2012 Youth Media Awards: Dear Kidlitosphere...

Yes, I have the Youth Media Awards live stream up on my laptop in my office. http://www.webcastinc.com/client/ala-webcast/

Yes, I'm also following their Twitter stream @ALAyma

But no, I'm not going to post the list or pictures of the winning book covers.  For some reason everyone does that instead of just providing a link.  I don't know why this seems necessary to people.  If we're in the Kidlitoshpere we follow this stuff.  We're not looking to your blog for news.  We're looking to your blog for your reactions, your opinions, your commentary. Feel free to pull up a bean bag chair, grab a grape Nehi and let us know what you think.

Enjoy the day and enjoy the news.  Congrats to the winners.  I may have more to say about this later but right now, just remember, our job isn't about award stickers. It's about getting the right book to the right student.  That book, whether it be an international award winner, or the latest full-color offering on Monster Trucks, if it's the just right pick for that kid, then it's the best book of the year to me right then.

I look forward to reading your reactions to the news in...just about one hour now.

The Lost City of Z

Another book on my shelf conquered!  This is, yet again, something that I've been meaning to get around to for some time and finally got to it thanks to C.B. James' TBR Double Dare.

I probably put it off because I already read one great Amazon adventure book, Candice Millard's River of Doubt.  That book is referenced more than once by David Grann in this books.  And just last year my book club read the amazing Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage (an adventure which is also mentioned in the Grann book).  But My Lovely Bride enjoyed this and it was just a matter of getting down to it.

I'm glad I did.  It's a real page-turner.  It tells the tale of British explorer Percy Fawcett who was the inspiration for Conan Doyle's Lost World and Indiana Jones himself.  He's not as famous as some other explorers simply because he didn't technically discover any one thing we can point to on a map.  But his stamina, courage, and obsession rank right up there with any you can name.  He traveled to some major blanks spots on maps that have many things that want nothing more than to see you dead.  He did this many times and always came back alive no matter what horrors he had to deal with.

So when he, his son, and his son's friend went to the Amazon one last time in 1925 to find a lost civilization he dubbed "Z," and never returned, it became a hot spot for obsessive adventurers trying to find the famous explorer.  Since obsession is what David Grann most likes to write about, he's found a perfect subject.  Since he looks about as shlubby as I do and he decided the research for this book should entail him also following in Fawcett's footsteps down to the deep, dark Amazon I wasn't sure how this would go.  But it's quite fascinating and he does indeed find some new things to share by following Fawcett's trail.

My favorite part is the contrasting of the so-called uncivilized "savages" who practice cannibalism with the so-called "civilized" Europeans who get caught up in WWI and where Fawcett encounters the real horrors humans beings can inflict on each other.  Unfortunately, Fawcett goes down a trail of woo and spiritualism in his later years, but as Grann finds out by talking with an anthropologist towards the end, he did make some decent contributions for a scientific amateur.

Now, off to my book club in which we will feast and discuss Kitchen Confidential.  I'll post an update when I've fully recovered.

The Foundling

This is part of the TBR Double Dare.  It's been on my shelf for a while but when I got a job in an elementary school library, I've kind of let my YA reading go.  I'm using this challenge, or dare, to make sure I hit some of the YA novels sitting around the house.

This book has a new cover but this is the one I read.  It's part one of a trilogy called Monster Blood Tattoo.  I'll give you fair warning that it's a fantasy book with maps and an appendix.  You'll know right away if that's your thing or not.

Back when my book club did Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, another member and I bonded over Lev Grossman's The Magicians and in the discussion he mentioned The Foundling.  So I had to move it up on my TBR stack right away!

