A word about my incredibly skewed ratings

I was looking at my tags on the sidebar today and realized that I haven't handed out any grade lower than a B.

Look, I don't want you to think I'm a softy, because I'm not. I'm actually kind of harsh. But unless something offends me to my very marrow, I kind of feel like the time I wasted reading a bad book is more than enough; I don't want to put in a lot of time writing a buyer beware review.

Plus, the process here is pretty unscientific: I read books that I think I'll like, based on flap copy and the writing in the first few pages. Usually, that works out well. Still, I have a stack of books that my friend Kim just loaned me from her children's lit class in college; there's a chance that I'll find a total clinker in the bunch and The Dog and I will be forced to give it a something-less-than-gentlemanly C (or D or F).

Ain't She Sweet by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

The Dog and I have been reading romance novels this week. It's making me revise my idea of what I want for this blog. It was intended to be a kids' lit blog, but I'm having so much fun with some of the other things I've been reading that I want to review them, too.

So here it is: Y'all are going to have to rely on the tags to find what you want, because I think The Dog and I are agreed: If we read it before bed, it's eligible for a review.

Last night: Ain't She Sweet by Susan Elizabeth Phillips.

The Dog was a little irritated because he's not that into romance novels and I kept laughing out loud and waking him up.

But I can't help it. Susan Elizabeth Phillips is funny and wry and I've loved this book since I first read it a few years ago.

It's a perfect comfort book. (In fact, I decided to reread all of Susan Elizabeth Phillips' books this week because they give my brain the sensation of eating chocolate chip cookies.)

Ain't She Sweet is a big favorite with me because I love an imperfect heroine. Not a clumsy heroine, or a silly heroine, or a heroine who endlessly stumbles into trouble because she just doesn't think.

Nope, I like heroines who remind me of me, which is to say heroines who see trouble on the horizon, watch it draw closer, and then sprint toward it to deliver a full-on tackle, simply because they'd rather have trouble on their own terms than wait for it to strike.

Sorting through the trouble is half the fun, after all, and that's a lot of what SEP delivers in Ain't She Sweet.

Our heroine, Sugar Beth Carey, has a lot of bad deeds in her past, and she's about to have her nose rubbed in every single one of them. And ... this is another thing I love in romance novels and novels in general ... she takes it because she knows she has to, because she doesn't have a choice, and because she's tough enough to handle it even if she doesn't like it one bit. Sugar Beth is playing a long game, which is the only kind of game worth playing.

In the end, of course, it's a redemption story with a happy ending. I was about to write "... and I love happy endings," but the truth of the matter is that I only love certain types.

I love the kind of happy ending where a person's mettle is revealed, not the kind where everyone capitulates in order to get along.

I love the kind of happy ending where the happiness isn't robins braiding seed pearls into Cinderella's hair; it's the knowledge that your ability to thrive is stronger than your talent for screwing up.

Even if you do go at trouble like a defensive lineman.

Grade: A
Who should read it: People who think chick lit is irritating, but still want romance
Author Web site
Buy it

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Here's a thing that you shouldn't do when you're writing a first-person contemporary YA novel with a female protagonist with friend issues and a secret: Read Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak.

Don't read it because it's too well written and will depress you.

Don't read it because Anderson's narrator, Melinda, has a voice so true that it's practically a virus and will move into your head and begin talking in your story.

Don't read it because you will immediately feel depressed that Anderson even exists in the same world and breathes the same oxygen and, worse still, is probably writing an even better book at this very moment, if such a thing is possible.

If you're not writing a first-person contemporary YA novel with a female protagonist with friend issues and a secret, I urge you to run out and buy it right away.

Grade: A+
Who should read it: Not me. That was a mistake. But the Dog loved it.
Author web site: www.writerlady.com
Buy it.

Crown Duel by Sherwood Smith

The original Crown Duel by Sherwood Smith was the first of two books (the second, Court Duel, is actually my favorite of the two), but they were (wisely) combined to create a single paperback a few years ago and now you find both books under the same title.

