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Long before the current unkempt presidential election season was set into play, the novelist Jane Mendelsohn (I Was Amelia Earhart) was embarked on her fourth novel, the story of a New York City family whose wealth is the product of intense (even monstrous) real estate dealing.

The family patriarch is Steve Zane. His "... office towers, malls, skyscrapers, housing developments, business contacts, political connections" have yielded tremendous, soul-darkening privilege. They have set decay—often violent decay—into motion, against the backdrop of sizable luxury.

Everything is in jeopardy in Burning Down the House (Alfred A. Knopf, March 31, 2016). The scheming son has had it with the father. The adopted child is self destructing. The Eastern European nanny who has emerged from a terrifying kidnapping and years as a sex slave is asked to revisit the terrors of her past. People are disposable. And when Zane—now older, now reflective, now negotiating the tenderness of unexpected affection—seeks at last to draw a moral line, it may (or may not) be too late.

Fearlessly deploying past and present tenses, multiple perspectives, and the smack of white space, Mendelsohn creates a harshly glinting (a Mendelsohn word) milieu.

Here is Steve Zane himself, for example, on the savages now destroying our world.

What we are confronted with in today's world are cruel degenerate people with no sensitivity or psychological awareness. Savages with no feelings. Maybe it's always been this way, but it's worse now. They are in charge. We are talking about people who are so numb to their fellow human beings that they think they know better how everybody should live. And do you know what happens to people who know what's best for everybody? They destroy the world. That's what they do. They dismember and disembowel the individual and boil her flesh and entrails down in a stew with everybody else.

Here a character elucidates artistic ambition, envy, and ego:

They'd followed his successful career as if they were bird-watchers and he some common pigeon who had inexplicably been accepted by a flock of rare eagles. They no more believed in his talent than they believed that they themselves might be untalented. Over the years they had won prizes and fellowships and commissions and professorships. They had been invited to lecture and appeared in numerous footnotes. These achievements had been like snakebites on their egos, swelling them out of proportion to the rest of their beings so that their sense of importance bulged and tottered on top of them like extra heads, as if they were monsters in a fable, muzzled, drooling, snouted, skin split to reveal pink bone and yellow ooze.

Like Lidia Yuknavitch, Mendelsohn brings a rare poetic sensibility to indecorous circumstances, a loveliness of language to odious characters. There's no hedging of any bets here, no softening of the tale, no hitching of this plot to a book-club formula. Obscene wealth and uncured ambition are often ruinous combustibles. Mendelsohn, in Burning Down the House, will not pretend that they aren't.

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The Magic Mirror: Concerning a Lonely Princess, a Foundling Girl, a Scheming King, and a Pickpocket Squirrel
By Susan Hill Long
Knopf (an imprint of Penguin Random House)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0-553-51134-2
Ages 9-12
On shelves May 10th

What do you want from a fairy tale? Magic? Romance? Derring-do? Despicable villainy? Academics and scholars have puzzled and puzzed until their puzzlers were sore over what it is about the European fairy tale genre that so enthralls us. Recently fairy tale lovers have seen the entertainment industry discover that fairy tales are still a primo source of capital. On the book side of things, I’ve seen a distinct uptick in retellings of Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and more in the last five years. Classic fairy tales have it easy. It’s the newbies that have a hard time going. How do you get a foothold in a genre that’s been in existence for centuries? In The Magic Mirror by Susan Hill Long, the author decides to simplify. Merely take the elements that suit the story best (highway robbers, princesses, and just a smidgen of magic) and then weave in some surprisingly stellar writing. The result is fairy tale fare that reminds one of nothing so much as the best of Gail Carson Levine. Funny, friendly, witty and sly, this makes for perfect bedtime reading.

Margaret (or Maggot, depending on who’s talking about her) should technically be grateful for her life. Though she sports a lame foot (an “accident of birth” she’s been told) and is an orphan, she has a roof over her head, food in her belly, and aside from avoiding Thomas, the local bully, not too much trouble in life. But of course she’s desperately lonely, and that’s a problem that’s hard to cure. When she makes the acquaintance of a man with a wooden leg, she receives in a trade a mirror capable of showing anyone their heart’s desire. But what she sees when she peers into it is a strange wild-eyed man she’s never laid eyes on before. When Minka, the woman who cares for Margaret, decides to marry her off, our heroine decides that leg or no leg she is not going to have her life decided for her. And in the course of her adventures she’ll little suspect there are royal mix-ups, a king with little in the way of fatherly feelings, a boy with a bagpipe, and a light-fingered squirrel in her very near future.