It takes place in an alternate steampunkish, Dickensian reality in which people wear tricorn hats, most commerce is by boat and monsters lurk in the shadows.  The orphans of Madam Opera's Estimable for Foundling Boys and Girls are raised to become future naval fodder.  Our protagonist is a boy saddled with a girls name, Rossamund, because it was written on a note pinned to him when he was found as an infant.  He dreams of becoming a naval soldier or monster slayer, but is chosen to become a lamplighter instead.  On his journey to report for his new position, he takes a perilous journey meeting not only monsters, but humans as well, some of which can be more treacherous than the monsters.  Not all is dark and dangerous, though.  There are good people as well, and fascinating sites at every turn.  It's the first in a series and it's a satisfying one at that.

Cornish is an Australian artist and the book is filled with his own brilliant illustrations and maps.  You can see more of his work at his own website here: http://www.dmcornish.com/

I loved this tale.  It's got that perfect balance of the new and the familiar and it's all handled by a storyteller who knows his business.  I admit to not going through all the appendices but in the main narrative he does a great job of giving you just enough background on each new character or element without getting bogged down in tiresome detail. But the appendices are there if you crave more detail! There are wonderful themes of the meaning of courage, the mistakes that can be made by us all regarding misjudging other's intentions or abilities based on gender, age, race and, in this case, species.

I know I'll enjoy reading the other two.  Someday.  After I catch up on my current TBR pile!

The Burglar In the Rye

You ever have an author you read pretty consistently and then...something happens?  You get busy; you get into other things.  You still buy some of their books but for some reason you just have other stuff to get to.  Then you finally pick up one of their books again and you’re instantly back in their world and remembering all the other books while reading this one?

That’s what happened to me with this book.  As part of the TBR Double Dare, I’m pulling things off my shelves that I’ve realized I’ve never read and finally getting around to them.  It’s the best resolution I’ve made!  I love doing away with reader guilt!

Lawrence Block is an official Grand Master of the mystery genre.  He’s got three popular series.  Well, he has more, but these three are his most famous: the Matthew Scudder series (my favorite), the Keller series, and the Bernie Rhodenbarr series.  Matt Scudder is an ex-drunk ex-cop who, in a gritty series, is an unofficial PI who deals with some serious moral grey areas.  Keller is a fun series about a professional killer and stamp collector.  Bernie owns an runs an antiquarian bookshop on paper, and that’s how he spends his days.  But many nights find his plying his true calling: that of being a burglar.  He’s a fastidious and entertaining character who often finds himself breaking into a room with a corpse and having to solve the murder so it doesn’t get pinned on him.  He’s the dry-witted Holmes in these situations and his Watson is the hard-drinking lesbian pet groomer next door to the books shop, Carolyn.  While the Scudder novels are gritty and hard-bitten, the Bernie books are all lighter than air and Block uses then as an excuse to play with all the usual tropes of these types of mysteries.  Scudder can be traced back to Hammett.  Bernie back to Agatha.  He’s even got the requisite cat in the book shop. The body, while obviously damaged in some way, has already been done away with.  There’s rarely ever any on stage violence.  It’s a game of wits that many times ends in a moment in which Bernie gets to say, “I’ll bet you’re all wondering why I’ve brought you here.”

This one is a riff on the Salinger letters and bios of the late 90s and early 00s.  In this one, a woman asks Bernie to break into the hotel residence of a famous reclusive author and steal his letters before the old editor sells them at auction and has them published.

Of course Bernie gets into the hotel room only to find that someone has just been there, gotten the letters, and done away with the old editor.  Bernie gets out; and to make sure the evening isn’t a total loss, steals some high-priced rubies from another hotel room on his circuitous path out of the hotel...and right into the arms of the cops.

So now he has to find the letters, solve more than one murder and clear up some confusion about these multiply-stolen rubies if he wants to stay out of the clink permanently.

With this many balls flying in the air, don’t even bother trying to figure out whodunnit because, well, you’ll never guess and it doesn’t really matter.  It’s more about watching the juggling act and enjoying the show.  And while you’re at it you’ll learn to appreciate those old writers who have filled our lives with these wonderful books.  Not bad for a light mystery.

The Purpose of Education

From an essay written by Martin Luther king, Jr for his college newspaper in 1947:

"At this point I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction. The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals."