The Unforgotten Coat by Frank Cottrell Boyce

"And, at that moment, I felt my own ignorance spread suddenly out behind me like a pair of wings, and every single thing I didn't know was a feather on those wings.  I could feel them tugging at the air, restless to be airborne."


Reading a book by Frank Cottrell Boyce feels like putting yourself in the hands of a master storyteller.  It's a little bit mesmerizing, a little bit magical.  He's also a writer I love to hear read out loud.  The Unforgotten Coat has a lot in common with his first book, Millions, which I adored;  it's funny, insightful and optimistic,  has a touch of bittersweetness, characters I defy you not to fall in love with,  and writing which just lifts right off the page.  The Unforgotten Coat has a simpler storyline and  is aimed at a younger audience than Boyce's previous works, but it's every bit as sophisticated.  Polaroid photographs are used add a mysterious visual element which expands the story. (The photographs were provided by filmmakers Carl Hunter and Clare Heney, who have worked with Boyce in his other career as a screenwriter.)  And speaking of photographs, I love the cover of this book.  The child, the coat and the title all seem to pop at once--I find it really striking.

The Unforgotten Coat is narrated, in flashback, by Julie, who as a child went to school in the U.K.   When two refugee brothers from Mongolia join her grade 6 class near the end of the school year she is instantly fascinated.  Chingis, the older brother, invites her to be their "good guide" to their new country and Julie gladly takes on the role, hoping to be invited to their home, which she is sure must be full of exotic treasures, just as Chingis and his brother Nergui bring new ideas into Julie's life.

"A few weeks before, I had not known that there was any such thing as a portable bamboo palace.  I hadn't even known there was such a person as Chingis Khan, who had been born with a clot of blood grasped in his fist and who had conquered nearly the entire world in hardly any time at all, sweeping over the steppe into Central Asia and right up to the very gates of Europe.  I hadn't even known there was such a place as the steppe!  The steppe that was flat as pavement but as wide as a sea, with nothing but grass and great bustards.  Wide as a sea and I hadn't even known it was there.  If there were seas of grass and woven palaces in this world, why couldn't there be demons too?  And why wouldn't one of them be crouched on our doorstep on William Morris Avenue right that minute, munching a boy made of dough?"

Julie does her best, but the task of guiding the brothers safely in their new home and culture proves more difficult than she could have known. I don't want to give away the rest of the plot, although I will say it ends, like Millions, with a loss that is healed.  The book was inspired by the very first class visit Boyce made after Millions was published. He met a refugee from Mongolia, a girl named Misheel who "just lit up the room".

"The other children were touchingly proud of her and told me about the time Misheel showed up to the school dance in full Mongolian costume with her elaborate headdress and fabulous robes.  They knew all about Mongolia--its customs and epic landscape--because of her.  Her presence massively enriched their lives...Then once day the Immigration Authorities came and snatched her and her family in the middle of the night.  Misheel managed to get one call through to Sue Kendall before one of the officers grabbed her phone.  And, of course, she has not been seen since...I do know that a country that authorizes its functionaries to snatch children from their beds in the middle of the night can't really be called civilized." 

One of the things I admire most about this book is how dimensional Boyce has made Chingis and Nergui --they are not at all stock "exotic refugee" figures but fully realized individuals, and their world view is treated with a respect that seems to come completely naturally.

Boyce has donated this book to the Reader Organisation, which aims to transform "society's collective approach to reading by making literature accessible, available, emotionally rewarding, and fun."  Hey, that's what librarians want to do too!

Beauty and the Squat Bears by Emile Bravo

"Pfft!  A prince, a prince...Now where am I supposed to find one of those?"

Ahh, that age-old question.... 

Emile Bravo is an award-winning  French comic writer and illustrator whose work for older children and adults I have been drawn to for its originality and emotional depth.  His Seven Squat Bears series (The Hunger of the Seven Squat Bears, Goldilocks and the Seven Squat Bears, Beauty and the Squat Bears) is his first foray into writing for younger children, and he handles the transition with panache.  The Squat Bears were an instant hit in France, and it's not hard to see why.  They're all clever fairy-tale mash-ups which are full of personality,  funny as heck, and just right for an elementary-school audience.   Beauty and the Squat Bears is my personal favourite, with its zany plot and derriere-kicking  fairy godmother.

