The Burden of Power

Kristin Cashore

If Graceling was about owning one’s own power, and Fire was about deciding when the use of power is appropriate and when it is not, then Bitterblue is about exploring what it’s like to have power over the fates of others. In this election year, Kristin Cashore (author of all three books in the Graceling series) raises searching questions about leadership—how much autonomy to grant others and when to determine certain decisions on their behalf.

In the case of 18-year-old Queen Bitterblue, her father, King Leck, twisted the truth. He wiped out the memories and experiences of his citizenry after inflicting unspeakable crimes against them as individuals and as a citizenry. Bitterblue feels compelled to confront those truths herself but then must decide how much of that information to release and to whom. Would it be healing or do greater damage to make public some of these facts? And how can she remedy the hurt her father caused to so many of his subjects? It’s a daunting task, and she has few people she can trust, surrounded as she is by her father’s men, who must come to terms with their own guilt, sorrow and grief.

Her only reliable means of gathering the truth is to disguise herself as a male and take to the streets. But that comes with its own perils. As the daughter of a king that wronged a nation, she has few friends and many enemies, but she feels it’s worth the risk to get to the truth. One of the great injustices she discovers is that her father made it a crime to teach others to read. As someone who thrives on education and loves to learn, Bitterblue finds this one of the greatest travesties of her father’s reign.  As she strives to bring about justice, Bitterblue also finds laughter and love, enjoys the friendships of Katsa and Po (from Graceling), and discovers friendly neighbors and possible allies.

Kristin Cashore once again explores the questions at the center of the human experience: the pursuit of truth and justice, and the need for a society that allows people to thrive as individuals.

The Cover-Up

When you’re a kid, there comes that time when you’ve covered up something that you thought could have dire consequences, only to discover that it would have saved so much time and energy if you’d just told the truth. Nearly 12-year-old Stella makes this discovery the hard way (is there any other way?) in Summer of the Gypsy Moths by Sara Pennypacker.

By the end of chapter two, Stella’s great-aunt Louise has died. Stella comes home from school to find Louise dead in front of the television set. Stella and Angel, the other girl Louise has taken in, decide they’d better hide the fact or risk becoming wards of the state. Their plan to dig a hole in the backyard for Louise’s body, and to say that the woman broke her ankle works even better and for longer than they want it to. Much of the book’s humor stems from their nearly 12-year-old thinking and how they pull off assuming Louise’s duties managing the summer rental cottages next door. Self-reliance and resourcefulness are their greatest assets and also their Achilles’ heel.

Both girls have had to grow up more quickly than most their age—Stella because of her mother’s frequent disappearances, and Angel because her parents both passed away. So their matter-of-fact handling of Louise’s death comes across credibly, and the comic moments increase as they get more deeply invested in their cover-up. They also come to appreciate each other’s strengths: Angel’s a better liar (which helps them carry off their masquerade), and Stella is a better cleaner (which helps convince owner George Nickerson that Louise is still following through on her duties).

All the while, Sara Pennypacker envelops us in the warmth of the Cape Cod sun, the smell of the sea, and the rhythms of the renters coming and going. The humor and authentic dialogue contribute to a great read-aloud experience, but Pennypacker also gently raises questions of when is it okay to tackle things on your own, and when is it time to ask for help? Is it ever okay to lie? What is a true friend? Pennypacker never makes the children seem at risk—what the children fear could happen is far worse than what does happen. At the same time, the author creates living, breathing girls whom we care about and whose fates matter to us. Each lives with sadness, but the girls don’t dwell on that. They forge ahead, often with humor and a determination to solve whatever challenge lies ahead.

Transcendent Storytelling

William Joyce

When I first heard the term “transmedia storytelling” at Digital Book World last year, I thought, “what?” It scared me. Writers were talking about stories that began as games and grew into films and books. I worried that books would be sidelined. Since then, I’ve come to believe that there are many ways to experience story, and a great story transcends its medium. William Joyce’s Morris Lessmore is the ideal character to travel through these porous boundaries.

