"A Boschean Delight": Half World by Hiromi Goto

"Half World is Boschean delight a la Goto: a magical, madcap, and deliciously creepy tale of tribulations, terror and triumph; a girl-power adventure in screaming jelly-toned colours"

Nalo Hopkinson

First of all, I am in love with Gillian Tamaki's incredible cover for this book. I can't even display the whole thing--it wraps around the back and also around the inside flaps--but it's so artful and rich. Tamaki's work has always seemed to me to have an echo of those elegant old japanese wood-blocks, but done with a modern aesthetic and energy. Her cover captures the psychology of the book, with its mirroring imagery and its folkloric elements (the crow and rat helpers who help the heroine navigate the dark dangers of her quest, the shabby girl who is transformed in a magical moment). Tamaki has also illustrated the interior of Half World with a series of eerie black-and-white drawings which suit the story beautifully.

It is fitting that the cover art for Half World packs such a punch, since Goto's text is so vividly visual and even sensual in a grotesque, surrealist kind of way. Early on there are references to the work of Frida Khalo, Escher, and Hieronymous Bosch, in particular the painting depicting the bizarre and disturbing Hell in the tryptich The Garden of Earthly Delights. A modern rendition of Bosch's Hell, Half World, is the landscape for the bulk of the story's action.

Melanie Tamaki, the story's heroine, lives in the Realm of Flesh (our earth) but does not know that she was actually conceived in Half World, a stepping stone between the Realm of Flesh and the Realm of Spirit. Half World is where we go after death, to work through our earthly traumas and arrive in the Realm of Spirit peaceful and purified. However, the cosmos is out of order and each of the realms is degenerating; Half World in particular has become a nightmare, with people endlessly reliving their worst moments, those strong enough to extend their cycle becoming psychologically twisted and losing their humanity. Cruelty and depravity abound, particularly in the form of a malevolent and powerful being called Mr. Glueskin. When Mr. Glueskin summons Melanie's mother back to Half World after 14 years on earth, Melanie follows in a terrifying attempt to rescue her. Accompanied by animal helpers (crows and a jade rat amulet which can come to life) Melanie finds that she has a power herself; after all, she is alive in a way that the suffering denizens of Half World are not, and as a living being, is capable of making choices that can change the future. As befits a dark fairy tale quest, Melanie's final choice of compassion has healing magic powerful enough to restore balance to the three broken realms.

Goto's writing is exciting, inventive, full of peril, and, to quote Hopkinson again, "deliciously creepy". The fantastical elements are grounded by serious themes of self-sacrifice and courage in the face of evil. This is a book that should appeal to fans of Neil Gaiman or Charles de Lint, both of whom have given Goto rave reviews. I've also seen it compared to the film Pan's Labyrinth. And, for such a "deliciously creepy" book, the ending is wonderfully redemptive. Perfect for teens who like their spines chilled just a little.

Let's Do Nothing! by Tony Fucile

This book is a blast. I can't wait to try it out for a school-age storytime. Let's Do Nothing involves two very active boys who find that they can't turn off their imaginations, even when they try to sit still. The pictures are absolutely hilarious--check out the page where Frankie tries to Do Nothing by imagining that he is the Empire State Building, "Tall. Heavy. You've been sitting still for years and years. No silly pigeon or puny dog could rattle the likes of you, O Majestic One.". And then King Kong starts climbing up, and ...wait for it...does he rescue Fay Wray? No! He puts on Frankie's glasses and makes a goofy, big-eyed face! Now that is what I call seeing the world from a child's point of view.

The book trailer does a good job of capturing the spirit of the book. Take a look:

Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork

"Shot with spiritualism, laced with love, and fraught with conundrums, this book, like Marcelo himself, surprises."

