Tag: Books

Following Scott Through Antarctica in 2083

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews, Science Fiction, Young Adult3 Comments

As you may know from reading past posts, I’ve developed a small obsession with Antarctic explorers lately.  So when I was doing some writing at the library and my eye caught the word Antarctica blazing (freezing?) out of the fiction section, I had to investigate.  I found Surviving Antarctica: Reality TV 2083 by Andrea White.

The story is set in 2083, where five fourteen-year-olds are on a reality TV show recreating Captain Scott’s historic trek to the South Pole.  But in this dystopian future, reality TV has reached a whole new level of realism–where no one interferes, even when that means people die.  And when you’re sending kids to recreate a journey where five men did die…well, that guarantees some good adventure programming, right?

Scott and his men at the South Pole

They had me at Scott.

I admit I was in it for the Antarctic explorers side of things, so I was pleasantly surprised to find a fascinating dystopian society too.  In this future, the government has gone broke.  Since they can’t afford anything, like scientific research and schools, they’ve decided that the way to keep the people complacent and uncomplaining is to provide better entertainment, and keep them watching television all the time.

It’s a disturbingly insightful idea.  Over 97 million people voted in the most popular American Idol vote.  About 106 million people voted in the 2004 presidential elections.  Sure, this would be more impressive if those numbers were reversed…but that’s not a big gap when you’re talking about two things as different as a TV show, and deciding the leader of the country.

So between looking ahead to a disturbing potential future and looking back to a fascinating past, you’ve got something good here.

About that past–my particular Antarctic obsession (if you’ll let me go a little poetic about it) swirls directly around the bundled and slightly frosted (but still charming) figure of Captain Lawrence “Titus” Oates.  I think Andrea White’s interest in Antarctica would shift left a little to bring fellow explorer Birdie Bowers into more direct focus.  Titus, sadly, does not come up by name until 160-odd pages in.  But I respect her interest and bring this up not as a criticism and only as a comment on my personal preferences.  I’m sure Birdie was very nice too.

Ultimately I think the concept of this was more interesting than any individual characters, although the five kids (plus one not on the mission) were all good enough characters in their way.  But it’s mostly the ideas in this book that make it work, rather than the individuals, or even the plot.  The individuals are fine, and it’s a good plot, but it’s more about the ideas.  It’s a thought-provoking book.  It might make you think about your television, or about reality TV.

It also makes me wonder if I’m going to be able to hunt down any more novels set in Antarctica.

Author’s site: http://www.survivingantarctica.com/

Finding the Way Back to Neverland

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Juvenile, ReviewsLeave a comment

As a general rule, I’m against sequels to classic novels written by new authors, especially when the primary appeal of the original was the author’s voice.  How do you ever do that right?  I’ve only see it happen once.  Peter Pan in Scarlet by Geraldine McCaughrean is a beautiful sequel to Peter Pan.

I give a lot of the credit to her–and a lot of the credit to the way the sequel came to be.  That’s a fascinating story too.  In 1929, J. M. Barrie gave the rights to Peter Pan to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, meaning that they receive all the royalty money, as well as controlling the rights.  Several years ago they held a contest inviting authors to submit a sample chapter and synopsis for a sequel.  All of this means that the people involved in the publishing had a primary interest, not in a later version, but in the original work–and you can tell.

I can’t say that Peter Pan in Scarlet feels like J. M. Barrie is telling the story, but I feel like the story is very much about the world and the characters that he created.  McCaughrean has done a very impressive job at staying true to the story J. M. Barrie gave us, and yet giving us another story that is, I think, what we all want.

Mr. Barrie was in some ways not kind to anyone who wanted to follow him with a sequel.  He left a lot of challenges behind him.  To name the chief ones–he killed off his villain, he grew up his supporting characters, and his heroine was rather annoyingly maternal all along.  So what is a sequel-writer, saddled with Wendy and knowing that readers really want to see Peter Pan and the (grown-up) Lost Boys fight (the deceased) Captain Hook, to do?

McCaughrean handles it all neatly and effectively, and with the kind of magical and whimsical solutions that are worthy of Mr. Barrie.  I don’t want to give it all away…but I can’t resist just a little.  Suppose a person wants to get back to Neverland but you can’t depend on Peter to show up at your window, how do you go about it?  Well, you’ve got to find a fairy for their dust, right?  And the best place to look…Kensington Gardens, of course.  And the way to find a fairy is to find a baby out with its nurse, and to catch the baby’s first laugh just as it turns into a fairy.  Brilliant, magical and whimsical.

Peter Pan in Scarlet opens with Wendy and the Lost Boys as grown-ups, but they’ve begun to dream about Neverland again.  They decide that something must be wrong, that perhaps Peter is in trouble.  They have to find a way to become children again so that they can return to Neverland and help him–and from there the adventures begin.  In Neverland they find that summer has turned into autumn, and something seems to be inexplicably wrong.

McCaughrean even handles Wendy well, successfully portraying her as simply a rather practical-minded child (after the grown-ups become children again), rather than a child who wasted all her time in Neverland darning socks.