So what do I like so much about these books?  First of all, I love the drawings...especially the bears.  They're the straight men in these stories and their expressions are priceless.  Especially when they're being grouchy and cynical.

Bravo's illustration style has been described as "clean, expressive and ironic."  I think his style, which is actually quite detailed although it manages to look fresh and uncluttered, is perfect for this age group.  I like the rich, saturated colours he uses.  I also like how he hasn't made the bears "cute".  They really are squat, rectangular almost, and it gives them a very business-like appearance.  Especially when they're stalking through magic forests looking for princes to solve their princess problems.  

The dialogue is snappy:

"'Ohhh!  Pleeeease, let me stay with you.  I'll do whatever you want...'
'Even chores?'
'Huh?  I don't think so!  After all, I am a princess...'
'So, what can a princess do?'
"Huh?  Well, marry a prince, duh!'"

And a little later on:

"'Alas!  A sorcerer put a curse on me that turned me into a bird for seven years...'
'Seven years!  No way!  That'll never do!  I need a prince right here, right now.  It's to get rid of a princess!'
'A PRINCESS?!  HOLD ON, WAIT!  WE CAN WORK THIS OUT!'"

I've heard that there is a fourth Squat Bear book coming out in french this year (Le Sept Ours Nains et Compagnie).  Hopefully the translation will be with us soon!

Life: An Exploded Diagram by Mal Peet

"I'm hoping that Life is the book that proves to be Peet's breakout book.  For starters, it's got a penis on the cover.  Wait, did you think that was a missile?  So did I.  Then I brought my ARC down to the cafeteria while I was reading.  Teenagers are very fast to clue one in about suggestive covers, it turns out." 
(Karen Silverman, Heavy Medal blog, School Library Journal website)


Mal Peet can't write a grocery list without winning a major award.  Despite that, it's true that his name doesn't trip off the tongue of the average teen reader, at least here in Canada.  He's not an easy author to get into.  His writing is challenging and his themes are serious. His humour, when it's there, is cerebral and ironic. His stories are often told in flashback by adult narrators, who range from mildly world-weary to downright bitter.  His endings tend towards ambiguity.   There is a constant undercurrent of debate in the teen lit world about what, exactly, makes his work teen rather than adult fiction.  My opinion?  Life:  An Exploded Diagram  is teen fiction because Peet published it that way, and if he and Candlewick believe that there are enough young readers around who find a detailed exploration of the relationships between 20th-century social history, military history, and personal narrative compelling, well, more power to them.  I'm sure not going to stand in the way of their optimism.

That said, however, I do think Peet's books are for older teens with lots of reading experience behind them. For one thing, the way he hangs a story together can be a little complicated.  The protagonist of Life is Clem Ackroyd,  who is born in chapter one as World War II draws to a close:

"Ruth Ackroyd was in the garden checking the rhubarb when the RAF Spitfire accidentally shot her chimney pot to bits.  The shock of it brought the baby on three weeks early.
'I was expectun,' she'd often say, over the years. 'But I wunt expectun that.'" 


Fair enough.  But no sooner have we met baby Clem, who had "grown in Ruth, struggling and undiscussed" while his father was at war, than we are whisked back in time to become better acquainted with the life of his dour grandmother Win, and later, his mother Ruth and her soldier husband.  They are not particularly happy people, and they live in an unsettled time.  Win grows up in rural Norfolk, in a time where horses pulled plows and landowners collected rent once a year on Lady Day and celebrated the harvest with a feast for the workers.  As pastoral as it sounds, it's not idyllic;  Win and her family must cope with illness and poverty and their many consequences.  As the years go by Peet gives us a long-term view of 20th century modernization:  the farm is slowly mechanized, the family moves into a new suburban home, and the landscape of the country changes.  Win's daughter Ruth marries and has a son, and that son, Clem, wins a scholarship to a fancy school and gets an education far above his station.  And all of that is merely context for the heart of the story, which is Clem's intense adolescent experience of falling in love with the landowner's daughter Frankie Mortimer.  After two dreary generations of emotional repression and marital disappointment, it feels like spring after a long, cold winter.

