I did this because I recently discovered how few of these illustrations from Ballet Shoes were available online. The Young Lady did the scanning for me (the scanner is attached to her Mac).
( cut for good-sized images )
The tradition-minded people of the Ooni Kingdom have only distant legends of what it means to be born dada, as Zahrah was. Although her family love her, they don't really understand what it's like for the young girl to grow up with living vines twining in her hair, and some of her classmates are cruel. Only her best friend, Dari, appreciates her and encourages her to explore what she is. But when a frightening episode in their experimentation and exploration leaves Dari poised on the brink of death, Zahrah must embark on a fearsome quest to save his life.
Author Neil Gaiman Wins Newbery Medal
Versatile author Neil Gaiman has won the most prestigious writing award in American children's literature for "The Graveyard Book," the story of an orphan raised by ghosts.
The English novelist, graphic novelist and screenwriter now lives in Minnesota, apparently making him eligible -- unlike, say, J.K. Rowling -- for the American Library Association-sponsored Newbery Medal ... .
Author Neil Gaiman reports in his blog that James Thurber's wonderful book The 13 Clocks has been reissued, with an introduction by Gaiman himself. If you haven't read this book, you should. It will make you happy. Thurber's love of language shines brightly in a wisely nonsensical illustrated fairytale that should appeal to fans of The Princesss Bride. Gaiman also cites an LA Times review of the book, which makes a good introduction if you have never heard of it, and should awaken some nostalgia if you have.
Sometimes I read a book, and it feels as though the author has decided to write in the style of some other author. For example, Thursday's Children, which tells the story of sister-brother ballet students Crystal and Doone Penny, reads as though author Rumer Godden had decided to write a la Noel Streatfield, author of Ballet Shoes and other children's classics about children in the performing arts. Similarly, Interworld reads as though Gaiman and Reaves had decided to write a Diana Wynne Jones science fiction/fantasy novel, somewhat in the mold of both The Homeward Bounders and Deep Secret, with perhaps a bit of A Tale of Time City thrown in. It's not as good a book as those first two, and isn't really as good as Gaiman's own Coraline, either, but it's a pleasant enough read. However, it has some strange similarities to other things I've read.
The hero and first-person narrator of Interworld is the decidedly unheroic young Joey Harker of Greenville, who describes himself as "the kid who could get lost going to the corner mailbox." When an eccentric Social Studies teacher sends Joey and his fellow students out on an exercise in which small teams are dropped off at random locations around town and told to find their way to various checkpoints - without the use of maps - Joey figures his goose is cooked. And because his team includes the girl he fancies, he imagines he's going to be humiliated, as well. So it's not too surprising that he is soon telling the object of his affections to wait a moment while he checks out the next turning, and running ahead .... through a bank of mist. On the other side is a McDonald's - with a green tartan arch. No, Joey isn't in Greenville anymore. Soon the kid who could get lost in his own house is skipping across dimensions from world to world. It turns out that Joey is a Walker, and as such, he's in danger from representatives of two opposing evil forces, representing the extremes of magic and technology, who exploit Walkers for their ability to travel from world to world. But the Walkers from the various worlds have banded together to fight the HEX and the Binary forces, and Joey soon finds himself training for exotic missions with ... multiple versions of himself.
( Read on - spoilers! )
With a new book, I tend to read and then re-read, immediately. Wintersmith improved with the second reading. I had wanted to dismiss it as another pale imitation of the first Tiffany Aching book, the wonderful Wee Free Men ("Ach, crivens!"), but on the re-read, it revealed its own rewards. It's better than A Hat Full of Sky (the first sequel), IMO.
Tiffany is now 13, and has started yet another apprenticeship with yet another eccentric witch. At the end of one extremely hectic day with her new mistress, she makes the mistake of actively participating in a ritual that she was meant only to observe. The result is another of Pratchett's explorations of the nature of the divine, and what happens when it comes into contact with the mudane and the mortal. And Tiffany remains Tiffany throughout and at the end, which is not a trivial consideration.
( Read on ... 'ware some spoilers )Dear Wintersmith: The snowfall Saturday was very pretty, but don't you think enough is enough? Yrs respectfully, Cho.
I'm going to play scholarly now, like the English major I was many years ago.
I doubt I'm really going to break any new ground here, especially given that a couple of different scholarly studies of DWJ's works have been released in the past few years. I'm also guessing that this same structure might well apply to other young adult fantasy novels. Finally, I have a nagging feeling that I once read about ideas like this in something called, I think, "The Hero's Journey." But thinking this through was useful for me when I was writing my review of her recent book The Game, because it let me pinpoint where I felt that things had gone wrong.
Most of the examples that I'm going to use are from the novels I've reread most often. They are:
These books focus on a single protagonist. Although that person may have siblings or friends as sidekicks, the story is told only from his or her POV. I'm going to add a few examples from Witch Week (WW), but that one features two alternating protagonists (Nan and Charles), which makes the arguments a little less clear in some cases.
( read on ... includes some spoilers for the books mentioned )No music, because it's the middle of the night, and we have house guests (sis-in-law and nephew). And the Young Lady is off at her "Pirates of Penzance" cast party, because this was the closing night. The party runs all night, but she hasn't socialized on this level much yet, usually it's been just one-on-one with a best friend, she's an introvert like everyone else in the family (INTJ, probably) ... I'll be picking her up soon.
The Game began promisingly, introducing a young orphan named Hayley Foss who has recently left her grandparents' quiet home to join a boisterous gathering of cousins she has never met. As the story explored Hayley's strange home life and her interactions with the cousins, hints of otherwordliness gave way to full-blown fantasy, comfortingly reminscent of Diana Wynne Jones's earlier books. I quickly became engrossed and was thoroughly enjoying myself - until the story slammed shut abruptly, leaving me surprised and annoyed.
This is only half of a DWJ book. No, it doesn't end in the middle. Instead the first three-eighths are grafted directly onto the final eighth. I can't say it's not worth reading, but I was disappointed.
( Read on for more, including some spoilers )
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