Don’t Laugh at Giraffe (2012), by Rebecca Bender

This review was first published in Resource Links Magazine, “Canada’s national journal devoted to the review and evaluation of Canadian English and French resources for children and young adults.” It appears in volume 18.1

Don’t Laugh at Giraffe

This colourful picture book lives its message: one of the best antidotes for sadness is laughter. The illustrations by author/illustrator Rebecca Bender delight the reader even before the humorous and effective twist at the end of the story. A successful element in the interaction of text and image is that Bender bolds the important words—mainly the verbs—on each page. So with the bold verbs creating motion, and the energetic pictures showing action and emotion, what Bender has created is a very lively picture book for young readers, who will be able to pick out the bolded words and match them to the action in the pictures.
In the scorching heat of the African sun, Giraffe and Bird—best friends but always bugging each other—have a tussle and are hot and thirsty. Already, many young readers will identify with two friends who are so dissimilar but yet “you rarely see them apart.” When Giraffe has troubles bending all the way down to the water, and ultimately falls in, all of the animals—including Bird—laugh at him. True to the age of the readership, this hurts Giraffe’s feelings, and he goes away, sad and humiliated. Bird, an insightful little chap for all his flighty ways—soon figures out that there is something he can do to help his friend. No moralizing here, just a little bird thinking about how his friend obviously feels. Young readers will be able to internalize the lesson of empathy well, as it is so subtle; Bender does not preach at all, but merely shows her readers—largely with her beautiful illustrations—one option in this social situation. The answer Bird comes up with is to make a laughing stock of himself: he sings, he dances, he teases the other animals, he makes a complete fool of himself, laughing all the time with the animals he is teasing—even Giraffe. “Anyone can see that the bird loves the attention … and the giraffe finally has a drink”… and the reader feels happy and giggly watching Bird floating on his back, spitting water up into the air.

Devil’s Pass (2012), by Sigmund Brouwer

This review was first published in Resource Links Magazine, “Canada’s national journal devoted to the review and evaluation of Canadian English and French resources for children and young adults.” It appears in volume 18.1.

Devil’s Pass

In the vein of Monique Polak’s excellent Middle of Everywhere (2009), Sigmund Brouwer’s Devil’s Pass takes a young urban Torontonian on an adventure of a lifetime in Canada’s wild north. Both novels are poignant investigations into how culture shock and isolation can be powerful motivators in identity formation, but where Polak’s protagonist learns a lot about himself and his place in the world, about cultural values and what really matters, there is a sense of security in his life that is noticeably absent from 17-year-old Webb’s experiences in Devil’s Pass.
Webb is a street kid—by choice. He has run away from an abusive step-father and a mother he loves but who remains in ignorance of Webb’s reality, an ignorance Webb painfully perpetuates to protect her from her borderline psychotic husband.  Upon the death of his beloved grandfather, Webb is thrust into an adventure—orchestrated by his grandfather as part of his legacy—that takes him to the Canol Heritage Trail in the Northwest Territories in search of answers to a mystery from his grandfather’s youth. The quest itself is interesting enough to engage the reader immediately and consistently: Brouwer feeds us clues little by little, artfully reeling us in to the tension that Webb feels both within himself and in the world around him. Webb’s street-smarts come into play when he runs foul of a local troublemaker in Norman Wells, where the hiking portion of his quest begins.  The combination of the social problems Webb must deal with (poverty, homelessness, abuse, police harassment), the grief he struggles with at the loss of both his mother and his grandfather, and his need to complete the task his grandfather has set for him, drive Webb forward with a determination that readers will not only admire, but understand. Webb is not a strong, self-assured hero; rather, he is a troubled, angry young man, sometimes scared, and certainly seeking for a home and security in an unfriendly world. In the end, we are not know certain he will manage the road he has chosen, but we applaud the choices that he ultimately makes.
Devil’s Pass is one of seven novels written by seven separate authors, about the seven grandsons of David McLean, each of whom is sent on a quest as part of his inheritance: Webb’s journey will certainly inspire readers to seek out the other novels in the series, in the hope that they are as satisfying in term of both intrigue and emotional veracity.