Booklist


What a brilliant past few years it's been for teen fiction. It feels like the quality of writing for teens is absolutely exploding right now, accelerating at a pace that seems as heightened as technology. Marcelo in the Real World definitely fits right into this upward trend. It's a work of real literature, thematically complex, emotionally nuanced, and highly engrossing. What really sets Marcelo and the Real World apart for me is the narrative voice. Marcelo is such an unusual and pleasing narrator; thoughtful, observant, highly idiosyncratic . His rich inner life includes a deep interest in religion, "internal music" which only he can experience, and a love of working with horses. Marcelo is on the autism spectrum, which gives his thoughts a slight formal quality that I liked.

In a way, this is a loss of innocence story. Marcelo has a happy and successful life, going to a special school where his specific needs are accomodated and he can work with the horses he loves. His mother is an understanding and nurturing presence in his life. His father, however, wants him to move outside his comfort zone and begin to function in "the real world", and he arranges for Marcelo to have a summer job in his law firm's mail room. The summer does indeed challenge Marcelo in ways that he (or his father) had not foreseen. He experiences great moral confusion, and also experiences envy, longing, and compassion for the first time. He makes strong connections with some people, while others try to manipulate him. And he is given the gift of "the truth"--an understanding of the ethical ambiguity of his father's world that he did not have before.


This would make a great discussion book for a teen book club, since so many good questions could be drawn out of it. Marcelo's a pleasure to get to know, and I think he makes the "real world" of fiction a more interesting place.

Words to My Life's Song by Ashley Bryan

Ashley Bryan's Words to My Life's Song made me catch my breath with its flat-out beauty. Not only because it is lavishly illustrated with Bryan's own art, although this certainly adds to the stun factor. But Words is the kind of lovingly designed book where everything, from the photography to the illustration to the layout and even the creative use of typeface, feels meticulously crafted and gorgeously inviting. It seems like the book's text is not so much being illustrated as it is being enveloped in the visual. Bryan has been a presence in the field of children's book illustration for many years now, but somehow I had never before appreciated the full impact of his body of work. It is now clear to me that Bryan's contribution to children's book illustration can stand alongside the best artists in that field. This is a book I want in my own library so I can read it over and over, and absorb its spirit on a regular basis.

Words to My Life's Song describes Bryan's artistic education and influences, beginning from an early age. We learn that he "published" his first books in kindergarten as part of a class project ("I got hugs, kisses and applause from family and friends for these books. The teacher called these 'rave reviews'..."). His parents encouraged his artistic interests, brought home paper for him, and sent him to free community art classes. As an adult he attended the Cooper Union School of Art and Engineering, and later, drafted into the U.S. army and sent to work the dockyards in Glasgow, he attended Glasgow School of Art part-time. After the war he completed his art studies at Cooper Union, then, troubled by his war experiences, sought answers doing a philosophy degree at Columbia University. Still later he studied landscape painting and fresco in Maine, then spent several years in France and Germany learning languages at University and developing his painting on his own.

His introduction to the publishing world came in 1962, when an editor at Atheneum books visited his studio in the Bronx and was impressed by the books Bryan had illustrated as art projects, and especially by the variety of styles at his disposal. And lucky for us that she made that visit, since Bryan has been illustrating and writing for Atheneum pretty much non-stop ever since, to our great benefit.

There is a sense of graciousness in Bryan's telling of his life's story. Incidents which in another person might have inspired bitterness, such as poverty or racism, are acknowleged but not dwelt on. Instead, Bryan's life story is filled with a sense of good fortune, generosity, and joy in creation. One of my favourite children's book blogs, Seven Impossible Things, asks the authors and illustrators they interview which three people they would most like to share a glass of rich red wine with, if they had anyone alive to pick from. If I were asked that question, Ashley Bryan would be my first pick, easy.

King of the Screwups by K.L. Going

"Give it a rest, Allan," Pete says. I'm not trying to be anybody's father, and if your son happens to be looking for one, maybe you should ask yourself why that is."

Dad laughs.

"If my son happens to be looking for one, I don't think he's going to find it in a cross-dressing disc jockey who lives in a trailer park."

Well, you never know...