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore by William Joyce won an Academy Award, but it began as a book. It makes perfect sense that a book about a lifelong love affair with books would begin as a book. And Morris Lessmore is based on a real man, William Morris, a lover of books if ever there was one. (Bill Morris hired me right out of college, so I got to witness this firsthand.)

But Bill Joyce told me in an interview that after he’d written the book, and before he’d completed the artwork, his retina detached, and he couldn’t see well enough to finish painting the book. At around that same time, he founded Moonbot studios, and they decided to make a short film based on Morris’s story.

Miniatures from the Movie

So Morris Lessmore’s story is a book and a film and an app. Each medium has its strengths and offers a different experience of the story. In the film, one of my favorite scenes occurs after Humpty Dumpty plays the piano, and Morris does a Gene Kelly–style dance with the many-hued books. In the app, a deep-voiced narrator reads the book beneath the animated pages, and you get to play the piano with Humpty by pressing keys that correspond to the notes. (There’s also a separate $.99 Imag-n-o-tron! app that “augments” the book. A video shows you how to lay your iPad or phone over the book to animate the pages; books fly, Morris dives into a book. It takes a bit of practice, but if you hold the device very still, the pages spring to life. My favorite is the feeling of “entering” the library. The walls seem to extend to the sky.)

But in the book, there’s a beautiful scene in which the books that Morris has cared for surround him, when he's "stooped and crinkly," and read themselves to him. It’s a scene that only appears in the book, and of all the means of experiencing his story, it’s the scene that most moves me.

Thanks to Bill Joyce, I am awakened to the possibilities of transmedia storytelling. Perhaps it should be called “transcendent storytelling.” A story that transcends its medium allows us as readers to transcend the here and now and to experience the story from a number of entry points. However we meet Morris and in whatever way we accompany him on his journey to his calling and his passion for books, each experience of his story deepens our connection to Morris Lessmore and his Fantastic Flying Books.

Water Babies

When summer hits, most of us hit the beach. Boat Works by Tom Slaughter makes an ideal guide to harbor-gazing.

Bold, predominantly primary colors and geometric shapes dominate the pages. Triangles for sails, circles for portholes and life preservers, rectangular docks and cars being ferried offer youngest children plenty to point to and name.

A mystery literally unfolds to the solution. The author-artist reveals one detail at a time as the accordion page extends to complete the giant square image. In this way, he directs our attention to the little things that make each boat unique—the sail on a sailboat, the oars of a rowboat. As children revisit the book, they’ll be able to name the anchor, the rope that ties the tugboat to the ocean liner, and also to understand the tugboat’s job—to pull the larger boats (heartening for any small person who wants to stand up and be counted among the bigger people).

The design of the book makes for an ideal guessing game. Each turn of the page exposes a little more information about the boat in question and also completes a little more of the picture. With repeated readings, children will feel smarter as they guess the right answer sooner. And even if you’re not headed to the beach, Boat Works makes a great pre- or post-bathtime read, to complement your child’s experience sailing his or her own boats through the bubbles in the tub. Here’s to smooth sailing!

High Society

Keeping the Castle by Patrice Kindle is a wonderful, witty farce that could well lead your teen to Jane Austen. If he or she already knows Jane Austen, then they will appreciate Patrice Kindl’s understanding of the issues at stake for young British men and women at that time. The book is funny and smart and offers teens a way of thinking about how society is set up and the values its members place on things like beauty, intelligence, gender, wealth and a family’s position.

Althea Crawley, as the young woman who’s uniquely placed to keep her family’s castle by marrying a wealthy man, has to consider sacrificing her own happiness for the sake of preserving her family’s lifestyle—and indeed their very survival. This is complicated by the fact that she cannot keep herself from saying what she truly thinks. She scares off one suitor after another.

