Notes From the Bedside Table

Snow and The Age of Miracles

2012-01-18T11:56:00.000-08:00

Sunrise was at 7:51, sunset will be at 4:49. Snow.

Okay. Now I feel like I've made the correct decision about staying home today. The reports on the news are that buses are hard to get and not getting where they're going anyway, and it has snowed at our house continuously since it began at around 4 am. We have 5 inches of snow in the yard, the birds are flocking into the bushes, and the neighbor's squirrel feeder has been completely emptied.

It's so pretty and looks so cold. The wind is beginning to pick up and snow is dropping off trees and power lines.

I am spending the day writing up reviews on Goodreads, updating my book list, and sorting books, crap, and stuff to donate, give to schools or to sell. It's an "extra" day, a day to do things I don't normally do because it's such a special one, a free day. I may even take a nap after hauling stuff around. I WILL finish the Christmas wrapping of the presents that still need to go out to the family today and I WILL get them mailed by Saturday. The snow inspires me to do so.

I read this GREAT book last night, thanks to one of our Random House reps, David Glenn! It was on my desk yesterday morning and I was up late finishing it. It is called The Age of Miracles, by Karen Thompson Walker, and is an interesting look at what might happen if the earth's rotation started to slow.

One day, not too long from now, scientists announce that the earth's rotation has started to slow and that the days, and nights, will start to get longer. Within days, people are able to see the changes, a news crawl along the bottom of the tv screen announces how many more minutes are in each day, people begin to feel symptoms related to the slowing, birds start walking their migration routes, and whales beach themselves in long rows where the waves end.

The government institutes a 24 hour clock day, one that doesn't necessarily follow the light and dark of the earth's rotations, and those who want to follow circadian rhythms are ostracized and vilified. It's an amazing description of the effects of a slowing earth - the children who go to school are sometimes waiting for the bus at what might be (in old time) 2 am. Periodically, daytime and nighttime activities correspond with the clock day hours and people can party in the dark and walk to school in the daylight.

In a world that is constantly changing, 11 year-old Julia just wants her best friend back and to be noticed by Seth Moreno, a cute skateboarder with a dying mother.

Julia's family is pretty standard, a California family, two parents and a child, who begin to fall apart during the slowing. It's funny, in a way, how adaptable we all are to destruction. When the days reach 48 hours in length and people are beginning to crack under the pressures of being awake for 24 hours in a row, we still look for love and acceptance and justice.

Julia has lost her best friend and is trying to navigate the dangerous waters that make up her middle school. She wants a bra (and the bosom to fill it), a boyfriend, any kind of friend, but she's a quiet girl who doesn't want to be too noticed, so she watches the negotiations that make up the lives of the other teenagers in her cul de sac as the world rolls slowly to a stop. As the slowing continues and becomes a part of daily life, everyone continues on, breaking up, falling in love, going out to dinner (no matter that the sun may have just come up) eventually figuring out ways to adapt to an environment that is increasing dangerous to be in.

I loved the descriptions of their town as the dark goes on and on, the cold and the noise of the insects, the heat as the light time goes on for 60 hours, melting asphalt and giving sunburns. It's a very quiet book for all the violence and drama surrounding this family, it feels very much like a memory being repeated, like an old photo or postcard, graying and soft around the edges, easier to recount each time it's remembered.

Such a true look at how we live, even in the midst of our world's destructing, we still want to find someone who'll love us, someone who will still love us after we screw up, we still want to belong to someone or something, we want people to know we were here.

The Age of Miracles will keep you up late and then make you wonder at how neatly we all fit into the world, how dependent we are on everything else being exactly as it is. It will make you want to notice each sunrise and sunset and the precise distance between each, preferably with someone you love close to hand.

I like that the book is written from somewhere in the future, our Julia is writing about this time in history from a farther place, and I would really like to know what happened to her as she made her way there.

This would be a great read for YA audiences. The main character is a tween and the storyline is so very cool! All that science, too. (Random House. Available 6/26/12.)

Happy New Year!

2012-01-03T08:57:00.000-08:00

Today is the 3rd of January.

I've been thinking about my goals for the year, for the decade; you get to be this age, your resolutions need to be longer than a year. Mine are pretty standard ones: Eat better, lose weight, figure out money. It sure seems that everyone I hear talk in re: resolutions, talks about those three things. Why is this so hard to get under control, so hard to change? Habit? Emotion? Too big to get your mind around? If I need to lose 50 pounds, why is it so hard to lose that second 5 pounds? Why is it so easy to just say, I'll be good tomorrow? Why do we use judgmental terms like good and bad?

Arghhh. So, here it is: I'm starting small. I avoided the pizza at the gym last night (yeah, I know, pizza in the gym once a month) - I looked at each one, the smell of melting cheese and hot tomatoes are a couple of my food triggers - but I closed the lids and walked on out.

But, here's the thing: I went to the gym last night. I took my clothes and told myself that it's only half an hour. Once my shoes were on, I was good to go. It's getting the shoes on that's so hard.

I am going to drink more water. I'm sure that most of my cloudiness at work must be due to something in the air, the fluorescent lights, the dust, so I don't need to amplify those things by being dehydrated.

From there, the world's my oyster: that first step on the treadmill will eventually lead to a 5 or 10 K "run" by the end of next year; that first drink of water will lead to feeling fuller earlier so I won't be as hungry for solid food so that first 5, then the second 5, pounds will be a little easier to handle.

I'll deal with the other things as they come. We are already choosing to eat out of the pantry rather than shopping every day for things to put together into a meal. We've made meals out of the stuff in the freezer. I'm going to keep the slow cooker on the counter rather than putting it out of sight. We are thinking twice about spending money on impulsive buys- if we still want it in a month, well, we'll think about it then. We are taking lunches to work.

I want to make an extra house payment a year. I want to go on a real vacation. I don't want to eat dog food when I'm too old to work. That's going to take a lot of thoughtfulness and work so small steps: Eat lunch in. Put 100 dollars aside when possible. Learn how to use eBay and sell stuff rather than donating. (Yeah, I know that donating is a good thing but sometimes we need the cash rather than the tax credit. That's even if we remember to keep track of the donation.)

Oh, one more thing! I am going to learn how to use the machines and materials D. has accrued in 30 years of geekery and make cards and framed gifts out of the decades of photos we've taken of the families. I've made one photo, so far, with way too much help. I will learn how to do it on my own!

I am also going to be better about posting reviews on Goodreads-I love that widget they have about reaching book goals. Last year I read 150 books and I got started in March. This year, I am planning to read 200 books and review them, not just list them.

Well. There you go. Aim at losing 50 pounds. Save 100 dollars a month. File paper. Read, list and review 200 books. Simple words, hard to do, but small steps to a larger goal for a more stress-free life.

Good luck to you all with the changes you are making in your lives!

Happy Solstice!

2011-12-21T08:10:00.000-08:00

Sunrise was at 7:55, sunset will be 4:20.

Solstice will fall today, Wednesday, December 21, 2011 at 9:30 PM.

I just have to mark this longest night, shortest day of the year with a post. The sun is up, and it is shining at its lowest point in the sky. Today, the sun's rays only illuminate a very few of the windows in the buildings on the east side of Beacon Hill-they are already fading from a molten gold to beige....and gone!

There are weeks when we get no sunlight at our house and nothing really dries out, only evaporates and then turns green, mossy and slick. Reading in the window light means sitting with one's head at an angle, book held close, everything tilted toward the little bit of ambient and reflected light that makes it through. There will be an extra second of daylight tomorrow and I will thoroughly enjoy it!

Still reading The Storyteller, and I have Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children and Lockdown on the bedside table, Sisters is on the buffet for quick meal reading, and I just finished reading Josh Bazell's sequel to Beat the Reaper, Wild Thing. I LOVE these books.

Josh's books are funny and profane and gruesome but there's something endearing about our "hero", whoever he is this time. They are smart and filled with all kinds of sidebar facts, they are mysteries about a man in witness protection trying to keep himself safe and out of his old life. He is a medical doctor but can only work in iffy jobs as a result of his past. The medical part is what makes the books more than a little gruesome, but the writing is so funny and our hero so wants to do good that everything else just adds more substance to the story. Beat the Reaper is out in paper, now, and if you like that kind of hardboiled crime story with a little whimsy thrown in, you really should give them a try.

Books you'll miss your bus stop for

2011-12-20T09:55:00.001-08:00

Sunrise was at 7:54, sunset will be at 4:20. One more day 'til Solstice, tomorrow will be the long dark and then we start the upswing into the light, a few seconds a day until summer swings us back into the dark. I woke at 7:30 this morning, still dark, clouds glowing from city lights still on, the football field's arches streaking red and green, red and green, red and green.

I have read a few books recently that I have either missed my bus stop reading or started in bed and had to finish before sleeping. In the last post I wrote about The Last Princess, by Galaxy Craze (don't you just love her name?), a book I started when I went to bed and had to finish before I could go to sleep.

I missed my bus stop reading Embrace, by Jessica Shirvington, last week. I remember looking up while still in Seattle and the next thing I knew I was at a stop I didn't even recognize. I had to get off and walk back along the route to reach my destination. So funny to have that happen; you think you are jaded because you read so much, but, no. If someone writes a good story, it will take you out of your life enough to make you miss your stop. Embrace is a really good story about exiled angels and humans who are half-angel.

Violet is in heavy physical training for a number of sports, marathons, rock climbing, kickboxing, and may have more than simple feelings for her trainer, Lincoln. When Phoenix walks into Violet's life, all the secrets that Lincoln's been holding about himself and her literally lead her into hell. Violet's been training for something more than the local 5K, she is one of the Grigori, an angel/human mix, someone who is on earth to keep the exiled angels from taking over the world.

There are a lot of angel books out there but this one is, I think, the best I've read, yet! It's the first of a series and the next one (Enticed) will be out in September (Embrace won't be out until March, 2012) and the third 6 months after that! YAY for series written in other countries and then released in the U. S., and YAY for publishers who recognize that people who read series may outgrow or forget and then not care about the next ones if they have to wait a year for that book. It's really good and I can't wait for others to read it! (Sourcebooks, price TBA. Available March 2012.)

Scorpio Races, by Maggie Stiefvater, one long read, one long wish that it would never end. I read nothing else while I read Scorpio Races. I didn't want to sully the pictures in my head or to dilute the story with something else. That never happens - I almost always have 3 or 4 books going at the same time (until one book tugs my attention away from the others) - and I would have turned it over and started it again if it weren't for the shelves of unread things pulling at me. Best book of the year.

And now I'm reading The Storyteller, by Antonia Michaelis, and all I want to do is read. It's beautifully written and I'm only a few chapters in so I don't know what's going to happen, but the author's ability to convey emotion and to put together a storyline is entangling. I started the book last night and read until I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. I woke up and still had the book in my hands, upright on my stomach, legs bent in a V behind it.

So far, we have Anna, a good girl, finding herself fascinated with bad boy Abel and his little sister, Micha, a sweet child who loves Abel. Abel tells amazing stories to Micha, and sells drugs on the school campus. Anna may actually be falling in love even though she has only just met him. She just followed him to school where he picks up Micha and then to the university cafeteria where she hides herself and listens into his conversations with his sister. I can understand her compulsion to follow him, to try and engage (she actually buys some drugs so she has a reason to talk to him). He is two different people in one body, the outside is tough, Nazi-like, and the inside is white noise and Leonard Cohen poetry and a big brother raising and caring for a little girl.

I tried to convince D. that I could take the bus today instead of driving (so I could keep reading) but it would get me home after 10 tonight and sometimes my neighborhood isn't the safest for walking in. I will be thinking about this book all day. (Amulet. $18.95. Available January, 2012.)

Last Princess, Galaxy Craze

2011-12-07T08:21:00.000-08:00

Sunrise was at 7:43, sunset will be at 4:18. The air is still and water laden. It's foggy and wet this morning and it probably won't get much above the low 40s-I'm not complaining about that! It's not snowing. There is a flicker on the telephone pole across the way, pecking away at a hole up towards the top. Flickers are one of my favorite birds, their cool tails with the patch of white you can only see when they fly, their strong beaks, that great dun color, flecked with black.

I talked to the Lake Forest Park Preschool yesterday, stayed late and talked about some of my favorite picture books. It's always weird to have such a different schedule: the sounds in the store are different, the staff is different, the way we interact with customers is different. Folks are a little more laid-back, coming in from the dark, looking for something to read.

I must remember to make a list of what was in the stack of books.

So, it was late when I got home and I had a glass of wine and watched John Stewart, finished sending out the BookNotes newsletter, before heading up to bed with a new book.

I don't know how you all choose what you read when but when the evening gets late and turns to night, I tend to look for what might be considered lighter fare for reading to sleep. I usually pick up something funny in the middle grade/chapter book genre or something science fiction-y. I don't have to think too much about those kinds of books, I won't miss too much if I fall asleep over a couple of pages- do you fall asleep still holding the book upright in front of your face? Sometimes I dream I'm still reading and when I wake up I realize I the book doesn't make sense and I have to start over.

Yesterday, in a black box on my desk, was a new book settled in a nest of purple confetti: The Last Princess, by Galaxy Craze. I grabbed it up and stuffed it into my bag on my way out the back door to the car. When it was time to go to bed, I had a pickup sticks conglomeration of books on the kitchen table to choose from and I chose The Last Princess- if it was worth reading, I'd know soon, and not lose much sleep over it if it wasn't. Well, I was up until I finished it (thankfully I read fast and I didn't have to be up early) and it was worth every single second!

It's 2090, the earth is in an environmental shambles, and the Royal Family in England is challenged by and then overturned by a revolutionary group. In a violent coup, two of the three royal siblings are arrested and imprisoned. The third child, Eliza, escapes and swears she will avenge her family and re-instate the Windsors to their rightful place.

In a rough and tumble world, Eliza joins the revolutionaries to find out what she can about her family, learning along the way just how tough she is and how strong she is going to have to be if she is ever going to find the remnants of her family.

The Last Princess was REALLY GOOD and well worth every second I gave up in sleep. There were pretty good descriptions of battles, the disgusting streets filled with rats Eliza has to hide in and hunker down in seemed realistic, and I think the environmental disasters that changed the world we know into one we don't holds as a basic story line. I really enjoyed the few "historical" links to our days, Eliza runs her hands over the dresses her great-aunts Princesses Kate and Diana wore, touching the robe Elizabeth wore when she became Queen.

There's a nice romance, one filled with secrets but sweet for all of that, a wonderful, brave dog and a war horse named Caligula that Eliza wins over. Good, good, good! 12 and up. It will be available in May of 2012. $17.99. Poppy (an imprint of Little Brown). I just saw on the Little Brown website that Galaxy is working on a sequel to Last Princess! Yay!

It's Good to be Home

2011-12-04T19:57:00.000-08:00

Nothing like coming home after dark, unpacking the car of groceries, book bag, books, walking laden up to the porch, feeling the thump, thump, thump of a bass in my chest, throwing the door open and being awash in Pete T's voice. Mmmmm. Thank you, D. That was nice.

Presents for Me!

2011-12-04T08:04:00.000-08:00

Sunrise was at 7:40, sunset will be at 4:19. Beautiful morning, blue skies, cold (39 degrees), windows across Beacon Hill exploding in color orange and yellow.

I don't have to be at work until 10:30 today because we have an author coming at 5:30, so I can watch the hummingbirds in the fountain and hope the swelling in my right eyelid goes down enough to be able to see.

I don't know what happened, one minute it itched, the next it started to swell. Maybe I touched my eye after touching spices on something we sampled at Pike Place? There's a little white spot on the swollen part, maybe a bite? I can't see my tear duct and it looks really weird. My eyelashes haven't turned under yet. I wish I'd taken a Benadryl last night but I forgot and now I'm worried that, if I take it now, it will put me back asleep.

We went to Urban Craft Uprising and Pike Place Market to shop and be around people yesterday- nice to see so very many people shopping at booths and filling bags with homemade local goods. Too crowded for me but it was exciting to be in the scrum! D wanted to shop at the market for stir-fry veggies and it was just a blast to be in the middle of all those locals and tourists. The colors of the vegetables fairly glowed in the lights as the sun went down.

Just a veritable bounty of bookish goodness at my house: John Green's manuscript of The Faith in Our Stars, the new Krisin Cashore sequel to Graceling and Fire, Bitterblue, and Bloodrose, the last in the Nightshade series by Andrea Cremer.

I am so looking forward to getting the couch cleared so I can just settle in for hours and read. I think there are times when you just need to skip the sweeping and the folding, let the cat deal with her own issues, put something in the slow cooker, and then provision yourself with a full pot of coffee, cheese and crackers and salsa, warm and thick socks, the coziest sweats and blankets, plump up the pillows and move your couch so it's under the window so you can read in natural light for as long as you want. During the daylight hours! Doesn't that sound positively decadent? Doing something completely for yourself? It would be a spa day without ever leaving the house.

The Girls of No Return

2011-11-15T22:03:00.000-08:00

Sunrise was at 7:14, sunset will be at 4:33, just after my afternoon break. Dark yesterday at 5.

Pretty day out there. Blue skies, orange trees, sun's up, rooftops are all frosty, and D had to wear his gloves for his bus ride to work. It's cold and I covered the daphne last night. I walked to the car after working out and it felt like my whole body was in the middle of a peppermint patty, the air tingled around me!

I'm making minestrone soup this morning with chard and cannellini beans and a sprig of rosemary from the back yard. The tomato soup was a hit although D would have liked shrimp or prawns in his. I just can't do that. The colors would be awful together and that bothers me! I don't mind prawns and I don't mind tomato soup, but I can't do them all mixed up in one pot. Sorry, D.

Just finished a really great book called The Girls of No Return, by Erin Saldin. It's about a group of girls sent to a wilderness school, a school where girls who have nowhere else to go after violence or troubles at home and school. Lida is unable to talk about why she is there, her Thing is a secret, maybe even a secret to her, but this year is supposed to test her physically and emotionally, to allow her to come to grips with why she is having the trouble she is. At The Alice Marshall School in the middle of a wilderness area, she meets Boone (rumors abound about her and her crimes), Jules (who is oddly happy to be there), and Gia, a glamor girl with more secrets than anyone and the ability to attract the neediest girls to her.

Boone, Lida and Gia form a triangle with Lida at the apex. Boone and Gia really dislike each other and Lida is torn having to choose between what could be a rocky friendship with Boone and her attraction to Gia and her glamorous life. When things come to a violent confrontation between the three of them, Lida finally has to decide what her role in her own life is going to be.

I love the location of the book, deep in the middle of a wilderness area, so the girls had nowhere to go and had only a small community of other women to be with. They are given the skills to live in the woods, mapping skills, hiking, learning the local flora and fauna, and even the girls who are fully made up every day learn how to tell north from south. I really appreciate having a book about girls who learn outdoor survival skills, about young women who are strong and combative. It's good to know that there's a book out there about girls who know they can survive on their own, make their own decisions, and live with the decisions they make. Ages 14 and up. (Scholastic Books. Available February 2012. $17.99.)

A nice way to spend the day...

2011-11-13T16:51:00.000-08:00

Sunrise was at 7:11, sunset will be at 4:35.

Not raining but the air is really wet. It's been gray all day except right at sunset when a blaze of wet yellow light slipped under the bank of clouds over Beacon Hill and lit up the air. Glorious for just a moment.

I had today off and spent it filling the compost bin with wild clematis, dead blackberries and fallen leaves. I'm covered in mud, cuts and pokes, and I broke a vessel in the fat of my thumb-it itches like crazy and my fingertip tingle with pain. Cleaned out the drains, swept the sidewalks and raked up all the leaves in the gutters.

And then I made tomato soup! We'll have tomato soup and tuna sandwiches for dinner tonight, had homemade mac and cheese and broccoli during the Duck game (an appropriately yellow and green dinner. Go, Ducks!) last night...I am thoroughly enjoying making soup - minestrone up next on Tuesday!

Still reading Believing in the Lie, by Elizabeth George, it's really good, and made a bracelet to match the necklace I put together for my sister's birthday. It's been an artful weekend!

(This photo's a little blurry but the jewelry is filled with pearls, little pale green, amber, purple glass beads, some amethyst and black beads. It looks very much like a beach scene to me, all sand and ocean and grass colors. We grew up on the Oregon coast and it was so much fun to build something using all these great colors from my favorite place on earth! The colors will look really nice on her, too.)

Mmm...Cake, Booksellers, Marie Lu and Legend

2011-11-11T12:15:00.000-08:00

Sometimes the hot flashes are worth it: Flourless chocolate cake with whipped creme and toffee bits and a lovely red wine to go with it.

After a long day at work and then booktalking the season's best books, in our humble opinion, Jane and I got everything cleaned up and put away and then I hurried down to Wild Ginger - got there just in time to have a slice of cake and a glass of wine and a bit of talk with some of the best booksellers around. Nothing better than getting together with other people who like to talk about books while drinking a little wine unless it's doing all of that while meeting the person who's written a book you really, really like!

Marie Lu is a new author and her book, Legend, is a great read.

June and Day are the best at what they do. Day is a master criminal and June is the best mind the military has. They live on opposite sides of the Republic’s social spheres, June is one of the elites and Day lives in the slums trying to keep his family and friends alive. They’d never have any reason to cross paths except that June’s brother is killed and Day is wanted for the crime. As June and Day’s paths cross and start to run in tandem, they begin to realize what secrets really brought them together and what the government will do to keep those secrets secret.

Man, this was a good book: absolutely riveting, fast-paced, a little romantic, and a well-developed world.

If you’d like to read more about this book, here is the post from when I first discovered Legend: http://notesfromthebedsidetable.blogspot.com/search?q=legend.

Ages 12 and up. (Penguin. Available November 10, 2011. Hardcover. $17.99.)

Fall! Time for Soup and Books

2011-11-11T11:54:00.000-08:00

Sunrise was at 7:08, sunset will be at 4:38.

My favorite kind of day! Warm, windy and gray - I love windy days especially when they are warm ones. Nothing like watching the trees bounce and the leaves roll.

I just went out and stood on the sidewalk to look at the maple, the neighbors were out walking their dog, and the leaves were coming off in a hurry! Circling in the wind, the leaves floating off into the street, the helicopter seeds twirling to the ground, a very autumnal scene.

It might very well be the end of the leaves and all the color, once they're gone we'll be into the grays and greens and browns of true November. The beautiful orange leaved trees across the way are completely bare now, but there is a brilliant red one that has JUST turned so we'll be enjoying that for the next little while.

Went out with the sisters-in-law for lunch with Dennis, a congratulatory lunch, as he passed the Google test with flying colors! Go, Dennis! It was getting dark by the time we headed home and the rain was just starting.

