The Other February Books

A Book a Week continues. 

Me

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

This is the 2010 Newberry Medal Winner.  Sonar X9 read it last summer, having found it in the library.  At the time, when I asked him about it, he had a hard time describing exactly what it was about.  He was clearly engaged with the story, and it obviously left him with a good feeling.  That kid loves an adventure story or a graphic novel that he can rip through quickly, but he has the sensitivity to really appreciate a book like this one as well.  It’s a smart book, that doesn’t condescend to explain every last detail, that pushes a kid to think about what it happening and puzzle out some meaning.  The book stayed with him and he mentioned things about it here and there.  I’ve wanted to read it since then, but when it won the Newberry, I knew I couldn’t put it off.  I’ve rarely been disappointed by the Newberry choices.  This one was no exception. 

I liked Stead’s first novel, First Light, but there is something distinctly different, bigger, more profound about When You Reach Me.  When You Reach Me is the story of a kid who finds a note, loses one friend, gains others, and along the way puzzles out a notion of time travel, self-sacrifice, and the way in which relationships must grow and change.  The characters have believable depth and flaws.  I particularly love the mother, who is studying for an appearance on the $25,000 Pyramid every day when she returns from her job as a paralegal. It’s good to see the portrayal of a parent that is engaged with her child but also struggling to be her own person and achieve her own goals.  I could talk about any of the characters in a similar way.  I believe in them.  They are complex, but that complexity is revealed by degrees, in elegant and simple ways.  

The story also has an elegance, though it seems far from simple until the very end.  The main character, Miranda, refers regularly to her favorite book, A Wrinkle in Time, another time traveling tale. I read A Wrinkle in Time in the third grade.  I remember very little about the story itself, but I remember the feeling that I wasn’t quite understanding the book.  I remember a feeling of flying.  I remember enough to know that this story is quite different and yet similar.  Enough to know that I want to reread it.  One book leads to another book as this book is passed to another person.  Partner is reading it now.  

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

This book was just fun.  I loved Pride and Prejudice when I read it in college, but with a kind of romantic distance.  I appreciated Elizabeth’s wit and marveled at the restraint exercised in a society of manners.  This zombie redaction heightened my appreciation of the original, particularly of the potential for reading humor between the lines.  Grahame-Smith elevates the innuendo even further.  I lost count of the number of ‘ball’ jokes.  He is able to infuse Austen’s work with something else besides zombies, a sense that the characters have actual bodies.  In the novel of manners there is a sense that anything corporal or bodily is just not talked about as if it isn’t there.  I don’t recall once thinking of Elizabeth’s body in any way beyond a holder for a gown or a hand proferred.  There was no sense of her physically.  Graham-Smith though, gives Elizabeth and her sisters bodies that fight and feel.  Oh yes, and they sweat too, though the low word ‘sweat’ does not appear in the pages of the book.  Elizabeth and Darcy at different points suffer from “exercise moisture.”  

Another word that appears rarely in this zombie book is ‘zombie.’  Epithets abound, but my favorite is “manky dreadfuls.”  That should totally be the name of a punk band.  

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

This is my favorite book so far this year.  A 2007 nominee for the ALA Printz award, this book wrapped itself around me and wouldn’t let go.  Death narrates this story of a German orphan living through World War II with her foster family near Munich.  Leisl is the thief and main character, earning the title when she steals a book from the cemetery at her little brother’s funeral.  Heartbreaking.  Rich.  Nuanced.  Leisl’s best friend is Rudy.  Together they steal books and other things, both for the thrill and to fill the aching need of hunger and privation of the war.  I find myself wanting more boys in stories to be like Rudy.  Or like Marcus and the other boys in When You Reach Me.  A boy who is both trying hard to be what he thinks a boy should be, which is so much more than any stereotype of masculinity.  These boys are trying to be strong and fast, but they’re also full of love, fear, and silliness.  They make mistakes but they know when to do the right thing.  

Death tells us the story of how Leisl—I get hung up on the word here, I want to say ‘survived’ because she is a survivor, but ‘endured’ works well too.  How people live, endure, survive.  Death is most troubled by his job when he has to face those who survive.  The way that survivors react to a death is difficult and painful for Death to endure.  But of coures, he does endure.  Death is eternal.  He reminds us that we know how things end.  They always end in death.  Leisl is human, and her life will end, but she and Death are similar in the ways they learn to cope with their survival.  

I’m rambling here.  This book makes me want to outline essays about the theme of survival, the use of words to control and uplift, the notion of nourishment beyond food, the ways in which lives are balanced against one another, or any number of other things that this rich story would support.  

The book is heavy.  Situated in an impoverished neighborhood during WWII, with a labor camp right down the road.  The story itself has few moments of explicit violence, but there is a palpable tension surrounding the story.  We know that people are dying in any number of ways.  We know the fear in which people lived, especially if they’re doing something that could lead instantly to their death if discovered.  Zuzak exploits these tensions exquisitely.  He tells us more than once what is going to happen, but rather than deflating what follows, the tension is heightened, the story driven forward.  We are compelled to read in order to understand how that conclusion comes about.  To learn what happens around that conclusion.  

This is one I will read again and hope that you will read.  You will cry, but it will be the kind of sadness that is deeply thoughtful and cathartic and enriching.  

Sonar X9

Things are so busy around here right now that I haven’t been able to get even a simple thumbs up or down on any of these. I think he loved most of these, though Johnny Texas was compulsory at school and I have no idea whether he liked it.  He was enjoying the novelty of The Inferno but I think was undone by the complexity and has given it up in favor of other pleasures.  

The Secret of Zoom by Lynne Jonell

Tapestry: The Hound of Rowan by Henry H. Neff

Tapestry: The Second Siege by Henry H. Neff

Fergus Crane by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell

Johnny Texas by Carol Hoff and Bob Meyers

The Inferno of Dante by Robert Pinsky

What We’re Reading Now

Firmin by Sam Savage

Mossflower by Brian Jacques (out loud)

What We’re Thinking about Reading

In Other Rooms Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin

Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin

American Nerd: The Story of My People by Benjamin Nugent

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

Comments

[Patrick]

I would totally buy a cd by the Manky Dreadfuls.