Is anyone going to challenge me when I say that comparing a book, any book, to The Princess Bride is never a good idea? The Princess Bride inspires a loving fandom that jealously guards its unique storytelling. Still, there are many familiar tropes in that book/film. A princess, a pirate, giants, swordplay, you name it. When writing a new fairy tale you Harry Potter it. You take those familiar elements and weave them into something new. So when Ms. Long wrote The Magic Mirror she did exactly the same thing. Additionally, by splitting her narrative into an increasingly large cast of characters, she gives it a distinctly Princess Bride-like feel. It has humor and fights and baddies in all the same ways. When Kirkus reviewed this book they said that it was predictable and unbelievable (because of the coincidences in the plot). I’d counter that there’s nothing any more predictable or unbelievable here than you’d find in any modern fairy tale, be it Ella Enchanted or Frozen, and just as much joy.

In this particular case it’s Long’s descriptions and characters that stay with a reader long after the book has been put down. Even the foulest villain has an emotional weak spot, and characters that are set up to seem like baddies at the beginning (like Minka) turn out to be pretty soft in the end. Plus you really root for these characters. Some authors think it necessary to drown their villains in a thick sauce of sadism so that when the heroes triumph it’s an even keener victory. But when writing books for 9-12 year olds there’s no need to pile on the bloodshed. In the right writers’ hands, as long as the antagonist is preventing the heroes from their happy ending, that’s all you really need to do to keep the plot moving at a sharp clip. I liked the people I met in this book, but the descriptions were probably my favorite aspect of the novel. Lines like, “Her voice climbed up the sentence like a ladder, and quavered at the top,” make me happy. Ditto wisdoms like “It’s all in the angle of the squint.” Or a description of a cathedral’s shadows where a character “shuffled away from the creeping dark so that she might escape God’s notice.”

I did experience a palpable sense of relief that it was written today, though. Since Margaret has a physical disability (a foot and leg injured long ago that were never set correctly) there is a brief suggestion at one point that there might be a magical remedy to her problem. I was reminded of a similar middle grade novel Handbook for Dragon Slayers which also starred a girl with an injured limb. In that book a cure for her disability is bandied about and ultimately rejected in an excellent manner. Indeed, the book went on to win a Schneider Family Book Award given annually to books that embody, “an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences.” Reading The Magic Mirror I had the very clear sense that if this book had been written in the past an easy cure for Margaret’s leg would have been part of the story’s happy ending and that would be that. These days such endings are mildly insulting answers to what, in truth, are very real problems. Happily The Magic Mirror does not fall into such a trap (though sadly the heroine does have some unfortunate thoughts about a successful man with a hunch on his back that did not gel well with the book’s otherwise positive embrace of disability).

As it happens, I did find one particular aspect of the book problematic. This is Ms. Long’s second novel so while the bones of this story are strong there are aspects to the writing that will need a bit of strengthening in the future. Specifically, the exposition. Now the art of exposition is learned, not born. Filling the reader in on a hitherto unknown back-story is no easy task. At best, back-story is woven into the dialogue so naturally the reader is hardly aware that they’re learning about what’s come before. Clunky back-story, in contrast, places huge chunks of it en masse in the same general vicinity of the novel. Alas, near the end of The Magic Mirror the author has set herself up to reveal not just the back-story of our heroine, but of at least three to four other people as well. The result is ultimately somewhat confusing, with new characters popping up (a midwife, a thief’s wife) to fill in the details out of the blue. Without a character guide (which would, admittedly, give away some of the plot) there is little to help kids distinguish between Petra vs. Minka vs. Margaret.

