The Price of Admission

The central paradox of Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers, is that the thing that gets Ismae Rienne banished from her fellow Bretons (the scar left by the herbwitch’s poison and the “proof” that she was sired by the god of death) is the very thing that gains her admission to her proper tribe.

Ismae discovers, upon reaching the convent of Saint Mortain, that there are many others like her, who have survived death-defying events, and this creates a bond and closeness between her and the others that she has never experienced before. But it also creates within her a tension that’s new to her: the sisters have trained her in poisons and weaponry and “the womanly arts,” but when Ismae is on assignment—alone—she must search her own conscience. Is Gavriel Duval, whom the abbess and Chancellor Crunard suspect of leaking the secrets of Brittany’s inner court to France, truly a traitor? Or is his loyalty to the duchess as unwavering as it seems to Ismae in the days and weeks that she has shadowed him? And what of the others with the “mark” of Saint Mortain? Are they irredeemable? Do they deserve to die?

Ismae is torn between the loyalty she feels toward the sisters in the convent, the only true home she’s ever known, and what she believes for herself when it’s just Ismae and her mark. These kinds of choices serve as metaphors for the defining moments of adolescence, which lead the way to adulthood. It’s about taking responsibility for our choices and living with that responsibility, whatever we deem it, right or wrong, in hindsight. Ismae has come far to gain this sisterhood, but she must travel further—alone—to come to herself.

Comedy and Suspense

Lissa Evans

At one time, author Lissa Evans produced comedy shows. Comedy is all about timing. The humor must be paced exactly right or it loses its oomph. You can see Evans’s exquisite timing play out not only with the humor of her novel but also with scenes of suspense, as you read Horten’s Miraculous Mechanisms, illustrated in black and white by Temujin Doran.

Ten-year-old Stuart Horten must move with his family to his father’s childhood hometown for his mother’s new job. He wonders how he’ll ever meet other kids in the heat of summer. Then he discovers a mystery in his family history—the disappearance of his great-uncle, a legendary magician—and at the same time, a neighbor girl appears and follows 10-year-old Stuart everywhere. Just when he’s feeling like she’s stalking him, Stuart realizes that she is actually three—identical triplets named April, May and June. Their appearance provides comic relief as tensions mount for Stuart—just the way humor can diffuse tensions in a great horror movie.

Later, when a grown-up actually does start shadowing Stuart (he’s not the only one trying to track down Teeny-Tiny Tony Horten), he has April on his side, so it’s not so scary. Stuart is unraveling a serious mystery, but there’s plenty of humor to leaven the proceedings.

When I got to interview Evans recently, I asked her if her background in comedy helped her with the pacing of this novel. She said it did: “A joke has to be exactly right,” Evans continued. “Similarly, with the accuracy of description of suspense, you have to get the phrasing exactly right or it doesn’t do what you want it to do. It’s got to be tight pacing and no flabbiness.” The success of Goosebumps proves that a successful mix of scary and funny will grab even those kids who don’t think of themselves as readers, and fans of mysteries will find much to savor with Horten, too.

Dive in Deep

Poetry gives us a way to look closely and contemplate deeply things we take for granted. In the Sea by David Elliott, illustrated by Holly Meade, transports us to the ocean’s depths and the seaside that surrounds it. Reading a good poem is like standing before a Georgia O’Keeffe painting. Her rendering of a flower makes us see it as if for the first time.

With a great poem, we hear the music of language and apply it in a new way. Like the sounds of David Elliott’s poem “The Sea Horse”: “See the sea horse in the sea./ Where else would the sea horse be?/ For though it’s dainty as a wish,/ The sea horse is, you see, a fish.” In one brief poem, Elliott plays with homonyms (“sea” and “see”), our concept of a horse, alluding to its four-legged mainland counterpart, and also informing us of the sea horse’s delicate beauty (“dainty as a wish”). And who can think of a sea turtle, with its 30-year journey to return to its birthplace as anything other than a “[r]are instrument of nature,/ fair compass in a carapace” after reading Elliott’s ode to “The Sea Turtle”? Some children will ask about the word “carapace,” and those old enough will google it. Because they’ve already gleaned that a good poem is all about the mot juste.

Poetry also lets us grasp the unfathomable, as Elliott helps us do with “The Blue Whale.” The animal’s sheer size, length and heft is hard for adults, let alone children, to wrap their minds around. Elliott’s poem pays tribute to this monumental creature’s presence, not only in its majestic appearance (its “nose an island, a mountain”) but also by its impact through the centuries, as with his mention of how the blue whale “sings a chanty deep and slow/ of winds that rage and storms that blow” and “shipwrecked sailors down below.” He suggests the whale’s strength in battling Mother Nature, outlasting many a human confrontation with the turbulent seas.

It’s a humbling poem and, coming at the close of the book, reminds us of how we fit into nature, that we all inhabit this world together, humans and sea creatures alike. By its brevity and element of surprise, poetry issues a unique invitation to pause and reflect on the extraordinary creatures with which we share the planet.

A Board Book to Count On

Kass Reich accomplishes a great deal in her first board book, Hamsters Holding Hands. As her rhyming text counts up to 10, she establishes a bond between the furry heroes from the moment there are two. It’s easy to underestimate how challenging it is to get the right balance of words and pictures for children just beginning to make meaning from images and the spoken word.

Her sherbet-colored tones of lemon, lime and orange look good enough to eat, and her hamsters engage in activities every toddler will either recognize or wish to emulate—playing telephone with two tin cans, sharing trucks and balls, a day at the beach with snorkels, popsicles and water wings, under a sun shining like a fried egg in the sky.