The Last Dragonslayer (2010), by Jasper Fforde

I read the first five of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series as they came out in the early years of this millennium (I had to say that!), and was thrilled by the irreverent humour, the originality of concept, and the artfully handled literary allusions. “But,” I thought to myself, “these cannot be literature for the average young adult, for the simple reason that they require an extensive background in the classics of English literature.” What a shame, as I know my teenagers would love the humour and the disruption of readers’ expectations that Fforde revels in.  So finally, in 2010, Fforde gratified my hopes, and produced his first YA novel. The Last Dragonslayer reveals the refusal to conform to readers’ expectations and narrative conventions, but is playing with a sub-genre more popular among child and young adult readers: fantasy, magic, and witchcraft. The tropes Fforde plays with will be recognizable to any readers familiar with Harry Potter, or Diana Wynne-Jones’s work, or Susan Cooper’s, Lloyd Alexander’s, Michael Ende’s, Cornelia Funke’s, Christopher Paolini’s, Chris D’Lacey’s… the list goes on.

The story centres around the Kazam Mystical Arts Management company, currently run by the “apprentice” Jennifer Strange, an orphan indentured to the owner, Mr. Zambini, who has mysteriously disappeared. Kazam’s business is to rent out sorcerers and other individuals adept at what magic there is left in the world: for magic is quickly being depleted as the dragons slowly die out. The last dragon is aging, and the magical world is in upheaval. Fforde constructs a world in which magic is an inherent part of consensus reality, woven through the day-to-day complications and frustrations of contemporary middle-class life: the combination is sardonic, and hilarious.

Part of the history of magic in the Kingdom of Hereford, in the Ununited Kingdoms, where Kazam is located, are the magical creatures created before such sorcery was outlawed. The fiercest of these is the quarkbeast: “a small, hyena-shaped creature that is covered in leathery scales and often described as: One-tenth Labrador, six-tenths velociraptor and three-tenths kitchen food blender” (Song of the Quarkbeast 87). You cannot train a quarkbeast: it chooses its owner. Or not. Wild quarkbeasts are rare, and hunted much as lions or grizzlies are in our world: as trophies. Quarkbeasts are also “fiercely loyal” (120), affectionate, and “for all their fearsome looks … obedient to a fault” (94), with a “placid nature” (5) that is belied by their appearance. It is not their fault that the mere sight of one sends fear into the hearts of even the bravest; in fact, Jennifer’s “might have been so unaware [of his fearsome appearance] that he wondered why people always ran away screaming” (6). That Jennifer Strange has The Quarkbeast as her companion is a clue to the reader, as well as those around her, that she is something more than an unmagicked apprentice—which of course she also is. We like Jennifer, her fortitude and refusal to be cowed by disreputable but powerful political forces, but we love the Quarkbeast.

Jennifer Strange, prophesy says, is destined to be a key player in the political and magical situation developing in the Ununited Kingdoms. Ultimately, she has to make choices that pit her moral integrity against the financial security of those who depend upon her. The situation is sufficiently complex that readers can not necessarily anticipate her responses, and what seems to be the wrong choice turns out (in true Jasper Fforde style) to be not only right but essential.

Transmigration (2012), by Nicholas Maes

This review was first published in Resource Links Magazine, “Canada’s national journal devoted to the review and evaluation of Canadian English and French resources for children and young adults.” It appears in volume 17.5.