One of the things I liked best about Life:  An Exploded Diagram was how Peet provided a political backdrop to his love story.  As Clem and Frankie are courting, Kennedy and Khruschev are becoming embroiled in what would later be known as the Cuban Missile Crisis.   The way that Peet plays these two stories off of each other sharpens them both, the Missile Crisis reminding us of the fragility of life just as Clem and Frankie's love story is affirming the value of it.  I'm a person whose mind normally shuts down when confronted with political history, and even when I try desperately stay tuned in all I tend to hear is "blah blah blah blah blah", so it's a tribute to Peet's excellent writing that I not only stayed wide awake during these chapters but totally understood what was going on. 

Here's the publisher's book trailer:

Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos

 

"He turned and walked out of the room to prepare for his trip.  I stood up and closed the door and sat on the edge of the bed feeling very different from myself. Maybe I felt like a city before it was invaded.  Or a ship before it sank.  Or happiness before it turned into sadness.  I couldn't say exactly.  But something was about to change in me." 


I've never had the privilege of seeing Jack Gantos speak in person, but a colleague of mine has, and when I asked her about the experience the first thing she said was  "He's not an ordinary person."  Gantos, the author of the Rotten Ralph books for young readers, the extraordinary prison memoir Hole In My Life, and the Joey Pigza chapter book series about a boy going through school and life with ADHD,  has built a distinguished career  writing about people and situations that are at least a little off-beat.  I have no problem believing that he's not an ordinary person.  What I didn't realize up until now was how unusual his life circumstances have been, as well.  For instance, remember his teen book Love Curse of the Rumbaughs, about the sixty-something siblings whose love for their mother was so obsessive that upon her death they taxidermied her body and kept it in their home?  I thought Gantos had been watching Psycho a few too many times,  but it turns out that that's a true story.  The Rumbaughs are maternal relatives of Gantos, and they actually did taxidermy their dead Mom.   No wonder his tone has at times been referred to as "gothic".

But there's so much more depth to Gantos as a writer than his quirky appreciation for the the outliers of society.  He's a man of intelligence and intellectual passion, and of long-practiced observation, and of humour.  His strengths are all on display in his latest middle-school book, Dead End In Norvelt, which is largely based on events in his own childhood.

Jack grew up in the historic town of Norvelt, Pennsylvania, a model community created during the Depression by Eleanor Roosevelt, whose idealistic presence in this book looms large.  Roosevelt (after whom the town is named) planned Novelt and similar communities to be self-sufficient, running on a barter system rather than cash, with large lots for people to grow food for their families. His mother makes sure she raises enough corn each year to share with the town elderly.  But by the time Jack is born, the principles the community was founded on have begun to erode.

"'Why'd you offer him fruit and pickles?' I asked, and looked up at her face which didn't look so bright and cheery. 'Doctors cost money.'
'You shouldn't be embarrassed,' Mom said, knowing that I was.  'Money can mean a lot of different things.  When I was a kid we traded for everything.  Nobody had any cash.  If you wanted your house built, you helped someone build theirs, and then they would turn around and help you build yours. It was the same with everything.  I'd give you eggs and you'd pay me in milk.'
'I don't think it works that way now,' I remarked.  'If he fixed my nose I don't think he'd want me to do brain surgery on him.'"


In the spirit of neighbour helping neighbour, Jack's mother farms him out one summer to assist Miss Volker, the elderly town nurse, who is now too arthritic to write obituaries (which she sees as a "final medical report" for the dying original town inhabitants).  Miss Volker's obituaries are amazingly detailed and personal, and deliberately stuffed with both local and world history. Gradually, as Jack and Miss Volker share a number of unlikely and sometimes hilarious adventures, her passion for history and its importance starts making a lot of sense to Jack, as well as to us.

Here's the snappy publisher-produced book trailer:

And here, courtesy of the Library of Congress, is a rather long but informative talk by Gantos about his career in general and Dead End In Norvelt in particular.  