Gidget and I (G is the cat) were sitting in the warm dining room, watching the HGTV channel when she did that scary cat thing where she sits straight up and stares off at something outside, ears so far forward they almost separate from her head. So I sit still, listening hard for whatever it is she hears: a tick tick tick like leaking water from a ceiling. I got up and looked around but didn't see anything. Tick tick tick... I opened the front door to see what was happening and hail was coming down in sheets! It was bouncing and rolling off the rooftop so hard, pinging and popping into all the metal bits and chimes on the porch turning everything on the porch and in the yard into an instrument. Amazing, beebee sized hail everywhere.

It's a good day for soup and sandwiches and the new Detective Lynley novel from Elizabeth George, Believing the Lie, available in January from Dutton.

Look! A little bit of color in the corners of the yard and fence! Grasses in red and green, succulents in lime green starting to cascade over the wall, competition for best greens with the moss.

Heading Down Memory Lane

2011-11-09T08:36:00.000-08:00

Sunrise was at 7:05, sunset will be at 4:40. It's dark so early. The outdoor lights come on at about 4. I was on author visits yesterday and when I got back to the store the light was at that very low, pre-sunset yellow that comes only at this time of year. It was beautiful and smelled like walked on and crushed leaves - dusty and spicy. Today? COLD, WET, GRAY!

It frosted up a couple of days ago and the car windows were swirled in crystals shaped like ferns. just a fingertip's touch to the center of the glass and it melted away. I had to cover the daphne, severely damaged after a last, late frost in February, to keep it safe. It may reach into the 60s tomorrow - we've been see-sawing between clear & sunny and cloudy & rainy every other day this last couple of weeks. The trees sure are beautiful, though. I've noticed that the trees up at the store, the ones that ring the parking lot, are all in various stages of color and change. There's one tree next to a light pole, one that is on all night, that is still pretty green. The leaves on the off-side of that particular tree are turning but the light must give off enough heat to slow the change in those underneath the lamp.

It's so cool to watch the maple out the kitchen window shut down for the winter. Its leaves are outlined in yellow, mostly still green toward the stem, and they will become all yellow and then a leathery brown as the sap makes its way back toward the trunk. The leaves that are less protected by the house are much more yellow and brown , already dropping and collecting around the storm drains.

I've been spending my Tuesday and Wednesday mornings making soup and rice. There's something about this weather that says "Nest!" So, I get up early and while D gets ready for work, I see what's in the fridge and pantry. Today, we have a vegetable-bean soup in the slow cooker and a pot of rice for combining with other things later.

The soup is really pretty, lots of different beans and colors, carrots, celery, onion, bay leaf, and vegetable broth, and we'll have it with a drying out loaf of rosemary bread. Mmmm. Of course, there will be the addition of a little butter for the bread, maybe some parmesan sprinkled over the soup.

I've been purging closets and drawers, bookshelves, baskets, whole rooms of things getting a second look, the trunk of the Jeep full as we head to Goodwill with donations. I have come across forgotten photos from high school (oh, my old boyfriends...) and letters from my grandmothers, chatty little things about the ducks along the stream and the weather and horses. That must be where the fascination about the weather came from!

These letters always put me right next to those women, standing in Grandma Pearl's kitchen in Brookings, looking out to the backyard stream where she fed the ducks and got some peace from my grandfather. Making tuna fish sandwiches and talking about boys and the future. And in Grandma Vi's kitchen, sitting on the flour bins (the most uncomfortable seats EVER, even with the little round pillows as toppers) looking out at the barn, the horses cropping the pasture ever shorter, her tomatoes and grapes ripening up for the summer (this side of the family had a creek, not a stream).

Those flour bin seats were such clever storage. They were wooden, circular bins, maybe a foot across and about 3 feet high. If you pulled the pillow off the bin, you could see that there was a lid with a ring for pulling attached to it and if you could pull off the lid, there would be sugar in one, flour in the other, whatever was bought in bulk and needed to be in the kitchen would be stored in these bins. I can still, after all these years, feel in the palms of my hands the way the lids resisted coming off (the ring would tear up your fingers, so you had to use your palms) eventually sliding up and popping off leaving you stumbling and a whoosh of flour following along.

(In the photo, behind Keeli and Bo, you can see a slice of the bins.)

They were amazingly heavy when full and the kids (there were 6 of us cousins) had to put our shoulders to them to move them. The lids were really tight and we could NOT get them off. Good thing because the chance of spillage was pretty high. We'd get taken by surprise whenever there was a holiday, coming into the kitchen, expecting the bins to be heavy and they'd fly under the the table attached to the wall under the long windows and one of the adults in the other room would yell, "Hey! What're you kids doing in there? Knock it off!"

The round pillows attached to the tops were supposed to make them more comfortable- they were blue, plastic, foam-filled pillows that fit right into the little rim around the bin lids. Sitting on them when you're a kid, the rim eventually eats into the backs of your thighs, your legs dangling over, the weight of your feet causing the rim to bite deeper and deeper until you can't stand it anymore and you have to jump off and run out, the little foam pillow re-filling with air and a sigh.

The adults never sat on the bins, the kitchen would fill with adults tucked into the corners and doorways, shifting from foot to foot rather than take a chance on the bins. G'ma and G'pa had those diner chairs with the plastic seat and backs, with the s-shaped chrome frames, placed at both ends of the table where they sat. I don't think I ever saw them sit on the bins, either, and if a kid sat in Grandpa's chair, that child was scatted off as soon as he came into the room. If you were willing to wait until he got settled, sometimes he'd let you sit on his lap and get warm, wrapping your hands around his coffee cup.

This was going to be a post about the books I've unearthed in all of this cleaning but the memories of the small things that make up your life are so very compelling to turn over and review. Those seats and the grandmothers' kitchens are obviously close to the surface of my mind right now. Maybe it's because I'm the oldest child in this family, and, except for my Aunt Peggy, I am now the oldest in this particular family chain- that's a weird thing to know, that you are now, almost (and I'm willing to wait a really long time for the title), the family elder.

I have no kids, no expectations for having them, so no one to directly pass these memories to. My family all live in another state and I don't reach out to the little kids like I probably should, bringing them the few memories I have that their parents might also share. So, maybe, with the dying of the season, wanting to fill the larder and feed the birds, this investigation of memory is another way of nesting, surrounding myself with family and home and remembrances of snorting laughter and coughing sobs, sharing a bath with 5 other tiny people who, now grown, will take you in at any time, remembering that where I came from forms who I am.

Emily Jenkins/E. Lockhart

2011-11-03T17:02:00.001-07:00

Sunrise was at 7:56, sunset was at 5:49.

The clouds look like illustrations out of a children's Bible. They are fluffy, rounded, lit from behind and glowing along the edges. The sun is setting behind Beacon Hill and still shining through the dining room windows. There will come a time, not too long, now, when the sun won't come through to the inside of the house, except for the bedroom; it will be too far south and too low to to come above the trees and the house behind us. Only when it starts to slip behind Beacon Hill will there be enough open space to shine through. It reminds me of a lariat, sliding over the hips of the earth and pooling at the feet, Argentina and Chile kicking it loose to catch on the toes of Antarctica.

This was my breakfast the other day, just before the Emily Jenkins/E. Lockhart events. Aren't those eggs just absolutely exquisite? The yolks of the blue eggs were the exact color of a Crayola orange-yellow crayon and they clung to the edge of the bowl when I whisked them. I kept thinking of all the insects and leftover veggies my fellow employee Chris' hens were fed that would give those eggs that color. They must be very happy girls!

We took Emily to Madrona in Edmonds to speak to 2nd-4th grades about her Toys Go Out books, illustrated by Paul Zelinsky, and then took to her alma mater, Lakeside, to talk about how she got to where she is now and why she writes what she does.

Those little kids were so attentive and they had really great questions for Emily. The school has an interpreter and the big boys, the fifth graders, are AV gods. They had Emily miked, the computers loaded, the projector aimed....and when Emily's handless microphone went kablooey, they had it turned off, the handheld set up and handed to her in seconds. They were the heroes of the day.

The teenagers at Lakeside weren't as well prepared as the younger ones.

It was an interesting discussion, though, so cool to hear E. talk about where her ideas come from and about her life as an author in New York. I loved hearing how she used her experiences as a social pariah at her first high school and her move up the social ladder at her second (Lakeside) to inspire her Ruby Oliver novels. She talked about her friends getting together for a beer every so often, many of them people whose books we love, like David Levithan and Scott Westerfeld.

Here she is in a room off the library at Lakeside, filling the group in about her days as an author. It had been a very long day by this time and only getting longer. Up at 3:45 am, or so, to catch a plane to Seattle for her first event at 10:45, lunch at 12:00, event from 1-3, then off to sign books at various bookstores before an evening event with Secret Garden's teen book club run by our friend, Liz Gallagher. Our Random House rep, Deanna, joined her for lunch at Lakeside (Random publishes the Ruby Oliver books). It was a very busy day, not nearly as glamorous as her real life, and she really should have stock in Starbucks.

Authors in Schools, Adults Still Learn

2011-10-22T10:18:00.000-07:00

Sunrise today was at 7:38, sunset will be 6:09 (I accidentally typed sunwet. Appropriate for today.).

Wet. the leaves are coming down off the crab apple trees, the maple is still pretty well-leaved but we are expecting gusty winds later today which means a lot more space showing through those boughs. The tree to the right is our maple. We are worried about its health. It keeps us cool and shady in the summer and we have amazing views and sun through its branches in the winter, but it's got more empty branches than last winter and the fruit is really heavy, more twirlies than leaves. The arborist said to watch it. I've taken pictures, we'll compare next spring. The raccoons love it! The lilacs are turning red, too.

These are the trees across the street from our house. They are like flames, they almost glow as the sun goes down. The sidewalks stay yellow for weeks after the leaves fall, like a mosaic, and the air underneath the trees is yellower than anywhere else.

Thursday (which is my Friday) was one of those odd days that can only happen when the place you work deals with both adults and children. I was out with Mark Pett all day and ended my day sitting a few feet away from Duff McKagan (Guns 'n' Roses). Just a little weird.

I spent all day with children's book author and cartoonist, Mark Pett, going to two different schools and watching him do his act, hearing the story The Girl Who Never Makes Mistakes, and watching him teach children about sketching and then turning the sketches into drawings. He teaches the students to sketch, that sketches are just practice for the final drawing. You make some mistakes as you go, then choose the "good" parts to make the drawing itself. It was fun, he was pretty entertaining, but his juggling leaves a little to be desired.

The book is about a little girl who has never made a mistake. She has fans, she is polite, she always finishes her homework. On this particular day, she almost makes a mistake, almost drops the eggs she was using to make muffins. This causes her to be really nervous about everything- she can't raise her hand in class and won't go ice skating.

That night, she is to juggle in the talent show. She grabs the salt shaker, her hamster, and a water balloon and heads off to the show. Unfortunately, she didn't get the salt...She makes a huge mistake, now how will she deal with it?

You probably guessed it! At the end of the presentation, the kids ask for the juggling and, I didn't even get my camera up in time, he made one pass around and the ceramic salt shaker went flying off onto the cement auditorium floor, shattering into myriad pieces. (The photo below is just after the shaker hit the floor.)

I have to admit that I thought it was supposed to happen! It could have been an illustration of how to handle a mistake right out of the book! I was a little disappointed that it wasn't staged. It would have been a perfect teaching moment. At the next school, all went as well as could be, but he didn't mention what happened at the other school: That he dropped the salt shaker, that's why he doesn't have one here, that it exploded and now he has to figure out how to deal with it; that everyone makes mistakes and learns from it. His lesson is to carry plastic salt shakers.

Mark's program was pretty good, and his little class in how to draw, that making mistakes is how you learn to draw, is pretty well done, but I think it will be even better the next time around. I hope he incorporates the salt shaker incident into his future presentations.

Driving in the Dark, Waiting for the Moon

2011-10-21T11:53:00.001-07:00

I went to bookgroup the other night. We've been meeting for years, started at the bookstore and, after it closed, continue now at each others' homes and the last one was at Jennifer's house, off near Carkeek park. We read kid's books and have been meeting for maybe 15 years.

It was dark, and I never remember exactly where her house is. I pulled over to find the tiny directions that get me to her driveway, and saw something moving in the grass by the driveway. I turned the lights off and waited a second and then turned them on and there was a little raccoon popping up and down in the ditch, going into and out of the culvert under the driveway! It was sleek and seemed very young, venturing out into the dark, playing in the ditch.

It was absolutely adorable and reminded me very much of the little raccoon in Wait Until the Moon Is Full, one of the best books in the world. See that little raccoon on the cover there? The one looking out at the world? That's what the one in the ditch looked like.

This is a wonderful bedtime book for slightly older readers. It's a little more text heavy than some of Margaret Wise Brown's books so a 4 or 5 year old will appreciate it more than a toddler.

Every night the little raccoon asks if he can go out and play. He wonders if there is a rabbit in the moon, he wants to see the owl, and every night his mama says, "Wait. Wait until the moon is full". And when the moon is finally full, the little raccoon goes out and meets the owl and the rabbits and all the nighttime animals who live and play in his meadow.

A quiet, simple book like many of MGB's but one with more substance than others. It's a good one for leading into discussions of why we sometimes need to wait for things. There isn't a lot of obvious repetition but it still has a lullaby-ish, lulling rhythm to it, encouraging quiet reading, soothing a child into quieting rather than into sleep. If you haven't read it in a while, or if you are young enough that it wasn't on your radar until now, take a look at it and pore over the illustrations. Ages 5 and up. HarperCollins. $6.99. Available now (and forever!).

Karma Wilson, picture book goddess

2011-10-20T07:17:00.000-07:00

Sunrise will happen, yes, it will! at 7:35, sunset at 6:12.

It is still dark at 7, still too dark to type without a light to diffuse the blue screen effect.

It looks like fall! Gray skies, wet air, yellow leaves, and just a tiny bit of wind out there. I have to get out and clean up the yard, the pea plants need to get out of the pots.

I spent yesterday with Karma Wilson going from school to school and then ending up at the Ravenna store for a signing.

What an amazing presenter- she had the kids completely intent, she would get them noisy, quiet them down, get them noisy again. She read her books out loud and used a gruff voice for bear, a little squeaky voice for wren, and stuffed icky things into the Frog in the Bog's puppet-y mouth.

Someone really should offer a class in how to have a school visit. Karma walked in and owned that library, she spoke to almost 300 children at the first school and between 150-200 at each of the others, and she let the students know who was in charge from the very beginning. She was very clear and using simple instructions told the children what she expected from them. She used the teacher's quiet signs (a rhythmic clapping for two schools that got their attention and focus) and told the children exactly what she wanted from them before they got started.

She introduced herself, told them she drove here from Montana where she lives, and told them what she does, that she writes books but doesn't illustrate and then explained about book art and had the kids talk about different ways a book can be illustrated.

And then the fun began. She read The Bear Snores On, telling the students exactly what their role was and when they needed to snore. A little practice, a nod from Karma, and we were under way!

After the first book, she asked for questions and she was so good about this part. She said, "We have time for 5 questions. Before we start, I am the storyteller today. I get to tell you stories, you get to ask me a question. If you have a story to tell me, you will need to put your hand down." and down went many hands, and the kids had stories they could write later.

She asked them questions, too: Where do stories come from? (What if...comments start many of hers.) What is an illustrator? Who can be a writer? What is a bog and will you ever forget what it is? Why didn't I use the word SWAMP in the book Frog in the Bog, instead?

She had a nice ending, too, she said it was time to re-cap the day and asked them the questions from before, giving everyone a chance for success. Then she asked the kids to raise their hands way up, put them down behind their heads, and then give themselves a nice pat on their backs and applaud themselves for being a good audience.

It was a good lesson in being polite and giving your attention to someone. It doesn't hurt that Karma is a really good storyteller and that she's funny. Her patter works well for the age she writes for and her rhymes are perfect, setting children up for memorizing and a little reading.

We sold a lot of books, still have a lot of books in the back of the Jeep, and now I'm on my way to another round of school events with Mark Pett! I understand that he draws and juggles!

Our Ravenna store has books available signed by Karma- They will make great holiday gifts for families with children ages 1-7.

PS someday we'll talk about the after hours with authors, the talk that happens after the kids go home.

A Very Long Day with Talented People

2011-10-19T07:44:00.000-07:00

Sunrise was at 7:35 and sunset will be at 6:14.

Doesn't it seem like it gets darker faster in the fall than it gets light in the spring? It was dark at 6:30 yesterday. It makes me sad, although the air smells like pears and pine needles. That makes me happy. It's foggy and cool, the fog beginning to tear like batt as the sun rises- I can finally see the buildings downtown, pinking up in the sunrise.

Last Wednesday at this time I was on my way to load the Jeep with books and school visit supplies. On my way to Einstein Middle School for an event with the Pen Fatale Author Tour: 4 authors, two publicists, and a boatload of books. Gabrielle Zevin, Mary E. Pearson, Alyson Noel, and Jessica Brody on a three week tour together talking about their books and their lives as writers.

I'll bet they were really happy to get home.

We didn't make many sales at the school, there is something about middle and high schools that doesn't inspire book buying at the school. Could it be teacher time constraints? No dedicated discussion of the books and authors? No librarian or English teacher who can add something into their curriculum that is such a tiny piece of the overall teaching plan? Who knows? The following morning's visit to Madison Middle School was better sales-wise and the librarian said she and the students just had a blast. No telling what happens between one and the other.

The events themselves were fun and laughter filled- the authors had great stories about their reading habits and their travel habits, the students had good questions, except for that one boy who hurt Gabrielle's feelings but then apologized (man, middle school boys...sometimes they should be seriously restrained), and I think the students will definitely check the books out of the library.

The event at the store was good. We had about 30 people and a group of young women and an adult driver made the two hour trip from Elma, a little town near Shelton, which is a little town near Bremerton, which is on the south-western side of Puget Sound. How cool is that? They had good questions and stood in line with books to be signed.

I so enjoyed Gabrielle's new book, All These Things I've Done. Sorry, ladies, but I've been a big fan of Gabrielle's for a long time and read this one back in the summer while sitting on the front porch steps at the in-laws so the memories of her book are infused with heat and cats, listening to family cooking and talking, and trying to finish it so I could give it to Mary to read.

It's a story set in the future, chocolate and coffee are illegal, and our heroine is the heir to a mafia-esque group that controls the chocolate trade. In 2083, water is rationed, paper is rare, the library and the art museums are now dance clubs, and Anya is the care-taker of her dying grandmother (the last person to actually know what OMG means), her very smart little sister and her brain-damaged older brother. She is also trying to get through school and negotiate a couple of boys, her current boyfriend and a new boy she shouldn't find attractive as his dad is trying to find ways to put Anya and her family out of business. When people start dying after eating her chocolate, Anya is accused of the deaths, and now has to figure out who is really behind it all.

Funny, really well-written, All These Things I've Done is the first of a series and I have to say, I am thrilled! I love these characters and I love the new New York she's invented. The backstory of the libraries and museums turning into clubs came from a thought Gabrielle had: What if everyone stopped reading books (paper books)? What would happen to the buildings when the populace stopped attending them? It's a fascinating thought and I think she did a great job showing us what she thinks. Ages 13 and up. (Macmillan Publishing. $16.99. Available now.)

Maggie Stiefvater and a full moon

2011-10-11T06:31:00.000-07:00

Sunset is at 7:22, it will set at 6:29.

The moon is full and beginning to set at 6:30 am.

I can watch it as it slides over the horizon, it's right outside the window, and is just in the space between the maple tree branches on our side and the crabapples across the street. I love how we can see how the earth moves as we watch the moon set. The moon has moved farther north as it sets (or have we turned farther south)? It 's a perfectly fall scene and I wish I could capture the view. It's really windy and the clouds are whisking across the moon's face and at the same time the clouds all around are glowing. It is so beautiful and I can see why it would be worshiped.

And let's not forget Jupiter, the biggest star-like body in the sky right now.

Maggie Stievater will be at the store tonight. I am looking forward to hearing her speak. I have to write an introduction for her!

Ooh, much later! Days later than when I started, I will finish this post!

Maggie was so much fun. She has great stories, a wicked laugh, and had us completely charmed. We had a smallish crowd- 30 or so - but, like many things, the small things are often best. We all got a chance to meet her, we got to hear all the words, we got to ask all our questions, and her next time around, it may be harder to find a seat up front.

We had her at the store at 5:30, much earlier than usual just because there was another author at 7 so we had to hurry through the last moments of signing.

A family of girls who'd hurried to meet her at 7 just missed her, the oldest clutching Shiver to her chest. We looked out onto the commons and Maggie was still there. We called to her and she came over to say hello.

With great grace, she asked if they wanted pictures and called everyone over, signed her book, and chatted for a minute. What a star!

(We had shells, rocks, battery candles scattered around the area- so pretty!)

Scorpio Races, Maggie's newest book, is absolutely my favorite book right now. It's one of the few books I would like to read again. It is a wonderfully atmospheric book filled with horses, mythology, loneliness, and finding true friendship. Ages 12 and up. Scholastic. $17.99. Available TODAY!

Reading Books that Don't Clash with Your Furniture

2011-10-08T11:43:00.001-07:00

Sunrise was at 7:21 (and it's only 7:41 now! 20 minutes of daylight so far!) , sunset will be at 6:31.

Boy, I was sure wrong about the weather last Saturday! It got warm and blue with these amazing architectural clouds building and dissipating as they came over the mountains and hills. We walked along Lake Union and imagined what it would be like to live on a houseboat. It's kind of like living in a dollhouse; everything needs to fit just so. We decided that having open space all around us and not being able to reach the house next door by leaning over and stretching is more to our liking right this minute. Well, there was that one with a slide that drops you into the lake. That was cool. We had a nice couple of beers in a restaurant with a patio over the lake and then had dinner in a German restaurant in South Lake Union as the clouds finally covered the last of the blue. In bed by 7, asleep by 8. On a Saturday night. We are finally old.

I've been noticing that the books I've been reading kind of match the places I've been reading. This is my favorite place to read. I sit sideways, head on one side, legs over the other, an old wool blanket, and, if she's cold enough, the cat. The window faces our backyard and I can watch the birds darting in and out of the holly.

This is the last book in the series by Maggie Stiefvater about werewolves and epic romance, Forever. The rest of the series includes Shiver and Linger and they are so GOOD (and she will be at Third Place Books on October 11 at 5:30!). (Scholastic. 12 and up. Forever is $17.99 and the others are in paperback.)

