The Cabinet of Wonders, by Marie Rutkowski

Title:  The Cabinet of Wonders
Author:  Marie Rutkowski
Publisher:  Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux
Year:  2008
Pages:  258
Genre:  Historical (?) Fiction, Fantasy
Themes:  Family, Freedom, Adventure, Magic
Age Range:  4th-6th Grade


Summary:  (from Goodreads)
Petra Kronos has a simple, happy life. But it’s never been ordinary. She has a pet tin spider named Astrophil who likes to hide in her snarled hair and give her advice. Her best friend can trap lightning inside a glass sphere. Petra also has a father in faraway Prague who is able to move metal with his mind. He has been commissioned by the prince of Bohemia to build the world’s finest astronomical clock.

Petra’s life is forever changed when, one day, her father returns home—blind. The prince has stolen his eyes, enchanted them, and now wears them. But why? Petra doesn’t know, but she knows this: she will go to Prague, sneak into Salamander Castle, and steal her father’s eyes back.

Joining forces with Neel, whose fingers extend into invisible ghosts that pick locks and pockets, Petra finds that many people in the castle are not what they seem, and that her father’s clock has powers capable of destroying their world.


Review:
I read this book fully expecting to really like it.  A blend of two of my favorite genres, historical fiction and fantasy, sounded like a recipe for enjoyment.  Unfortunately, I think that it needed a pinch more history.


Rutkowski is clear in the afterword that she took historical figures and events and completely changed them to suit the purposes of the novel.  She also says that she imagine some uptight history lovers sniffing their nose at her complete disregard for the historical record.  Well, I certainly don't think of myself as uptight, but  am going to turn up my nose slightly.  Some of the characters are based on actual people who lived during the 16th Century.  The geopolitical climate is similar to what was true at the time.  And the Roma, from which group two of the main characters derive, is certainly real.  But some of the history is changed not at all, some if changed a little, and some is completely fabricated.  Not in an "imagine if THIS one thing has gone differently" sort of way, but just kind of randomly to suit the story.


That said, most fourth or fifth grade readers of this book are not going to know any of the above, and Rutkowski does tell you in the afterword what was factual and what was made up.  But my real issue is that I don't think that she needed to base her story in the real world at all for it to work.  Basically it's the story of a young girl fighting the injustice of an evil king using magic-there is nothing inherently "real world" in the plot that would have required the use of actual people and actual places.  But, I imagine that younger readers, unlike me, will not really focus on that aspect of the book, and it is a good story.  The people who have magical powers have unusual ones-not just the ability to do spells or, say, levitate objects, but the ability to manipulate matter to make something at once mundane and magical.  Metal pets that grow and talk, marbles with water or lightning inside that multiples one-hundredfold when broken, a beautiful clock that can change the weather.  This is a land where skill is just as important as power, and that is a good message for anyone.

Deep and Dark and Dangerous, by Mary Downing Hahn

Title:  Deep and Dark and Dangerous
Author:  Mary Downing Hahn
Publisher:  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Year:  2007
Pages:  192
Genre:  Supernatural Fantasy
Themes:  Secrets, Family, Ghost Story
Age Range:  4th through 6th Grade

Summary: (from Goodreads)
Just before summer begins, 13-year-old Ali finds an odd photograph in the attic. She knows the two children in it are her mother, Claire, and her aunt Dulcie. But who’s the third person, the one who’s been torn out of the picture?

Ali figures she’ll find out while she’s vacationing in Maine with Dulcie and her four-year-old daughter, Emma, in the house where Ali’s mother’s family used to spend summers. All hopes for relaxation are quashed shortly after their arrival, though, when the girls meet Sissy, a kid who’s mean and spiteful and a bad influence on Emma.

Strangest of all, Sissy keeps talking about a girl named Teresa who drowned under mysterious circumstances back when Claire and Dulcie were kids, and whose body was never found. At first Ali thinks Sissy’s just trying to scare her with a ghost story, but soon she discovers the real reason why Sissy is so angry. . . . 


Review:
Anyone who reads my adult book blog or visits my Goodreads profile will know that I love a good supernatural horror story.  The fact that I have read pretty much everything that Stephen King has ever written is a pretty big clue.  But my love of scary ghost stories started long before I was old enough to read Uncle Stevie...some of my favorite books as a middle grade child were The Figure in the Shadows and The House With the Clock in its Walls by John Bellairs.  Big spooky houses, mysterious noises, creepy characters-I loved being scared.  I can only imagine that Mary Downing Hahn felt similarly, since she has made quite a career of writing scary stories for young readers.