Transmigration

Whoa. What a ride! Nicholas Maes’s Transmigration is brilliant: a well-conceived fantasy with a unique premise and a gripping storyline. The novel begins with a talking bunny, but there is nothing cute or cuddly about the sinister alternative world history that Maes creates so carefully. It should perhaps have been a clue that a West Coast bunny talks with a Brooklyn accent, but I admit I found it only a bit out of place—until the plot progressed. In Maes’s history, a species of souls—bolkhs—coexists with humans as we have developed through the evolutionary process: a species that wants now to take back what was once theirs, destroying all human life. Young Simon Carpenter, of Vancouver, BC, is a tool they need for their war against humanity. When he learns this, his comfortable world is shaken to its foundations, and he must flee for his own safety and that of his family. The complicated relationships between players—different types of souls and their various connections with physical bodies—are adeptly explained to the reader through Simon’s own learning experience. I almost needed to create a rubric, but Maes brings in the terms just often enough to help the reader learn his nomenclature and the associated characteristics of his world.
The talking bunny seems an unlikely scenario for the introduction of a YA mystery-fantasy, but the bunny’s very cuteness is the first tool used against Simon by the bolkhs in their battle for supremacy. The bolkhs inhabit animals, as well as some humans, and their plan would have all bolkhs incarnate and powerful, at the expense of humankind. What ensues is a series of flights and confrontations that takes the protagonists from Vancouver to Europe—both of which the author obviously knows well—where Simon confronts the leader of the bolkhs, Tarhlo, who almost convinces him of the righteousness of the bolkh cause. Tarhlo’s logical argument is based on empirical scientific knowledge: the bolkhs argue that their ascendancy now is a natural part of the evolutionary process, as right and understandable as the Cro-Magnons prevailing over the Neanderthals. So well-crafted is Maes’s story that we are honestly not sure what Simon’s choice will be.
Ultimately, Simon travels to New York and a final confrontation, after which we are left with the protagonists safe for the moment, but still threatened: the final sentence assures us that “[w]hile the first confrontation with the bolkhs was over, the war was only getting started” (244). This is the one flaw in this otherwise spectacular piece of YA fiction: the end does not present any closure; it demands—rather than merely anticipating—a sequel. Please, authors: write novels that stand alone as narrative entities; refrain from publishing what amounts to the first installment of an indeterminately long narrative cycle. It is not fair to readers to create a book-length cliffhanger: leave such commercial tactics to the pulp serials. The degree of disappointment in the inconclusive ending is proportional to the level of engagement Transmigrations elicits: if it were a less engrossing story, we wouldn’t care so much that the ending disappoints.

Another Kind of Cowboy (2007), by Susan Juby

Susan Juby’s kind of cowboy is rather fine. Alex Ford has always been obsessed with horses, especially the structured control and exactness of dressage, which as a child he called “corsage” until corrected by his aunt, Grace. Like Grace, Alex’s father, Brian, understands but distinctly does not share the obsession. Nonetheless, when Alex is eleven, his father wins an old nag in a poker game and brings him home to Alex, and Alex’s real life begins. The horse, Colonel Turnipseed, “Turnip” for short, is trained Western and comes with Western tack, so Alex’s father arranges for Western lessons: he “loved having a cowboy for a son” (15). The degree of vicarious machismo Brian Ford felt watching his son compete—and win—in the “performance-based” competitions was not lost on his son, who nonetheless still dreamed of dressage. Eventually, circumstances conspire to present him with the opportunity to begin again: in dressage rather than Western. Alex’s strength of personality—a strength he possesses but does not believe in—coupled with his determination and natural riding ability set him on a new path, no less troubled but certainly more rewarding than his life to date.

Juby creates a community for Alex that will ring true, I think, for readers from all demographics. He is relatively poor, from a disorganized, broken home, but with drive and a dream. His fellow student is a spoilt rich girl sent to a private, girls-only riding school on Vancouver Island as “punishment” for her naïve lack of judgment concerning the family chauffeur. Alex’s twin sisters and aunt are the perfect foils for his up-tight insecurities, made worse by his alcoholic father.  The dynamic within the family is a brilliant balance of sibling intolerance, teen anger and angst, and embarrassment, underscored by compassion and understanding that is revealed in small glimmers throughout the novel. While we unequivocally like Alex, we also come to like and appreciate the people who surround him. There is no bully to contend with, no individual antagonist to stand up against; Alex’s life is complicated, troubled, and rewarding. Juby presents his conflicting concerns—continuing with dressage without a horse, and coming out to his family and friends—as similarly weighted in Alex’s mind, and I think this is one of the most refreshing elements in the book. Alex is gay; he knows that; he is highly insecure about letting his overly macho father know it. Alex loves dressage; he has worked hard to be in the ring; the horse he is using is taken away from him. Both to young Alex are monumental crises, and it is to Juby’s credit that Alex is permitted to find the strength within himself to own who he is, and his father is permitted to show his real love of his son by helping to solve the real problems: despite his own initial homophobic feelings, Brian Ford comes through, and both Alex’s worries are sufficiently alleviated.