And this is what I was reading when I fell asleep in bed yesterday. I hate napping in bed- it feels so much more slothful, you have to plan to nap when you're in bed, you just fall asleep when you read in a chair - but I was cold and Gidget loves this blanket so she will sleep here and keep me warm. It could be that the color of the blanket lured me up the steps.

This is Jo Walton's book, Among Others, and it is an amazing story. It's about a girl who was once a twin but the other one died. I still haven't found out how or why, but bits and pieces are being revealed as we go along. Mori (short for Morwenna) is journaling about what she is doing and how she got here. She had run away from home, from her mother, she was turned over to her father, someone she'd never met, and his family and now she's in the boarding school her aunts had gone to. She is teased for her gimpy leg but takes refuge in the science fiction and fantasy books she reads. She is extremely worried about the magic she knows her mother is using like a net, pulling her back. She also knows that the fairies in Wales can help her figure out what's happening with the people she loves, but the English fairies are mean and won't talk to her, they just glare.

It is such a well-written book! It's absolutely PACKED with book titles, authors, bits and pieces of some of the best science fiction and fantasy books ever written in and before 1979. I LOVE this! I want to do a display with this book and the others linked to it by yarn. So cool.

Because it's a journal, she starts where she starts and it's only when she's trying to figure out connections, do you find anything out about her past and how she gets here. The fairies and magic are only a part of the story, something children would believe and maybe grow out of, she just hasn't yet. And now there's something a little bit off happening to her. I just started to wonder about her sanity. Ooh. It's so good. It was written for adults but wood be good for age 14 and up. (Tor. 24.99. Available now. Probably coming in paper soon.)

There is a list of books included in this one on the Tor website. I'm going to print it out and hang it in the science fiction section. This would be a great cross-over novel for teens.

Maile Meloy, The Apothecary, and Dahlia Lounge

2011-10-08T10:51:00.000-07:00

Sunrise was at 7:18, weird that sunrise happens after we're already up, sunset will be at 6:35.

It's Saturday and cold, I see a band of blue across the Sound, beyond the blocking of Beacon Hill, but it's gray here! No wind, no birds, just one of those in between days of October that makes you feel that you're stuck and there's nothing to do. Even though the art room is calling me, all the cupboards need cleaning out, and I need to clean up the yard, I still fell like there's no where to go, no thing to do.

That being said, we will be heading out in a little while. Yes, we are going to start our holiday shopping and my sister's birthday is in a couple of weeks. I woke up wanting to go shopping, wanting to be around people in a crowd, looking at lights and soaking up movement on the streets.

We, Seattle area children's booksellers, had a lovely dinner at Dahlia Lounge with new author Maile Meloy last night. She's written a really good book about magic and saving the world during the 1950's nuclear age called The Apothecary. Janie's family is blacklisted and they move to London. The next door apothecary promises a cure for homesickness and his son wants to be a spy. When the apothecary goes missing during a violent dispute, Janie and Benjamin find his magic book, the Pharmocopeia, and they set off to find the apothecary using the spells in the book. It turns out that they are the only things between peace and nuclear war. Spies, spells, secrets, and grand adventure. (Ages 10 and up. Putnam. $16.99. Available now.)

I love sitting with all these wonderful booksellers, talking about books and publishing, making lists and gossiping about the authors we love. Thank you, Colleen, for putting it all together! Thanks, Maile, for giving Colleen a reason for having a party!

P.S. I had the salmon with blueberries, the Oodles of Noodles was really good (noodles with parmesan and butter, the perfect comfort food), the crab cakes are always what I want, the bread salad was exquisite, and the Coconut Creme Pie was HUGE! I brought it home to share with the husband. Oh, and the wine was plentiful and so very, very good. The little spoonful of soup that started the party was cool and savory, and the sea food platter was fresh and tasted of the sea. The goeduck was really good, something I'd never tasted before. I don't usually like seafood, it often reminds me of the smell of the dock in Port Orford, but this was clean and cool and spiced.

Interview on Northwest Booklovers blog

2011-10-03T20:44:00.000-07:00

Sunrise was at 7:11, sunset was at 6:45. It's soon going to be dark before I get off work.

Hey, look at this link about me! NorthWest BookLovers posted this interview today on their website! Take a look:

http://www.nwbooklovers.org/2011/10/03/a-conversation-with-career-childrens-bookseller-rene-kirkpatrick/

I am reading Forever, by Maggie Stiefvater and it is so good! Can't wait to meet her on October 11. She's coming by for an event, at 5:30, so you should come on by.

This is the last book in her series about werewolves and the grand love between the main characters while they are human. Very romantic, very well-done, the main male character, Sam, is naive and strong at the same time, Grace is very much a human who would be fun to hang with. I'm almost done and it was a hard choice between TerraNova, that new science fiction t.v. show, and Forever. I'm reading during the commercials. Going to go finish it now. Ages 13 and up. Scholastic. $17.99. Available now!

And Scorpio Races will be out on October 18. This is one of my absolutely very favorite books this year.

Mmmm, PIE.

2011-09-28T10:33:00.000-07:00

Sunrise was at 7:04, sunset will be at 6:55. Blue skies and windy. Lots and lots of birds hugging the bird feeder in the blackberries. The berries are drying out and hanging tightly to the canes. They are clinging upside down on the vines, pulling berries off. The vines then bounce and scatter the rest of the birds into the maple until things calm down, starting the whole process over.

I just finished reading Sarah Weeks' newest book, PIE. I am a sucker for Sarah Weeks' books- every one of them makes me happy and glad that she writes books. PIE is the story of a famous pie crust recipe, a recipe that disappeared after pie-maker Aunt Polly's death, and the effect of that loss on the town and her niece, Alice.

When Aunt Polly dies, when the pie shop closes, the tourists who filled the town for slices of pie stay home and the town begins a quick turn for the worse, quickly losing revenue and population. Alice's mother is pretty upset because Aunt Polly has left the recipe for her crust to Lardo, her cat, and her cat to Alice. No actual written words seem to be left behind and the cat's not talking. The town is in uproar, too, when a series of burglaries happen. Lardo goes missing, a gold earring is found in Alice's bedroom, and the pie shop is demolished. Someone is desperate for the recipe.

What we learn from PIE is that it really isn't the pie itself that is magical, but the way in which the pie is shared. Memories happen with each bite, people are remembered, and the feeling of being part of a family envelopes each person as the fork passes lips and touches tongue.

Each chapter starts with a recipe and a memory. The ending had me in tears. Sigh. Now I want to re-read her books.

And here's a list: Pie, As Simple As It Seems, Jumping the Scratch, So B. It, Up All Night, and The Guy Series (especially good for 3rd & 4th grade guys.) The novels of Sarah Weeks are all heart-touching and often funny, most deal with a character or two who have to overcome something traumatic and serious in order to move on with life. They are SO GOOD! The All for Kids Book Group (reading kids books we missed when we were kids) found her books especially good for discussion.

Up All Night is a collection of short stories by different authors about being awake and out in a world where you would usually be asleep. This would be a really good lesson plan for a writing class. I still vividly remember being awake until the sun came up as Saturday became Sunday, writing bad high school poetry, trying on makeup in the only bathroom for three girls, and just staying curled up on the couch waiting for something to change.

And here is her website if you want to know more about her: http://www.sarahweeks.com/.

PIE is good for ages 9 and older. Scholastic. $16.99. Available now.

Losers in Space! Read it Soon!

2011-09-26T19:58:00.000-07:00

Sunrise was at 7:01, sunset was at 6:59. Oh, my, it's windy today! Curtains billowing, leaves swirling, you can hear the planes bounce on the air.

I completely forgot to tell you all about Losers in Space, by John Barnes. One of the best I've read books this year, and there are a LOT of really great books coming out this year.

No cover art yet!

Losers in Space is about a group of teenagers, well in the future, who are all in the same class, waiting to see where they'll end up. In this time, you can't inherit wealth and fame, you have to make it. These kids decide that they are going to do something so outrageous that they will be famous from now until forever. They are going to stowaway on a rocket on its way to Mars. They will be unable to be returned to earth for months and months and months, their fortunes assured, but something goes terribly wrong and the rocket they are on is broken apart leaving them alone in the capsule. And this is where math becomes very important. In a space as big as the solar system, a teensy wrongness can put you out in the stars with absolutely no way back. The science parts between the chapters explain all the science jargon and math as you go, showing you how big a mistake a small thing can be. You can read just the story, just the science or just read the whole thing in one long swallow.

I loved this book. The science is good and the group of students are all different. You get to know a lot about them as time goes along, seeing beneath the crap and the hate and the sex, and they begin to find out more about themselves, becoming resourceful, using the skills they have hidden or are learning. Except for the psychopath. He never changes, taking advantage of everyone and everything, lying, hiding, cheating, and getting everyone to trust him and believe him. Really a nasty being, but everything he says sounds so true.

Such an adventure-so much fun to read. Kept me on the front porch for hours, sitting in one spot until I was done. I hurt later, but it was worth every popping joint and tight muscle. 14 and up. (Viking Books. $18.99. Available April 2012.)

Insomnia and a Long, Long Sleep

2011-09-24T20:10:00.000-07:00

Sunrise was at 6:59, Sunset was 7:03

Woke up at 3:15 a.m., just could not sleep, so read instead. I finished up another fairytale retelling, Long, Long Sleep, by Anna Sheehan, and it was really good, too! It is, of course, the retelling of Sleeping Beauty.

Far into the future, after a plague has wiped out millions of people and genetically modified seeds have left most of the rest of the population sterile, a young man opens a stasis tube he finds in a subbasement and resuscitates a beautiful girl who has been asleep for 62 years. She is now 16, more or less, and her story is dark and sad.

Rosalinda was the daughter of very wealthy parents who traveled a lot and, whenever they left, or whenever they felt she needed a time out, would put her in stasis, eventually letting her out when whatever it was was no longer something they needed to worry about. She moved from school to school because she wasn't very good at it and so never got close to anyone except for Xander, the baby boy next door.

Over the years of living in her family, she was put in stasis a lot. There were times when she would come out of stasis and Xander would be years older. Eventually, he caught up and passed her in age and they fell in love.

62 years later, everyone she ever knew is dead. She is in a foreign world, barely understands the language and her only true friend is an alien, someone who is as much a freak as she is. She has slept through The Dark Times and everything she ever knew is gone. Oh, and there is a plastic human-robot who has a directive to find her and take her back to the principal but, because everyone is dead, including the principal, the next directive is to terminate her.

Very good story, great world building, and the characters were well-developed. The way Rosalinda Fitzroy deals with her life now felt pretty realistic. Her self-esteem is non-existent and the constant need for reassurance was a little much but I had to keep reminding myself that she was belittled and abused her entire life; no wonder she can't trust herself or feel any confidence in her decisions.

Good stuff. Ages 13 and up. (Candlewick. $16.99. Available now.)

Autumn Equinox and Cinder

2011-09-23T19:57:00.001-07:00

Sunrise was at 6:57, sunset was at 7:05, just as much light as dark.

It's the equinox, man, autumn, the days are already short and I'm looking forward to spring. There is something so very paganistic about the changing of the seasons, the notice of the change, the very change of the air. I'm sure I might be making this all up, but the wind had a slight edge to it, didn't it? I know it was hot and muggy today, but when the wind came up it had a little coolness to it. I feel like I should mark these days by saluting the sunrise and -set, going out in the morning and honoring the fact that this is really the beginning of a new season. Maybe I'll pour a little wine to the gods in thanks that the world will continue to spin on.

The air is getting cooler, now; it's later. I just came in from watering the front yard plants and the sun's gone down. The Olympics look like torn construction paper pasted to the sky. Dennis is playing his guitar upstairs and our house is thin enough that I can feel his tapping foot through the ceiling.

Went for my usual Friday walk around Seward Park today and thoroughly enjoyed it. The sky was SO blue, and it was quiet-I could hear the waves lapping at the shore, the wind clapping the leaves together and there were lots of kids yelling and laughing. And then I noticed that there were no planes flying. I don't know why, I think the president's coming next week, but it was nice to have a little break from all that noise.

I walked around the park reading Cinder, by Tacoma (yes, Tacoma!) author Marissa Meyer, and, boy, it was GREAT! I am pretty bummed that it's part of a series, I'd really like to know what happens before next year.

Cinder, as you've probably intuited, is a retelling of the Cinderella story placed in Beijing far in the future. The moon has been settled, surgery has advanced enough to allow cyborgs to live in the world, and Cinder is a cyborg mechanic covered in grease when she meets Prince Kai who needs an android repaired. Ah, such a great start to the story.

But it is different enough to make an old story new again! Cinder is adopted and her father is dead, one of her sisters is horrible, the other is lovely, and her best friend is an android named Iko. There is a nasty plague with no antidote and the Emperor is sick with it. One day while at work in the market place, Cinder is tasked with repairing the nanny droid that the prince has brought in. He flirts with her, and wants to know if she's coming to the ball (of course there's a ball!).

I loved this book, the characters are well-written, and it's always good to believe in the world you're reading. There is intrigue and unhappiness and so much stuff woven into the story. You know from the beginning what Cinder's true self is and how the story will turn out, but the way it advances is so very cool!

I'm pretty bummed that it's going to be a series and we will have to wait for so long for the next one.

Good for ages 12 and up. Feiwel and Friends, publishers. $17.99. Available in January. Of 2012! Oh, man! Sorry, you'll have to wait. Oh, wait, me, too!

BookNotes: September 2011 Edtion

2011-09-21T09:10:00.000-07:00

Hello: this a post of a newsletter I send out to friends. I can't add art to that newsletter so I like to re-post, here, so the cover art appears.. This is the back to school issue. I also can't seem to edit the big spaces here. Sorry.
BookNotes, September ‘11
It’s that time again, the rainy season is coming, kids are on their way back to school (eventually!) the smell of pencils and crayons surround the youngest children, backpacks like turtle shells pull them slightly off balance. Some of that weight must be a favorite book, tucked in at the last minute, like a grown-up blankie or stuffed animal; a touchstone to all that is familiar and home. Books do that: remind you of places and people you love. Sometimes you don’t even need to open the book, just touch the cover, feel the jacket, and there’s an immediate connection to that world.

To celebrate the beginning of this new school year, I will share some of my favorite back to school books with you.

My Name is Elizabeth! by Annika Dunklee, is a retro-looking story about a girl whose name is Elizabeth! Not Lizzy, or Beth and where did BETSY come from! The art, strong black lines, orange, blue, some white for space, is the perfect palette for the vigor Elizabeth gives her argument for why she must be called Elizabeth. Accompanied by a duck through her daily ventures, she confronts grandpa, crossing guards and various other neighborhood characters until they all understand how important it is to own one’s own name. She is willing to give her baby brother a little slack, for now, though: he can only say “Wizabef”. The art and the text are equally strong and many children will be able to identify with our heroine in her quest for self. Age 4 and up. (Kids Can Press. $14.95. Available now.)

Cinderella Smith, by local author Stephanie Barden is a cute, funny story about a little girl who cannot keep both shoes on her feet. Cinderella is a happy girl, with a really good friend who is happy to help her out when she loses the one ruby red tap shoe she needs to be the Pumpkin Blossom Fairy at the fall recital. But Cinderella’s problems don’t end there: She makes a new friend who needs advice about how to deal with stepsisters and a stepmom. Unfortunately, Cinderella has misled Erin; she doesn’t have sisters, step or other. Now what? Cinderella Smith is a charming book, filled with angst about pierced ears and cell phones, for the 8-12 group, especially good for the second and third graders who are reading on their own and looking for something a little more toothsome. (HarperCollins. $14.99. Available now.)

Eight Keys, by Suzanne Lafleur, captures perfectly how difficult middle school can be. This is the story of Elise and Franklin, best friends forever, and how one day can change everything. In middle school, you’re not supposed to play or be friends with boys, and there are bullies who will take full advantage of all of this. Elise is bullied by her locker partner every day after she finds out that Elise still plays with Franklin. A bad beginning turns to full blown daily dread about going to school as she tries to become who she thinks she should be and gives up Franklin and his friendship. The only thing she looks forward to is her 12^th birthday; surely something good will come from finally being 12.

The eight keys referenced in the title are gifts from her long dead father, 8 keys that open 8 different doors that fill in the blanks in her life and give her a skeleton to build a future self on, rooms that show her that she will be a fine adult.

Trying to wrangle your way into those middle school days and years is hard enough without a manual. It’s good to have a book like this out there so kids won’t think they are all alone in this world. It would make a really good book for the first week of school, lots of discussion points on how to deal with bullies, how to talk to friends, that everyone will go through many of the things in this book. Ages 9 and up. (Wendy Lamb Books. $16.99. Available now.)

Warp Speed, by Lisa Yee, is one of a small set of companion novels that started with Millicent Min, Girl Genius and it is a great book for starting a new year, too. Filled with nerds, bullies, AV class, and discussions of what's better: original Star Trek, Star Wars, or Batman, Warp Speed is the story of Marley, invisible to everyone except his AV buddies and the bullies who hunt him down.

The angst and confusion about being a teenager in seventh grade was very well portrayed and the characters were great, realistic, and I loved how philosophical they are about their lives at this time. I loved the relationships between the friends and I especially appreciate Marley’s relationship with his family. They treat each other with respect, something that isn’t often written in YA novels. I really enjoyed seeing the characters from the other three books appear in Warp Speed, making the entire series fuller. I think I need to read them all again, now, to see if the characters are tucked into the other stories.

It’s a funny, poignant book and boys will really like this one. Ages 11 and up. (Arthur Levine Books. $16.99. Available now.) (The rest of the books in this series are: Millicent Min, Girl Genius, Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time, and So Totally Emily Ebers. All in paperback.)

Well, I’d better get this off to you all before the Halloween issue comes out! Let me know if you have any questions about these titles, or others; I’d be happy to help.

Third Place Books has a ton, no, really! a TON of authors for children and teens coming to town in October. Some of these authors need schools to visit, some are available as in-store field trips, most are going to be in the store to talk about their newest books, and they are all amazing storytellers. Give me a call or email me if you have an interest in hosting an author in your school or if you would like to know more about the field trips. Let me know, too, if you have students who need extra credit for English classes or if they would like to interview an author for a paper. I’ll see what we can do. (See the schedule at thirdplacebooks.com; phone me at 206-366-3314; email me at rkirkpatrick@thirdplacebooks. com.)

I will post this newsletter on my blog (http://www.notesfromthebedsidetable.blogspot.com) so you can see covers.

Alright, then. Let’s go out and have a great year!

Rene’

PS: TPB’s Teacher Night is October 5, 5-7 pm. Authors, publisher’s reps, swag, refreshments. Let me know if you need more info.

Ashland and a bookish vacation!

2011-09-17T11:33:00.000-07:00

Sunrise was at 6:49, sunrise will be at 7:18, but it will be a long twilight and darkish at 6:30. Lights need to be turned on. It's cold out there, today, highs will be in the 60's. Maybe. It's gray and it's rained a little. Everything is either brown and crispy or dusty and green. There are tiny splashes of other color, like pink and dark blue, but mostly the yard is filled with jungle camouflage colors.

We spent a week in Ashland, OR, during the hottest September they've had- too hot to window shop or to go for walks except early in the morning (88 degrees, 80% humidity at 11 pm, the first night we were there). Thankfully, most of the restaurants and the theaters were air conditioned and we spent a lot of time standing in shops to get cold before venturing out again. We had to change hotels from one with only fans to one with air-conditioning- someone was on the verge of heat stroke. So much for being adventurous and staying in historic places! Maybe next time we'll be better prepared.

We saw three plays, Julius Caesar, Pirates of Penzance, and The Imaginary Invalid, and they were all extraordinary. Julius was played by a woman, Pirates had rap and other modern styles of music and the puppeteers were amazing. Imaginary Invalid was really funny (someone said the comedy was a little juvenile) and my brother-in-law was part of the "audience participation" segment. Completely floored him and he couldn't remember his age! We walked all over town with people whispering "That's Ed Fitzgerald! From Minnesota!" as we went by. Hysterical! A couple in a car bent over to look out at him, pointing, and waving!

Lithia Park, in the middle of the city, has a creek running through it, it's where all the city water comes from, and my sister-in-law and I would walk there in the early morning. One day, on our way to breakfast, the resident deer family was clipping along the main street heading north, cars stopped, waiting for them to get safely off the street, headed back into the park.

No television watching, a little live music, a lot of nighttime and restaurant reading: Absolute Value of Mike, by Kathryn Erskine, Please Ignore Vera Dietz, by A. S. King, Fox and Phoenix, by Beth Bernobich, and Riding Invisible, by Sandra Alonzo, four of the 9 books I took with me.

All of these books are really good so I'm just going to synopsize them (is that a word?) here:

Absolute Value of Mike is the story of a boy with dyscalculia, his dad is an engineer with Asperger's, and Mike is sent to spend the summer with his aunt and uncle to work on the Artesian Screw, something that will help him get into engineering school- which he wants nothing to do with! It turns out that the Artesian Screw is actually the Artisan Crew, a group of people who are doing and selling art to raise funds to help a woman adopt a Romanian child. Or they would be if the head Artisan wasn't still grieving over the death of his own son. Funny, heartwarming, A.V. is all about finding out who you are and what your passions are. A good read for ages 10 and up, boys will like this. If you are a teacher, it would be a great read-aloud; read a chapter or two and start lining the readers up! (Philomel books. $16.99. Available now.)

Please Ignore Vera Dietz is about a girl whose best friend dies and she is working through her feelings about him and the last couple of years of their relationship. Vera has always loved her best friend, Charlie, holding close all of his secrets. Even after he ruined everything, Vera holds tight to one last secret. Will she clear his name of the horrible things attached to it? Is it okay to hate him, after all that's come before? Believe it or not, Vera Dietz has moments of great humor as well as being a smart and surprising read. Ages 14 and older. (Alfred A. Knopf. $16.99. Available now.) (Make sure you check out A. S. King's new book, Everybody Sees the Ants. An absolute must-read for anyone who likes YA Lit.)

Fox and Phoenix is a really interesting mix of folkloric China and modern day Chinese steampunk. Yun and Kai must travel across China to find their friend, Princess Lian, to warn her of her father's, the king's, imminent death. Their quest is filled with Dragon Ghosts, warriors, spells and magic, and all the mod-cons with which to cast the spells. Such a great world to put a story like this in: the elevators are run by magic and wind, there are cell-phone-like phones and computers in people's eyes, and no hotels, only inns or roadside stops, where you have to pee out back. Exciting, funny, I'm looking forward to the sequel. (Viking. Age 11 and up. Available in October '11.)