After we return to Neverland and find everyone’s favorite Wonderful Boy, the adventures are “nicely crammed together,” and we have the chance to explore the greater geography of the magic lands.  Everyone’s favorite pirate captain appears too.  Again McCaughrean finds a way to stay true to the end of Mr. Barrie’s book, where the Crocodile eats Hook, and yet still bring the villain back.

Even if there was nothing else in this book to recommend it–which is obviously not the case!–there is a single line in here which would alone put it miles above Peter and the Starcatchers in my estimation.  At one point in the book, Wendy tells Peter and the Lost Boys a fairy story about a little white bird in the Kensington Gardens.  We don’t hear the story; we don’t even know what the story is supposed to be about.  But that doesn’t matter.  McCaughrean knew that a little white bird in Kensington Gardens is significant in Peter Pan lore.

Thank you, Geraldine McCaughrean, for knowing what you’re writing about, and for writing it so well.

Author’s site: http://www.geraldinemccaughrean.co.uk/

One of Those Books About the Civil War

On By cherylmahoneyIn Historical Fiction, Juvenile, ReviewsLeave a comment

Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt is one of those books.  Not a bad kind of those books.  One of those books that shows up on class reading lists and in books reports and that everyone seems to know the title of.  I wish I’d liked it better.

Even as one of those books, I somehow never actually read it in school.  I probably listened to an oral report or two, but I don’t remember them clearly (I remember endless reports on Harry Potter, but that’s another story).  Somehow, Across Five Aprils never came my way, so I decided to pick it up recently–mostly because I knew it was one of those books and I thought maybe it would be worth forming an acquaintance.

If you’re also unaquainted, Across Five Aprils covers the five Aprils of the Civil War, told from a farm in Illinois and mostly from the point of view of Jeth, too young to go to war and thrust into responsibility for the farm when his older brothers all go to fight.

I liked the book well enough, and there were were some good parts in here, especially in connection to Mr. Lincoln.  That leaves me the task of sorting out why I didn’t like it better.  Maybe it’s the hazard of covering five years in a fairly slim volume.  By necessity you have to summarize past days and weeks and months, and only occasionally dip into more detail.  I’m left with a feeling that I couldn’t get down into this book, that it was too much summary.  Even though I know there were scenes that were more detailed, I feel as though the whole thing took place on a surface level.

Another matter probably comes down to personal preference.  When I read historical fiction, I don’t like my history to get in the way of my fiction.  I’d like to learn something, but I’d rather not notice too much that I’m doing it.  Remember that this book is set on a farm–we’re not actually out engaged in the Civil War.  And yet the story stops for paragraphs and pages at a time to discuss the progress of battles and which general has been promoted and demoted and who’s advancing where.  It’s at that point that I start to feel the history is being foisted on me.

I think a fair comparison to make here would be with L. M. Montgomery’s book, Rilla of Ingleside.  It’s set during World War I, but takes place on the Canadian homefront.  Again, we’re not on the front lines, and yet we hear about every town that is taken, every time the line moves forward or back, every decisive battle–but it works.  Because the story doesn’t stop for the narration to tell us that the Germans captured a town.  Instead, the next event in the story is when one character comes flying into the kitchen to tell the other characters what the newspaper says today.

I feel arrogant saying this, when I’ve got a review from The New York Times reading “An intriguing and beautifully written book” staring up at me from the cover of Across Five Aprils, but I just don’t think the mix of fiction and history was handled all that masterfully here.  If you know a kid with an interest in the Civil War, then I do think I could recommend this book.  But you have to have that interest, because rather than fiction with a historical backdrop, this is definitely history told through fiction.

An Uninspired Apprentice

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews1 Comment

There are some parts of An Unexpected Apprentice by Jodi Lynn Nye which may sound a little familiar.  A magical world with a number of magical races.  One of them is a race of kind people smaller than humans.  One of the characters is a wise old wizard.  There’s a quest, involving a group made up of several races.  There’s an object of immense power on the loose, which could destroy the world.  Said-object tempts its bearer to use its power for his or her own gain.

Some of it, I suppose, is archetypal.  Some of it is Lord of the Rings.  I could forgive An Unexpected Apprentice for resembling Lord of the Rings, but it’s harder to forgive it for being, well, kind of bland.  I’m not sure why I was left with that feeling of blandness.  There are dangers, and the world is reasonably well-developed.  But maybe the world lacks enough details, and maybe I didn’t care enough about any (except one) of the characters to feel much concern about the dangers.

One good point: I do like that object of immense power.  Rather than a ring, it’s a book.  The Great Book that holds everything’s true sign, from individuals to entire countries.  Change the sign, and you change the thing.  Destroy the sign in the book, you destroy whatever it represents.  There’s something fascinating about that.

