to take part in his latest experiment.

If Dr. Franklin’s Island was assigned to us as a science fiction read, and Peeps as horror, why did I find the former much more creepy?  I’m going to say it’s because Peeps is about vampires, which don’t exist, while Dr. Franklin’s Island is about a man so consumed by his cause, conveniently justified by the great notion of ‘progress’, that he is able to treat other people as less than human, as objects.  And the world is full of people like that.   Dr. Franklin sees nothing wrong with the horrific things he does to his prisoners; indeed he is happy to chat with Semi and Miranda and tell them in great detail what he has in store for them. He has no shame, and so it easy to imagine Dr. Franklin not just as a ‘mad’ scientist but as an SS officer executing civilian hostages, or as a Wall Street executive cashing out his bonus while his employees’ pension fund goes up in smoke. As I said, the world is full of people like Dr. Franklin.

In a brief  ‘about-the-author’ style note at the end of the book, Halam mentions that Dr. Franklin’s Island was inspired by The Island of Dr. Moreau, by H.G. Wells. I haven’t read Wells’ book (though I have seen the awesomely bad movie based on the boo – you know, the one with Val Kilmer and Marlon Brando).  Based on what I know about the earlier title, Halam has inverted the mad scientists’ work: Dr. Franklin seeks to change people into animals, while Dr. Moreau wanted to change animals into humans.  In Well’s book the transformation is presented as a very bad thing, but in Halam’s novel the change is presented differently. The process is horrible and scary (and creepy to read about) but the result is, well, enjoyable for the test subjects.  Being a person changed into a fish or a bird is not bad in-and-of-itself; it’s the captivity and lack of control that pain Semi, Miranda and Arnie.

Booktalk hook: It would hard – really hard – to beat the blurb on the back of the book i.e ‘what would it be like to watch your friend change into a bird, knowing you’re next?’ I would play on that statement and read aloud the particularly horrifying passage where Miranda really starts to change.

Westerfeld, Scott (2009). Leviathan. NY: Simon & Schuster. 434 pages.

Summary and evaluation: In Leviathan the setting is as much the attraction as the characters and plot, or at least it was for me. Westerfeld’s book is a mashup of steampunk and alternate history. The story begins on the eve of the First World War, something I appreciated. Not only do I have an afore-mentioned interest in that time period, but while there are already plenty of stories set in alternate timeline of the American Civil War and WWII, off the top of my heads I can’t think of any set in a re-imagined version of the Great War. The Allies are known as the Darwinists, so-called because in this world Darwin not only discovered evolution but also DNA – DNA that is manipulated to create war machines, like the huge dirigible Leviathan created from the genes of whales. The Central Powers, known as the Clankers, have no truck with genetic experimentation, instead relying on giant, steam-powered robots and ‘Land Dreadnoughts’ – basically Edwardian mecha. Westerfeld’s vision is further brought to life by Keith Thompson’s many illustrations in Leviathan; apparently Westerfeld not only worked closely with Thompson on design but in order to maintain closer control of the pictures also paid for his services with his own money, not the publisher’s.

I found the two main protagonists to be pretty stock characters. (Maybe this will change in future volumes as Leviathan is the first book in a projected trilogy. I might also add that the secondary characters are plenty interesting. Aleksandar’s loyal retainers in particular put me in mind of Paul Atreides’ teachers in Dune.) Aleksandar Ferdinand is the son of the murdered Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie. Now fleeing from enemies in his own family and forced into hiding, he is learning about life without privilege and coming into contact with ‘common people’ for the first time in his young life. Should Aleksandar be discovered and captured, death is a likely fate. Deryn Sharp is a plucky young girl who has enlisted in the British Air Service, disguised as a Midshipman Dylan Sharp. She’s enjoying the freedom and adventure of the Service – freedom and adventure that will be taken away if her true identity is discovered. Deryn and Aleksandar eventually meet, adding a prince-and the-pauper vibe to the dual coming-of-age-stories. Hopefully the next two books will do something more interesting with these two characters. Each faces death, literal or figurative, if their disguise is breached, so how will they come clean with each other? (Like Montmorency, the question of identity figures prominently in Leviathan.) Deryn’s growing feelings for Aleksandar only complicate the situation. And any sort of return to ‘normalcy’, that is to say how things are at the very beginning of the novel, would result in the characters being separated by an enormous social gulf.

Booktalk hook: I think I would emphasize the two very different but very cool visions of technology represented by each character.

Reeve, Philip (2006). Larklight. NY: Bloomsbury. 400 pages.

Summary and evaluation: Myrtle and Art Mumby live with their father at, or on Larklight, their house-on-an-asteroid, located to the north of the Moon. Mrs. Mumby disappeared some time ago, while voyaging on an aether-ship to visit relatives in Cambridge. The children and their father lead a quiet and isolated existence, until they receive word that a Mr. Webster, a member of the Royal Xenological Society, is coming to visit.  Unfortunately, Mr. Webster turns out to be rather large, spider-like alien intent on capturing Larklight and all aboard.  Art and Myrtle escape and in short order crash-land on the Moon, are rescued by the infamous space pirate Jack Havock , and are chased across the solar system by the mysterious Mr. Webster.

Larklight is science fiction, but not science fiction like Star Wars (which is actually science fantasy, which is another conversation entirely); it’s the science fiction of Jules Verne or H.G. Wells and freely uses the tropes of that particular sub-genre,  along with some conventions from the ‘sword and planet’ stories of early pulp science fiction. Spaceships fired from giant cannon and the canals of Mars feature prominently in Larklight.  Historical figures (or more accurately in this case alternate-historical) figures pop up too: Richard Burton, the Duke of Wellington, and of course, Queen Victoria.  How much of all the above is taken in by the books’s intended audience is beyond me, but I enjoyed the various winks, nods and homages.

Booktalk hook: Are pirates still popular, or have they been overtaken by zombies?  Because there’s a lot of (space) pirates in Larklight which might attract readers.