Riding Invisible was quite a good book. Good for kids who like reading things in the form of journals, good for others who like reading about kids in crisis, good for horse fans. Yancy is in a family where his brother could kill him or his horse at any time. Will has conduct disorder, a mental illness where he has no ability to control his emotions or to see his way clear to the end of an action. He has threatened Yancy's horse, Shy, and now they have to run away to be safe.

What a story. They head into the desert outside of LA, sleeping in parks, drinking out of rivers, getting mugged and relying on the kindnesses of strangers. When they are eventually given refuge by a man who works on a horse ranch, Yancy learns that sometimes, but not always, forgiveness is the better part of life. It doesn't mean be stupid and put yourself in danger, but to try and get beyond the immediate, get safe, and then deal with the fact that family is still family and things have to get fixed.

I really appreciated that the adults tried to be adult and deal with the son in a quiet logical manner until they realized that, sometimes, you really aren't going to be able to fix things and you have to let someone else better qualified help you. Lots of good stuff in a thin volume. Ages 11 and up. Great horse information in this one. (Hyperion. $8.99. Available now.)

Beneath a Meth Moon, Jacqueline Woodson

2011-08-20T08:13:00.000-07:00

Sunrise was at 6:12, sunset will be at 8:13. It is a beautiful day in the neighborhood. The birds are beeping at the feeder, little beep-beeps as the little birds maneuver the rim, and the sky is blue and clear. It's supposed to be in the upper 70's today and right now it's cool and there is just a teensy breeze coming through the open windows.

It's dark when our alarms go off, now, twilight at dawn. The tops of the lilac bushes are turning red, the maple is heavy with helicopter seed pods, the ground is drying out, finally, and we need to water. The berries are ready to be picked and I think I have enough for a couple of jars of jam or one pie.

The photo above is of Dennis' hop plant, Sam, I think (the other one is Dave), and little tiny raspberry sized hops. The trellis they are on is going to be too small next year and we should build one that runs along the west side of the house, above the kitchen windows, and let them run the length. At some point, maybe we'll have enough to make some beer! I like the name Thirsty Barracuda: Beer with a Bite.

I have been reading so much! I'm on an children's book awards committee so I'm reading and re-reading everything from picture books to young adult books and having a great time revisiting a few of my favorites from last year. And discovering, again, just how many really awful things get published. And, no, I can't talk about any of the books, yet. We choose next week!

I've also been reading, like a palate cleanser, anything I want to between the committee books: Beneath a Meth Moon, by Jacqueline Woodson, The Future of Us, by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler, The Death Cure, by James Dashner, The Pull of Gravity, by Gae H. Polisner.....

Quick synopses of these will come, but not all at once:

Beneath a Meth Moon: Amazing how big a story this little book holds. Hurricane Katrina leaves Laurel without the two women she needs most, her mom and grandmother, when it rips through the little town of Pass Christian, Mississippi. When she finally finds herself at a place where she is beginning to feel comfortable, with a friend and a position on the cheerleading squad, she is introduced to the "moon" by her boyfriend, the only thing that eases the guilt and the grief she feels. This is the story of what the moon does to a person, a family and a community.

As light as it may be on some aspects of meth addiction (can we talk about the horrors in Nic Sheff's books?), it doesn't stint on how quickly and perniciously the drug insinuates itself into a life. It's not a pretty story, it shouldn't be, and is filled with Laurel's self-loathing, need, scratching, and ugly teeth as she sinks deeper into the wasteland of the drug. It shows how perfect a drug meth is, as it fits those receptors so beautifully, and should be talked about in the same breath as unprotected sex: never let it happen, the after-effects are too dire. It never leaves a body, memory of its effects will continue to lead folk back, once tasted, never refused.

While reading Meth Moon, I kept thinking of science fiction, here you are, walking along, minding your own business, and BOOM! the world blows up, aliens take you away, the earth opens beneath your feet and you disappear. One missed chance to get away, injected with drugs when you weren't looking (an old Robert Silverberg story) and life is never the same. It's not like pot, alcohol, meth is a little like a virus where just housing it can kill you.

Anyway, it is really well-written, as are most of Woodson's books, and should definitely be on all middle and high school reading lists. It's an unassuming volume, and has an attractive cover, so those kids labeled reluctant will be willing to read it. It was something I started and finished in one session, I just had to know what happened to Laurel before I did anything else. Ages 11 and up. (Penguin Books. Available in February 2012. $16.99.)

Everybody Sees the Ants, A. S. King

2011-08-02T09:22:00.000-07:00

Sunrise was at 5:48, sunset will be at 8:43. It's cloudy, a little breezy, but supposed to be in the high 70s again. A robin just hit the window and scared the crap out of me and my cat. Gidget's under the table, looking up at the window, waiting to see if it's safe to get back to her napping place. Lots of robins in the fountain this morning, standing in the bowl, shrugging their wings up around their necks, flicking water away; they look like boxers getting ready to jab.

So, I drove to work yesterday, listening to Mumford and Sons the whole way (I can get through the first 7 songs on my ride), looking forward to reading both Ashes, Ashes and Mostly True Story of Jack when Judy, our children's book buyer, brought me Everybody Sees the Ants, by A. S. King, and tells me that it's a book we all need to read and then tell everyone else about it. I opened it and that was the book for now.

There are a lot of books about bullying in the world today but Lucky's story is different. Maybe not so different in the truth about bullies and the bullied, but the way it's told is different. And so very well told.

Lucky has been bullied by a single classmate for eight years, since he was seven. It started when Nader Macmillan peed on his leg in a restaurant restroom and then told the manager that Lucky peed all over the place on purpose. No one would stand up for him, take his side or listen to the truth, because Nader's dad, is a powerful, nasty, attorney, and no one wanted to accuse his son of being a dick. That was the beginning of a constant round of hurt, terror, worry with no end in sight.

Then Lucky invents a questionnaire for a sociology class asking if other students thought about suicide and how would they do it. He gets pulled into the counselor's office and when he tells them that it had just been a question he and his friends were tossing around, his friends get questioned, too. One of those people is Nader Macmillan, and Nader's father gets involved. As a result, the bullying of Lucky takes on a whole new weight.

Nader catches him at the pool one day and rubs his cheek raw on the cement, almost to the bone, and no one does anything about it. Not his father, who has absolutely no idea what to do about this, not the manager of the pool, who is scared of Nader and his family, no one stands up for Lucky until his mother says enough is enough and leaves with Lucky for Arizona to live with her brother.

This starts Lucky's new life as Lucky, not Nader's punching back, not the boy who doesn't respect his dad, but a good person who knows pain and hurt and how to listen and how to tell that a person is a bully even if that person is an adult. This is Lucky's time to find out what kind of a person he wants to grow up to be.

Well-written, compelling, great characters, good subject matter. This is a complex story, too. Lucky's father has issues about his MIA POW father (someone he's never met), but, in Lucky's dreams, Lucky is trying to save his grandfather and bring him home from Vietnam. He uses these dreams to figure out how to get rid of Nader in ever increasingly violent ways. There is a girl, a beautiful, smart, girl with bullies in her life, too. It's as if the adults in Lucky's life are still trying to grow up. It's like growing up and becoming an adult will always going to be nothing but practice and guts- it's never done and you hope you do it right and learn something along the way.

Parents, teachers, counselors, kids, this is a good book for everyone. Kids need to know that adults can be bullies, that bullying doesn't always mean physical pain, adults need to remember that just because they're older, they aren't always right or good. It's really easy to become a bully or to be bullied, it's hard to stand up for yourself or for someone else. Ages 14 and up.

(P. S. The ants as Greek chorus are brilliant.)

(Little Brown. $17.99. Available October, 2011.)

Two Books equals Choice

2011-08-01T07:52:00.000-07:00

Sunrise was at 5:47, after my alarm goes off. The sun doesn't come up over the hilltop now. Sunset will be at 8:44. Dusk is purpler earlier. It will be in the high 70s today and Seattle is beautiful in the clear, blue skies.

Damn you, One Bus Away! I don't know why it registers the phantom buses, those buses that it shows are at your stop.....NOW! and then immediately shows it is now a minute, two minutes past your stop with no bus either coming OR going in either direction. I know I should get to my stop 10, 15 minutes before the app says, but that means that, should that bus arrive, I get to my connecting bus 20 minutes before that one leaves and then I get to work way too early. As it is, if I can actually FIND a bus at my stop when I used to catch it, I get to work half an hour earlier than my shift. Granted, it is a bookstore and there is coffee, but it's still work.

The truly unfortunate thing is that if I miss that one bus that puts me at the connector at 8:00, I can either arrive at work late by 15 minutes, or I drive. I have been trying not to drive every day - I have a really old Jeep - and I was so looking forward to the half hour reading time. Today I drive.

Yes, I finally got past last week's doldrums and I am really unhappy that I am not reading on the bus right now. I picked up two books out of the galleys at my desk yesterday and I can't decide which one I should read first, I've started both and both are hard to put down. Ashes, Ashes, by Jo Treggiari, takes place in New York City, just after smallpox has wiped out most of the population and there are now two seasons: wet and drought.

Our hero is 16-year old Lucy, the last of her family, and we meet her as she is trying to get inside a turtle to get to the meat. She is alone, living in a willow hut, and is either dehydrated or trying not to drown in the downpours, when she is treed by feral dogs (one is a terrier, whining at the trunk of the tree), saved by a boy she's never seen before. Sounds good, doesn't it? and that was only the first 25 pages!

Then, I started to read The Mostly True Story of Jack, by Kelly Barnhill, before going to sleep last night and woke up looking for it to read at breakfast. This one is about a boy named Jack whose parents have broken up and he is being dropped at his Aunt and Uncle's house in Iowa until things shake out. Oh, he doesn't want to be there. Home isn't much better, no one really seems to see him or care about him, but it's home. So far, there is a whispered discussion of something unraveling and his aunt and uncle actually care that he is with them. It's the kind of book that has a lot of reveal to do - things will come slowly clear and it compels the reader to keep turning the pages to find out what's next.

I'm taking them both with me and I think I'm edging toward Jack, first.

No book joy or love in any of the stacks scattered at my feet

2011-07-27T09:29:00.000-07:00

Sunrise was at 5:40, sunset is at 8:51. Its overcast, supposed to get to 71 degrees.

BIRDS EVERYWHERE! Red-headed house finches, hummingbirds, robins (juveniles all spotty), jays, bluejays, flickers, chickadees and sparrows. The big birds chase the little ones out of the fountains and flop the water out of the bowl with their bathing. A robin was sitting over the bubbler on the tall rock and looked like it was wearing pantaloons, a little fringe of white showed over its legs when it bent over to duck its head under the water. A sparrow slid off the top bubbler and almost landed in the bowl below, barely saved itself from a dunking. Must get a fountain cam.

I can't find anything I really want to read since I finished Boy21 (Matthew Quick) and All These Things I've Done (Gabrielle Zevin). No first page, first sentence joy, nothing that drags me into the story and makes me late for work or stay up all night. Lots of books that are worth the paper, just nothing that says FINISH ME, NOW! On the kitchen table alone I have books open butterfly style (Saving Yesler, Cinderella Smith) and dollar bills and pens marking differing levels of stoppage in three others: Melody Burning, Belle's Song, Dragonswood, and a stack of books for an awards committee that I HAVE to read. I think these books are fine, I just want to be swept away. I have read such truly I-Will-Even-Buy-This-One-When-It's-Available books this year that I just don't want to just read for something to do, I want to get lost. Yesterday on my work break I read a little of Cinderella Smith and then looked at LOL Cats. Sigh.

Looking forward to Cowboys and Aliens and finding something toothsome to read.

Boy 21

2011-07-20T10:51:00.000-07:00

Sunrise was at 5:32, sunset will be at 8:59. It's cold, gray, supposed to get up into the 60's. Lushly green and muggy when the sun comes out (if the sun comes out).

I just started a book called Boy 21, by Matthew Quick, and it is so good. I am only on page 53 and it's one of those books I want to be immersed in. I should have started it last night instead of half an hour ago, but I was finishing The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler.

I love Finley, the main character, I love his girlfriend, Erin, and I think I'm really going to love Boy21, the damaged boy who comes to live and play basketball in Belltown.

Matthew Quick wrote another book about a teen in trouble called Sorta Like a Rock Star- a book that had me in tears and laughter all along. I am really looking forward to seeing more from him.

I have to go brush my teeth and go to work- I'm going to be thinking about this book all day. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Eagles, Cranes, Turtles and Before I Go to Sleep

2011-07-16T10:44:00.001-07:00

I went on my usual Friday walk around Seward Park, it was warm but the wind was cool. There was a swimmer heading into shore and a woman with her dog just ahead on the trail. I was playing the "how quickly can I catch up to her" game and just started reading Before I Go to Sleep, by S. J. Watson when I heard an odd sound and looked up and saw an eagle heading out over the lake, chased by crows. It dove down and hit the water and shook the crows off for a second or two and then headed back into the forest. We (I caught up to the woman and her dog) stood and watched for a bit and then walked on when TWO eagles made their aerial mating dance over the lake. So absolutely amazing, such an unusual event! I've never seen that before, only in pictures.

Finished the round (and spent some time watching the turtles) and found an open bench where I sat to finish the book I started at the beginning of the walk. Did you know that cranes sound like ducks when they make their cries? One kept flying away and then coming back to stand on a limb in the lake in front of me, I assume it was looking for lunch. A juvenile eagle had everyone oohing and aahing as it headed towards a boat dock.

Before I Go to Sleep was a thriller of a mystery. Every morning Christine wakes up and goes into the bathroom with no memory of the man in the bed next to her. She doesn't know who the woman in the mirror is, either. Every morning the man who says he is her husband fills her in on her past with photos stuck to the wall and a scrapbook and every next morning he does it all again. Until the day she gets a phone call from a doctor who convinces her to look in the closet for the diary she has been keeping during the days before she goes to sleep. The first words in the book are DON'T TRUST BEN!

Not a book you want to start when you have to do something else. Go to the park, start it in bed on a weekend night, take a long bath, but give yourself permission to read it from the start to the finish. And then just try to stop thinking about it and her life. (HarperCollins. $25.99. Grown-up book. It has just come out.)

Liesl and Po, Lauren Oliver

2011-07-01T09:13:00.000-07:00

Sunset was at 5:18, sunset will be at 9:09, -1.06 away from the longest day.

Today is absolutely beautiful. It's July 5, clear skies, all the mountains are out, it's supposed to get into the 80's today and the last few days have all been like this. Summer has arrived. Will it stay? The blackberry petals are falling away from the tight, green berries that will eventually make a really good pie.

I'm waiting for the smell of blackberries in the sun - just the exact scent of summer for me. Hot blackberries, warm hay and the bitter, rank scent of ragwort, the citrus scent of pine trees, the hot, wet scent of rain on concrete. Your favorite summer smells?

What a lovely book Liesl and Po is.

Liesl and Po, by Lauren Oliver, is a fairytale-like story about loss and discovery, family and friendship. It's also a fun story filled with adventures and chases.

Liesl, a lonely little girl banished to an attic after her father's death, meets a child-sized shape in the corner of her room, accompanied by a pet-sized shape, two shadows from the other side, Po and Bundle. Po and Liesl become fast friends and because of Po she escapes from her attic prison to embark on a journey to say goodbye to her father.

Liesl has sat in the only attic window, drawing, night after night, while a little boy, Will, an alchemist's apprentice, watches her from the shadows on the street, hoping that some day she might see him and say his name. Will has fallen in love with Liesl during late night deliveries of magic for his horrible master, the Alchemist. One night, exhausted from work and watching Liesl, he mixes up the deliveries and has to run away from the Alchemist.

While Po, Bundle and Liesl are trying to get to her father and stay out of her step-mother's clutches, Will sees them get on a train, and follows them, eventually catching up and joining them on their journey.

This is such a good book. I love Po's character - it has been on the other side for so long it no longer remembers who or what it is, only that it is lonely, too. It is a ghost, I guess, and Liesl wants it to help her get a final chance to say the things she couldn't before to the one person in the world who still loved her.

I loved all these characters: the awful people are really awful, reminiscent of Grimm and Andersen, and the others are lonely and need families and friendship. It feels as if Ms. Oliver read the book aloud while writing it, the writing compels you to read faster or quieter, or in a sing-song like a lullaby. I am glad I waited to read the "Dear Reader" letter until after I finished the book, it probably would have changed the way it was read. I think I want to read it again, see if it holds the same secret, whispery feeling of the first time through.

Lauren Oliver is a pretty great author. She's written a couple of other books, Delirium and Before I Fall, and Liesl and Po is completely different from the others. And with only three books on her shelf, we can probably look forward to some really great, interesting stories in the future.

With its lovely language, Liesel and Po would be a wonderful read-aloud for ages 8 and up. (HarperCollins. $16.99. Available October '11.)

Here is Lauren Oliver's website.

A Slow Breath In

2011-06-28T22:37:00.000-07:00

It's 9:45 and I'm home from our summer kids' booktalk at the store.

There's a beer in the fridge, Raising Hope's on tv, and it's still light outside. The drive south down I-5 was beautiful: the blue windows of the skyscrapers reflect the strip of leftover sunlight, white headlights head north like satin Christmas ribbons, and the intimacy of talk radio whispers facts about gentrification into my ear. Dennis is asleep, I'm having some chips and salsa, drinking my beer, and am now trying to decide what to read when I go to bed. The wind is just coming up and dispersing today's mugginess. It's warm and the strip of sky in the far north between the clouds and the mountains is a greenish-aqua-yellowy-peach color.

I seldom have time alone, Tuesday nights, and, as mundane as watching the sky darken can be, watching a tv show, watching it by myself is like a little wrapped gift given for no reason, just because. Nothing special going on but not thinking about anyone else for a bit is pretty great.

Birds of Paradise, Diana Abu-Jaber

2011-06-28T08:43:00.000-07:00

Sunrise was at 5:14,Sunset will be at 9:11, -33 seconds less daylight.

Cool, gray, lushly green, our strawberry runners are heading out across the driveway in ropes, and I have actual peas, maybe 12 beautiful peas dangling from the plants! There are still a few blossoms in pink and maroon bobbing in a very slight breeze. There are bees popping out of the berry blossoms and everything needs a serious trimming.

I stayed home sick last Thursday and, like many of you out there, I took a stack of books with me, just in case. I have a king-size bed and there's plenty of room for shoving stuff over and not having it interfere with thrashing limbs and heat, blanket tossing and pillow burying- I wake up sometimes and there are books between Dennis and me, they may lay there for quite awhile, if we don't make up the bed, just toss the covers back and forth covering and uncovering them. I love my bed. Anyway, I took Rotters (see the last posting) and a couple of grown-up books with me that I really wanted to read.

I don't usually pick up everyday adult reading material because I am often so disappointed with the stories- they are just too slow or I just don't find anything to connect with or they are just too ego-centric, too "this was my story, you'll relate to it" and, no, sorry, maybe someone will, just not me, so I take kid's books and science fiction with me whenever I just need to be entertained.

I spent the day reading Rotters and then, when I got to the ER for blurry eyesight (I'm fine, no stroke, seems to have been an "ocular migraine") and had the 3 hour wait to go home, I was very happy to have had 2 good sized, grown-up, books to pull out of my bag: Birds of Paradise, by Diana Abu-Jaber, and The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach.

I started Birds of Paradise because I am a HUGE fan of Diana's and I am so glad I did. It was SO GOOD! If you are a bookseller, find a galley and read it now! If you aren't a bookseller, call one of us and order it now! or find a bookseller friend and barter to read the galley.

I don't even want to tell you much about it because the details sound so dull: hurricanes, Florida, housing problems....but those are just the points around which the story turns. It's a family in crisis- one of the children has run away desperate to pay penance for the secret she's held for the past years. She's now 18, and the rest of the family seems to have been holding its breath the 5 years she's been gone.

Avis and Brian are still mourning their daughter's leaving and it takes its toll especially on the days Felice calls to make an appointment to meet with her mother. When she doesn't show up, one more time, after Avis has waited for hours, you can feel Avis' deflation and defeat and Brian's anger at how the women in his family treat each other. And, maybe it's time they don't forget that they have another child, a son who has made his own way, owns his own business, and also mourns his sister's disappearance. Such a beautifully written book about how hard it is to be, to stay, a family as things change, how hard it is to know each other and the secrets that shape a life, maybe even especially the lives that share a home.

There are wonderful descriptions of the lushness of the Miami vegetation, the heat, and gorgeous poetic passages about Avis' baking and confections. This book should be accompanied by chocolate croissants and only the very best coffee. (W. W. Norton. Available September 2011. $25.95.)

Reading Rotters in the Daylight

2011-06-23T06:35:00.000-07:00

Sunrise was at 5:12, Sunset was at 9:11, -18 seconds daylight. It doesn't sound like a lot, does it? but it does mean we're already heading into fall and we haven't even had two days in a row of sun and heat yet.

I called in sick on Thursday with a horribly sore throat. I hate calling in sick, but when my throat gets like this I ALWAYS lose my voice and then I get a nasty cough which then keeps my throat even more sore. I took a benadryl to try and dry everything out and slept until almost noon. Then I read.

I had to keep the window above my head closed so I wouldn't breathe in the cold air but it looked like a pretty nice day, a perfect day to lie in bed and read Rotters, written by Daniel Kraus, in natural daylight.

What an amazing book-A lot of talk about maggots and flies, fetid smells and difficult families but such a good read! It's the story of a boy whose mother dies and he has to go live with a father he never knew who lives in a small town with a small-minded bunch of jocks and bullies. His father is known as the garbage man because he smells so bad and it takes a very long time for our hero and his dad to come to any kind of friendship, much less any kind of family feeling.

Joey finds himself the center of a very special club of men, a group whose ranks formed in the ancient worlds of da Vinci and Shakespeare: grave robbers. His father tries to keep him ignorant of the work he does but when things at school reach boiling points, Joey is inducted into his father's very special life. It turns out that his father is actually the golden boy of grave robbers, the epitome of what one would aspire to as far as this form of work goes. He can read a slide of pebbles, the track of root systems, the way a slip of skin slides off a limb in a coffin and he trains Joey to see the way nature effects the dead and the way humans try to stop the process.

Absolutely fascinating look at the world of embalming and ground scenting at funerals. I loved this society of men who rob graves, their fraternity, their mythology and loneliness, the special words and feelings for their tools. I love the relationships they have with each other, the love and fear they have for their work and that it will soon be a world gone as the men die and no one is further admitted into their ranks.