For all that there is a magic mirror in the story the book is pretty devoid of magical activities. You won’t find dragons or wizards or much of anything out of this world here, with the sole exception of the mirror itself. It’s almost a pity that it’s in the title since you could probably hand this title to kids that only like realism (and they do indeed exist) and they’d get just as much out of it as the most ravenous fantasy fan. While it’s not a perfect novel, it is a ripping good yarn that keeps you enthralled from page one onward. Will you see where it’s going? Maybe. But you’ll enjoy the sights along the way. Fine fantastical stuff.

For ages 9-12.

On shelves May 10th.

Like This? Then Try:

• Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
• Handbook for Dragon Slayers by Merrie Haskell
• The Midwife’s Apprentice by Karen Cushman

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Given his affinity for typewriters and his collection of favorite models, including a Hermes 2000, a 1930s Remington, and a midcentury Royal, we imagine Tom Hanks tapped out first drafts for the book he just sold to Alfred A. Knopf. Images of his typewriters inspired a series of short stories.

According to the New York Times: “’The stories are not about the typewriters themselves, but rather the stories are something that might have been written on one of them,’ Mr. Hanks said in a statement released by Knopf on Monday.”

In September, Hanks shared the origin story for his typewriter love with NPR’s Audie Cornish, “I ended up just having them around because they’re beautiful works of art, and I ended up collecting them from every ridiculous source possible. It really kicked off probably when I had a little excess cash. But better to spend it on $50 typewriters than some of the other things you can blow show-business money on.”

He also discussed with Cornish how using a typewriter changes the writing process:

“It makes me work a little slower, and when you work a little slower, you work a little bit more accurately. … I like operating a little bit slower. Typing on an actual typewriter on paper is only a softer version of chiseling words into stone.”

Hanks’ book of short stories follows the release in August of his writing app, Hanx Writer, which simulates a typewriter keyboard and action, and his 2013 New York Times op-ed, “I Am TOM. I Like to TYPE. Hear That?”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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I've traipsed through many a wood and have collected my share of pinecones, but never, never on any of my adventures have I come across a friendly, mechanized, working robot.  I must be walking through the wrong kind of woods, because in Ame Dyckman's picture book world this scenario is entirely possible.

Simply and perfectly told with bold, eye-pleasing illustrations by robot-lover Dan Yaccarino, BOY + BOT is quite possibly the best robot picture book we've ever read (and believe me, we've read several).  The story-line goes like this: Boy walks through the woods.  Boy meets a big, red robot.  Boy and robot problem-solve. Robot and boy become BFF.  Now obviously there's more to it than that, like for instance both boy and bot have similar "misunderstood malfunctions" and need fixing, but to say any more would spoil the fun.  Read the robot parts aloud in your best robot voice. Remark on all the fun things the robot and boy do together like swimming, apple-picking and rock-skipping.  And remember, little boys do not need oiling, and never, ever feed your robot applesauce.

This book deservedly received starred review from Kirkus, Booklist, and Publishers Weekly. Take our word for it (and theirs), if you have a young, robot-loving child, BOY + BOT is for them and worth purchasing.

Fun fact: If you look closely at the illustrations in BOY + BOT you'll discover one of Yaccarino's creative additions to the story -- a light-bulb shaped, one-eyed robot that Ame Dyckman calls "Watt."  Not surprisingly, illustrator Dan Yaccarino has a self-described "slight penchant for robots."  He is also the author/illustrator of another robot picture book, If I Had a Robot, a story about a boy who dreams about all the things he could or wouldn't have to do if he had a robot.  His robot illustrations have a retro, vintage look reminiscent of those tin wind-up robot toys from the past. 

Related links: 
Ame Dyckman - Author Website 
Dan Yaccarino - Illustrator Website

BOY + BOT by Ame Dyckman, illustrated by Dan Yaccarino.  Alfred A. Knopf / Random House (April 2012); ISBN 9780375867569; 32 pages
Book Source: copy from our personal library

Sadly we have not discovered our own robot friend in the woods, so my son and I did the next best thing ... made our own robot out of LEGOs. Our LEGO collection is large and diverse enough to provide ample parts for robot building.   We have eyes, connecting parts to make arms that swing and plenty of multi-sized, red blocks.



My son insisted that our BOT robot have a power switch in the back. Pair the LEGO bot with a boy mini-figure and let the book play-acting begin!  

