Kidliterate

SO YOU WANT TO BE A WIZARD by Diane Duane

Note from Melissa: Kymm recently moved from NYC back to her hometown of LA, and when she did, she regained her ability to use the library. (We can neither confirm or deny that she may have some outstanding fines in NYC.) She is now busily checking out the first book in every series she's ever been interested in and revisiting old favorites. She'll be sharing her journey with us!) So...here's Kymm!

As I was trolling through the library I found out some really exciting news! There are, since I last checked, two new Young Wizards books by Diane Duane! And you know what that means, don't you? It means that I get to re-read all of the previous books! SO YOU WANT TO BE A WIZARD was published in 1983 and I have probably been reading it since it was new, and every time new books are written I read it again, so I almost know it by heart by now. I always love how many kids books are about loner kids who love books, it's charming to me how many loner kids who love books grow up to write books.

This book is about Nita, a loner kid who loves books, who, while being chased by the bullying rich girls from her school who beat her up on a regular basis, hides in the library and finds the title book, which turns out to be every loner kid who loves books' dream come true, really exactly what it says that it is! She finds Kit, another kid in her neighbourhood who also is learning to be a wizard and they team up to ostensibly find Nita's stolen favourite space pen, but in reality, to save the world. What is wonderful about this series of books is that wizardry doesn't actually solve everyone's problems easily, it makes things harder sometimes, and not everyone always lives through whatever ordeal the book centers around. Nita and Kit, and, in later books, Nita's little sister Dairine, have very honest, distinctive kid voices, written by someone who didn't forget what it was like to be as helpless as a child sometimes is; you may be a wizard and saving the world, but you still have to be ontime for dinner or you get in trouble with your parents.

The Young Wizard books are not only about magic and wizardry and the wonder of talking to animals and plants and cars, but about what it is like to grow up and take responsibility to help, in whatever small or large way we can, to save the world. By the way, the edition that I read this time was the twentieth anniversary edition, which includes a really great afterword by Diane Duane, and a hard-to-find short story from 1986 about a miniature adventure of Nita and Kit. The story isn't a classic, but it's fun to read if you are a completist like me. On to DEEP WIZARDRY! And beyond!

THE WIDE-AWAKE PRINCESS by E.D. Baker

I am so in love with this book. I ordered it on the strength of E.D. Baker's other books, but because I hadn't read it by the time it came out, it sat (as hardcovers I haven't read tend to do). And sat. And sat. For months. Finally in late November I plucked it off the shelf on my way out the door one night and took it home to read. Which I did in two hours. Then I promptly kicked myself - hard, while wearing steel-toed boots - for waiting so long. Oh, the lost income. Oh, the girls who could have read it already. Oh, the time I spent reading things that weren't as good.

Our heroine: Annie, younger sister of Gwendolyn; Gwendolyn's the princess cursed at birth to prick her finger on a spindle and you know the rest. So when Annie's born, her parents are so paranoid that they ask a fairy to protect her. The fairy casts this charm: From this day on, no magic shall touch you or bring you to harm. You'll have to survive on your natural charm. Annie is now impervious to all magic, which is not exactly considered a blessing in a country where everything relies on spells and charms. Everyone uses magic to make themselves "beautiful and graceful and sweet," and most members of Annie's family had been given magical gifts at their births. However, being in Annie's presence makes those gifts fade, so Annie has spent much of her life being held at arm's length by her entire family.

Annie's gift comes in handy when a miniature spinning wheel is smuggled into the palace and Gwendolyn pricks her finger, causing herself and everyone else within the walls to fall asleep - everyone, that is, except for Annie. Because she is the only one untouched by the magic, it's up to her to save her family and her kingdom. With the help of Liam (a Royal Guard who'd gone on a mission to the town and thus missed the spell) and a series of haphazard princes, Annie will outsmart some well-known fairy tale characters, wake up her family and possibly even fall in love.

THE WIDE-AWAKE PRINCESS is FUNNY. What a great read-aloud this would make. I sold a bunch of copies as Christmas gifts and I am going to sell the absolute crap out of it in paperback; there won't be a girl who shops at our store who won't have this book. Annie is a fantastic character - I always need a great book with a self-rescuing princess. Baker weaves a bunch of bits of well-known fairy tales into the story and it's so much fun picking them out. This book is a total romp and I love it to pieces and I can't wait to read it to my daughter someday. Sometimes when I like a book I just keep the galley, but this one? I'm buying it in hardcover.

(Oh! And the cover! Thecoverthecoverthecover! I LOVE the cover. The galley had a photo cover and I am SO. OVER. photo covers and when the book came I was so happy to see they'd changed it! Yay!)

LOOKING AHEAD: The Emerald Atlas by John Stephens

Hold on to your hats, middle-grade fantasy fans: 2011 is here. Brandon Mull's back with a new series; Catherine Fisher's got a summer series coming over from England; and you're about to meet a guy named John Stephens.

I don't use the word (okay, fake word) unputdownable very often, but I suspect you might hear it a lot over the next few reviews because I was really, really lucky with the last three or four books I read. THE EMERALD ATLAS was - you guessed it - unputdownable.

Ten years prior to the book's start, for reasons they have never understood, Kate, Michael and Emma were separated from their parents and sent to one orphanage after another. After a brief but awful time at the Edgar Allen Poe Home for Hopeless and Incorrigible Orphans, they are sent far away to the desolate town of Cambridge Falls to a new orphanage run by a man named Dr. Stanislaus Pym. Strange things happen - Kate has a disturbing dream of Dr. Pym's house before they even see it; there are no other children at the orphanage; and Abraham, an odd, elderly employee of Dr. Pym's, for some reason gives Kate a black and white picture taken in Cambridge Falls fifteen years prior. They are left to their own devices, and while exploring, find a door that appears out of nowhere. Behind the door is a strange study, filled with books and instruments and an old, green leather-bound book.

Michael takes a Polaroid picture of the study, and then opens the green book. He believes it to be a photo album, takes out the picture Abraham gave Kate, and places it in the book - and as soon as he does that, the children are transported back in time to the place pictured in the old photo. Now they're on the run (in the past) from the Countess, who's kidnapped all the children of Cambridge Falls to force their parents to work for her. She's looking for the Emerald Atlas, and when she learns about Kate, Michael and Emma, she's looking for them too. With the help of Dr. Pym, Abraham, the mysterious Gabriel and a whoooooole bunch of dwarves, the children fight to keep the Countess and the Atlas apart, save the children, get back to their time and figure out what all of this has to do with their parents.

It is hard to summarize the beginning to a fantasy series like this, because there is SO MUCH GOING ON. Stephens cleverly weaves together past and present and several different storylines and magic and mischief and humans and dwarves and it could be head-spinningly confusing, but it's NOT. The world-building is skillfully done. This is a book I can give to a lot of different people - boys and girls; elementary and middle-grade. It's clean and the scary parts aren't too scary (but they're enough scary) and the violence isn't too violent. It's going to be a terrific read-aloud, too. Kate, Michael and Emma each have their own very distinct personality, but they have an incredibly tight sibling bond. Each gets their own separate adventure in THE EMERALD ATLAS, and the separate adventures are as well done as the main story. This is just SUCH a good book, such a classic fantasy story of the kind that there are never too many of. I predict a big fan following springing up around this one, and can't wait to read the rest of them myself.