Elsewhere

Elsewhere, by Gabrielle Zevin.

Liz Hall is fifteen years old when she is hit by a taxi cab and dies. Like most of the recently deceased, she is sent on a boat to Elsewhere, where people age backwards until they are babies and are sent back to Earth. She must deal with her feelings of loss over a life cut short and struggles with whether she should return to Earth early (it's an option given only to youth under the age of 16; instead of aging backwards Liz can opt to return to Earth as a baby immediately). She quickly falls into a deep depression and becomes obsessed with watching her friends and family from special viewing stations. Despite the strict rules against it, Liz also plots to communicate with her family in a dangerous plan that, if it fails, could mean her remaining years in Elsewhere are horrible.

In Elsewhere, Liz has the opportunity to meet and live with the grandmother she never knew, learn how to drive, and form her first romantic relationship. She also gets her first job (as a counselor for the Division of Domestic Animals, Liz utilizes her previously unknown ability to speak "Canine" to greet new dog arrivals and place them in homes). Even though Liz begins to age backwards from her first day in Elsewhere, in another respect she grows up very quickly as she begins to come to terms with her new reality. This is Zevin's first novel for young adults, and she beautifully presents Liz's initial emotional turmoil and eventual journey towards acceptance. At times the book is sad, amusing, sweet and even profound. Highly recommended for readers in high school.

The Girl's Like Spaghetti

Last year, Lynne Truss followed up her popular book Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation with a children's version, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: Why, Commas Really Do Make a Difference! Just last month, The Girl's Like Spaghetti: Why, You Can't Manage Without Apostrophes!, Truss's latest offering for children, was published. Both of the children's books follow a similar format: a brief introduction of the punctuation mark the book focuses on is followed by a number of examples, and the book ends with further explanations of those examples. In The Girl's Like Spaghetti, Truss explains the two uses of the apostrophe: to show where letters have been left out of contractions and to indicate possession. Then fun, colorful illustrations by Bonnie Timmons demonstrate how apostrophes can change a sentence. One illustration, of boys dumping trash on each other, is accompanied by the sentence "Those smelly things are my brothers," while on the next page is a picture of dirty shoes that is captioned "Those smelly things are my brother's." Two different pictures show children's clothing stores. One picture, of Lil' Tess's Tots' Wear, is labeled "The shop sells boys' and girls' clothing." The other picture, labeled "The shop sells boys and girl's clothing," shows Lil' Tess's Tots 'n' Wear, which has girls' clothing and little boys in the shop window! After all the illustrations is an additional explanation of each sentence; for example, Truss explains that "The apostrophes make boys' and girls' plural nouns that are possessives" and that "Without an apostrophe, boys is a plural noun."

While the average child probably wouldn't seek this book out on his own, it could be a useful tool for teachers or parents who want to work with their children on punctuation. It is very well done and quite entertaining (I laughed out loud at some of the illustrations) and I highly recommend it for work with elementary school children. It might also provide a helpful review for older children--or even adults--who won't be put off by the simplicity or playful illustrations.

Dairy Queen

In Dairy Queen, by Catherine Gilbert Murdock, we are introduced to DJ Schwenk, a 16 year old who lives with her family on their dairy farm in Red Bend, Wisconsin. With her two older brothers off at college and her father recovering from hip surgery, the burden of operating the farm falls on DJ. During the summer before her junior year of high school, DJ develops a friendship with Brian Ott, the quarterback of the rival town's football team, and helps him train for the upcoming football season. Over the course of the training, DJ decides that she wants to play football for her high school, which causes problems with her friends, family and the community. It also endangers her budding relationship with Brian, and DJ must figure out how to navigate through unfamiliar experiences and truly express herself to her friends and family, which doesn't come naturally to her.

Dairy Queen's story and characters felt completely fresh and held my interest all the way through. DJ is a complex, interesting character who is both inspiring and flawed at the same time. She is a strong, athletic girl who has no problem trying out for the football team despite the mixed reactions of her friends and family, but she is clueless when it comes to having meaningful interactions with even her closest friends and immediate family members. She learns a lot about herself and how to interact and communicate with others, but, endearingly, she still has a ways to go at the end of the book.

Dairy Queen is best suited for girls in middle and early high school, and I highly recommend it for that age group. I listened to the audiobook and thought it was very well done. The narrator, Natalie Moore, captures both the accent and spirit of a 16-year old from Wisconsin in a very appealing way. Moore seems to truly understand the characters and she does not turn them into charicatures, which I have noticed sometimes happens in audiobooks, especially those featuring teenagers. Moore also narrated The Off Season, the sequel to Dairy Queen, and I am eager to listen to that as well.

Camp Babymouse

Camp Babymouse, by Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm, is the latest in a series of graphic novels about a young mouse named Babymouse. In this volume, she goes to summer camp for the first time. She is enthusiastic when she arrives, but things quickly go downhill as she racks up demerits which bring her bunk down to last place in the competition for the "Camp Wild Whiskers Cup." When she leads her bunk to a victory in a scavenger hunt she manages to redeem herself in their eyes, but her bunk still comes in last in the overall competition.

These ups and downs are typical for Babymouse in all the books in the series. She is a highly relatable character who means well and wants to be liked, but who makes plenty of mistakes and often alienates her peers. She also loses herself to her imagination quite frequently, such as during a canoe race when she imagines she is "Captain Babymouse" searching for a white whale (and ends up capsizing the boat and losing the race).

The illustrations are simple yet amusing drawings in black, white and pink. Recommended for girls in upper elementary school.

Junie B. Jones

Today's New York Times has an article ("Is Junie B. Jones Talking Trash?") about the Junie B. Jones chapter books by Barbara Park. I have only a passing familiarity with the series and had no idea that they were so controversial. Interestingly, at issue is Junie's grammar. The NYT sums up some of the problems: "Her adverbs lack the suffix 'ly'; subject and object pronouns give her problems, as do possessives; she usually isn’t able to conjugate irregular past tense verbs; and words like funnest and beautifuller are the mainstays of her vocabulary."

On one side of this debate is those who find the books to be funny and entertaining. These parents don't see any harm in their children reading the books and are happy their children are reading at all. Some even view Junie's grammar as an opportunity to discuss proper grammar. On the other side of the debate are parents who are outraged about the language in the books because it lays a foundation of improper grammar for children who are still learning the English language.

While I wouldn't support banning these books entirely (Park was on the ALA's 2004 list of Most Frequently Challenged Authors!), I probably wouldn't recommend these books or encourage children to read them. I have to agree with the parent in the article who is quoted as saying “No wonder we have declining literacy and writing proficiency rates in this country!” I work at a university and frequently interact with undergraduates who don't have a grasp of basic grammar or even spelling. Friends who teach courses at various universities confirm that this is increasingly widespread. It seems clear to me that many children become adults who have never learned proper grammar. Junie B. Jones is isn't to blame for this, but she does seem to be part of a larger trend of simplifying language and placing no value on correct grammar. I don't see why we would want to encourage this trend by promoting these books. Grammar, spelling and vocabulary ARE important, because they allow people to express themselves clearly. Additionally, it could be that much harder for those who don't value these things when they are interacting with those who do (such as in searching for a job).

It might seem silly to some to make such a fuss about language in a children's book, but I think this is an important issue to at least consider when deciding what books to recommend or put in front of your own child.

15 Minutes

15 Minutes by Steve Young.

Things aren't going so well for Casey Little. He's bullied at school and is stuck being a water boy for the football team even though he wants to be out on the field. But when he discovers his grandfather's old watch in the attic, everything begins to change. Casey quickly realizes that the watch has the power to send the wearer back in time 15 minutes, and it doesn't take long before he's using the watch to his advantage. Through making countless trips back in time, he becomes a valued member of the football team, befriends the popular kids at school and even gets his revenge on a bully. However, he eventually comes to realize that there might be unintended consequences of using the watch and he's forced to decide whether it's worth using the watch if it's at someone else's expense--even someone like the school bully.

This is a quick read that is not too dense (many of the chapters are quite brief). It would make a good choice for boys in upper elementary or middle school because of its action, fast pacing and relatable male protagonist. While there are themes such as learning compassion and empathy for others, Young manages to handle them in a manner that is not overly self-conscious or heavy handed, resulting in a fun and entertaining story.