We are starting a list at work of really great books for young men and this one is pretty darned close to the top of it. Although a number of women "of a certain age" have loved Rotters, it's a book that we think is especially good for those boys heading into manhood, ages 15 and older, a coming of age story as Joey wends his way through high school, family and friendship.

It would be a really good book for all those adults who may be not particularly squeamish who are just looking for a good book to read, an interesting story with fascinating characters, a story with love, lust, jealousy, rat kings, loyalty and interesting facts about death and the funeral business. Ages 14 and up. (Delacorte. $16.99. Available now.)

Cherub: The Recruit

2011-06-22T09:16:00.000-07:00

Sunrise was at 5:12, sunset will be at 9:11, 3 seconds less daytime today.

Cool, gray, not raining, yet. It's supposed to get partly sunny and into the 70's later. I'll believe it when I see it. There are blue jays in the trees and a young squirrel (where do the babies nest?) is investigating the maple. I've seen one hummingbird this spring and only a few bees - lots of bumbles, not so many honey.

On my afternoon walk around the block, I go up to the Windermere building at the edge of the Third Place mall's parking lot and look at their plantings. Yesterday, the small, white-flowered bushes were humming with bees, bees that look like honey bees but their lower abdomens were red! I've never seen that before. The smoke bush had teensy explosions of flowers and they were filled with bees darting in and out, bouncing heavily on the tiny florets. I go there for ideas for plants to put in our garden. We are hoping to become an attractive bee spot.

If you are looking for a good series for boys ages 11 and up, try the CHERUB series, by Robert Muchamore. They've reissued them from a mass market format to a trade paper, I think they are a little more attractive now, but the entire series isn't available in this format, yet. You could probably find some used in the other format and it would be worth buying them all at once because your kids will want to keep going after the first.

I read the first one, The Recruit, over the weekend and I really enjoyed it. It's about a smart troublemaker, James, who is recruited into CHERUB, a group of secret agents, highly trained and talented, and all under the age of 17. No one knows about them, but they are sent into dangerous situations because no one ever thinks that children are spying on them. I am really looking forward to reading the next one. (Simon and Schuster. Available now. $7.99)

Oh, I started this book after seeing Super 8 and I LOVED it. I like science fiction movies and the kids in this are amazing actors. Let me know what you thought of it.

Solstice and Mo Wren

2011-06-21T07:18:00.000-07:00

Sunrise was at 5:11, sunset will be at 9:11!

It's Solstice! The day is 15 hours, 59 minutes and 29seconds long, just 31 seconds short of 16 hours. Is there a chance for some warmth? The moon is a little more than half full right outside the kitchen window where I write. So cool to watch it slip down toward the horizon moment by moment - when I started today it was above the power lines, it's now fallen to just above the Pac Med building on Beacon Hill. The buildings in downtown Seattle reflected the sunset last night at 10:15 while I was on my way home. The sky still yellow and orange at that time, the blue windows shimmering, the streets below dark. It smelled like pine needles, bruised citrus, and there was a feeling of expectation in the air.

Mo Wren, Lost and Found, by Tricia Springstubb, will be out in August! I LOVE Mo Wren! the first book was called What Happened on Fox Street and I am so happy Judy put this galley on my desk. It was like finding a truffle all wrapped in foil- something to save until it could be savored.

This little series is very much along the lines of the Penderwicks, the Elizabeth Enright Saturdays books, and the Ramona Quimby books. They are funny, poignant, stories about growing up. There's a gap in books for middle readers, there are tons of good genre books for the elementary school world, lots of fantasy, mystery, but not a lot of really good books about dealing with every day life. The books that are written for that age just don't seem to be especially well-written, or maybe I'm just not reading the right ones. I'm glad that I've discovered Tricia Springstubb and her hero Mo Wren.

Mo and her little family of dad and sister, Dottie, live on a street called Fox Street, a magical place where she has lived for her whole life, the same neighbors, the same friends, the same dream of someday seeing the fox the street was named after. When the economy begins to head south her neighbors start to sell their houses and theirs may be next. Her dad's job is in peril and there's a developer looking to buy out everyone. What will the people of Fox Street do?

These books deal with real problems children have like changing friendships, loss, family strife, the stresses of just not knowing yet how to make decisions about life and growing up. Mo is sturdy, careful, caring, a good daughter and a good friend. Her little sister, Dottie, is a wild child and Mo's responsibility while her dad works.

In the new book, Mo feels she has lost everything and her anchor in the world has come loose. She's never had to make new friends, she doesn't know every corner on her street, she's angry and unhappy and unsure about her place in the world. As Mo begins to get more involved in helping her dad start a new business and she begins to investigate the neighborhood and to let people be friends with her, her heart starts to mend and she learns new ways to handle her anger and fear of change.

Mo and her sister, Dottie, are great characters and these books are perfect for ages 8 and up. (Balzer and Bray. Both books are in hardcover. $15.99.)

Lev Grossman and Magicians and Kings

2011-06-19T06:26:00.000-07:00

Sunrise was at 5:11, sunset will be at 9:10. It was still light at 10 last night. It's cold, wet (again), gray. My peas have overtopped the little cage they were climbing, I have poles to put in but it's been too rainy to get out to do it. Dennis' planted some hops (Sam and Dave) and they are going great guns, so far. Everything is very green and thick and, across the street, there is one warm orange light shining through the trees and vines. It looks very cozy and welcoming. It's a day for searching out neon and warm, wooded rooms-watching from the inside out.

I LOVED Lev Grossman's Magicians when it came out in 2009. Such a clever mix of real world and fantasy: Quentin, an unlikeable hero- so whiny -is a huge fan of a series of books that take place in two worlds, ours and Fillory, and, like the Narnia series, you get in and out of Fillory by going through doorways.

Quentin is certain that world is real and he is so unhappy that he would give anything to be able to live there. When he is tapped for a special school of magic, he is sure this is his way in. He and a number of other young magicians work together to find their ways there, battling monsters, death and each other. Very adventurous, very exciting, it was hard to care a lot about Quentin but the other people who are with him on this quest are funny and brave and caring. My favorite character is Julia, Quentin's friend from high school, pre-Brakebills, who wasn't admitted into the school, and wants obsessively to be part of the world of magic.

The sequel, Magician King, is every bit as good as the first, maybe even better in some respects. Quentin isn't nearly as whiny but he needs to feel more important than he thinks he is. He wants to be a hero, he wants to really be king, he wants a quest. Magician King again takes place in both Fillory and on Earth and Fillory is literally winding down. Quentin's quest is to keep it going.

In MK we get to find out what happened to Julia during the years her friends were at Brakebills. Julia is an amazing character filled with obsession and need and drive to be a magician and her journey to Fillory is a dark and dangerous one.

Make sure that you reread or scan Magicians again before reading Magician King. I found that the details were dim after two years and I'm sure I would have enjoyed it even more had I read it more recently.

If you have an older teen, 16 and older, maybe especially a boy, try these out on them. The humor is right there for that age and the only reason I recommend older readers is that the sex scenes are sometimes graphic and the violence is pretty violent. (I have to say that as unappealing as Quentin is as a main character, it's pretty refreshing to read a book where you don't always want to identify with that character. Although, who among us isn't whiny or feels we aren't getting our due?)

(Viking. Available August 9, 2011. $s6.95.)

These are the bits of color on my front porch. Aren't they pretty?

Notes from the Blender and Stupid Fast on a(nother) cold, wet day

2011-06-10T20:39:00.000-07:00

Sunrise was at 5:11, sunset will be at 9:11. Cloudy, wet, and cool. Our blackberries somehow edged up over a tree branch and have blocked out the view of any of the houses across the street. Lots of blossoms, not so easy to reach, though, when they are ready to pick; they're right out over the cliffside.

I got my hair cut last Friday.

Loan, my stylist, said, "Let's just get rid of this, we don't need to work with this much extra", and grabbed the end of my hair in her fist, shut the blades across it and, snick!, it was gone. She had maybe 10 inches of hair in her hand, held like a fish in her fist. Now, I can reach over my shoulder and touch the bottom of my hair! I used to reach around to my belt line and play with the ends, twirling them into little curls. I am missing almost 2 feet of hair.

Those of you who know me know I don't have very many social skills. I have such a hard time talking to people like stylists or people I only know slightly, and, thankfully, they often spend their time telling me about themselves or asking very simple questions about what I do.

As uncomfortable as I am talking to people, I love listening to their stories; I love the connections that are uncovered when stories are shared, the stories that people need to share with others they don't know. But there's something specifically seductive about the bubble of a salon. Is it because you are looking at each other in the mirror, hands on your body, lips close to ears, that things you would never tell an almost stranger come slipping out from between your teeth?

Notes from the Blender and Stupid Fast are two great and funny new books for young adults that would be great reads for boys.

Notes from the Blender is told in two voices, the girl part is by Trish Cook, the boy part by Brendan Halpin, in alternating chapters. Declan is a death metal music fan, loves violent video games, and Neilly Foster. Neilly is beautiful and popular, the child of parents who love her very much, divorced when her dad realized he was gay. And now Declan's dad and Neilly's mom have found each other and fallen in love (and gotten pregnant). This is especially uncomfortable because now Declan will be living in the same house with Neilly, and her underpants, and he is having enough trouble with being an adolescent. Neilly, as secure as she seems to be in her social metier, is still a teenager and worries about her boyfriend, her place in the world, and how the people she knows are going to react to her dad's upcoming marriage.

I found this book to be absolutely charming and hysterically funny. Neilly and Declan don't really know much about each other, just the surface things you know about people you are in school in. As they deal with parents who are acting like teenagers themselves, moving in together, sharing bathrooms, they find out how much they have in common and how deeply you can feel for someone else.

There are the attendant problems that come with two teenagers living together, especially one who has such a huge crush on the other. There may be a little too much penis talk for some but it feels very real to me. One of the lines that Declan has is something like, "This is what adolescence is: I have a boner and I want to cry." True enough.

Stupid Fast, by Geoff Herback was also hysterically funny and absolutely heartbreaking. Felton has grown up over the summer-his voice dropped, he got tall, hairy and stupid fast. All of a sudden, he is on the football team and can run really fast. He finally feels that school can be salvaged because he can run which gives him a little more recognition, not all of which is good. Unfortunately, everything seems to conspire against him: his mother has become horribly depressed, his brother won't get out of his pirate outfit, his best friend's moved out of the country, and he's falling for the girl who's moved into his friend's house. It's a summer of revelations and secrets and revelations of secrets.

Felton is as awkward as a teenaged boy can be. He has outgrown himself in bits and pieces and, just as he becomes accustomed to one thing, something else needs a work-around. He is funny and deeply caring about his family, wants to find a place where he belongs, and, in trying to keep his family together begins to fray at the ages.

Stupid Fast is good. Readers will find themselves cheering for Fenton and his little brother, hoping that things will get better. Readers will also find themselves mired in Fenton's life; how do you make things right and just keep going on? I loved how we also see how Fenton's little brother deals with his anxieties, what happens to Fenton as the main character doesn't just happen to him. And I really appreciate that when things get really awful, the kids realize that they are just kids! They need an adult! These kinds of problems aren't something they have the experience to even begin to solve or work through.

Absolutely wonderful reads for a summer day (I'm sure we'll have one, eventually). A little laughter (on the bus snorting and chortling), some teary moments, some AARRGGHH shaking of the book moments when people do stupid things- No sentimentality in these books. Just a good story, well-told.

Notes from the Blender: Age 14 (for the sexual talk). Egmont. Hardcover, $16.99.
Stupid Fast: Age 12 and up. Sourcebooks. Paperback, $9.99.

Libba Bray Rocks!

2011-06-07T09:49:00.000-07:00

Sunrise was at 5:13, sunset will be at 9:04.

Stormy, trees bouncing, rainy, gray. Kind of cool to have autumn weather with summer foliage.

Libba Bray really does just rock! I spent my morning on the stationary bike, just cycling and reading Beauty Queens for almost two hours. Libba Bray as workout guru!

Beauty Queens is very much a Lord of the Flies meets Miss America mash-up and every girl should rush out and buy one. That's pretty much it, the entire story in a nutshell. It's funny, with a great dose of serious and it's pulled off as only Libba can do. A full-on strip down of the media and advertising, and how manipulated we are by it.

A plane load of beauty queen wannabees crash land on a deserted island and have to use every bit of their courage and wiles to survive, forging new friendships, learning how physics works, using their gowns for water filtration units, completely unaware of the machinations back home of the Queen of Beauty Queens and her plot to take over the world. The island is filled with hidden soldiers who are working with TQOBQs on a new weapon using a female mustache remover. Danger comes ever closer when a ship of Bodacious Pirates is shipwrecked on the island, threatening not only to drive the girls apart, but to use them to fill their own dreams of stardom and fame and lust.

And the added feature, two for the price of one, hurry now and we'll send you the glitter filled Lost Ponies, of the book? It is filled with footnotes, I love footnotes. Value added, indeed.*

Beauty Queens does do a righteous job of telling a really fun story while exposing the nasty side of advertising, media, and gender politics. Kind of a velvet glove. Blue velvet, with spangles. Ages 13 and up. Scholastic. Available now. $18.99.

*See also Jonathan Stroud's Amulet of Samarkand series and John Green's An Abundance of Katherines for more great books with clever footnoting.

U2 on a warm Saturday afternoon

2011-06-07T07:58:00.000-07:00

Walking north on first toward Elysian Fields for a beer, Saturday afternoon. Past Safeco where the ball game is in session and is being broadcast out onto the street, across a street that leads toward Qwest field, and suddenly the air is filled with U2's Adam Clayton's deep bass notes. The sound falls to us and thumps in our bellies and I can't help but breathe deeper and stand perfectly still for just a minute. My mood lightens and all I want to do is follow the noise, it beckons me, fishhooks in my brain.

We sat in the bar and had a beer. Outside is the parking lot for Qwest, filled with people waiting to head in for the concert. While we're sitting inside, the bar music is actually playing a U2 song while U2 is warming up with a different song, muddy and warped by the stadium and the walls, but it's U2 and any U2 is good U2. Oh, how I wish I'd thought to get tickets, but there is something really cool about just having been in that place at that time hearing what we heard.

Had The Unwanteds, by Lisa McCann, in my bag, put it on the counter next to my beer (Prometheus IPA, by the way) and did not even open it up. I just sat there, all jumpy and breathy inside my self, silently squealing and squeezing all my muscles tight. Wanting to get up and do big things, the music makes me want to walk with great long strides, swinging my arms, taking up a lot of space as I go.

A visit with Gary Schmidt

2011-06-04T08:41:00.000-07:00

We had the best time with Gary Schmidt on May 15 and 16. He and his family came to the store on Sunday evening and he talked about his writing process and his new book, Okay for Now.

If you don't know, Gary is the author of the award-winning books The Wednesday Wars and Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, and a clutch of other equally wonderful books that you should either buy from us or borrow from your library, school or other. There's a good summer reading list for you! (This photo is of Gary and Judy, our children's book buyer, in The Den.)

Gary completely charmed (and horrified) us all with his descriptions of how and where he writes, and then reading from his book.

He writes in a little shed out back of his house- it has a wood stove, a desk, windows, a typewriter (one that uses paper and RIBBON!), and a dog "for ambience". He types and, when he is unhappy with what he's written, he unrolls it out of the typewriter and then tosses it into the stove. You should have heard the gasps that flew out of the mouths of the audience! People were appalled! Worried! He said something along the lines of: "That's right! There are no copies, no hidden texts, no backups, no bad writing out there to be dredged out of a computer and put out into the world". In our day, everything is photographed and staged, held onto "just in case", parsed and reformed...it is so naughty to think that he just uses his unhappy work as fuel!

He read a piece out of Okay for Now that had most of us angry, furious, with people who take advantage of children, especially those people who are supposed to most love and care for them the most. Okay for Now is an amazing book about a boy dealing with a mostly awful life, a life that could tip one way into despair and growing up into an abusive parent, too, or with the lucky intervention of caring adults and friends, a man who knows how to do what's right.

I got to drive him (!), and his family, to his hotel after the event and it was a joy to hear him talk with and to his kids.

We went to schools the next day and he had the students absolutely riveted with the stories he told. Each ended with a question that pretty much ensured that you wanted to learn more. That point is where stories come from. The photo with the boy in the blue shirt (a library aide for Voyageur Middle School) isn't a good one for showing just exactly how riveted those kids were to his every word.

We sold some books at the schools, not a huge money maker, but the experience the kids had with the author of the books they love, was worth every bit of the time we spent there.

I think we still signed copies of Okay for Now. $16.99.

Lark in the Morning, Alki in the Evening

2011-05-31T09:25:00.000-07:00

Dennis took Friday off and I don't work Fridays so we went for a drive to and a walk in West Seattle. I am really going to have to keep a camera in the car-There's always something I'd like to share with the people I know who never see Seattle the way we who live here every day see it (and then I want them to keep in mind just exactly how many days of cloudy weather we have).

Friday wasn't clear and sunny, there were spots of sunlight but it certainly wasn't warm. We walked around the Junction in West Seattle, stopped in at the record store, and just window shopped. Eventually headed down to Alki beach to walk and watch the sky.

I headed down to the waves to look for sea glass, listening to the burbling of the rocks as the wavelets run up and back, and Dennis walked along the prom and people watched. It was a great day to picnic because you could really get your pick of spots! Lots of tents and sweaters over shorts, bonfires lit, wind whipping sand through the flames, little dogs squinting and crouching as they walked into the wind.

We weren't dressed for rain, we had jackets and scarves but no hats, and we watched this huge rainstorm coming east toward us across the islands and the mountains and the Sound. Sheets of rain falling and then the clouds dissipating as they broke up once passing into the open area of the Sound, so, no rain on this side. Absolutely gorgeous skies. The sun slipped through and lit up the trees on the hillsides, a wet golden wash of color that reminded me of the colors I imagine you'd see in Italy along the sea.

Pretty.

I read a book called Lark, by Tracy Porter, this morning. Picked it up to add it to a pile and opened it, finished it still sitting on our uncomfortable kitchen chairs, elbows on my knees. A small thing, big content, pretty cover, ugly story. Kind of a cool way to trick someone into picking the book up, it wants to be held; it feels good, it fits in a hand just so. It's the story of Lark, a girl who was left to die, tied to a tree, and the story of her best friend and the little girl who sees her spirit.

It is an ugly story: Lark and her best friend have had a fight and haven't spoken for awhile when, on the way home from school, Lark gets into a car and gets killed. She is tied to a tree and left in the cold.

When she dies, her spirit tries to convince her friend and the girl to see her so she can move on. Neither of them understands and won't look at her so she can't leave this plane, and the other trees around her are whispering that she will be imprisoned forever, like them. The two girls finally meet at Lark's house when her mother invites everyone to come and choose something to remind them of her. When they meet, they realize there is something they have to do, as hard as it will be for them to do it.

It's a much better book than this review reveals. It's a tiny book, very short, but such a good book for girls, especially, to read. Lark dies because she is polite and gets into the car because the man has the perfect story to get her inside: His son's in the hospital and he doesn't know where it is. She is so reluctant, she says no, she knows there's something wrong with this, but what if he really does have a son who's in the hospital? What if she keeps him from finding the hospital and the son dies? She gets into the car.

That is the only decision she had to make, get in, stay out, and she made the wrong one. Would boys have gotten into the car? Would the driver have even stopped for a boy? Would a boy even worry about what the driver thought or about the son?

Maybe.

I know my brother didn't grow up worrying about someone's feelings if he said he wouldn't get in the car; I worried that if I didn't smile if someone whistled at me, they wouldn't like me. Now that I'm old, I still think that way. Not so much the whistling, not so much the liking, but the what ifs that come with telling someone no: what if he really is stranded? What if that child really is hurt? What if no one else helps?

I think we need to train our girls to be rude and powerful in themselves. Not physically strong, although that would be good, but able to know that it's okay to walk away, to not engage, to know that no one worth knowing will ever say it was wrong to leave a date, to fight back, to call for a ride home. It's better to be whole and uncomfortable, than dead because they were worried about hurting someone's feelings or want to have that boy still like them after.

I'm glad books like this are being written. It's a quick read, simply written, engaging, and gets to the point quickly- I'm sorry that they need to be written.

A Summer Saturday and Putting Makeup on Dead People

2011-05-28T12:39:00.000-07:00

Sunrise was at 5:19, sunset will be at 8:55 and it's beautiful today, breezy, partly cloudy (that means there's sun!) and the blues are blue, the mountains are out, and the air is full of birdsong and jet engines.

D and I walked to my first boxing fitness class in years this morning. I am going to hurt. but it will be such a good hurt. We walked the route I used to take when I walked to AFK. The houses and gardens are much changed, the demographic has changed, and it was a lovely, quiet, early summer walk. And then I wrapped my hands, grabbed a jump rope and some gloves and proceeded to find out just how truly out of shape I am.

Besides running and ballet, boxing fits my mindset. It's you against you and no one else. No special gear, some wraps, some sweat and a serious need to see if you can do just a little more than last time. The music is good, there were only three men in the group and 6 women, and there was some serious thumping going on. I think my left hook is still pretty good (having hips like mine helps to give the punch a little extra sumpin' sumpin') but I was sucking some major air in no time. It's a good thing we walked home-I needed the half hour to catch my breath!

Read Putting Makeup on Dead People, by Jennifer Violi, yesterday. What a book. It's about a girl whose dad died a few years earlier, everyone in the family is still getting over it. All the major changes happened at the same time: Older brother graduates, she is heading into high school, dad dies. Nothing easy about any of it.

Four years later, just months from graduation to go to the local college to study something she doesn't really want to do, Donna is still grieving her losses, no boyfriend, no close friends, and a classmate dies. While standing in the viewing room and helping the others figure out what they are supposed to do, she has a revelation: She wants to be a mortician. Which, of course, no one understands as her desire to help people traverse the difficulties of burying their friends and family, to help the living to keep living.

When she makes a new friend, Liz, charismatic, funny Liz, she realizes that everyone has begun to leave their paths of least resistance and being the first one out is going to force everyone to look at their lives in new ways.

I absolutely loved this book. It was funny and thought-provoking. It gives people a chance to think about where they are going and how they get there. Even for older readers, it asks about what one brings to a greater world and how that can help you make a living doing it. The one question that stopped me cold for a minute or so was "what do you want to be?" and the answer for our hero was like "amazing and memorable" and the response was something along the lines of "So, how do you get there?" Questions we should ask, probably, all along. As we change and grow up, maybe our views of who we are and what we thought we should be should change.

It was a really good book for teens ages 12 and up. Hyperion. Available now, I think- the galley says July but I think it's on the shelf now.