K.L. Going wrote a book a few years ago that just knocked my socks off. Fat Kid Rules the World, it was called, and I remember reading it on the subway and snorting with laughter, so much that people around me broke the ignore-each-other subway etiquette and actually asked what I was reading. This book felt so fresh to me. I loved the fat ungainly narrator with his loser life and his outsider's point of view. He spent the book nurturing his inner Eeyore, but still, it was madly engaging and I fell for him hard. On the strength of my beloved Fat Kid, I went on to read Going's next three novels, which all disappointed me (just me, mind you. They were all well reviewed, but somehow I found they lacked the flavour of her debut). With King of the Screwups, however, Going has gotten my attention once more.

One of the things I think she does best is write oddball characters, get down deep into them, and make them real. Not just real, but worthwhile. She really makes you root for her good guys, no matter what their problems. In King of the Screwups, it's not really the protagonist who's a screwup, although he has certainly been brainwashed into thinking he is. No, it's his parents who are the losers in this story. Behind their successful worldly facades, they are too wrapped up in themselves to really do the hard work of parenting. Liam believes he is letting them down, but really, from my point of view, they are the ones with the problem. And I say "they" deliberately because, even though Liam's Mom is a much more sympathetic character than his cold-hearted Dad, when push comes to shove she chooses to turn her back on her son. The really sad part of this story is that Liam loves his parents so much, both of them, and trusts them too. It breaks my heart. The arc of the journey, for Liam, is not just figuring out what his strengths are, but also tearing down that curtain behind which his Dad is hiding and bellowing "I AM OZ, THE GREAT AND POWERFUL! BECOME LIKE ME OR BE FOREVER BANISHED FROM MY SIGHT!". And trying to get his Mom to step up to the plate like an adult and do her job, which is being a parent. To him. Not to her husband, needy as he is. His turn is over now. Time to grow up.

The other thing I think Going does best is be funny. And despite the serious subject matter, King of the Screwups is a very successful comedy. Liam's Dad kicks him out of the house by chapter 2, so despite the massive room he takes up in Liam's brain, he's not actually around much. Liam ends up living in his gay glam-rock uncle's small-town trailer home. "Aunt Pete" is a great character, flamboyant, comfortable with himself, a bit out of his depth with Liam at times but definitely capable of giving him love and support. If anyone can turn Liam's life around, it's Pete. I loved watching it happen, and I loved the band mates who pitch in to help. King of the Screwups is a book that I'd like to see a sequel to--I've grown attached to Liam and his new family, and now that he's beginning to blossom, I'd love to see how far he can go.

At Forty-Five, I'm Finally Ready: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

My parents gave me my own copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a child. This was actually unusual for them--they gave me remarkably few books considering what a ravenous reader I was. I was a real library kid.

The irony was that, at age 9, Huck totally stumped me. I read some of it--I was the kind of kid who would read a cereal box if there wasn't a book in front of me--but I didn't like it. It made me feel uncomfortable. I didn't know how to process it, and I really couldn't relate to Huck. I mean, Tom Sawyer, sure, he acted wild, but I knew he was a regular kid underneath, and that Becky Thatcher would eventually tame him even if Aunt Polly couldn't. But Huck lived on riverboats and in forests, didn't wash, had a seriously evil father, and seemed unlikely to become a banker or a lawyer when he grew up. I was the kind of kid who would have begged the Widow Douglas to take me in and civilize me if I were in Huck's shoes, but Huck rejected civilization to the end. What's more, he saw through it, or partly did, or should have, in ways that I wasn't ready for. His life was edgy, and I was scared to live it, even vicariously.

It's taken me quite a while to return to Huck, but this summer at the cottage my husband read it aloud to me over the course of two weeks. And it was so wonderful--we were intensely engaged and it provoked much discussion and emotion between us. There were times when the tension ran so high I couldn't listen any more, and other times when I wouldn't let Doug stop reading. I loved the outrageously brilliant language and the sense of place and Twain's ability to be so side-splittingly funny but also so dark and daring. There is a sense of innovation that comes through fresh and strong, even though Huckleberry Finn is over a hundred and twenty years old. This is definitely a book which rewards reading aloud, especially by a reader who is good with dialect and expression.

