Kidliterate

ALANNA - THE FIRST ADVENTURE, SONG OF THE LIONESS - BOOK ONE by Tamora Pierce

note from Melissa: I love Kymm's reviews of stuff from ages ago. I've actually never read Alanna, despite meaning to for...well...ever. Now I REALLY want to read it. And I think reviews of old stuff really help a new crowd discover it!

   When I picked this one out of the library, I did so because it was the first of a series that looked interesting, not realizing that Tamora Pierce is She of Many Many Series and if I end up enjoying this one I'll just be chasing my tail desperately trying to quiet my OCD by reading them all, but then she'll just keep writing new ones and I'll never enver finish!  

That said, I plucked this one out of the pile and started on it anyway.

Alanna and her twin, Thom, are being sent off to precicely the opposite futures that they long for, Thom to become a knight and Alanna to go to the convent to become a lady (where they also teach sorcery, which is what Thom wants, not to beome a lady), so they decide to switch places.  Alanna chops off her hair and pretends to be Alan, and Thom just goes off to the convent because they train boys, too.  How fortunate that he doesn't have to pretend to be a girl.

When Alanna, now pretending to be Alan, gets to the palace, she makes friends with the prince and an enemy of a bully, she works hard because she is stubborn, she uses the magic that she fears to save a life, she learns to fight, she binds her chest, she is liked and admired by all, though she neither knows nor understands why.  Exciting things happen, and more exciting things will happen in three more books as Alanna grows up to become the warrior maiden that she wants to be.

This is an enjoyable book and I look forward to reading the other three, but it is clearly the work of a very young writer.  I was surprised when I did the math and found that Tamora Pierce was almost 30 when this was published, but it says on Wikipedia that she wrote these books in college, which makes perfect sense, because this is the character that you write when you are in high school.

Alanna has red hair and purple eyes (how many purple-eyed heroines did I come up with as a child?  As many as Anne Shirley did, I'm sure), she has an amazing amount of magical ability, more than anyone else, she beats up the bully even though she is smaller and a girl, she is admired by everyone, everyone who is nice likes her the best, but because she doesn't know it, she's not stuck up, and nobody is jealous that she gets special attention because they see that she is special and deserves it.  This is the person that we all pretended to be in grade school, the special, magical heroine worknig against great odds.  With purple eyes.

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!

DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: THE LAST STRAW by Jeff Kinney

When I picked up this book at the BEA, Melissa pounced on it and said, "You got the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid!" "I did?" "There are two other books..." "There are?" "And they're great!" "Well, that's good!" As you might be able to tell, I have spent the last several decades rereading Betsy-Tacy, Anne of Green Gables and the All-of-a-Kind Family books for the 500th time, not straying far into the New Book aisle at the bookstore.  Which is one of the reasons why I have become a reviewer for this fine website, to get me out of that rut! When I was at BEA, I was entirely overwhelmed and had no actual idea of what places I should go or people I should see, so I just started to get in any line I saw, because at the end of it there was a free book and an author wanting to sign it for me!  The first time I did this, at the head of the line I got Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw with Jeff Kinney, pen poised, asking me if the "Kymm" I wanted the book signed to was my daughter.  "Nope, it's ME!" Now, my OCD doesn't usually let me start a series of books with any book other than the first, but trust me, it doesn't matter a bit with Diary of a Wimpy Kid, I didn't feel as though I was coming in in the middle of anything.  It's the story of Greg Heffley, the titular wimpy kid, his parents, older brother Roderick, baby brother Manny, and best friend Rowley.  All Greg really wants to do is sleep, eat sweets and play video games, which seems like a reasonable goal to me, but his parents want him to do things like "get good grades" and "play soccer", but Greg is pretty difficult to improve.  Will military school help?  Uh-oh... This book is, to put it mildly, hilarious, with funny drawings and in an extremely realistic boy's voice.  It is completely from Greg's point of view, without any winking at the audience.  I really need to go back and read the first two books in the series, because Greg and his somewhat unusual world-view is definitely someone that I want to know better.

THE AMARANTH ENCHANTMENT by Julie Berry

The Amaranth Enchantment is a terrific reworking of the Cinderella fairy story, which is not something that they try to hide in any way; the heroine's name is Lucinda, for heaven's sake.  Author Julie Berry is not married to the source work, but uses it as a base to start from, shooting the story out in quite unexpected directions.  Starting with Cinderella means that the story feels comfortable and like a known quantity, and when suddenly there is a sharp left turn in the plot, it really is tremendously exciting. Lucinda Chapdelaine was born wealthy and upper-class, but one day, when she was five years old, her parents went off to a ball at the palace and that was the last she saw of them, therefor she was raised in poverty, a drudge for her kind but weak uncle and his cruel second wife.  After many years of misery, one day a mysterious woman leaves a mysterious jewel at Lucinda's uncle's goldsmith shop and that's when Lucinda's adventures begin. The jewel is lost, found, stolen, sold, stolen back again, she discovers a mystery involving her parents' death ten years before, she goes from the dungeon to the ball at the palace and everywhere inbetween, and no-one she meets along the way is quite what they seen, not the mysterious lady, known as the Amaranth Witch, not Peter the thief, not Prince Gregor, not even her aunt can be accepted on face value.  The author takes what could have been one or two-dimensional characters and gives everyone just that little bit of extra life to make them seem like actual people.  Actual people, in a fairy tale!  What will they think of next? Lucinda has to go through an awful lot to reach her destiny, and she has help along the way, but mostly this is a female hero story, a fairytale about the girl using her own wits to find the end of the story.  If you or your child likes Robin McKinley, Diana Wynne Jones or Gail Carson Levine, this book should be right up your alley.  This is Julie Berry's debut novel, I flat out loved it, and I am really looking forward to reading more from this writer. Order the book from an independent bookseller!