That sounds, I think, like the relationship between Alex and his father is paramount in the text: it is not. It is a deep current underlying so much more going on. It is, however, for me, the most poignant relationship. If “it takes a village to raise a child,” Alex Ford lives in the right family and community. They are not perfect—none of them—but together they create (well, Juby creates) a community that while (like all the world) built of damaged, flawed human beings, is nonetheless supportive and real.

Where Things Come Back (2011), by John Corey Whaley: A response by guest reviewer, Rob Bittner

A (Hopefully) Thoughtful Response to Karyn’s Review of Where Things Come Back

Cullen Witter (whose name is in no way associated with Twilight, I can assure you all) is a likeable character, and one who is incredibly realistic, even if he does tend to overuse the term “ass-hat.” Whaley’s debut novel is beautiful, and my experience was no less enjoyable the second time around. The plot and various subplots, though perhaps random, are interwoven in a creative and mystical way. Some of the twists are not concretely connected, but the mysticism throughout the text allowed me to suspend my disbelief without any problem. Cullen’s story is the overarching narrative, interrupted with a secondary story and other mini-stories branching off here and there.

Perhaps where some people will get confused is in the subplot with Benton, Cabot, and Gabriel. Benton’s narrative begins when he is sent off to Africa on a missionary trip, but his expectations are disappointed and he is flown back home, much to the disappointment of his family, his father especially. Benton’s college roommate, Cabot, eventually finds and reads Benton’s journal detailing his experiences in Africa, his reading of The Book of Enoch, and his obsession with the fallen angels and the angel Gabriel. Once Cabot’s theological appetite is whet, he begins a journey of religious discovery that eventually leads him, through a winding road, to Lily, Arkansas, and to Cullen’s brother, Gabriel.

Unlike Karyn (though my reading is in no way more “correct”) I did not find myself at all troubled by the transference of Benton’s mission to Cabot due to the finding and reading of the journal. Karyn goes on to say that everything can be explained by rational means, but I have a hard time agreeing considering the amount of visions, dreams, and speaking woodpeckers that make appearances throughout the text. For me, the novel is a slice-of-life style of narrative; a novel that speaks to seemingly random stories and personal experiences that can be connected in when looked back on. And to answer Karyn’s question, “What was the point?” I say, why does there have to be one? Personally, I enjoy the type of ending that isn’t wrapped up in a pretty bow.

Should I mention that I double-checked my answer with the author to make sure I got it right? No? Okay, then, I most definitely did not.

Where Things Come Back (2011), by John Corey Whaley

This review is… difficult. I borrowed this book from my friend Rob, whom you all know by now, after he posted about it on facebook, and his friends all raved about how wonderful it was. With all their positive comments—such as “Oh! My! God! Where Things Come Back!!!! I think I’m in love.” from someone I have never met—I had to read it to review for this blog, and asked to borrow it. Be careful what you ask for…

Rob dutifully lent me his signed copy (and not just “To Rob, John Corey Whaley,” but with a personal message because they know each other!) last time we met, and tonight we are going over for dinner and I have to return it. So I guess I had better write something. Don’t get me wrong; it’s not a bad book: I just didn’t connect with it.  Here’s what happened as I see it…

To begin with, I think that everyone, regardless of how hard we might try to avoid it, is influenced by others’ opinions pre-reading. I recall, though, the pleasant anticipation of a fascinating, heartwarming reading experience, and was prepared to enjoy myself (and the book); indeed, there is ample reason for me to have done so. Where Things Come Back is very well written, with well-rounded, well-constructed characters, and interesting—if at times random—plot elements. The story is set in a small town in Arkansas, Lily by name, where initially things disappear… closure of a sort is achieved by the end, for the town Where Things Come Back.