Deep and Dark and Dangerous was the perfect book for me to start my summer reading with.  The cottage that Ali and her aunt and cousin go to for the summer sounds like the perfect getaway-a cozy cottage with a light, airy studio; the cool lake surrounded by beautiful northern forests.  But Hahn quickly turns that idyllic setting into something creepy and menacing.  When Sissy shows up and starts harassing Ali and Emma it is clear that everything is not as it seems.  Soon every shadow, every noise, every bump in the night makes Ali and her family more and more unsettled.  


Despite the spooky atmosphere, the story stays just this side of being too creepy for the intended audience.  In fact, once the ghost is revealed, the story actually becomes more about doing what is right than about scaring the pants off of the reader.  In the end, the story is more about how mean children can be to each other, and how important it is to take responsibility for your mistakes.  This book would be a great addition to any classroom library.  I could even see it as part of a ghost stories theme unit.  But make sure that you read it with the lights on!

Divergent, by Veronica Roth

Title:  Divergent
Author:  Veronica Roth
Publisher:  Harper Collins
Year:  2011
Pages:  487
Genre:  Dystopian
Themes:  Identity, First Love, Coming of Age
Age Range:  7th Grade and Up

Summary:  (from Goodreads)
In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself. 

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles to determine who her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes infuriating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers a growing conflict that threatens to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves… or it might destroy her.


Review:

This book was all over the place last year, and was voted the readers' favorite book on Goodreads in their Reader's Choice Awards.  It obviously has wide appeal to the same audience of YA readers that loved The Hunger Games, and they proved it by making it a huge bestseller.  I think that part of what took me so long to read it is that I am leery of clones...you know, like all of the vampire/werewolf/normal girl love stories that came out after Twilight hit it big.  But since everyone I know that's read it has raved about it, I made it the first book on my summer reading list.

And the praise they heap on it is well deserved.  It does not feel like nearly 500 pages, even as a young adult book.  The action is well-paced, and interspersed with enough of Tris's internal struggles to make it more than just an action book, but less than navel-gazing.   And what an interesting character Tris is.  While obviously the protagonist and a sympathetic character, I didn't always like her or approve of her choices.  I was turned off by the violence inherent in the Dauntless lifestyle, and how easily it sometimes was for her to use violence.  But I liked the book more for my ambivalence.  It made the story more thought-provoking.

Though really it didn't need much more than the basic premise to be more thought-provoking.  The idea of my city falling to pieces, the lake replaced by a giant dead marsh, with five different factions running the place gave me plenty to think about.  I think that this book would be an excellent choice for a teen book club.  I don't know that there is enough literary substance there to make it a teachable book for a whole class, but as a way to get reluctant teen readers to read and discuss what they are thinking it would be great.  What I think could produce the most discussion in a book club setting is the re-ordering of society.  I loved the fact that only the selfless could go into leadership and public service-makes what's happening in today's political culture seem small-minded.  And I imagine that a good discussion could also center around which faction the people in the group would choose.  I know what my answer is, and it is not Dauntless, that's for sure.  

Like most YA fiction, there is a love story.  What I appreciated about it was that it appeared to be an even partnership, with each person having power in the relationship and neither one having to change who they were to be together.  I also appreciated that it did not become the focus for the action of the story.  It was great that they fell in love, but it was not the main driver for why they did the things they did in trying to save their city.  It also did not completely conform to gender role stereotypes.  Tris, though diminutive in physical stature, was both strong and sometimes cold in her ability to do what needed to be done, which is often a masculine trait in media.  Tobias, while physically strong and skilled, was often shown as being emotionally vulnerable-a female trait, according to society.  


The ending was very up in the air, so don't expect a tidy conclusion.  But the second book in the series, Insurgent, came out May 1st, so if you are the kind of person who needs to know now, I suggest you buy both books together!

Cosmic, by Frank Cotrell Boyce

Title:  Cosmic
Author:  Frank Cotrell Boyce
Publisher:  Walden Pond Press
Year: 2008
Pages:  336
Genre:  Science Fiction
Themes:  Family, Growing Up
Age Range:  4th-8th grade

Summary:  (from Goodreads)
Liam is too big for his boots. And his football strip. And his school blazer. But being super-sized height-wise has its advantages: he's the only eleven-year-old to ever ride the G-force defying Cosmic rollercoaster - or be offered the chance to drive a Porsche. Long-legged Liam makes a giant leap for boy-kind by competing with a group of adults for the chance to go into space. Is Liam the best boy for the job? Sometimes being big isn't all about being a grown-up.