The essential plot of An Unexpected Apprentice is that someone has stolen the Great Book, and Tildi (a Halfling, one of those small people mentioned above) and her friends go on a quest to get it back and restore it to a place of safety.  Tildi and all the rest are nice enough, but no one on the quest made much of an impression on me.  I wanted to like Tildi, if only because I have a soft spot for girls who disguise themselves as boys to go pursue their dreams (ever since reading The Song of the Lioness Quartet by Tamora Pierce).  Tildi does that at the beginning, although she’s unmasked as soon as she takes up her apprenticeship with the wizard.  But despite that, I never developed much attachment to her.

No one in the book experienced that problem.  That is actually at the root of one of the book’s biggest problems, and certainly one of the most easily defined.  The other characters like Tildi too much.  That sounds odd, but what I mean by it is that they have all only recently met her, yet they worry about her, care about her, appreciate her–when I don’t feel Nye has built relationships that would justify it.  It almost feels as though the other characters know that she’s the main character. 

There is one great and glorious exception to this band of so-so characters, and that is Magpie.  He’s a prince who travels around in an alternate guise as a minstrel.  During a recent war, he became a close friend of the enemy king by becoming the minstrel at his court.  He’s engaged to a princess, has a volatile relationship with his family, and is charming and witty and a bit roguish.  All around, he’s the kind of character I could love.  Unfortunately, he’s only here in a supporting role, and we find out most of the above as backstory.

If I find out that Nye has written a book just about Magpie, I’d pick it up.  But so far, despite doing some searching, I haven’t found anything.  There is a sequel about Tildi.  But so far I haven’t picked that one up.  I said this blog would be about sharing favorites and warning you off of some not so good books…and this post is much more of a warning.

With the Fairies in Kensington Gardens

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews1 Comment
J. M. Barrie

As I’ve said elsewhere, J. M. Barrie (best known for Peter Pan) is one of my favorite authors.  Peter Pan is not a series, but I have been able to track down several related books, by Mr. Barrie and others–prequels and sequels and so on.  So that I don’t overwhelm anyone with a steady stream of Peter, I’m going to spread some related posts out over the next several weeks, to explore the good, the great, and the simply dreadful.

To begin at the beginning–that’s actually not Peter Pan.  It all began in the The Little White Bird.  It’s very possibly my favorite J. M. Barrie book, even over and above Peter Pan. 

The Little White Bird; or Adventures in Kensington Gardens is a tale about a man who befriends a little boy, and has adventures with him in London and Kensington Gardens.  If you’re not already suspecting the autobiographical nature of this novel, the little boy’s name is David.  Historically, J. M. Barrie befriended the Davies brothers in Kensington Gardens.  Not too subtle!  He also has a dog named Porthos, as did Mr. Barrie.  The man in the story is left unnamed.  He’s referred to as Captain W–.  I somehow picked up the habit of calling him the kindly old gentleman.

A review in The Times said of the book when it was first published, “The peculiar quality of The Little White Bird…is it’s J.-M.-Barrie-ness…whimsical, sentimental, profound, ridiculous Barrie-ness…Mr. Barrie has given us the best of himself, and we can think of no higher praise.”

I couldn’t put it better.  The Barrie-ness is often the best part of Mr. Barrie’s books.  The charm, the whimsy, the flights of fancy, the sweet sadness…the book is funny and tragic, absurd and heartbreaking, and sometimes all at the same time.  The tragedy, for the kindly old gentleman at least, is that David doesn’t really belong to him, and will one day grow up and leave him.

And there we come to the Peter Pan connection.  Besides thematic connections, there are also four chapters in the middle of the book that are about Peter.  They’re almost oddly unrelated to the rest, other than by geography, but I think they’re meant to be stories that the kindly old gentleman tells David.  In Peter Pan, Peter tells Wendy, “I want always to be a little boy and to have fun.  So I ran away to Kensington Gardens and lived a long, long time with the fairies.”  And this is that story.

We read about Peter’s running away from home, find out why he doesn’t grow up, see him meet the fairies, and also meet a girl he knew long before there was Wendy.  This is before Peter went to Neverland (although an island features) and the Lost Boys and Tinkerbell are yet to come on the scene, but there are other wonderful magical creatures and adventures.  The four chapters about Peter, along with one chapter giving a Grand Tour of the gardens, have been excerpted and published as Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, with lovely illustrations by Arthur Rackham.

The Baby's Walk

The Grand Tour (and map) is especially wonderful, because if you’re ever in London, I highly recommend spending an afternoon in Kensington Gardens with The Little White Bird in one hand.  It’s what I did, and I spent a couple of hours going, “Oh, there’s Mabel Gray’s gate!  And the Round Pond!  And that must be the Baby Walk!  And this is probably the weeping beech where Peter sat!”  Even a century later, I was able to find almost everything J. M. Barrie described.  And it’s a little easier to get to Kensington Gardens than to figure out which star is the second one to the right.

One more note on The Little White Bird–George Davies, who was the chief inspiration for David, took a copy of the book with him to the trenches in World War I.  I think that’s one of the saddest and sweetest things I ever heard.

Even in much less dire reading circumstances, it’s a lovely, sweet and enjoyable book–and, of course, a bit magical too.