But what kept us both glued to the book and kept it alive for us afterwards was the way Huck's story was twined in with Jim, the runaway slave. Jim unsettles everything and turns what might be a "boy's own" style adventure into something real and serious. Jim is the vehicle for Huck's growth but also shows us Huck's limits. Their relationship is complicated and I, as a modern reader, often felt that Huck was letting Jim down in ways he didn't seem to even understand. The episodes where Huck would end up leaving Jim alone on the raft (or worse) without a thought for days or even weeks at a time drove me insane. Likewise the nightmare fact that their trip wasn't taking them in the direction that Jim needed to go to attain his goal of freedom, and Huck wasn't doing much about it. The times when Huck considered turning Jim in to the authorities felt like real threats to me as well. As much as Huck and Jim are companions, Huck just never seemed intellectually capable of challenging the idea of slavery as a social institution. So frustrating! But there is a genuine closeness between them despite all this, and I found it moving how Jim slowly lets Huck know more about his inner life, his wife and children and how constantly they are in his thoughts.

Reading it now, I understand why this was over my head thirty-five years ago. I'm left wondering--is this really a children's book?

Jerk, California by Jonathan Friesen

"Heaven laughs at me every day."

Jerk, California is a debut novel for Jonathan Friesen, and one of the books I read over my recent vacation. It was a great holiday read, with an interesting hook (a narrator with Tourette Syndrome), and a vacation-appropriate road trip plot. To me, this book had a really masculine feel--not in a "macho" sense, exactly, but in a more philosophical, "what makes one a man" sense, which I think is one of the interesting questions of our time. There is a strength to this book and to its protagonist Jack, and it is a pleasure to watch that strength unfold. Jerk, California is a quest story that digs deeper than the where-can-I-find-some-self-esteem journey that many teen books take us on. Jack's journey is about character.

Jerk, California tells the story of 17-year-old Sam Carrier, a young man with Tourette Syndrome who feels like, and is generally treated as, a freak. Sam, with his twitches and jerks and occasional bouts of spontaneous cursing (usually at the worst possible time) is incredibly self-conscious and pessimistic about himself in terms of relationships--any relationships, not just romantic ones. Sam's father James died in an accident when Sam was a baby, and his mother, perhaps the only person on earth who loves him, nevertheless fails to protect him from his nasty obsessive-compulsive stepfather Bill. Sam's self-loathing comes largely from Bill's and his classmates' jeering reactions to his Tourettes but also from the stories he has been told about his dead father, who, according to his stepfather, was a worthless, womanizing alcoholic who wouldn't even hold his infant son.

Everything begins to change for Sam the day he leaves home to work for George, a master gardener and his late father's best friend. George insists that Sam's real name is Jack Keegan (Bill had changed Jack's name when he entered their family--can you say "control freak"?) and he wants Jack to hear a different version of his family past. George dies, but before he does, he plans a road trip where Jack can meet some of his father's friends and finally his grandmother, who lives in Jerk, California. Jack takes the trip along with a young woman, Naomi, who has some tough problems of her own to work out and needs some thinking time.

I love how Friesen peopled his book with such strongly drawn and believable characters. Not just Jack, whose head we truly enter, but so many minor characters feel very real. Jack's stepfather is a horrid person who beats his wife and spews bile at Jack on a daily basis, but Jack carries around two childhood memories of this man's kindness to him, and these small memories help us, and Jack, see Bill in a more complex way. James turns out to have been a loving family man, a fact that proves tremendously healing for Jack. In fact, one of the few things I found difficult to accept in this book was how Jack's mother could have chosen two such opposite men to marry--James, with his kindness, strength, and principles, and Bill, with his petty mind and explosive temper. You'd think that her relationships with James would have made her quicker to blow the whistle on Old Bill. When she finally does leave, baby son in tow, Bill is finally seen as the real failure in terms of manhood. As Jack finally realizes, Bill is "all lies".

Jerk, California makes me want to read more Friesen. I'll be waiting in line for the next book.