The narrator, Cullen Witter (is this a nod to Twilight? I seriously hope—and think—not), introduces himself by telling us: “being seventeen and bored in a small town, I like to pretend sometimes that I am a pessimist” (5). But the truth that we are shown throughout his narration is that, as he says, he “can’t seem to keep that up for too long before [his] natural urge to idealize goes into effect” (5). This fluctuation between pessimism or sometimes downright despair and an unquenchable optimism is both honest and refreshing: we like Cullen, and we ride the emotional waves of his troubled adolescence with him, hoping—as he does continually—that his lost brother will come back, and life will return to normal in Lily.

The teens in Lily have their local mythologies, such as that dating Ada Taylor was tantamount to a suicide, as her two previous boyfriends had both died in accidents; that Russell Quitman, her current bully-boyfriend, while still breathing, would eventually succumb: another point of closure by the end. Cullen and his best friend Lucas are typical teenaged boys: interested in girls; uncertain of their futures but more concerned with their present; hanging out; being, well… adolescent boys. Cullen’s younger brother, Gabriel, on the other hand, is not typical in any way, and Cullen idolizes him. Their relationship sets the reader up for a misinterpretation of what follows, and this perhaps is what bothered me about the book… I am not sure if I felt that the author manipulates the reader, but if not, then what was the intent of the Gabriel-Benton-Alma-Cabot subplot?

This is what unfolds: the initial pages of the book are narrated by Cullen; the next section switches to Benton, an evangelical missionary set on Mission to Africa, who sees in a vision “a boy standing on the water with one hand, his left, held into the air … God’s voice introduced the boy to Benton. ‘This is the angel Gabriel’ … Just before the boy opened his mouth to speak, a large bird flew overhead and landed on the angel’s shoulder” (18). The reference is unmistakable, linking Gabriel, Benton, and the rediscovered Lazarus woodpecker, thought extinct but now claimed to have been seen in Lily only days before Gabriel Witter disappeared apparently into thin air… What is troubling about this set up is that Benton’s vision is transferred in some way to his college roommate, Cabot, who is the active agent in Gabriel’s disappearance. He studies the apocryphal Book of Enoch, following in Benton’s path, and ultimately comes to see Gabriel as an angel, although the vision was not his. His actions are motivated primarily by sexual jealousy. The religious overtones smack of psychosis, but why? And Benton’s initial vision could only have been real, in some sense, for he cannot have known about the Lazarus woodpecker, or Gabriel Witton, out there in the African village. So there is some motivation for Benton’s actions that are external to his psyche, motivations that seem to have been transferred to Cabot, but with no rationale for the transference. Ultimately, everything—everything—can be explained by rational means, and yet the author gives us visions and associations—including numerous comments by the people of Lily about how special Gabriel is or was—that suggest something more. If that is the point—that there is nothing more in our world—then I feel manipulated. If not, what connection am I missing? There is a suggestion of power in Lily, the town Where Things Come Back, but I could neither feel it through the characters’ understandings, nor rationalize it out of the narrative. So I am left wondering —as obviously others are not—despite the excellent writing, and despite the fabulous characters: what was the point?

It troubles me still… I think I will ask Rob to write a guest review, so you can have his side as well.

 

Lower the Trap (2012), by Jessica Scott Kerrin

This review was first published in Resource Links Magazine, “Canada’s national journal devoted to the review and evaluation of Canadian English and French resources for children and young adults.” It appears in volume 17.5

 

Lower the Trap

On the dust-jacket of Lower the Trap, we read that it is “the first book in the Lobster Chronicles, a trilogy about how life changes for three boys in a small coastal town when a giant lobster is caught in a trap.” What is most intriguing for the adult reader here is how the author will sustain interest in this seemingly small incident over three entire books, especially if—as is suggested earlier in the blurb—“the right thing would be to set the lobster free.” The description does not give the skeptical reader much hope, but this skeptical reader was surprised on every count.

Jessica Scott Kerrin has managed to take the smallest incidents of life in a Maritime village and give them an importance that young readers will not only understand, but identify with. Her child protagonists are carefully and artfully constructed. Their language, thoughts, and actions are simple and straightforward, both reflecting primary school children’s more simple modes of expression and allowing the young reader access to their thought and feelings through simple language. At the same time, the narration of the story includes sophisticated vocabulary that will ask young readers to stretch their knowledge: words such as “reverberation” (12), “behemoth” (21), “imperative” (62), “manically” (71), and “crustacean” (79). That she also includes local-knowledge vocabulary such as “mummichogs” (9) and “shoal” (75) adds to the depth of the setting, either as familiar or exotic, depending upon the reader.