I'll leave you with an endorsement by Jon Scieszka, uber-famous writer, founder of the Guys Read foundation, and the U.S. National Ambassador for Young People's Literature:

"Nobody can tell a story like Jack Gantos can.  And this is a story like no other.  It's funny.  It's thoughtful.  It's history. It's weird.  But you don't need me to attempt to describe it.  Get in there and start reading Gantos."

Slog's Dad by David Almond, Illustrated by Dave McKean

 "'They can hack your body into a hundred bits,' he'd say, 'But they cannot hack your soul.'"  

It's difficult to imagine the audience for this moody, unusual story.  In a way it's a typical David Almond book--mysterious, earthy, otherworldly, a little unsettling, a little wonderful.  Almond's body of work is mostly composed of  chapter books for the 8-12 age group, and although this story is much shorter and heavily illustrated I couldn't imagine giving it to a child younger than eight.  In fact, I think Dave McKean's illustrations ramp up the creepy/sad qualities to the tale (although those are certainly not the only moods they evoke).  I would say that with Slog's Dad, Almond and McKean have together created a highly original work of art for children who are mature enough to handle some emotional ambiguity.

For those of you who don't know David Almond, he's an internationally recognized  British writer who has won the Whitbread Award twice, the Carnegie Medal once and has been awarded the very prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Medal by IBBY International  for his lifetime achievement.  His first novel, Skellig, has been adapted into a radio play by the BBC and into an Opera which was reviewed as  "mysterious, eerie and enthralling" by the Guardian.  For those of you who are not familiar with Dave McKean, well, what can I say?  Go read The Graveyard Book, or Coraline, or The Wolves in the Walls.   He's an artist/photographer/illustrator whose work tends to be matched with writing that has a certain fantastical quality. The pairing of these two here is very powerful.  McKean digs into the rich emotion of Almond's story and allows us to slow down and linger over the complexity of it.

Slog's Dad is told from the point of view of Davie, whose friend Slog's father has just died of a slow, devouring illness which robbed him of his legs before it robbed him of life.   Slog's Dad promised on his deathbed that he would return for a visit in the spring.  Slog believes his father's promise implicitly, but Davie is more practical.  For Davie, dead is dead.  So when Slog sees a dirty, apparently homeless man sitting on a bench in the springtime, he believes it is his father come for the promised visit.  Davie, and we as readers, resist seeing the miracle.

"Slog looked that happy as I walked towards them.  He was leaning on the bloke and the bloke was leaning back on the bench grinning at the sky.  Slog made a fist and face of joy when he saw me.
'It's Dad, Davie!' he said.  'See?  I told you.'
I stood in front of them.
'You remember Davie, Dad,' said Slog.
The bloke looked at me.  He looked nothing like the Joe Mickley I used to know.  His face was filthy but it was smooth and his eyes were shining bright.
....'He looks a bit different,' said Slog.  'But that's just cos he's been...'
'Transfigured,' said the bloke.
'Aye,' said Slog.  'Transfigured.  Can I show him your legs, Dad?'


Slog's Dad is about grief, hope, and, possibly,  resurrection.  It's also about love and how tenderly it can be bestowed upon even the most humble of us.


"Once I stood with Mam at the window and watched Mrs. Mickley stroke her husband's head and gently kiss his cheek.
'She's telling him he's going to get better,' said Mam.
We saw the smile growing on Joe Mickley's face.
'That's love,' said Mam.  'True love.'"


But Almond's vision of love and resurrection isn't typical.  Cold looks, glittering eyes, twisted faces and the stink of garbage mingle uneasily with the image of a man who's gone to heaven.  Almond makes it difficult for the reader to make the leap of identification from Davie's closed, doubting heart to Slog's open, accepting one.  Even once we believe, we are left questioning:  what manner of miracle is this?  I love the ambiguity and full emotion of this story.  I love how this short book made me think and feel and re-read. There's a lot of depth in this murky, marvellous tale.

Bronxwood by Coe Booth

" He get a little smile on his face, like he laughing at me or something. 'I'm saying, if you don't like it at Cal place no more, you got a room right here. It's all set up for you.  You could be laying in that bed tonight.  But you ain't moving back in here 'less you ask me if you could.  That way, both of us is gonna know the reason you back living with me is 'cause you wasn't man enough to make it on your own.'
I don't get this guy.  He losing it for real.
'There's only gonna be one man in this house, Ty.  And that man ain't you.'"
 