Review: 
 That summary doesn't really do the plot justice, but I can understand why it's written the way it is. The plot for this book is convoluted and completely unbelievable-except it's not.  Somehow Boyce manages to make the story about an extremely mature looking 12 year old who fakes his way into a top secret space mission by pretending to be someone's dad feel real.  But I suspect that the authenticity that I felt while reading the book had less to do with the plot and more to do with the emotions that Liam brings out in the reader.


Liam is awkward and brilliant and lacks all common sense-much like almost any other tween.  He desperately wants to fit in, but has mostly given up on that due to his extreme height and premature facial hair.  The one place he feels accepted is in the online community of World of Warcraft.  But when he hears about a special contest for dads and their kids to ride the most amazing ride ever, The Rocket, Liam knows he has to find a way to win.  And when he finds out The Rocket is, well, a rocket, going to space, instead of running for the hills like most sensible chaps, he fights for the right to ride.

Liam's character perfectly demonstrates the stage of life that comes between childhood and the teen years.  He feels left-out by his peers, misunderstood by his parents, restless for adventure...the tween age reminds me of how a reptile must feel before it sheds its skin.  Itchy and twitchy and impatient for the next stage of life to begin.  Before Liam can truly understand the importance of his family and his own self-worth, he has to scrape away all of that immaturity and try to see the world for what it really is.  At least the view is better from space!

I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced

Title:  I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced\
Publisher:  Broadway
Year:  2010
Pages: 188
Genre:  Memoir
Themes:  Survival, Social Justice, Feminism
Age Range:  8th Grade and Up

Summary:  (from publisher)
Forced by her father to marry a man three times her age, young Nujood Ali was sent away from her parents and beloved sisters and made to live with her husband and his family in an isolated village in rural Yemen. There she suffered daily from physical and emotional abuse by her mother-in-law and nightly at the rough hands of her spouse. Flouting his oath to wait to have sexual relations with Nujood until she was no longer a child, he took her virginity on their wedding night. She was only ten years old.

Unable to endure the pain and distress any longer, Nujood fled—not for home, but to the courthouse of the capital, paying for a taxi ride with a few precious coins of bread money. When a renowned Yemeni lawyer heard about the young victim, she took on Nujood’s case and fought the archaic system in a country where almost half the girls are married while still under the legal age. Since their unprecedented victory in April 2008, Nujood’s courageous defiance of both Yemeni customs and her own family has attracted a storm of international attention. Her story even incited change in Yemen and other Middle Eastern countries, where underage marriage laws are being increasingly enforced and other child brides have been granted divorces.


Review:
Nujood's story is simply but powerfully written.  Detailing a loss of innocence that was made all the more brutal for coming from the betrayal of her parents, I Am Nujood is both an easy and a difficult read.  While the sexual assaults that she endured daily are only described in much detail once, the effect of it on her is both tragic and ultimately redemptive.  Despite all teachings to the contrary, Nujood refuses to accept that her fate as a woman is to be beaten and raped by her "husband", showing a bravery that not many adult women in repressive societies do.  Her determination to move forward and help other girls is an example to any survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, whether from countries where the practice is societally supported or from more "enlightened" countries like America, where supposedly we value women more.


But this book is much more than one personal story of survival and redemption.  This book can be used to highlight the very real problem of forced child marriage that exists in parts of the developing world.  Unicef estimates that in Africa, there the practice is prevalent, 42% of girls will be married before the age of 18, many without their consent.  This means that a lack of formal schooling and a separation from the rest of society will only lead to a perpetuation of the cycle for their daughters.  Child marriage is most often the result of poverty combined with a  rigid sense of honor.  This sense of having to "honor" the family by putting up with abuse is pervasive and makes girls in this situation feel ashamed of their desire not to be married.  There is much work to be done to help women world-wide gain the education and rights necessary for them to have true self-determination, not to have to choose between the equally unacceptable alternatives of staying with their family and starving or being forced into a marriage with an older man and enduring whatever abuse he chooses to throw her way.  


While the reading level for this book is quite low, the content is mature, and should it should be read with guidance by younger teens.  I believe that it could be a very powerful book to use in the classroom, however, not necessarily for its literary merit as much as for the issues it raises about human rights.  While the description of Nujood's rape on the first night of her marriage is disturbing, it is not graphic in nature in terms of language.  I believe that it would make an excellent addition to any high school literature or social sciences curriculum, and that it could be used as a jumping-off point for a unit on the status of girl children throughout the world.