With minimal backdrops, she keeps the focus on the friendships between the hamsters and the joy of shared activities. She also leaves a lot unstated, so toddlers can make their own discoveries with each rereading. Here’s hoping this is the first of many books by Kass Reich.

Farfetched, or Possible?

George Orwell may have written his novel 1984 in 1949, but his themes of an all-powerful government, the submersion of the individual, and invasion of privacy reverberated with his readership—and still do. First-time author Marie Lu was born in 1984, and her book, Legend, plumbs these same themes—in ways that will also resonate with readers today.

In Lu’s world, global warming has reshaped continents, the military runs the country and disseminates the information, and plagues run rampant through the poorest neighborhoods. Enter 15-year-old June, who was born into privilege, with both parents employed by the government, and who believes what she’s been taught. Day, on the other hand, also 15, has witnessed firsthand how the government’s policies have betrayed his family and put their lives in danger. They cannot both be right.

When I had a chance to interview Marie Lu about her book, she discussed the underpinnings of her fiction as being rooted in fact. “The dystopian setting came about when I was looking online at a map of what the world would be like if all the fresh water in the world melted and the oceans rose 100 meters,” said Lu. The ever-evolving plague grew out of the author’s research on factory farming, and how quickly diseases like SARS can spread via factories of farms with animals on antibiotics. And Day’s dexterity and agility, scaling buildings and the like, were inspired by a discipline called parkour or “free running,” developed in France, with roots in the martial arts but with a focus on moving efficiently around obstacles.

Marie Lu said that she did not set out to convey a message with Legend. Quite the opposite. The inspiration came one day when she was watching Les Miserables and tried to imagine what it would be like for two teenagers who found themselves in the opposing positions of Valjean and Javert. But as she reflected on her novel, she realized that a pivotal moment in her own life inspired a climactic scene in the book. In 1989, Lu was living with her aunt in Beijing, and tensions were mounting all summer between the government and its citizens. One day, kindergarten was canceled, and Lu found herself with her aunt in Tiananmen Square. The turning point of her book is “a mirror,” as Lu put it, of watching the protestors in Tiananmen Square. Suddenly her futuristic "Republic of America" does not look so farfetched.

Time and Trust

Wonder by R.J. Palacio made me want to be the kind of person who could and would welcome someone like 10-year-old Auggie Pullman and put him at ease. His sister, Via, does that. His sister’s friend Miranda does that—Miranda even gave Auggie an astronaut's helmet to wear when he was small, which he wore in public all the time to hide his disfigured face. His new friends Summer and Jack are able to put him at ease, too, and we hear from them all.

Palacio helps us remember that there’s more to every situation than we can see or know. Even Auggie learns this about his classmates Summer and Jack. We know so little about someone else’s life or circumstances. It takes time and trust to get to know someone else well. I think of Georgia O’Keeffe’s quote: “Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven't time, and to see takes time—like to have a friend takes time.” In Auggie’s case, his looks are all people see initially. And it takes time for them to see past that to the person inside.

My father always told my brother and me that if you could count on one hand the number of true friends in your lifetime, you are lucky. When he first told me that, it was during the cruel era of junior high, and I thought his words were harsh. Now I know them to be true. Friendships go through tests—one friend becomes more popular than another; one gets a boyfriend or girlfriend and the other doesn’t; one makes a new friend and the other feels left out. All of that happens to Auggie, or the people close to him, in Wonder. The solution lies in being able to talk about what’s going on. That’s what Auggie and everyone around him learns. Eventually.

If Wonder models anything, it’s the importance of confronting situations and problems as they arise, and then figuring out if and how they may be resolved. And not going it alone. Talking to one other person about an issue plays a role in resolving each situation that arises in Wonder.

With time, more will be revealed, whether it’s more of the story or the way to address an issue. With a friend you trust, you can wait it out.

Voilà!

Spring is my favorite season. Having grown up in Michigan, we waited patiently, very patiently, for that first golden spray of forsythia to tell us winter was over. And even then we might get another blizzard, crushing those fragile first blossoms. Erin Stead, who illustrated Julie Fogliano’s And Then It’s Spring also grew up in Michigan. Maybe that’s why her visual interpretation of the hero's emotions in Fogliano’s poetic text feels so right and true.

Spring is the season akin to the starlet who’s an “overnight sensation.” No one knows of the years of cold call auditions and being turned away and lining up again. Few but the starlet remember the hard slogging and patient persistence once success arrives. When spring finally bursts into full bloom, we feel we’ve earned it, after all those dark days of endless trudging in high boots through cold snow.

Yet because spring has always come, we trust that it will come again. Like the young gardener in Fogliano's story, we start to see glimmers of “a hopeful, very possible sort of brown” in the same brown ground we’ve stared at for many bleak months. We, too, see a... “is that a little green?/ no, it’s just brown sort of brown,” and then, a week later with still no change, we think the worst. Birds have eaten the seeds, bears have stomped on the seeds. This is my favorite line of the book: “[B]ears can’t read signs/ that say things like/ ‘please do not stomp here--/there are seeds/ and they are trying.' ”

Aren’t we all trying? Just trying to get through these last brown days, however long the brown stays, until the green pokes through. “Please do not stomp here, there are seeds and they are trying!” It’s so much more eloquent than “Stay off the grass.” And while we wait for the seeds to succeed, we can put an old tire to use as a swing or refashion a milk carton as a bird feeder.

And then suddenly a riot of color runs rampant, and cherry blossom trees escort us on our walks up the Hudson River or past the reflecting pool in our nation’s capitol, or in the town square in cities all across America. And we have an overnight sensation: Spring.