Whew.

I had to tell you that so I could tell you that Court Duel was actually The Dog's bedtime story last night (he's a sucker for high adventure with a dash of romance); I bought the books when they were still discrete hardbacks (and then rebought the combined paperback edition) and we left Crown Duel on the shelf.

Not because it's anything short of excellent. In fact, these are some of my very favorite YA fantasy books and it's just my weakness for snappy dialogue and intrigue that makes me prefer the book that wraps it all up (okay, and happy endings).

Here's the deal: Meliara and her brother, Bran, are the slightly neglected children of a backwoods count; their mother, the (almost) last member of a formerly royal family, was killed when they were small. The book opens as the count is dying, and from his deathbed he charges his children to overthrow the corrupt king.

Crown Duel is all about their efforts to do just that. What I love about the book (and Sherwood Smith) is that they pretty much fail. They're poor (their county has been taxed to death), ignorant of politics, and extremely young. Nevertheless, they manage to make themselves into serious nuisances before everything gets sorted out and they discover (spoiler ahead) that there is a second, much quieter rebellion occurring among the court-based nobility, who are trying to effect a power change without a civil war. In the end, they all throw in together and win ... sort of.

Court Duel (which is just so delicious that it's like a cool drink of lemonade in August) opens as Meliara has returned home. She and her brother have been awarded the king's personal fortune and she is hard at work restoring the ravaged local economy and infrastructure, but she's also spending a lot of time thinking about her role in the war, and how much damage her ignorance did. In short, she's proud but terribly embarrassed and suspects that she has exposed herself to ridicule at court.

Bran, in the meantime, has been enjoying a triumphant introduction to court life and has made friends with the presumptive new king -- who was also one of Meliara's bitter enemies during the war. You see where this is going, right?

Except ... and this is what I love about the book, and why I think middle grade readers (especially girls) would love it as much as YAs ... Meliara is far more concerned with the future of the kingdom and her own cautious forays into politics than with any sort of romance. Along the way, there are fabulous dresses and so forth (yay, said the girly part of me), but also typical Mel heroics and (since it's delivered entirely in her dry, self-deprecating and not-even-remotely-omniscient voice) stumbles.

All goes well in the end, after mud and exhaustion and a cross-country race to save the day, plus some balls and court intrigue and a secret exchange of letters.

Grade: A+
Who should read it: Anyone from 11 on up
Author web site
Author blog (a great one)
Buy it

The Safe-Keeper's Secret and The Dream-Maker's Magic by Sharon Shinn

I was in the mood for something sweet, but not too easy. Something like a fairy tale, but more complicated.

In the end, my hand dropped on the spine of Sharon Shinn's first young adult novel, The Safe-Keeper's Secret. I devoured it in one go, and then thought, "I'm sure I have at least one more of these books somewhere in the house." And I did, the third of the trilogy: The Dream-Maker's Magic.

Here's the bare bones of this world: It's your typical fairy tale/fantasy setting -- semi-rural, simple, agrarian -- but fleshed out in interesting detail. And there are three unconventional jobs in this world, sort-of magic jobs, that frame the three books.

Safe-Keepers serve as ... kind of secular confessors. They are bound to keep any secrets they are told, by their own natures and by whatever it is that keeps priests from blabbing about the confessional. There's not exactly magic to it, except the kind of magic that secrets bestow.

The Safe-Keeper's Secret is the story of a lost royal child, a humble village and two children who don't know their fathers. The primary characters -- Fiona and her not-brother Reed -- are engaging and manage to be believable but also rather extraordinarily good people. The secondary characters -- their mother and aunt, both Safe-Keepers, and the other adults they encounter -- are equally well-drawn.

I wish I had a copy of The Truth-Teller's Tale, but I don't, so let's just skip ahead to The Dream-Maker's Magic.

First, you should know that Truth-Tellers (of which there are many, like Safe-Keepers) feature heavily in all three stories, and they are incapable of telling a lie, which makes them pretty uncomfortable people to know. And there is only one Dream-Maker, a person whose presence mysteriously causes wishes to come true, but at a cost: The Dream-Maker always has a tortured, painful life before the power comes to her (or him), and the pain continues until she (or he) releases the gift to another person.