Still Cold, Spent Time in Never Land

2011-05-25T08:48:00.000-07:00

Sunrise was at 5:21, Sunset will be at 8:52

Cold, wet, gray, up to 60 degrees today, maybe 58. Nights are in the 40s. We leave the windows open, the pillows stay cold, and we cover our heads with the quilt to stay warm.

There are spots of color: bright yellow irises, hot pink whatever-they-ares in the front yard, that chartreuse green of new growth and peas. We have golden hops growing up a trellis, bright blue flowers on a bush, something that starts with a c, that, at the nursery, was COVERED with honeybees, the bush was humming.

The blue blossomed rosemary plant we have had something that I thought were bees but weren't the cozy, round, furry bees holding pollen like saddlebags. They must still be moving pollen, don't you think? Could it just be a different species? We have tons of bumblebees, and tons of bumblebee holes in the hillside and under the rosemary, and they are very cool to watch as they take off and land at the mouths of their tiny caves.

The lilacs lasted a week. When they finally unclenched and opened wide, the scent flooded our yard and street. That day was warm and slightly overcast and the smell was held in the air. And then it rained and they turned brown. They usually bloom at Easter, the bushes look like they are filled with Easter eggs, but they were about a month late this year. Already time to deadhead.

I'm in the middle of three books, Daughter of Smoke and Bone, by Laini Taylor, Queen of Hearts, by Martha Brooks, and Stay, by Deb Caletti but I have to read (and can't wait to start) Wonder Struck, by Brian Selznick. We need to write up a proposal for the publishers to draw him to our store in the fall when he's on tour. Wish me luck!

I also have China Mieville's new book, Embassytown, on the table here. I am so excited about starting that one. Steve from work said he can't read it on the bus, it takes more concentration than that, so I've been reluctant to pick it up until I can read straight through. John Scalzi seems to like it, I like John Scalzi (Old Man's War), so I am really looking forward to this!

I'm also really excited about going to Chop Suey this weekend to hear him talk to Paul Constant between music sets. Nothing better than books and beer. I have ALWAYS loved to read in bars. Max's Tavern in Eugene, wooden booths, hard seats, cold beer, talk all around, music on the boom box and then on stage, and a book. Books, beer and music. I'm not very social but I love being with people as long as they are over there; I love to be a part of the crowd but it's best if there is something between me and them, like a book!

Just finished reading the spin-off novel from the Peter Pan and the Starcatchers books, The Bridge to Never Land, by Ridley Pearson and Dave Barry. It takes place in our world, and the adventure begins when Aidan and Sarah Cooper find a cryptic note that references characters and things in the Starcatcher books.

Things unfold as they should to have an adventure that leads you from your comfortable world to Never Land, and you need to suspend a little disbelief. Eventually Sarah meets Peter and Tinkerbell in a race to save her brother and to keep Ombra from overwhelming the world. It was fun and anyone who's read the others will appreciate this addition to the series. Age 9 and up. Hyperion Books, $18.99. Available in September of 2011. (No cover art available yet, sorry!)

Rosanne Parry: Second Fiddle

2011-05-23T06:46:00.000-07:00

Rosanne Parry came to the store on Sunday afternoon, May 22. It was a nice day, 60 degrees, the farmer's market was in full swing, the air was damp but not rainy.

This was such a fun event. She and her daughters played a little Pachelbel's Canon pre-talk and the audience was filled with family. We changed up the normal way of doing a stage event and circled the chairs around the mike, using monitors on the floor to direct the sound, making the space feel much more intimate.

Rosanne is a YA author from Portland, she has family up here, and her newest book is called Second Fiddle. It's a good book about a trio of girls, friends who play music together in Germany, the children of parents who are in the military. They are rehearsing for a contest in Paris and they think they might win! This will be the last time they play together, their parents are being reassigned, and Jody, our main character, will miss the others greatly. This is the first time she's been in one place long enough to actually make good friends and she is secretly writing a piece of music to honor them.

On their way home from the music master's, very disappointed because he is ill and will be in the hospital so unable to to take them to the contest, they try to figure out how to still make the trip.

While walking around on the "other" side of the Berlin wall, they watch Russian soldiers throw a beaten man into the river to die. Jody jumps into the river and drags him out, applies CPR, and tasting chemicals and oil, watches as he finally takes a breath and vomits. It turns out he had information he was sharing and the other soldiers were teaching him a lesson, probably assuming he would die and the problem would be gone.

Jody and the other girls hide him and give them what they can, deciding to come back in the morning with food and clothes. They get his story the next day: He is an Estonian citizen, forced into the military, and missing his family and country. All he wants to do is go home. And the girls figure that they can still get to the contest and help him get home: He will be the adult they need to register them and they will smuggle him into Paris and then to a Lutheran Church where he may be able to find other Estonian patriots.

That begins a great story of discovery, both of who Jody really is, and of the greater world in general. This is an adventure story for girls, smart girls who are able to figure out what to do and then how to do it.

I loved listening to Rosanne talk about the book and what didn't go into it. Her stories of being a soldier's wife in Germany, the stories told to her about the old German veterans and their naked, drunken runs through the streets (after trading their prosthetic limbs with each other) with an American soldier following behind (also naked, but with his own limbs!), how she decided on this time period. Besides being an amazing time, one that Americans will also know, there weren't cell phones or the internet, so the girls were on their own, pretty much unable to contact anyone. They had to be self-sufficient and figure things out.

It's a great book for libraries and classrooms, it's filled with talking points about differences and samenesses and whether we should we believe everything that people in power tell us. It's a good book for looking at research and why someone needs to do it.

The best thing about these book events is finding out the backstories, for every story or item that makes it into the book, there are tons that are left out - they are often the more interesting ones, the ones that are maybe a little over the top, and this is the only way to find out about those. It's all about the connections between people and their stories and how those stories change us all.

PS: I'll Be There

2011-05-21T09:11:00.001-07:00

Sunrise was at 5:45, sunset will be at 8:27. It's cold, gray and wet. Again. We had a warm day on Friday, not a clear one, but it finally reached the 70's.

I'll Be There, by Holly Goldberg Sloan, is one of my top 5 books of the year. It's got everything you want in a book: adventure, suspense, interesting people, great sibling relationships, romance, horrible and loving adults. AND no supernatural events or beings, the only angels are the human ones we encounter in daily life. It is SO good, and I love the way it was sent out to buyers and booksellers.

And, if I could find my copy -where oh where can it be?- I'd take a picture of it and show it to you!

Like Delirium, I'll Be There had no giveaway info on the galley. Unlike the manuscript for the Delirium, IBT has a brown cover, black type, and at least had the author's and publisher's names on it. A blurb from the editor on the back was the only entreaty to open the book.

I saw it in a box, the plain kraft paper brown cover, the title and author, and thought, "Ooh! What's that?" and then my next thought, "I want that." Judy said it was being highly touted by the pubs and they wanted everyone to know about it and she thought it was really good. (It's hard not to get everything first, anymore. Sigh.) So, I asked if I could read it and she handed it over. I turned it over, looked in and out, asked what's it about? and thought, wow, this is a chance-taking book. This is a book that is going to be only hand-sold to buyers. I didn't see any cover art, didn't know who the author was, no photos, no flap copy. There is nothing like reading something completely blank slate-ish.

It took me a while to become completely caught up in the story; I had a lot of other things I had to read for work, there were blog posts to write, a house to clean. I finally took it with me when I went to do the weekly chores and knew I was going to eat lunch out. Isn't that how you always kickstart a book you aren't sure about? Make it the only thing you take with you when you have to eat or pump gas, walk to work or around the lake?

I started it and was really surprised to read the words "Junction City"- oh, a clue!- she must be acquainted with the northwest, at least Oregon, the Willamette Valley for sure.

And then I got a little farther along, finished lunch, and reached the part where questionable activities happen and I had to put it down. I got scared for the characters- the two brothers who have been stolen by their father and have been on the road, out of school, for 10 years and the older brother is 17, his brother may be autistic, and the boy is worried about being beaten. Enough for me until I know how tense I need to be prepared to be.

Eventually, with reassurance from the rest of the staff, I finished the book and oh, it was good. It may be one of those books that transcends most stories for teens. There isn't much dialogue (128 different characters in the book), it is very movie-ish, lots of scenes where you are living in the character's heads, seeing and hearing what they see, quick moving, well-paced, surprising in a number of ways. I think I was most surprised by the idea that there are probably a lot of families out there who aren't on the grid, don't subscribe to the ordinary ways of the world: school, church, neighborhoods, community. They have withdrawn from the norm for whatever reasons they have.

It's a good book for adults to read, too. Smart, funny, different.

I'm not going to tell you anything about the story itself. You need to read it and have the joy of having it unfold in your head without expectations. You need to meet everyone as they do. mmm. I'm glad that you have it ahead of you to read for the first time.

I'll post a photo of the book when, or if, I ever find my copy of it.

Holly Goldberg Sloan: I'll Be There

2011-05-09T06:53:00.000-07:00

Sunrise was at 5:40, sunset will be at 8:32. Monday, May 9, 2011- School visits.

I'm on my way to a school visit to Aki Kurose Middle School with Holly Goldberg Sloan! Her first book, I'll Be There, is a suspenseful, survival story filled with longing and love. It's the story of two brothers, an abusive father who keeps them on the move, and the girl who discovers them. So GOOD!

A first-time author (a debut author in the parlance) is often difficult to market to schools, to readers, to librarians, but I gave the ARCS to some teachers and they snapped her up (after checking their testing schedules).

.....

Well, Aki's presentations were good.The other one, not so much. How are schools so different in preparing their students for something like this? Both were middle schools, notoriously hard to control, very different demographics, but the south end school was monitored and the expectations of them were much higher than the north end school.

I walked into Aki, a large urban middle school in south Seattle on a really pretty day, no rain, no wind, and the sound of voices led me on up into the Library, a soaring library, all ceilings and windows. Holly was there with her driver, Diane, and Dene, the librarian, was ready to go.

We usually first meet the authors for these events at the places they are scheduled to go. So, we walk in cold, no real ideas about what we're going to see or hear, no ideas about the behaviors of the students, just a great hope that what is about to happen will inspire everyone in the room to at least read the book or, maybe, think about the possibilities of "future".

Holly had these 100 or students in the palms of her her hands. She introduced herself and the book and then started to talk about where she got the idea and how important the small things that happen in your life can be, that those are the things we might should be paying attention to. Her first book, I'll Be There, is built on those small turns in a person's life, whether you should go to that church for the music or the other, whether you should walk your dog past this neighbor or the other, whether your husband should eat that shrimp or even go on that vacation.

Holly is a filmmaker and entertained us with stories of movies and trips into exotic places, made herself loved because her dad designed the tests the kids are taking, talked about the book and her job as a writer, but especially wanted them to pay attention to the things in their lives that may not seem important at the time but could send them in a direction they may never have considered.

I especially liked how the kids meet her as a novelist, but she writes screenplays as her day job. She told them about how if you like to write, it doesn't have to be narrative. There are all kinds of different ways to write and make a living doing it. I'm glad those kids got to hear this from someone who has gone from no work to too much just because writing is writing is writing, you just have to learn the procedures for the differences.

She started writing as a 7th grade journalist (another turning point, first day of school, AP English, fires in the hills, teacher said, let's write about that, investigate, and the single page newspaper became a weekly award-winning event), graduated and went to college to study writing, won an award for a short story she wrote about a man she met on her walks into town, who sat in a lounge chair on the sidewalk, and then went on to write ads and lines for different kinds of things, tires, tacos, and started to write television shows and movies.

Just by the bad luck of an off-shrimp, and a vacation to a far-flung yoga retreat, the lack of any kind of electronic device, and the memory of a story a friend had just told her, she wrote I'll Be There, while she waited out her husband's sickness. Using only paper and a pen.

It's exciting to see how a chance meeting in a school library with someone like Holly could possibly shift the direction a life might take.

I stopped back by the school to talk to Dene and she said that the students were checking the books out and still talking about the visit. YAY! It worked!

2011-05-05T06:49:00.000-07:00

Sunrise 5:46, sunset will be at 8:27

Today's my birthday! Claudia wished me a year full of good wine and books. I am going to start today!

It's cold, wet, and GRAY! The maple catkins are unfolding with that neon shade of green only seen against a sky this color. Yesterday, when it was warm and clear, the birds and bumblebees were swarming them, today, they are hunkered in their nests and caves, waiting for a little dry spell to go out.

The lilacs haven't even started to open, they are usually in full bloom by Easter, but are still in little fists of purple. The tulips, though, are strong and vigorous, and, oddly, run in straight lines across the landscape. We have tall, thick stemmed yellow tulips and sunset colored ones that opened wide showing their throats, some little frilly fuschia ones I don't remember planting. The daffodils are up, the narcissus are all over the yard, and everything smells so good.

I am going to treat myself to a new book, a BOUND one, one I get to buy and haven't yet read, today. I don't know which one, I'm just going to take a little break and find something that speaks to me.

I'll let you know what I find when I post next!

Exposed

2011-04-20T08:50:00.000-07:00

Sunrise was at 6:12, Sunrise will be at 8:06. Old post finally up.

I love looking back at the sunrise/sunset times in past posts, how much earlier the sun comes up between one post and the next. I heard birds chirping at around 5 am and the sky is light then.

Exposed, by Kimberly Marcus, is a book written in poetry. There's something powerful about books written in poetry, there are fewer words so what gets said has to get right to the point, there's no chance to hide ugly things inside a pad of words. They are like winter, bare branches, exposed hillsides, flat skies where everything is available to view.

Exposed is the story of a friendship ruined when one friend charges the other friend's brother with rape. It's a book filled with grief and guilt. Liz is a photographer, happy and good at what she does. Kate is a dancer, light and joyful, and has decided to study history instead of dance. They have been best friends all their lives, sharing their love of their art and each other, until Liz questions Kate about her decisions about her future. A huge fight ensues, Liz goes upstairs to bed, Kate stays on the couch.

In the morning, Liz goes to apologize for what she's said and Kate is gone. When Liz goes to her house, her mom says she sick and in bed. From that moment on, Kate avoids her, she won't talk to her, won't meet her eyes. Time passes and rumors start to fly about what happened between Kate and Liz' brother the night they fought.

What do you do when everything you though you knew about the people close to you twists and begins to change? Who do you believe? How do you deal with the people you still love that now have these shades surrounding them? If it's your best friend's words against your brother's?

There are many books out now about date rape, Mockingbirds, Speak, You Against Me, and it's interesting to note how even the girls, think "Did she really mean no?" It's even more interesting that girls are often too embarrassed or scared to yell out to stop, that they want this to just go away, not realizing that it won't.

It's good that books like these are written; it's good that if a girl gets raped that she knows she's not alone. As women, we need to make sure this topic isn't taboo. It happens to more of us than anyone knows and most of us wonder, "How did that happen to me?"

When do we give a girl the magic words that give her the power to be as tough and strong as the person holding her down? When do we teach them to be rude? When do we show them how to fight back or to know when to just walk away from a situation? Why don't we train girls to believe that they are as important as the person they are with, that their bodies and feelings are theirs alone, and that they can walk away from bad situations. We need to give them the tools to feel good about walking away and being strong enough to do it before we get to the point where we get to tell them what happened wasn't their fault.

In Lovely Bones, if that little girl had not been polite or felt she was going to hurt that man's feelings by going with him, she'd still be alive today.

Blood Red Road, Moira Young

2011-04-07T06:51:00.000-07:00

Sunrise was at 6:27, sunset will be at 7:55.

Muddy sunlight as the sun rises between the Cascades and Rainier. Pac Med glows in peach and the skyscrapers' south sides are the color of sunlight in smog.

Blood Red Road, by Moira Young, is a fabulous book for anyone interested in what the future on our world holds. Saba lives in not so much a dystopian world as an a-topian world, a post-apocalyptic world without government or much of a future for its folks. She and her twin brother, Lugh, were born 18 years ago when there was still plenty of water and small excesses of crops, enough to share if needed. They live on a small holding with a tiny pond with their father and younger sister, Emmi.

When the story starts, Lugh is beginning to chafe against the future he sees for himself and his father seems to be going mad, reading their futures in the mud and sand of the holding. Saba only wants Lugh to stop wanting to leave her and the homestead.

A massive sandstorm moves through on Lugh and Saba's 18th birthdays hiding a violent posse of men on horseback, there to kidnap Lugh, killing their father and leaving Emmi and Saba alone in an uninhabited, unfriendly landscape. Saba can't imagine a life without her twin and decides to leave Emmi with the only other person they know of, a woman living in a hidden valley, the woman who helped deliver the twins but arrived too late to save their mother when Emmi came early. Saba has blamed Emmi for their mother's death ever since, hating her and treating her badly- this is the perfect way to leave her behind and get on with things by herself. However, Emmi loves her brother, too, and there is no way she's going to be left in the valley alone.

The ensuing search for Lugh is one of the most exciting adventure stories I've read in years! Saba and Emmi eventually learn to work together, sharing their skills, as they are arrested, kidnapped, beaten, become part of an underground movement to free an entire town, and fall in love.

Blood Red Road is filled with great characters, humor, and adventure. The world Ms. Young has invented is realistic and scary, like a denuded, dry New Zealand, and Saba is a flawed and sometimes unlikable hero. But, she is strong, dependable, loyal, and has a one track mind, to get to Lugh. The people she meets along the way, especially the women in the prison where she fights other people to the death, join her in her quest to get to Lugh because he has been taken by the man who has kept them imprisoned and impoverished for so long.

I love how the characters grow in the book, they become fully fleshed and learn from all their mistakes as they go. I love how the relationship between Emmi and Saba changes. I'd like to know more about Emmi, all those years of knowing Saba hates her, living without a sister, losing her brother, knowing she's the reason her mother died, raised by a not-so-lucid father, never knowing a world with water or excess, pretty much raising herself and teaching herself warrior skills and the virtues she needs to get along in the world. She's an interesting one. And then there's the crow, Nero. Saba saved Nero as a baby and they have forged a language of their own, Nero able to understand commands and words, and is a force of his own.

Definitely a book for 11 and up, just because of all the gore. I am really hoping there will be more by Moira Young. And I would love to know more about this world. (Simon and Schuster. $17.99. Available in June, 2011.)

short night, it's gonna be a long, long day

2011-04-05T06:56:00.000-07:00

sunrise will be at 6:40, sunset will be at 7:45.

it's quiet at 4 in the morning. few cars out there on i-90, no one walking their dogs, and you wonder what's going on in the houses with lit windows. the radio holds the dulcet tones of BBC reporters. their voices are strange, the news is strange.

i can't sleep and i'm really tired. i woke up hot and sweaty, worried about work, worried about money, worried about everything so i just got up. figured i might as well get a couple of hours of reading in before the day breaks and it all starts over.

i finished nic sheff's we all fall down last night which has left me feeling a little creeped out and weird. it's hard to believe that people can ingest such vast quantities of alcohol and drugs and still be able to function. i get to that third beer on a weekend night and that's it for me; i'm pretty thankful i can read my personal warning signals.

he's coming by the store to do a "drop-by", an on-the-run stock signing. he's not speaking at our store so this gives us a chance to meet him, get some books signed, and offer local educators and counselors a moment with him. he's got some powerful things to say, he's got experiences that most of us will never have, stuff that could change lives in ways we will never know.

drug use is such a private thing that when someone steps up and says, i do it, i did it, you do, too, what do i know that will help you, giving you the chance to tell your story, to share such a moment is life-changing. knowing you aren't the only one is a powerful thing.

as hard as his books are to read, as wickedly brutal and train-wreck-like as they are, they are important to have available to the people who need them, when they need them. they are, of course, full of drug use, full of sex, full of lies; reading along, you can see how he lies to himself, justifying what he does. As much talk of sex as there is, it isn't pretty or prurient - it's ugly and torturous, it's sex, not love, even though the word love is used to describe it. all part of the lie.

fascinating, horrible, icky, anyone who has ever known anyone living a life like this will find themselves more empathetic, more forgiving, after the reading than before. definitely a book for older teens, unless you are a user or know a user. if you are or do, you need to know what that life is like. (Little Brown. $17.99. available now.)

Close to Famous

2011-03-29T07:24:00.000-07:00

Sunrise was at 6:54, sunset will be at 7:35.

Wet, gray, the maple tree is covered in moss and the sidewalks are lined in green. There's supposed to be another major rain storm coming through and avalanche warnings are in effect in the mountains.

There've been gorgeous sunsets, though, a last little hurrah before the end of otherwise monochromatic days, gold shot through with pink and aqua shining through a gap between the clouds and the Olympics.

I have a wicked headache and my hands are tingling and numb with carpal tunnel problems. I've thrown a load of laundry in and am thinking about throwing something into the slow cooker but I really just want to go back to bed and cocoon.

I've been reading a lot lately (okay, I read a lot anyway-) for a book awards committee and for the store's spring kid's book talk. We are having a book talk on Thursday night and I read the books that I want to talk about 6 months ago at least. So I've been re-reading and I have to say that they still stand up to a second time through. I finished Piper's Son yesterday with tears, laughter, and a deep desire to re-read everything else Melina Marchetta has written (and since I have her entire oeuvre on my shelves, not hard to do). People are complicated animals and PS shows just how much we only see the world as how it relates to us.

Great book, great characters, not just for teens with its complex adult relationships weaving through the younger people's relationships. Tom is our "hero", a boy whose family is messy at best. A beloved uncle and brother dies, the best one of them all, and the family falls apart, leaving all the unanswered questions of their lives raw and dangling. Grief overwhelms them and they don't deal with it well. And I love that. I love that they grieve so loudly and don't really know that's what they're doing. I love their friends, who are grieving, too, and aren't allowed to show it. I love how deeply depressed Tom is and what a total shit he is about everything. It's just so real. They all have to face their demons and figure out how they're going to climb up out of the pit.

It's REALLY good and you should read Saving Francesca, too. Read it first, if you can, just because you'll have a little better idea as to why these people do and say what they do. Oh, and it takes place in Australia. What more do you need? 14 and up. (Candlewick. Available now.)

I also re-read Close to Famous on my home (I love riding the bus). This is Joan Bauer's newest venture and, yes, it was also really good. It's written for a much younger demographic, and showcases her ability to come up with characters who deal with adversity well, often making lemonade out of those lemons life gives them.

Foster has big plans. She wants to be the first teen to have her own cooking show on the Food Network. She bakes the most amazing goods, muffins and cupcakes that can find the piece of your heart that needs healing. But when she and her mom have to leave Memphis to get away from a man who's turned violent, they end up in little Culpepper. No job, no money, they are given a trailer to stay in and decide to try and make the best of it. Culpepper is a town in transition, a prison has been built and inmates are interred, but the promise of shopping locally and hiring locals has not been honored and the town is dying, but Foster and her mom are nothing if not resourceful.