Teacher Resources:
Random House Reader's Guide
Human Rights Watch Article About Child Marriage in Yemen

Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffery

Title: Dragonflight
Author:  Anne McCaffrey
Publisher:  Del Ray
Year:  1968
Pages: 320
Genre:  Fantasy/Science Fiction
Themes:  Survival, Self-Determination
Age Range:  8th Grade and Up

Summary: (from Goodreads)
To the nobles who live in Benden Weyr, Lessa is nothing but a ragged kitchen girl. For most of her life she has survived by serving those who betrayed her father and took over his lands. Now the time has come for Lessa to shed her disguise—and take back her stolen birthright. 

But everything changes when she meets a queen dragon. The bond they share will be deep and last forever. It will protect them when, for the first time in centuries, Lessa’s world is threatened by Thread, an evil substance that falls like rain and destroys everything it touches. Dragons and their Riders once protected the planet from Thread, but there are very few of them left these days. Now brave Lessa must risk her life, and the life of her beloved dragon, to save her beautiful world. . . .


Review:
The Dragonriders of Pern books were some of the first adult fantasy novels I read.  I had already been through the Narnia books, as well as Lloyd Alexander and Susan Cooper.  While I certainly had a strong desire to find my own magic wardrobe, none of those other series made me long to be part of a fictional world the way McCaffrey's books did.  To experience the intense psychic bond between dragon and rider, to fly in battle against the devastating Thread, to travel through space and time in an instant-these were things that so greatly appealed to me that I felt it as a physical force when I read these books.  


I am not alone in my worship of the dragonkind as imagined in these books.  Anne McCaffrey, who died earlier this year, had a house full of dragons, many of them  given to her by her adoring fans.  People who, like me, wished they could experience the magic of dragonflight.  McCaffrey's books are for fantasy lovers, but also for lovers of science fiction, because as the series went on and we learned more about the origins of the dragons, we discover that in fact science is at the core of what these books.  McCaffrey merges science fiction with fantasy elements in a way I have not read since.  


From a teacher perspective, these books are likely not something to use as a whole group or small group reading assignment.  But they are certainly books worthy of inclusion in your classroom library.  They may provide a gateway to reading for kids who are looking for a fantastic world to escape to.  And if it affects them anything like it affected me, it will lead them to authors like Tolkien and Asimov and Heinlein and the many fantastical worlds they created.

Signal, by Cynthia C. Felice

Title:  Signal
Author: Cynthia C. Felice
Publisher: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
Year: 2009
Pages: 160
Genre:  Realistic Fiction
Themes:  Family, Friendship, Loss
Age Range:  4th-7th Grade


Summary: (from Goodreads)
One day while running on the trail near his house in upstate New York, Owen McGuire meets a girl with startling green eyes and bloody cuts all over her body who seems to be utterly alone. Her name is Campion, after the wildflower that is an alien species in the area—alien meaning “from someplace else”—and Campion claims to come from someplace else entirely, a planet called Home. She plans to signal her parents to come pick her up in their spaceship. Owen agrees to help, and as he does, he feels happier than he has in a long time: his mother died a year and a half ago, and now he and his workaholic father live together like two planets on separate orbits, in a new house far from his friends. What will he do when Campion asks him to come with her into outer space, away from his lonely life on Earth?


Review:
I picked this book up at the book fair at my school.  I hadn't read anything about it online or anywhere else, so the description above led me to believe it was a science fiction book.  And that is the hook, the thing that sets you up for the much sadder and more earthly truth of Campion's life.  


Owen's loneliness is apparent in the beginning of the book, and only gets more evident as the story progresses.  His father throws himself into his work after losing Owen's mother in a car accident, and Owen has no friends in the new town where they live.  The few interactions we see between Owen and his father are obviously strained, and it helps make his decisions-first to believe Campion's very far-fecthed story, and second to leave with her and her "parents" when they arrived in a spaceship to rescue her.

From the beginning of the book I felt that the backstory that Campion produced was not exactly believable.  But I was still thinking of it as a science fiction story at that point.  Once I realized the sad reality that Campion was running away from an abusive home, the story set-up made much more sense.  I can see how children reading the story would be drawn in thinking it was one thing, and be surprised at the "twist" at the end.  It would provide an excellent discussion of character motivations-both for Owen and for Campion.  The other characters in the story each have their own quirks and eccentricities, which can only add to the discussion and make it richer.  I would say that this book would be good for a book club, or for a literature circle format.