In the third book, there are two children, Kellan and Griffin, who both have an incredibly tough lot. Kellan's mother is crazy, a specific craziness that spills onto her daughter (whom she insists on calling her son); Griffin's legs are withered and nearly useless, and he lives with his abusive uncle. Still, the book is mostly concerned with how the two of them use their friendship to drag themselves into better lives. Even if there weren't magic involved, it would be an enchanting story.

And Sharon Shinn has a knack for weaving a terrific book out of what appear to be discrete threads of small incidents (what someone referred to as "the unexpected inevitability" at the SCBWI conference earlier this month).


Grade: A-
Who should read them: Advanced middle-graders and YAs who love fairy tales
Author web site: SharonShinn.net
Buy them

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

The Dog and I learned a valuable lesson last night:

If you're going to read Angela Carter before bed, then don't even bother going to bed at all. For one thing, you won't be able to put the book down. And even if you do, you won't be able to sleep.

This is a beautiful but (as the title suggests) deeply violent and sensual collection of fairy tales, retold in ways that make you wish that they were the first version you'd ever heard. (Although, were we to institute "read Angela Carter before Disney or Perrault" as a policy, the children of the world would never sleep again.)

In addition to mining the creepiness that still hovers around even the most sanitized of fairy tales, Carter is just an incredible writer. I kept finding passages that would make me stop, lean back against the pillows and think deeply despairing thoughts about my own prose.

A few examples:

"His wedding gift, clasped round my throat. A choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat."

- from "The Bloody Chamber," a retelling of "Bluebeard"

"The tiger will never lie down with the lamb; he acknowledges no pact that is not reciprocal. The lamb must learn to run with the tigers."

- from "The Tiger's Bride," one of two versions of "Beauty and the Beast"

"The forest closed upon her like a pair of jaws."

- from "The Company of Wolves," one of two retellings of "Little Red Riding Hood"

These are not stories for children. But I decided I had to review them because they are childhood stories with the icing and ribbons stripped away so we can finally see what we were getting.

Grade: A+
Who should read it: Early morning coffee drinkers, people well past the age of consent
Author bio
Buy it

Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson

Kirby Larson made me cry. In person.

I got to hear her speak at the Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators conference in L.A., and she said some of the most sensitive, encouraging things I've ever heard a writer say to other writers. So Kirby, herself, gets five stars, an A++ and a lifetime supply of chocolate chip cookies.

As for Hattie Big Sky, you should know that I've been pressing it on everyone I meet. It's just one of those books whose premise and flap copy can't possibly capture the scope of the story.

To sum up: Hattie (loosely based on Kirby Larson's great-grandmother) gets the chance to go to Montana and prove up a homestead claim.

You're yawning? Prairie history gets you down? Hush. You're going to be shocked by the goodness.

The thing that struck me over and over as I read this book (which both deserved and won the Newbery Medal) was a sense of constant surprise.

True confessions: My grandfather was born in 1915 and his parents spent the early years of his life proving up a claim on 320 acres in Montana. To do it, they had to do what Hattie did: Build a house, fence most of it, and drag a crop out of at least 40 acres of rocky, uncultivated land.

But my grandfather's stories have always left me disconnected from the era (possibly because he was a little boy himself). I hear "homestead" and I think Conestoga wagons; I don't think of World War I, airplanes, motorcycles, food rationing, draft boards or Liberty bonds.

All of those things show up in Hattie's story, along with local tensions between German immigrants (remember: World War I) and range wars between ranchers and farmers.

If Grandpa had included this kind of detail, I'd have been hooked. And that's just one reason why I'm grateful to Kirby Larson: She's opened the door for an entire new understanding of my own family.

Grade: A
Who should read it: People who prefer history that reads like a storybook and, well, everyone else
Author web site: www.kirbylarson.com
Buy it