Foster bakes up some muffins and cupcakes and takes them to the local restaurant, Angry Wayne's, and gets the very reluctant okay to sell her goods there and her mom gets a job in the local hardware store. Things seem to be going along okay, until Huck, the man they are running from, finds them.

Foster is a wonderful character, upbeat, happy, strong in her convictions, well-loved, high self-esteem (and when was the last time the main character in a book was okay with herself?), and flawed. She can't read and has taken great pains to hide that from everyone. Until she meets someone who has been through the same thing and is willing to help her learn to read.

I loved this book. It's full of good people willing to help others, great characters who love each other, high ideals, good recipes and people who know that with work they can achieve their dreams. I can't wait to hand it to someone else to read, knowing that they'll be smiling when they are done, too. Age 9 and up. (Viking. $16.99. Available now.)

Piper's Son, One Crazy Summer

2011-03-26T08:47:00.000-07:00

Sunrise at 7 am, sunset at 7:30 pm, and what a beauty it was.

Completely different day out there today. Cool. Gray. Wet. Lots of little popcorn birds zipping through the blackberry bushes and the lilacs, hanging from the branches in no particular direction, upside down, sideways, they are tiny and bounce through the air, they fly in scallops.

My neighborhood isn't a pretty one, it's on the edge of I-90, we consider it a pass through neighborhood: most everybody who comes up our street is using it as a shortcut to the other major streets leading somewhere else. It is full of old houses and poor people, blackberries and big, old trees. It's also full of younger families, not very many children, and artists. It has a few remnants of the old orchards left behind by the Italian families who lived here when this area was called Garlic Gulch. There are some mad gardeners in the neighborhood, a couple of musicians, and a very few teenagers whose families all moved in around the same time we did.

My favorite part of all of this neighborhood is Davis Street. Our kitchen window looks out on this one block piece of the two block long Davis. It is a short street, low street lighting, amazing gardens, lots of artfully designed houses, chickens, a horse, once, and people who walk and play on the street. It is covered by trees that keep it cool all summer and the snow looks like butter in the winter lights, lots of birdhouses and feeders, a couple of nature habitat houses with plaques and everything.

It is a joy to walk on the street in every season: The daphne is wafting its siren scents, the lilacs are just beginning to leaf out, light green lace against the darker cedar greens, pink magnolias and cherry trees like tutus. In the fall, leaves are bunched up against the curb, the sound of rakes along the street, people gather the leaves for their gardens, the people who grill all year long now light their outdoor fireplaces, and the rain runs down our hillside like a river, you can hear it go. The trees almost touch overhead in the summer and everyone is out and working on their cars and yards, and in the winter, the bare bones of the land are exposed. Skeleton trees, brown grass, mud in the easements.

But the best thing is how many people say, "Hey!" when you see them. They let you into the conversation, lend you their tools, help clean up your part of the street if you can't get out to do it. I have gone out to rake up the corner, clean out the drains, and gotten into hour long conversations about what to plant where in the heat and sun. Our street isn't very long, there aren't a lot of people on it, but we can pretty much recognize everyone and that's kind of rare and wondrous.

Anyway. This post started as a view from the window. The lilacs are starting to leaf out, the maple has red leaf buds at the tip of each branch. The magnolias across the street are in bloom and so beautiful, the easements in front of Sheila's house are full of green and cool plants and the garden plot in the yard across is a deep, warm brown.

Reading One Crazy Summer, by Rita Williams-Garcia and re-reading Piper's Son, by Melina Marchetta.

OCS is a look at the summer three African-American girls spend with their estranged mother in Oakland. She is working with the Black Panthers and the girls aren't to know what's going on.

Piper's Son is a coming of age novel, a companion to Saving Francesca, and is FAB-ulous. Great story about family, loss, grief and love.

Origami Yoda and a Spring Day

2011-03-25T08:51:00.000-07:00

Sunrise was at 7:02, sunset will be at 7:29.

What a day, huh? I straightened the house, made the bed, put my clothes away, waiting for the end of Friday morning's KUOW show, getting ready to do the week's shopping and to take my Friday walk around Seward Park since the sky is blue, the sun is warm, and I have a full tank of gas.

I parked at the edge of the park, taking The Strange Case of Origami Yoda, by Tom Angleberger, with me for the walk. It was slightly cool, the air full of the sound of ducks, geese and seagulls. I could hear the gravelly, sandy sounding redwing blackbirds in the cattails across the water, no beaver but lots of turtles sunning on the beaver's nest, glinting dully in the light, like little helmets. There was a single turtle slowly moving under the skin of the lake, nose like a little periscope the only above-water piece of turtle. It didn't seem to swim; maybe pulled along by the movement out of the bay? Tides? The locks opening and closing? A pair of duck swim over it, frightening it lower in the water.

There was a cry in the trees I haven't heard before. I saw a big bird walking along a branch but have no idea what it was. I know what I wanted it to be! Lots of young kids and nannies, enjoying the afternoon of sun before the weather changes and the clouds, rain, and wind roll back in. The inside of my car was warm and I wanted a nap.

The Strange Case of Origami Yoda was really fun. A boy, a boy no one really likes, folds a piece of origami into the shape of Yoda and wears it on his finger. As kids ask the Yoda questions, he, using Dwight's voice, Dwight is channeling Yoda's wisdom, gives advice that inevitably the best possible advice that could be given. Is it true? Can the origami Yoda be real? Dwight has never been known for his ability to put two thoughts together that make sense. He also swears that he doesn't know how Yoda does it! It just happens. Tommy, our narrator, needs to know how it all works before he takes the Yoda's advice about something very important about a girl.

It's fun and funny, a light-hearted little thing perfect for the beginnings of romance. I loved how it ended, Dwight finally comes into his own, and everyone learns a little more about tolerance and difference. Ages 9 and up. (Amulet. Available now. 12.95.)

2011-03-20T05:58:00.001-07:00

Sunrise will be at 7:13, sunset will be at 7:22.

Happy Spring!

The days will start getting longer now and what a beautiful day we had yesterday. I am sitting in the dark in the kitchen, watching the moon, the Supermoon, over Beacon Hill, as it begins to set.

It was supposed to be gloomy yesterday and we woke to sun, partially cloudy skies, and warmth; the daffodils are starting to bloom, the lilacs are just starting to leaf out, and my mangy little daphne has a few blossoms that are sending out the most exquisite citrussy scents.

Dennis and I walked around Seward Park and we saw a beaver on its nest of sticks built up against the swimming dock in Andrews Bay! I have never seen a beaver before- it was a glorious shiny brown, a block of reddish brown against its den of gray bark, and it was surrounded by those dark grey, long-necked birds that stand on poles with their wings out.

The air was redolent with wet dirt and warm pine needles, the grass swampy with puddles.

We came home, opened all the windows, and took our afternoon naps (D likes to sleep in a bed, I like to sit in my big chair and read in sunspots). Dennis grilled, we ate, and before I went to bed, I walked up the street and watched the moon rise, the closest the moon has been to the earth since 1993. Only 221, 553 miles away, a worm moon. and it won't be this close again until 2029. One of those celestial things that connects us to the rest of the world.

I'm so glad it didn't rain and stay cloudy.

Oh, I'm reading Melissa Marr's newest book, one for adults, called Graveminder. It's good.

PS: I took the photo from the newspaper-it is shot over the super telescopes in Hawaii.

Mark Teague and Ike visit Seattle

2011-03-15T08:33:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I had the distinct pleasure of following Mark Teague to three different schools while he presented his new book to hundreds of avid children.

This is one of the joys of working in a bookstore, working with children and the authors they love, working with the teachers, librarians and parents who are all committed to making the kids in their lives literate and widely read. We may not make huge sales (note to self: remember that the first weeks in the Seattle schools is Book Fair week!), but the "ooh"s and excited chatter that erupt when the first story is read, the familiarity of meeting a new book in a series, makes it all worthwhile.

There were a couple of good sized groups in yesterday's meetings and I loved that Mark involved the teachers sitting along the sides of the gyms; the behavior watchers became part of the story and the event by holding copies of the book so everyone could see without having to always look up front at the book being held by Mark. It is a good way to make everyone a guest at the party.

Mark has great control over his crowds. He laid out the rules before he got started ("If you have a question, raise your hand, and stay quiet so we can hear the question") and the kids, pretty much, followed along.

There was one open-ended question, "do you and your brothers and sisters squabble like that?", that provoked some amazingly intense discussion among the first, second, and third graders at Echo Lake Elementary School. The rise of chatter, like an entire rookery of crows calling, completely overwhelmed the hissing ssshhhs of the adults, and not one child noticed the upraised hand signal with the middle fingers closed tightly on the thumb signifying closed mouths. They had things to say and they were important! Each one of those kids had been victim to someone not letting them look out the other window, or the radio is on her side, or fingers walked over the duct tape separating them ("MOOOOMM! He's on my side!"). I sense a class in narrative non-fiction coming.

And, OH! when you are lucky enough to have an author in attendance who also illustrates the books! Every single child in every school was absolutely silent when Mark put his pen to the page. There was a little movement, a little susurration, while he explained how he decided where to start drawing, that he needs to know where on the page the action takes place before he gets started (he starts at the top, works his way down the page). But, the moment he put the black pen to the paper, at the top, little triangles and a brushy line, it was absolutely quiet. Until he said, "Do you know what this is?" "EARS!!!" Turning back to the easel, he lifts his pen and, brandishing it like a baton, the voices calm and then disappear, as he starts the next few lines to complete the drawing of Ike, the hero of the Mrs. LaRue books. He finishes, and capping the pen like a little bow, the school erupts in applause and whistles.

Questions next, pretty good ones, too. When did you start writing? About your age, dictating stories to Mom, drawing the pictures, then stapling the pages together. Where do you get your names? Keep a journal, write interesting names down, sometimes the names suggest what that character will be like. How do you make every drawing of Ike the same? Practice, practice, practice, I draw him over and over until it's right. One of the teachers asked, "How often do you rewrite your stories?" Over and over until it's right. "It could take 10 times?" I re-write until it's right, sometimes it takes a lot of rewriting until every word is right.

I love that authors tell kids that what they see in the book doesn't just happen, quick, like a finger-snap, that they work really hard, writing, sending it to an editor, rewriting, sending it away again, getting it back and working on it again. Maybe having to throw what may be your best words out because they don't work as well as others in this story. It validates the teacher and let's kids feel good about having to rewrite their own work. I can hear them now, "Even Mark Teague had to re-write his stories. And then he had to send it away! You can work on your story and have it back right now!"

Anyway, the long lasting effects of having an author visit a school are many and varied. For some, it's a chance just for a break in the classroom routine, for others, it can be inspiring to see a grown-up making a living doing something that looks like fun. Some kids get teased for writing or drawing and this is validation for them. Some children find a soul mate in the author, some find solace in the words. All of them are affected in one way or the other by being read to or talked to, encouraged to try a book they may not ever have wanted to pick up, changed by the experience, no matter their ages.

Can you see the absolute concentration in these boys as they watch Mark write their names in the books they love? They are watching him draw a little tiny Ike next to their names. They will never forget this.

books for dreary days

2011-02-23T07:49:00.000-08:00

Sunrise today was at 6:35, sunset will be at 6:06. Wet, dreary, gray.

So, when you're stuck at home and the landscape outside is strange and unearthly, retellings of fairy tales can be a good distraction. Three of the current offerings on my desk are Noah Barleywater Runs Away, by John Boyne; Sweetly, by Jackson Peirce; and The Search for WondLa, by Tony DiTerlizzi, not really a tale-retelling but it has that feeling.

Retold fairytales are seductive to me; it feels as if each new story helps to unveil the secrets as to where and why these stories were originally told. I love reading how other tellers of the tale understand and explain that world, taking us back to the kernel of story and lesson.

The Search for WondLa has been out for a while and it really is a wonderful book. It's the story of Eva Nine, a little girl who has lived underground her entire life. She is 12 years old and has lived only with Muthr, a robot who cares for her. When her home is invaded and destroyed by a huntsman, she must escape to the surface to survive. Eva and Muthr, and a cast of characters that will capture your heart, embark on a journey to find WondLa. Eva holds a single clue that could explain why she is the only human being on the surface of an alien planet, a picture of a girl, a robot and a human holding hands, with the word WondLa written on it.

The Search for WondLa is a great deal of fun, very exciting, adventurous, and the artwork is amazing, as you'd expect from the illustrator of the Spiderwick Chronicles. I read the advanced reading copy so the art isn't complete or in color but the few pieces included are still pretty cool. There is "expanded" (no, wait: Augmented Reality with sound) art on the author's website. If you have a child who likes epic-y big books, this is the one for you. It's big and thick and is the first in a series. It's very much a book to capture your attention and keep you enthralled for hours. Age 9 and up. (Simon and Schuster. 17.99. Available now.)

Sweetly, by Jackson Peirce, is a loose Hansel and Gretel retelling. The author also wrote Sisters Red, which I really liked, based on the Red Riding Hood tale. Gretchen was a twin but her sister was wrenched out of their lives by a monster when they were children. Ever since, Gretchen and Ansel, her brother, have felt that the woods are watching them, waiting for them to make a mistake. When their stepmother throws them out when they are teenagers, they end up living with a candy maker, Sophia, in a little comfortable southern town. Sophia's candies are magical, and she teaches Gretchen her trade. All is wonderful and good, until the local girls start to go missing. Creepy, a little odd, romantic...A good crossover book (crossovers are books that teens and adults can share). (Little Brown. $17.99. Available June, '11.)

My friend Mary Jane Beaufrand absolutely loved this next book so of course I had to read it. No one at work had one; I thought I'd have to ask MJ to borrow it! And she borrowed it from someone else-I never have to borrow books from people (and I certainly didn't want to wait until it showed up at the store)! Thankfully, it was one of the books I found in the ABA Winter Institute galley room (I know, can you imagine? A whole room stacked with new galleys. How on earth do you choose? Why choose?) and one of the few I took with me for the plane trip back home. Noah Barleywater Runs Away, by John Boyne, the author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.

I love the cover of this book, browns, yellows, a tree with stars hanging and an empty pair of tennis shoes at the foot of the tree. Kind of eerie in a dream-world kind of way. The art, line art in spots throughout, is by our friend Oliver Jeffers, author/illustrator of Lost and Found.

Noah Barleywater is 8 years old and his problems are overwhelming. So he runs away, through the woods and into the great wide world. Along the way, he encounters moving trees and people who chase him for assaulting the apple tree by taking its apples, and into an extraordinary toy shop filled with magic and a toymaker who has an amazing story to tell. Noah's journey leads him to a man whose story shows him that home is always with you and that regret shouldn't be a word in a life's vocabulary.

Noah Barleywater Runs Away is beautifully written, quite dreamy, and one of those books that makes you feel longing for something. I don't know for what, just longing. Age 9 and up. (Random House. $16.99. Available May, 2011.)

Nebula Award Nominees announced

2011-02-22T07:57:00.000-08:00

Sunrise was at 7:03, sunset will be at 5:43.

There was blue light coming through the crack in the curtains when the alarm went off and it wasn't yet 6 am. Took the car in and the sun was up and the birds were loud. The rain froze to the windshield and the cover over the daphne plant was crunchy. There are tulip, daffodil and crocus leaves coming up through all the old leaves. Don't you love when the bulb leaves come up actually through the leaf, right through it? They must grow so slowly that they, atom by atom, push the leaf cells apart and insert themselves in the open part. The neighbors' daphne plant is sending out the first scents of spring, wafting out over their fence and down the hill. mmmm, bright and citrus-y.

I read Marsbound and Starbound over the weekend-LOVED Marsbound and couldn't wait to read Starbound so went to Elliott Bay to buy it. I don't regret having read it, but it wasn't my favorite book by any means. It was disjointed and I had to keep thinking about who was speaking and I so liked the main character in MB...I really just wanted more of her. There will be a third, which I wish was available already- the end of SB has quite the little cliffhanger. When I checked Joe Haldeman's site, he said he was working on Earthbound. It may be two years before it's done! Aarggh!

Then I had to see about John Scalzi's next book and went to his website and had a very pleasant time reading his blog: whatever.scalzi.com. And today he has a link to the Nebula Award Nominees for 2011. Here are the Young Adult Nominees, The Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy, I am so excited to know about these now! Can't wait to read them all:

Ship Breaker, Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown)
White Cat, Holly Black (McElderry)
Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins (Scholastic Press; Scholastic UK)
Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword, Barry Deutsch (Amulet)
Boy From Ilysies, Pearl North (Tor Teen)
I Shall Wear Midnight, Terry Pratchett (Gollancz; Harper)
Conspiracy of Kings, Megan Whalen Turner (Greenwillow)
Behemoth, Scott Westerfeld (Simon Pulse; Simon & Schuster UK)

Oh, and these are the nominated adult novels:

Native Star M.K. Hobson (Spectra)
Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit UK; Orbit US)
Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)
Echo, Jack McDevitt (Ace)
Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okarafor (DAW)
Blackout/All Clear, Connie Willis (Spectra)

Now, that's a LIST! If you like science fiction and fantasy, add the Hugo Award nominees (the deadline for nominations is March 26, 2011) and you have a season's worth of reading all taken care of.

Great Science Fiction and Angry Young Man

2011-02-19T18:11:00.000-08:00

The sun rose at 7:07, and brilliant orange of sunset was at 540

I read Marsbound, by Joe Haldeman, after I got home yesterday and was quite peeved that I didn't think far enough ahead to buy Starbound just in case I finished it. So, we walked to Elliott Bay Bookstore and went shopping. Saw Jamil and took in the scene that is Elliott Bay.

We walked down to the Melrose Market (obviously on Melrose Street) and fell completely in love with the rough-hewn loveliness that holds a butcher shop, sandwich shop, flowers, wine and cheese. It was packed! and we took complete advantage of the different offerings they had. There are cheese classes, home-made soups, brunch in a wonderful terrarium-like room where you can watch the cooks make your food. And it smelled so good, like rosemary and mint, exotic spices from the butcher's counter.

Such a be-yoo-ti-ful day. Blue skies, sunny, and COLD and WINDY! We didn't even break a sweat walking all those miles. I think we're going to make these long neighborhood walks on Saturdays a tradition. We've been to the Pike/Pine neighborhood twice, I know, it sounds like we've never lived on Capitol Hill, but there is so much to see and eat and drink there. How can you take it all in in two hours-long walks?

It is going to be a clear and star-filled night tonight, in the mid-20's, I'm going to go out and cover the daphne again. The poor thing looks awful.

I read Angry Young Man, by Chris Lynch, another author whose books I will read without even looking at the blurb. His books are often about young men on the edge of violence, the edges of society, difficult books to read about people who have done some awful things or who have had awful things to them. That having been said, he has also written some hysterically funny books about growing up and living with the choices that are made.

Angry Young Man is the story of two brothers, Robert, our narrator, the older brother of Xan, a misfit with a good heart, different enough to not have a comfortable place in the world. Xan's sense of justice runs high, he doesn't really have the ability to see two sides of an argument and he's worried that people can see into his soul by looking in his eyes.

Robert is in college and has a job, not enough to leave home, though; his life is hard but it's working out. When things start to get really rough at home, more bills than money, Xan is asked to get a job, too. Unfortunately, things don't go well and his behavior begins to get more and more extreme. When it looks like Xan may resort to violence to set things right, Robert has to figure out how to save him.

I love the relationship between the brothers, I love that the mom is flawed and has done the very best she could have done under the circumstances. I love the relationship between the brothers and the mom. It's a book that illustrates how quickly things can go pear-shaped and how hard they are to fix when it happens.

It's a small book, a quick read, but very good. Ages 12 and up. (Simon and Schuster. Available now. $16.99.)

books, books, boxes of books (long post for a car full of all those words)

2011-02-18T17:53:00.000-08:00

Sunrise, 7:08, sunset 5:39.

It's Friday once again and what a great day. For one thing, it's not raining. There is light in the sky and it isn't freezing. The other good thing was getting up and delivering boxes and boxes of books to schools that REALLY need them. I am on the board of the Northwest Literacy Foundation and we have a program called Fill the Shelves. We delivered 20 or so boxes to 6 different schools, schools that have lost all or almost all of their funding for books and their libraries. We choose these schools based on the percentage of children who receive free or reduced lunches.

The look on the faces of the librarians and the kids when we rolled the handtruck into the libary was pretty amazing. Some cried, most laughed, the buzz in the libraries when we walked in was intense. We'd put the boxes on the counters and then let the kids open them up and look at what was inside. By the time the kids get back from their winter break, most of the books should be catalogued and ready to be checked out. The kids who helped with the book opening all got a post-it note and a pen and dibs on the book they most wanted to read first.

One of the classrooms was in the middle of the RIF book distribution, selecting a (free) book and
then putting their names inside. One little boy kept asking, with a very sweet emphasis on the word "book" (booook, pronounced like Luke), I can read this book every day? Every day I can get to read this book? and the librarian, Pat Bliquez of Roxhill Elementary, said, Yes, it's yours forever! You can read it forever! He really got the idea of forever and the joy flowing from his little first grade heart was palpable.

The single middle school we went to, Chinook Middle School in the Highline School District, was in the middle of class change, high movement, lots of noise, and Carolyn Rancour reminded us to stay alert in case we didn't get to the library before getting embroiled in the hallway world of middle school. Her library was filled with computers and books. The computers were lent her from other classrooms so the kids would be able to work together in labs or in groups. She found the space for them by searching through the stacks for old history, science, social studies books, books long out of print, now filled with misinformation. One book she told us about was published in 1962. We hadn't even made it to the moon. John F. Kennedy was still president. The Beatles hadn't yet come to America.

Her new books will be helpful in correcting some of that old information: there is no Soviet Union.

Concord International School in South Park is filled with different languages, many of which I couldn't recognize. The signs are in English, Spanish, Vietnamese...All the kids were in pajamas, obviously it was Pajama Day, the last day in school before Winter break. The first graders in Mindy Terr's library that day got to ride up in the elevator in shifts, each chaperoned by the adults, two of whom were our younger delivery people, Elizabeth and Riley. You forget how exciting riding in an elevator can be for little kids and how very open they are. John Odland and I learned that you should never get in an elevator with anything that could catch on fire because then you could have a fire in the elevator. Someone really learned her lesson about fire safety.

Mindy's students gathered around the books and each one found one they really wanted to read and headed to the little reading area, settling in and reading out loud to each other. I don't think ANY of them were listening to each other, they were just sharing everything, laughing, getting up and showing their friends what they were reading, and then going back to their chairs.