Many British books and films revolve around class. What you’re born into, and how you get around that. The most humorous scenes in the book arise from the angst of trying to serve food for everyone who comes to Crawley Castle to pay a social call. The people who kindly decline sugar for their tea, because they know the family has very little money and can’t afford such luxuries. Then to come across Mr. Fredericks, who has no finesse at all, who critiques Althea’s family holdings--and who brings Althea to a rude awakening when she realizes how long her family has been low on cash. Mr. Fredericks’ observations about the tapestries and portrait frames reveal to Althea that her father was slowly selling off their valuables to keep the castle even while he was alive.

Mr. Fredericks and his mother are the most like Americans. Practical, hardworking folks in a world in which other people coasted on title and inherited wealth. Althea is in her own way hardworking, certainly resourceful, and has much to recommend her. With character names such as Lord Boring, Prudence and Charity, Kindl telegraphs the depth (or lack of depth) of each. One of the great pleasures of the novel for readers will be knowing who the right match is for Althea before she does.

Withholding Information

Jennifer A. Nielsen

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about the idea of “the unreliable narrator” in connection with Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity. When it’s done well, it is one of my favorite reading experiences. It’s even rarer to find an unreliable narrator in books aimed at middle graders (fourth through sixth grade), but The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen is an excellent example. We get the feeling from the beginning that narrator Sage knows more than he’s telling us.

Sage has street smarts and trusts no one, so it’s completely in character for him to keep everything close to the vest. He’s an orphan who’s had to do whatever he could to survive, so Nielsen makes it completely feasible that he would be circumspect.

When I was teaching, one of my favorite books to give to third graders was Bill Britain’s The Wish Giver, a Newbery honor book. The same events unfold through the eyes of three different characters. Students could see for themselves where one character’s version contradicted another’s and also where their accounts corroborated each other’s perception of the facts. We then looked at three different major newspapers, to see what each had emphasized of world and local events. We also looked at how each paper presented those events. What was the writer’s viewpoint? What were the facts in common among the articles? Where were they in conflict? It was a way of getting kids to think critically about what they read and to think about the author’s hand in shaping the events we take in as readers.

In The False Prince, it’s almost as if Sage’s distrust of people extends to readers, too. Can he trust us with the information he has? As the book progresses, he parcels out more and more of his past, but it’s almost as if we must earn it. This novel is a great, immersive read that will keep kids turning the pages for the sheer adventure and for the ruse that Bevin Conner (their guardian of sorts) is trying to pull off. He claims he has the kingdom’s best interests in mind. Does he? That’s another piece to the mystery. These questions will get kids thinking about who’s behind the curtain, pulling the strings. This reader can’t wait to see where Nielsen takes her characters next.

Breaking the Rules

Z Is for Moose by Kelly L. Bingham, illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky, is such an over-the-top success because it breaks all the rules. Or rather, it breaks just the right rules. The book follows the alphabet, but Moose does not. Zebra tries to keep things going along smoothly, but he cannot—because Moose bucks the system. And when Zebra casts Mouse in the “M” scene, it feels downright mean. But the clever way that Zebra makes it up to Moose teaches us something about both creativity and friendship.

We all know how desperately Moose wants to be a part of the show, and Zelinsky emphasizes this in his brilliant artwork by breaking all the rules of picture book making. Bingham and Zelinsky establish a strict structure, then tear it all down, and play with perspective and the animals' relative sizes. But author and artist also convey an emotional honesty through the breaking of these rules, as Moose invades our space and that of his fellow performers—crossing out words and bursting through the edges of the pages until the stage is utter chaos.

Children, like Moose, are passionate and focused—they just want to participate. And when they are barred from participation, they cannot control their anger and disappointment. It leaks out in all sorts of ways, albeit perhaps not as dramatically as it does for Moose. As a picture book that tests the boundaries of the format while also teaching children their ABCs as well as giving them a way to talk about their feelings, Z Is for Moose is a triumph.