Boy, would I ever hate to be Tyrell.  Things were bad enough when his family was living in a shelter, his Dad was in jail and his immature, do-nothing Mom was pressuring him to be the "man" of the family (in other words, steal or sell drugs to support her and his younger brother Troy).  Talk about a role reversal--aren't mothers supposed to want to keep their kids out of trouble?   In Bronxwood, Coe Booth returns to the characters she brought to such vivid life in her debut novel, but adds a twist--Tyrell's brother is in foster care, Tyrell himself is sharing a small apartment with his friend Cal, and his father is being released from jail and is returning to take charge of his dislocated family.  The thing is, Tyrell has grown up a lot in the past year,  and his father doesn't want to know about it.  He wants things back to the way they were before, and Tyrell no longer fits into his family's life.

Coe Booth excels at so many things, but I think she conveys two things really well in this book.  One is the sense of pressure that Tyrell feels, the way everyone expects something of him that he's not sure he wants to give.  This is a kid without a lot of great options, and he knows it.  His friends are drug dealers, one girl he's eyeing wants him to spend money on her that he doesn't have, and the girl he cares about even more is being groomed by a sexual predator.  He's good at being a DJ but he can't afford his own equipment.  He loves his brother but the foster mother in charge doesn't want him visiting.  If Tyrell feels that no one has his back, it's probably because no one does.  How can he become the man he wants to be with so much working against him?

I've read lots of books which put young people into dilemmas like this, only to bring in a responsible adult at the end to save the day.  But not Booth.  She keeps it real.  No one's swooping in to help.

Coe Booth's second triumph here is in showing Tyrell finally facing his father as an adult.  I think the primary relationship in Bronxwood is between Tyrell and his father,  and their relationship is pretty complex.  Tyrell's Dad is very much a my-way-or-the-highway kind of guy, and if he feels disrespected, he doesn't hesitate to get violent.  Tyrell wants to confront his father with the consequences of his jail time, and he's frustrated by how unrepentant his father is.   What Tyrell wants from his father, he's never going to get.  At least Tyrell has  reached the point where he can begin to separate himself from his father's bad choices.  Although Tyrell isn't out of the woods yet,  I think that's a sign of hope.

Read You Should: The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger

"The big question:  Is Origami Yoda real?
Well, of course he's real.  I mean, he's a real finger puppet made out of a real piece of paper.
But I mean:  Is he REAL?  Does he really know things?  Can he see the future? Does he use the Force?
Or is he just a hoax that fooled a whole bunch of us at McQuarrie Middle School?"

I'm kind of bummed that I wasn't the one who thought of writing a story about a Yoda finger puppet who dispenses sage advice from the hand of a grade 6 boy.   With a genius premise like that, the book would practically write itself!   And I mean, it's not like I don't have lots of practice in Yoda-speak, living with an eight-year-old Clone Wars expert like I do.  (He even has a Yoda t-shirt that says "Read you must!"  No kidding.)

If you like the Wimpy Kid funny-chapter-book-with-sketches format,  you'll like Origami Yoda too. I think the reading level is slightly lower than the Wimpy Kid books, actually,  but it's just as visually entertaining.  The main character is Tommy, who creates a casebook around whether Origami Yoda's advice is accurate or misleading so he can decide whether or not to ask Sara to dance at the school Fun Night like Origami Yoda told him to.  Harvey is the skeptic who  Does Not Believe and scribbles his Unbeliever comments all over the casebook.  Dwight is the creator and voice of Origami Yoda. His friends don't think much of his intellect, which is why they kind of think Origami Yoda might be for real.  How could Dwight possibly come up with advice that actually works?

The sequel to  Origami Yoda has just come out and it's called...wait for it...Darth Paper Strikes Back.  I've just put it in Ewan's and my to-read pile.  Origami Yoda comes with instructions on how to make your very own Yoda finger puppet.  I am totally psyched!

And, just for fun, here's a hilarious commercial starring Darth Vader and "The Force".

May the Force be with you, friends!