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One of the reasons I like to use twitter is because I can connect with such a wide variety of people, follow their random thoughts and discover new ideas and inspiration. Many children's authors and illustrators are active on twitter. To name a few, you can find Mo Willems @The_Pigeon, Carin Berger @CarinBerger, Shannon Hale @haleshannon, and Neil Gaiman @neilhimself.

A while back, I was browsing my twitter feed and noticed a tweet by author/illustrator Deborah Freedman (@DeborahFreedman). This was the tweet:

DeborahFreedman: April showers bring... May showers. And flowers. PB reading suggestions about gardens: http://bit.ly/anY5eX

I do love books about gardens so I clicked on over and discovered an amazing image of rain and flowers on her "writes with pictures" blog . I showed it to my daughter and she thought it was beautiful that the cloud was raining stars. I knew she'd enjoy trying to recreate the picture, so in between the rain showers this week we made some spray artwork outside for our stART (story + art) project.

❖❖❖❖❖❖ stART Craft - Spray Bottle Art ❖❖❖❖❖❖
To make the spray paint, I mixed a little water and food coloring together and put it in a spray bottle. We hung a piece of paper on a low clothesline. My daughter squirted her picture with the paint, first using blue for the rain and clouds. Then she turned her paper upside down and added green spray for the grass and flower stems. She hasn't decided yet if she wants to add stars to the painting or flowers, so it's just stems and rain right now. We tried spray painting on a variety of different paper types and found the watercolor paper worked the best and allowed for more vibrant colors. This was a fun activity on a hot summer-like day and later on we even used the clothesline for another purpose -- a tent!

Scribble by Deborah Freedman. Alfred A. Knopf (May 2007); ISBN 9780375839665; 4

12 Comments on Scribble by Deborah Freedman - Book Review & Spray Bottle Painting Craft, last added: 6/18/2010

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An Almost Unschooling Mom said, on 6/17/2010 1:05:00 PM

I like the idea of turning the paper over to make the grass, and letting the drips be stems - very clever. We haven't tried spray bottle painting yet - maybe this summer.

Christianne @ Little Page Turners said, on 6/17/2010 1:55:00 PM

Great activity idea! Thanks for the twitter links as well. I keep trying twitter, getting overwhelmed, and not logging in for weeks. I'll have to give it a go again. :)

Ticia said, on 6/17/2010 2:39:00 PM

What a cute idea. I'll have to see if I can find a good spray bottle. Right now I just have the mister kind.

sbswtp said, on 6/17/2010 6:58:00 PM

What a fun outdoor project :) I will have to get a spray bottle...I think Ryleigh would like this activity!

littlewondersdays said, on 6/17/2010 7:20:00 PM

Fun project! My kids love using a spray bottle, especially with paint in it.

Jenny said, on 6/17/2010 8:36:00 PM

Awww, that looks like a great book. So fun for them to spray paint.

Melissa Taylor said, on 6/17/2010 9:45:00 PM

Thanks for the great recommendation! I can't wait to check out this book!

Melissa

Raising a Happy Child said, on 6/18/2010 12:22:00 AM

The book sounds great. I am putting it on my library list pronto. And I also like your spray painting - we haven't done it in a while. I wonder if your daughter decides to add to it.

Christy said, on 6/18/2010 4:40:00 AM

My kids love spray bottle painting - it's fun! I am going to look for this book on my library website right now!

Charlene said, on 6/18/2010 6:26:00 AM

We haven't spray bottle painted yet, we are sooo going to try it this summer though!

Amy @ Hope Is the Word said, on 6/18/2010 11:57:00 AM

My girls would love this art project, and the book looks terrific! Thanks for linking up to Read Aloud Thursday!

deborahfreedman said, on 6/18/2010 3:25:00 PM

What a terrific project you've come up with! I love it! Especially since I've been doing lots of dripping and splashing myself lately.

Twitter is amazing, isn't it? Thanks so much for the lovely review. I hope you and your daughter have lots more imaginative fun this summer, and that you post the end results of the drip painting.

- Debbie

p.s. I loved the idea of "dripping stars".