Our first delivery was quiet, school hadn't yet started but this school, Muir, is near Franklin High School, one of the schools that consistently comes in the top places in the Global Reading Challenge. Their librarian, Steve Marsh, is tireless in getting kids who may not speak English at home, literate and at or above grade level before they leave him.

(All the elementary schools are participating in the Global Reading Challenge. Briefly, it is a contest involving books and facts about each one. Each school's 4th and 5th graders will read ten books and then do a Quiz Bowl type trivia test. The school with the most points goes home with the trophy to compete against schools in British Columbia. Northwest Literacy is one of the groups that funds the program.)

Mary Manzin, at Emerson Elementary in Rainier Beach, had only a couple of kids in the room, one in a suit, ready to move on to perform in an assembly but books have an amazing lure for children at this age. Well, for kids of all ages, actually. Mary's assistant was like a bee in a flower bed, touching the boxes, walking around us, getting closer, moving away.

Marcia Kauzlarich at Madrona Elementary in Highline was in the middle of Free Day, the kids had had perfect behavior for 5 weeks (!) and got to choose what they wanted to do. They seriously gave up the games and puzzles they were involved in to be some of the first people in the school to handle books only a few people have touched before. BRAND NEW BOOKS! Again, each of those students immediately found at least one book they "Really have to have it NOW! Can we have this NOW?"

Yeah, I love this. Seeing the progression of literacy, from the tiniest first graders sounding out the words they don't know, the third graders secure enough now in their reading to choose something to read that they haven't had any contact with before, to the great, big middle schoolers who, because they got the right book in their hands, may go onto college or at least have a life filled with beauty and interest.

These librarians, too, are faced with huge obstacles in their schools. There are 80 different languages spoken in the schools in Rainier Beach. There are more than 240 dialects spoken in the Highline School District. They are poorer schools, mostly filled with kids from poorer families. They don't own many books, so the books they can borrow from the library not only change their lives, they change the whole family as they come home for a week or two. Kids read the books to their parents who may not speak any English, thus passing what they learn on to others.

And you know the librarians at EVERY school, not just these few, are dedicated to the kids in their schools and to their lives of literacy, all the forms of literacy. They work long hours, they know every child, every need, make decorations and run math labs. The excitement in each of these libraries was amazing. Every single one of these librarians seemed to be vibrating, their minds ahead of their bodies, they were answering questions and handing out pens, solving problems, catching someone's eyes, and still paying attention to the 4 people who came and interrupted the day.

Look at these classrooms, they are vibrant, bright, connected, filled with laughter and words. What wonderful places to be.

If you are ever looking to donate some money to a good group, think of The Northwest Literacy Foundation. 21 years in existence, it has given thousands and thousands of dollars worth of books to schools in need. It is completely run by volunteers, has no office space, every penny goes to buying books for schools, using a locally owned, independent bookstore for the sales. It is a truly worthy place to give money.

Paul Doiron, Marie Lu: Trespasser and Legend

2011-02-12T17:56:00.000-08:00

Sunrise at 71:9 , sunset at 5:29. Stormy tonight, windy and rainy. The sun's going down and there is a strip of clear, lemony light between the Olympics and the rest of the sky. The lights have been flickering and the radio's done that static-y thing that scares the bird. The rain is pummeling the windows.

It's been a long couple of reading days and night. Yesterday was the first day of my weekend, tomorrow's the first day of the next week.

I got up early and took D to the doctor and then to work; I love the drive back down Rainier Avenue South toward home, anchored in the way, way south by Mount Rainier. Every so often, mostly when the air is clear, I can feel the gravitational pull of having something that big at the southern horizon. It is the horizon.

Once, years ago, my friend Jo and I got off the bus in Banff, long before daylight, probably around 4 am, and spent the hours waiting for morning just wandering around looking in windows and deciding where to eat when things opened up. Just as the sky began to lighten, I got really dizzy. It felt like I was walking with a decided lean. When we could finally actually discern the difference between the sky and everything else, I realized that I must have felt the absolute massiveness of the mountain that loomed over the place we were in. It felt like the world had tipped a bit, the mountain was so big and straight up that, even though I thought I was standing upright, I was actually leaning at a slight angle to make the sidewalk seem flat. Bizarre. I think that was the first time that I realized that mass has pull.

I read off and on all day yesterday. It was a good day. I watched the Food Channel (Jamie Oliver is my very FAVORITE!), surfed through old photos, and read.

I absolutely loved Paul Doiron's next book in his series about Mike Bowditch, Maine State Game Warden, Trespasser. Trespasser is about a young game warden dealing with all the crap of trying to hold a relationship together while investigating the disappearance of a woman who hit a deer and then left her car. Great descriptions of the Maine woods in the middle of winter, great descriptions of the Maine folk who live on the edges of those woods and on the edges of society.

The first book in the series is The Poacher's Son. It is still only in hardcover (and well worth the money, in my opinion) but will be available in paper in April, 2011. Trespasser will be out in June. (Minotaur Books. $24.99)

I got to meet Paul at an author dinner here in Seattle last year. Good food, good company, good wine, good book, and then he wolf howled on the corner of 4th and Virginia. Absolutely fabulous night.

I finished Trespasser at midnight and was still not too sleepy so, quietly and with great stealth since every floor in our house squeaks, went into the next room to rummage through the stash of Winter Institute books that I have squirreled away. I found Legend, by Marie Lu.

Legend is a huge deal at Penguin. They rushed out a Special ABA Winter Institute Edition, bound in shiny black paper, with an exciting paragraph on the cover. Sometimes you have to kind of laugh about the serious discussions that people have about the books they are selling us. As booksellers, we hear SO many intense descriptions about certain kinds of books that they all begin to sound alike. And right now, anything that is in anyway about the future world, and not a particularly nice view of the world, is described as a little like Hunger Games, but with a twist. It isn't a very good way to get started with a book that should be read with new eyes.

It is a really good book; great characters, great themes, not so much a utopia gone wrong as a world in decline. It's the story of Day, a boy with issues, smart, caring, and worried about the health of his family. He's also on the run, the government's been looking for him, as he's been taking from the rich and giving to the poor. He's also supposed to be dead. Most of the poor have different versions of plague and he's been secretly stealing money and medicine to help his family.

It's also about June, a wealthy 15 year-old girl who has perfect scores, the highest scores on the youngest person ever allowed to join the military. Her brother has been training her to be the best officer ever, and it seems that most of their time is spent checking to see who hast he plague and looking for Day.

One fateful night, June and Day's worlds collide and their lives will never be the same.

Great read for everyone. It's exciting, well-written, sad and hopeful. I am really looking forward to telling everyone about it when it's published in NOVEMBER! AND it has to be a series because there are certain things in the story that aren't resolved. It ends in such a way that it could be finished, but I hope it does go on! Age 11 and up. (Penguin. Due November '11. $17.99.)

Books, Ideas, Life

2011-02-09T08:50:00.000-08:00

Nancy Pearl and Steve Sher talking about books and big ideas on KUOW. What books changed your life, your way of thinking, and Nancy mentioned the tv show Eyes of Veronica Mars, it sounds like she really likes the show. And she should! As the pre-eminent librarian in the world today, she recognizes good writing when she hears it!

Rob Thomas is the writer of Eyes of Veronica Mars and the author of some extraordinary teen books: Rats Saw God, Slave Day, and Doing Time. His others are alright but, come on, Rob. Even a fan like myself can't champion those!

Anyway, the books that I love and still think should be at the top of most teen reading lists are the above. Books that deal with self-discovery, stepping into someone else's shoes, how your actions change the world...I think we book sellers of teen lit need to bring these books back into the canon. If you haven't read them, do. If you have, order a couple for the shelf and make them the ones you go to first. They, as far as I can remember, aren't dated, they are funny, they will make the reader re-think their everyday actions and thoughts.

Rats Saw God is the story of a boy who is in detention and has to write about how and why he got there. Along the way it becomes much more than just an assignment.

Slave Day is reminiscent of Glee, now that Glee is in the world. Slave Day is just that: A fundraiser for the school, slaves are auctioned and bought, much horror and insightfulness ensues.

Doing Time is a collection of inter-connected stories, all about people doing their 200 hours of community service. The story about the girl and volunteering at the vet's....

Okay, if you read any of these, will you let me know what you think? Rob has stopped writing books for young adults and he is such an amazing writer. I would love to let him know that his words still reverberate with us, that paper books are still making a difference out there.

I am having trouble working with sizes, obviously, sorry for the unevenness of this post.

These books are good for ages 12 and up. Especially good for boys.

(I have a picture of the two of us in a bar in L.A.. It was a party for Ian Falconer in an amazing hotel -one seen in many commercials- and he was standing at the bar. I couldn't help it, I had to introduce myself and tell him how much I loved his books. His agent was standing right there, and heard the story, kind of looked at Rob -yes, I feel I can call him Rob- and told him that he needed to finish the book he was writing. Well? It's been many years since then, he's done Cupid and Veronica Mars and no more books! I am so bummed.)

2011-02-08T10:12:00.000-08:00

Sunrise was at 7:26 and sunset will be at 5:21. Only a little while more to the equinox, March 20 this year! Cold, overcast, stripes of blue sky and gray clouds and it's supposed to be mostly sunny and close to 50 degrees today.

Dull colors and once more I had to take note of the color in the yard. We have a sustainable, low water, Northwest plants yard so it seems to be mostly gray, green and brown. Some of the things we planted and kept from before the renovation will have great colors, eventually, and then there are the volunteers: the crocuses are rising.

The photo on the left, I don't know the name of this plant but it's strong and rubbery looking, hangs down over the rock wall and has the most vibrant dark blue flowers. All washed out in the camera, though. I find the crocuses most exciting, these little harbingers of spring. They come up everywhere and I have no idea where they'll be next year. The squirrels help to keep the mystery strong.

I finished Ruby Red, by Kerstin Gier, yesterday and so enjoyed it. What if there was a gene for time time travel? What if your cousin was the one in your generation who inherited and was being trained for the experience? And what if all the training should have been for you, instead?

Gwen lives with her extended family in London, keeping watch on her cousin, Charlotte, just in case she disappears from sight and time. The female side of this family has the gene for time travel, exhibiting the signs just around the age of 16. Charlotte has been groomed for this from the time of her birth, long anticipated (since the other family members have been able to at least figure out the when if not the who would be the next in line for the talent) by the family. She knows many languages, has been schooled in different time periods' clothing and manners, can fence and curtsy, and has a comfortable relationship with Gideon, another time traveler.

Unfortunately, Charlotte isn't the one with the gene. It's Gwen. And she hasn't been trained for anything that will help her deal with suddenly appearing in the drawing rooms of ancient mansions.

There are vast, centuries long conspiracies, very interesting time discussions, a missing chronograph, and two of the other time travelers have run away and disappeared into the past. Ruby Red is the first in a trilogy and a fun, funny, light read. I am looking forward to Sapphire Blue and Emerald Green (I think those are the colors!) and more adventures with Gwen and Gideon. Age 12 and up. (Henry Holt. Available in May, 2011. $16.99.)

PS: These books were originally published in German and the only jacket covers I could find were on Kerstin's website (I think it was Kerstin's site!) and they are beautiful! I hope the US publications are as nice.

Brian Jacques

2011-02-08T09:06:00.000-08:00

Brian Jacques died. A moment of silence to remember the man who was able to make every child (and adult) feel they were the only reason he created that vast Redwall world.

I don't know how many of you visited All for Kids Books and Music but if you'd ever been, you'd have seen the event room and its walls full of art and words from all of the visitors who'd ever presented to us. Brian Jacques' signature was the very first one; big and black on a wide, white drywall'd wall.

He came and spoke to many children that first event, the very first event we'd had since moving to our new space which included an Event Room. Taking a couple of ciggie breaks, and signing everything we asked him to, he saved a few of the saltier stories about his life for the after-event while his wife and the staff sat laughing and handing him books. When he was done, he said something about how something needed to be done about the blank wall and asked "Shall I sign it?" And that was that. A tradition was born. We found some not too dry markers and he stepped up to the middle of that wall and with a flourish put his name smack dab in the middle, a little like John Hancock's. It was big and bold and all the other authors after signed around his name, eventually filling every open space, the inside of soffits, the door frames, the ceiling and moving out of the room into the store itself.

He came back a few more times just to say hello and to slide another little note onto the wall: Il Ritorno. I return. He was a marvelous man to listen and talk to, someone who never thought there was a difference in writing for kids or adults, that if the story was a good one, it was a good one for all. He changed a lot of lives, Brian did. Children, especially boys, would read his very thick, very small print, books straight through, surprising their parents and teachers, because the story was so good and Brian said they could. Kids still find themselves traveling through Redwall into the rest of the world.

Travel well, Brian. Eulalia!
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-12380763

Stork, by Wendy Delsol

2011-02-04T16:18:00.000-08:00

I have to write about Stork before I forget.

I read Stork, by Wendy Delsol last month but I obviously went on to something else before I got it written down- I really like retellings of fairy tales or re-inventions of how myths get started and Stork is a good example of this.

Katia Leblanc is 16 and a reluctant new resident of a small northern Minnesota town. Not only is she new to the town, she has to start over at a high school smack dab in the middle of a whole class of kids who have known each other forever. Even though Katia has been to visit her grandfather before, she doesn't really know anyone else.

One night, she meets the old woman who owns the fabric store across the street from the grocery store her grandfather owns and she helps out in. This meeting heralds a huge change in her life, combining ancient worlds and rites and modern day choices about life and death. She is inducted into the Icelandic Stork Society, an order of women with the ability to connect unborn children with the correct mother.

If that's not enough, she has to deal with a bad decision she made with BMOC Wade at a party and some interesting feelings she has with Jack, a boy she fights with every time they meet, even though she feels strangely drawn to him.

This was a really intriguing read. I hate the cover, it certainly doesn't evoke any of the innards of the book. I picked it up thinking, "Okay, read a page or two and then you can take it back to the store and leave it." Nope, you're right, I had to finish it. Absolutely riveting and will be one of those books you can recommend to teens who like fairy tales. Age 12 and up. (Candlewick. Available now. $15.99.)

2011-02-04T13:34:00.000-08:00

D and I went to his company picnic last Friday. I bought a new outfit and new shoes, shoes with non-rounded toes, with a HEEL, a high heeled pair of shoes. I had to wear them around the house while I worked so they'd stretch a little bit. I love my feet. They are bony and veiny and wide. They look like my hands. My feet and hands are the very same as my Grandpa Hi's, my Grandma Pearl's and my mom's. Except for the color of my eyes, these body parts are pretty much the family legacy. No money, no treasures, just bony body parts.

Okay, because it has been so dark today and I needed a little pick me up and a little light, I went out and took photos of the color in the yard.

Gary Schmidt and Best Books Ever

2011-02-04T11:56:00.000-08:00

Sunrise was at 7:32, sunset will be at 5:15 but on days like this, it just stays dark and gets darker until it's night. It's cold, wet, windy; gray, sage and brown. I know there are bright spots out there somewhere but it's too uncomfortable outside to go look. I just heard that it's 50 degrees and my feet are freezing.

It's noon, I've been up for an hour, too many late nights reading, have drunk half a pot of coffee, and am boiling up some beans for chili. I can't seem to focus on any one thing: it took me 20 minutes to empty the dishwasher and I still haven't put the pans away. Looked at facebook, then got distracted by a pile of books, then jumped back and forth between the blogger dashboard and email. I finally turned the heat up and the heat has risen to my shoulders and now I'm too warm (and my feet are still cold).

Since it's Friday and my day off, anything for an excuse, I am going to make ramen for lunch! YAY! My favorite comfort food. And, yes, the small, square, packages that are 10 for a dollar, are my ramen of choice. Lots of celery, snow peas, and some cheese all melted through. Mmmmm. I used to make this for my high school boyfriend; in college I had a friend over for dinner and this is what I made (he said, "Maybe you can't cook, but you can sure stir!"). I love this stuff. I know it's not the best possible food on earth, and I always end up napping after, but it makes me HAPPY!

I received the boxes of books (and, yes, I said BOXES) from the Winter Institute shipping room and I left them unopened for a couple of days, sitting on the floor in the dining room. I put off opening them because it was such a treat knowing what was inside, knowing how great it was going to be to get inside and pull them out, one book at a time, ruffling the pages, looking at the back covers, putting this one in the immediate pile, this one in the next pile, this one on the table so I could read it NOW.

I pulled Divergent out first and read that one in one long pull, then I searched for Okay for Now, written by Gary D. Schmidt, because I really wanted to read that one first.

Okay for Now is Mr. Schmidt's companion to The Wednesday Wars, one of the best books ever. And now I can add Okay for Now to my list of One of the Best Books Ever.

Doug Swieteck is an 8th grader. His dad is a slob and an alcoholic, a mean man. His mom is amazing, his brother is beginning to take after his dad, and his other brother is in Viet Nam. When the book begins, they have to move away from the world they know to "Stupid Marysville", a town with a stupid library, a stupid store, and a stupid school, because his dad got himself fired from his stupid job.

I don't want to tell you too much about the book because it is such a joy to read. I told D. how much I liked this book and a little bit about it and he said something along the lines of "sounds really uplifting". Well, it is. Doug is a great character and so realistic. He's confused, unhappy, worried, angry but so wants to do well and be a good friend. Will he ever get his chance? Will his hoodlum brother's reputation always get in Doug's way? Will his dad's friend, Ernie, get him fired again? What will happen when/if his oldest brother comes home from the war? How is he going to deal with school when his disabilities are discovered?

Thank whatever's out there for libraries, librarians, and friends who see something good in you. When Doug finally gets himself admitted to the library and makes his way to an echoey room with a glass box in the center, he finds something that gives his life focus and reason. That enclosed book and its paintings of birds give him something beautiful and all his own to hold close to his chest. Something his father can't take, that he can share in little ways with others, and something outside himself that he feels he can make the world a better place.

I LOVED this book. Now I want to reread Wednesday Wars and then this one, again.

Gary D. Schmidt will be coming to Third Place Books in May. Read one of his books and then come meet him. The photo at the top of the page is of Gary signing my copy of Okay for Now at Winter Institute. Isn't that COOL!

(And the ramen? it was good and I started Bumped, by Megan McCafferty, while I ate and scraped up every bit of stringy cheddar and snapped into those bright green veggies.)

David Levithan and The Lover's Dictionary

2011-02-02T10:20:00.000-08:00

Oh! I had my second physical therapy appointment today, many tiny movements writ big, movements connecting those tiny wrist bones and their delicate shifts and those big shoulder bones that are so affected by the lack of movement in those wrist bones. One more therapy session and x-rays next week. Woohoo!

I know, I know, two posts in one day but I have to tell you about David Levithan's new book for grown-ups, The Lover's Dictionary.

The Lover's Dictionary is the story of a relationship told in alphabetical order using words from the dictionary where the definition is a memory/thought/entry defining that word. It is such a cool book! I just couldn't pick up Getting Things Done to read while I had breakfast. This is what I took with me to therapy and just had to keep reading.

"disabuse, v.

I love the idea that an abuse can be negated. And that the things most often disabused are notions."

It is a very interesting way to tell a story- I have visions of using this idea in our summer book and writing programs - however, using words that may not be loaded with so many adult connotations.

David Levithan writes beautifully, something you'd expect since he is an editor at Scholastic. If you haven't read anything by him, check him out (Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist, Love is the Higher Law...). He will be at Elliot Bay Bookstore for this book on Saturday and I think I need to be there.

Maybe I'll see you there!

(Lover's Dictionary is for grown-ups. Available now, $18.00. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.)

Divergent for Spring

2011-02-02T07:45:00.000-08:00

Sunrise is at 7:35, sunset will be at 5:12. The Olympic mountains are ghostly this morning. The snow glows against the graying skies and the snow-cleared rock is the same shade of sky - the peaks float above the Sound. And now they are pink as the sun has finally risen high enough to illuminate that side of the landscape.

It's sunny and COLD. It isn't back east or Texas cold but it's still cold. Had to cover the daphne again last night so it might have even a few buds open in late February. The lilac buds are beginning to plump up and I heard a bird at 5 am the other day. I guess Punxsatawney Phil is right: Spring must be right around the corner.

I was up until 1 last night, this morning, whatever, reading Divergent, by Veronica Roth, a first-time author. What a book! One of the things we did at Winter Institute was a Speed Dating thing: authors spent 15 minutes speaking to us about their favorite books and then they'd move on to the next table and keep spreading the good news. I would say that at least every presenter had at least one book they compared to Hunger Games. Hunger Games meets Twilight, Hunger Games goes feral....I remember talking to someone about that: what if there was no Hunger Games? How would you describe these books then?

Divergent takes place well into the future, in a degrading Chicago, and is the story of a girl who lives in one of five Factions. In the bad days, it was decided that evil, poverty, violence, all these things could be lessened or gone if the world was divided into groups that were the essence of certain virtues. Beatrice is born into the Abnegators, one who gives selflessly, thinks only of others, and is able to think clearly because they have nothing above anyone else. They are also the people in charge of the government because they only think about what would be best for everyone.

At the age of 16, the children are able to choose where they would like to spend the rest of their lives, to switch factions, if they are unhappy, to one that more closely reflects who they are. The other factions are Erudite, the scholarly, research laden, Dauntless, brave and exciting, the ones in charge of training for battle (just in case), Amity, balanced and happy, and Candor, the ones who see through the crap and see things only in black and white, truth tellers.

This one choice can change everything they have ever known, can take them from their families and friends, change who they will ever be.

Beatrice and her brother, Caleb, are 16 and the story begins as they are being tested to see which faction they would best be suited for. Beatrice has begun to really question who she is, she has realized that she is not suited for selfless giving, she feels selfish and questioning, not an Abnegator. When she decides, she chooses the most opposite faction she can: Dauntless.

This is an amazingly compelling read. Filled with exciting action, evil people, great romance, big ideas and massive fallibility- I truly could not put it down, and neither could Annie, one of my co-workers at Third Place. I started it last night at 9:30 and was truly concerned that I would not finish before midnight. I didn't, but I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep if I didn't know how this first part ended.

This book will be garnering a ton of buzz and press, so order it up from your local, independent bookstore.

I probably should have finished the rest of the first chapter of Getting Things Done that I have to have done by tomorrow before I picked up Ms. Roth's novel. I can read a 487 page book like Divergent in a single bedtime reading and it takes me days to get through 53 pages of a business book. Hmmm. (Divergent will be available in May, 2011. Age14 and up. $17.99.)