The plot is equally simple and effective. There is the requisite conflict between the cannery owner who does not know or understand the community, or care to, and the fishermen who toil daily to survive. This conflict extends to the cannery owner’s son, Norris, and our protagonist, Graeme. When Graeme’s father traps the biggest lobster the town has seen in 50 years, the mystery of its history and its fate is tied up in a more straightforward mystery that Norris has tricked Graeme into helping him solve: who destroyed the teacher’s prize cactus. The two plots coalesce in the end, with Graeme learning a lesson in trust—of both his friends and his own instincts. More than this simple and necessary lesson, though, Graeme discovers that the despised Norris might share some of the integrity and community spirit that connects Graeme with his other friends. Even more than the ultimate fate of the lobster, this discovery provides ample scope for further stories of Graeme and his close-knit community.

Calyx of Teversall (2011), by Maia Appleby

This review was first published in Resource Links Magazine, Canada’s national journal devoted to the review and evaluation of Canadian English and French resources for children and young adults. It appears in volume 17.3.

Calyx of Teversall

My initial response to Calyx of Teversall was not entirely positive, a result of the rather stilted—rather than merely simplistic—writing style.  The style continues throughout the text, but the further I read, the less it seemed to matter.  The story itself should be stereotypic, but is not: while the characters encounter gnomes and fairies and there is an evil Rumplestiltskin-like creature after our protagonist, Maia Appleby keeps her plot and characters fresh and lively. We really come to like and respect young Calyx (formerly Charles), his mother, and the aunt and uncle who take him in and hide his identity.

Calyx is protected by fairy magic in his youth—one reason the Borgh elf Fenbeck wants to capture him.  This magic is augmented by his naturally cheerful and friendly disposition, and he eventually gains access to trading directly with the gnomes, who are master jewellers and gem-cutters. Calyx is taught their trade, and would be set for a life of honest, lucrative labour with his antique-shop owner uncle, were it not for the return of Fenbeck, who discovers his whereabouts.  In order to overcome Fenbeck, and return him to his original beaver form (now there’s a lovely Canadian twist!), Calyx must learn Fenbeck’s true name…

This is a simple story, but one that pleases in its straight-forward narration and honest character development.  In the end, Calyx’s trust and honesty—and the help of the fairies—help remove the threat of Fenbeck, and all works out for the best.

Howl (2011), by Karen Hood-Caddy

This review was first published in Resource Links Magazine, “Canada’s national journal devoted to the review and evaluation of Canadian English and French resources for children and young adults.” It appears in volume 17.3.

Howl

In Howl, Karen Hood-Caddy has created a story that will resonate strongly with many young readers, populated as it is with psychologically realistic characters whom everyone will recognize.  The protagonist, Robin, is both strong and insecure, having recently lost her mother; Robin’s older sister is a typical teen, dealing with loss by acting out, and her younger brother, “Squirm,” is both annoying and loveable.  Her father, a veterinary, is struggling to provide support for his children and hold his own life together after the loss of his wife. The crucial aspect of his own grieving is that he moves his family from Winnipeg, Manitoba, to northern Ontario where his mother lives on a large property beside a lake. Combine the complicated (and successfully portrayed) dynamics of a grieving family with bullying neighbours and growing (and not quite legal) wild-life rescue operation, and we have a novel rich with possibilities.  It may sound like there is too much going on, but Hood-Caddy balances the different, equally important, aspects of Robin’s new rural life perfectly: we see life from Robin’s young perspective, glossed by sparse and effective wisdom from her “eccentric” grandmother, Griff.

Through her involvement in a school project on ecological consciousness, and her activities helping to heal injured wild animals, Robin eventually learns to trust in happiness again.  The threats she encounters—both socially and legally—are dealt with in ways that readers will perceive as possible in their own lives.  More than just an engaging story of a young girl growing back into strength after trauma, Howl presents the reader with a map—both psychologically and logistically—of how young people can grow towards maturity and efficacy within their world.