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Eleven-year-old Riley Liston isn’t exactly a jock. Don’t get me wrong, he is good at some sports. Especially the kinds that involve distance and endurance like cross-country and swimming, but he’s not standard fare for sport’s camp.

Camp Olympia turns out not to be quite like the brochure. The “arena” was nothing more than an old barn with a cement floor and the “stadium” a plain old field with the chain link backstop. “The Camp Olympia Institute for Sports and Nutrition” was a smoky, greasy cafeteria that serves food that the kids don’t even want to eat! (They stock up on snacks at the Trading Post to survive.)

But Riley figures out a way to get by. Since all of the campers have to participate in the team sports, Riley simply tries not to screw up. All during the two weeks of camp the bunks are earning points to try to win the Big Joe Trophy, and Riley doesn’t want to be the camper who costs Cabin 3 the cup.

Rich Wallace has written a summer camp story that will snare sports enthusiasts and non-sports enthusiasts as well. The camp setting is familiar to many kids, and if not, readers will take their first journey along side of Riley. Since the sports in the camp are varied, readers will get a glimpse of softball, basket ball, water polo, cross country, and even hot dog eating contests. Readers get to see Riley’s confidence grow as the days go by. All of the trappings of summer camp are in the mix as well, including ghost stories, a famously huge and famously unseen resident snapping turtle, and cabin trashing shenanigans.

Pack this in the bag of a camp going guy you know this summer!

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I am excited to present Erica Moore's first review at The Well-Read Child.

Thornspell by Helen Lowe

Prince Sigismund has lived in the small West Castle on the edge of his father’s kingdom for many years. The castle, village and park are surrounded by a large wall and gate. Sigismund hasn’t been allowed outside of the wall for a long time and he likes to dream about what lies beyond the gate and the silent forest that comes up to the western wall. The forest is forbidden and no one has been allowed to enter it for almost a 100 years, not since his great-grandfather placed an interdict forbidding anyone to go into the forest. No one remembers why exactly the forest is forbidden but there is a presence about the forest that makes people avoid it. No one would dare to enter it. There are many stories about the forest. One story tells of a kingdom in the middle of the forest and an enchanted sleeping princess under the spell of an evil fairy. Sigismund loves hearing these stories. Nothing exciting ever happens to him until one day he speaks to a mysterious lady through the castle gate and falls under a sleeping sickness only to be cured by another lady in his dreams. Afterwards, everything changes for Sigismund.

Helen Lowe has done a remarkable job in retelling and expanding the sleeping beauty fairytale. This tale focuses on the story of the prince chosen to awaken the princess and the danger and intrigue of the fairy realm when it plays in the mortal realm. Sigismund comes to realize he is the prince that must awaken the sleeping princess and put a stop to a fairy who wants to control both his kingdom and the one in the sleeping forest.

There is suspense, magic, betrayal and of course a dragon but you’ll never guess who or what is the dragon. Well I didn’t. This book is full of surprises. I stayed up late reading it in one sitting. Fantasy lovers will not be disappointed. Pair this book with Robin McKinley’s Beauty and Bella at Midnight by Diane Stanley (Cinderella theme) for additional fairytales. I would expect to see this book on best book lists. Helen Lowe has won awards for her poetry and short stories. This is her first novel.


What Other Bloggers Are Saying:

Create Readers: "This is an exciting page-turner, especially for lovers of fantasy, and even for folk such as me who are not usually ardent fantasy fans." (read more...)

Alissa's Picks: "The story is definitely fantastic, with fairies (good and bad), shifting realities of real and unreal (that s comes up again and again), and, of course, a magical, powerful sword. But what's truly great about this book is that it's not ABOUT all those elements--they just happen to make the story more enjoyable to read." (read more...)

A Dark Feathered Art: "It’s quite an intelligent book, and Helen being a poet means that it sings beautifully too. " (read more...)

The Puck in the Midden: "Thornspell is compelling, but it’s not fresh and new. The writing is good, and the story moves, but it lacks teeth." (read more...)

Author Interview at Tim Jones: Books in the Trees


More Info:

• Reading level: Ages 9-12
  
• Library Binding: 320 pages
• Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers (September 9, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 037595581X
• ISBN-13: 978-0375955815
• Source: Review copy from publisher
  

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