Guys Read

This is a big week for me---in addition to having my birthday on Saturday (and thank you, Liz, for that lovely post. I still have our copy of A Birthday for Frances, chompo bar included!), I am also expecting the birth of my first child, a son, any day now. As I mentioned in my first post, I am looking forward to sharing my love of reading with him. However, I realize that some of the books that I loved as a child may not exactly be his cup of tea (I can't imagine that too many boys get into the Little House on the Prairie series, for example). Plus, boys tend to lag behind girls in literacy achievement and often find reading to be a chore rather than a joy. The best thing parents can do, then, is to help their sons select books that they will want to read. This is easier said than done, especially when the books that you remember as a child are now at least 20-30 years old. Some of these have remained classics for children of both sexes, while others are probably out of print and hard to find. Plus, parents will want to become familiar with titles that have been published since their childhood---but as Liz pointed out in an earlier post, the children's book market has exploded, meaning that there is a lot of bad (movie tie-in books, anyone?) out there with the good.

Liz and I have already written about ways to find books for kids, from Liz's likely-to-be-successful tips (asking a librarian, using a reference book, perusing a library's online lists) to my hit-or-miss technique of picking books off a new-arrivals shelf at the library (at least I flipped through the texts and didn't judge them solely on their covers!). But not all of these techniques will help you to select books that might appeal more to boys than to girls, and you may not have access (or the time to read) subject matter guides such as Kathleen Odean's Great Books for Boys). For those short on time or without access to a large library collection, the Internet can be a terrific resource to help locate books.

Jon Scieszka (author of The Stinky Cheese Man, a personal favorite, although he's written a lot more since that book was published in 1992) has created a website to address the issue of boys and reading. It is called Guys Read (be forewarned that the site uses flash and didn't work so well on the Firefox browser). Scieszka has put together a site that parents can use to find books that their sons might enjoy. The "Find a Book" feature allows the user to type in the title of a favorite book, author, or topic (say, dinosaurs); the database will then return a list of suggested books. The "Guys' Picks" page lists favorite books as recommended by other users of the website; the lists are roughly broken down by age group (Young Guys, Middle Guys and Older Guys). Either way, a click on the titles or author names will take you to the appropriate page on Amazon.com.

I played around with the site for a few minutes, and although I think it's a terrific idea, there are some limitations, particularly with the "Find a Book" database search. Entering a subject in the "Books About" box is probably the best way to use this feature. Type in 'trains', for example, and you'll get 120 pages of suggestions, from The Little Engine That Could (I always loved that book not so much for its message of empowerment but for the pictures of candy and toys that the good boys and girls on the other side of the mountain were about to receive!) to the unavoidable Thomas the Tank Engine series. Other books with "train" in the title that have nothing to do with actual trains were included, meaning that the search code is not particularly sophisticated (while I'm sure that a book on Harriet Tubman would be fascinating (Freedom Train: The Story of Harriet Tubman), it's frustrating to sift through 120 pages knowing that many of the selections won't actually have anything to do with actual trains). And there doesn't seem to be any specific order to the list that the search returns---multiple editions of one title show up but are not grouped together, for example.

Other limitations with the database search become apparent with a search based on favorite author or title. I was expecting a search according to either of these categories to recommend books that are similar in some way to the favorite. However, in both cases, the search simply returned all the books by the favorite author (or author of the favorite book).

The "Guys' Picks" page lists books by a variety of authors, although they are not broken down by subject or even a specific age range (how young are "Young Guys", anyway?). But, one could definitely print out the list and then either read reviews on Amazon or as a starting point for a search at the local library. There are lots of familiar titles on the list (Richard Scarry's Things That Go, James Marshall's George and Martha books), some that I know have become popular since I was young (Mo Willems has been recommended to me by two children's librarians-in-training), and some I've never heard of. It looks like a nice mix, but again, without further information, it's hard to know as a non-librarian the age appropriateness of each title.

I'd be curious to hear what others think of this site, especially Liz and other librarians or librarians-in-training.