Go read a good children's book!

If you think you would be wasting your time reading a book written for children or young adults, you're missing some really wonderful experiences. The Golden Compass, my previous post, was written for YA's... I won't even mention "she who shall not be named" and her book/movie mania. Some of my favorite books in the world were written for YA's, like the two by Virginia Euwer Wolff, Make Lemonade and True Believer, or those by Deb Caletti, like Honey, Baby Sweetheart or The Nature of Jade. There are some absolutely brilliant picture books that stun you with their art and move you with their message. Henry's Freedom Box: A True Story from the Underground Railroad, by Ellen Levine and illustrated by Kadir Nelson just won a Caldecott Honor and When Marian Sang, by Pam Munoz Ryan, is illustrated by Brian Selznick who just garnered the Caldecott Medal for his new work, The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Written and illustrated by Selznick, Invention is clearly a labor of love. Weighing in at 530 pages and documented with source material, it can be finished in just a few hours since the creator has capitalized on the burgeoning graphic novel trend and included dozens of full page and double page illustrations. Sometimes, in true GN fashion, the story is conveyed by the B & W illustrations alone. Other times, the plot moves forward with the spare text. Illustrations vary from the vast panorama of a full moon over 1931 Paris, the setting of the story, to the detail of an anxious eye peering out from a hiding place behind the clock on the wall of the train station. You can read reviews about the book in a dozen places such as this collection by Powell's Books.
On a slightly different note, but not really, have a look at this funny/not so funny bit of invention in The Onion about some weird guy who read a whole book, under no apparent external pressure or duress, and actually enjoyed it! My friend Sara made me put this on my blog, probably because I rant so much to her and anyone who stands still long enough about how important reading is, but I must give credit to my colleague Loretta for pointing this one out to me.

The Golden Compass

Well, what a lot of kerfuffle about a book being made into a movie. After reading this article in The Atlantic ("How Hollywood Saved God") and talking with my sis-in-law, I think the controversy about religion and anti-religion was a cover up for the real issue, sexuality. And we know that we don't talk about sexuality in this culture. So better to try and worry about whether the movie will turn people from the one true path... You DO already know I am opposed at the core of my being to organized religion so admittedly I am not a sympathetic audience to the would-be censors of movie and books. I actually went to see The Golden Compass movie and then came home and re-read the book--all in one day. Whew! I was really trying to pay attention and I just don't get why people are so upset. But anway, what I found more interesting and what also generated more conversation with S-I-L Joan was the way the characters were simplified in the translation from text to screen. Not surprising in some ways; after all, books are very hard to translate in all their subtlety. But just to take a couple of examples of relatively minor characters. In the book, it is the Master of Jordan College who tries to poison Lord Asriel, not the Magisterium. So he is a more conflicted being than we see in the movie where he is uniformly on the side of the good guys/gals. Late in the book we witness a conversation between Lee Scoresby and the witch Serafina Pekkala where he indicates, in the gentlest way, that he would really like to get paid for this work he is doing to help the good guys/gals because he is after all a businessman and is saving for retirement. Well that is not the portrayal in the movie where we are led to believe that he jumps in to help Iorek and Lyra at risk of life and limb just out of the goodness of his heart and pure friendship. So we started conjecturing about the possible relationship between these visual interpretations that presented people and issues in, shall we say, fewer shades of gray, and the propensity of our society (as witnessed by electing "you know who" twice) to view issues as black or white. Which is the chicken and which the egg? Is this part of what we lose as we move away from a culture that reads? Of course it's not that simple as my colleague Anne-Marie points out in her blog and as the recent article in the New Yorker by Caleb Crain affirms. But it sure makes you wonder.

Vacation Reading

Aahhh! My idea of vacation is reading things that aren't even vaguely work related. So my 12-day vacation to Hawaii and the following holidays allowed me to indulge. I discovered two new authors, both writing Robert Ludlum type spy novels--only with current players (terrorists instead of cold war villains). The first was Greg Rucka, whose Tara Chace works for HMG as a Minder (that's the British secret services euphemism for all-around-clean-up-person for messy situations and occasional assassin). She was apparently born in the graphic novel world in a series called Queen and Country; although I haven't seen/read these, I thoroughly enjoyed the two regular books I read, A Gentleman's Game: A Queen and Country Novel and Private Wars. He also writes a series about a professional bodyguard named Atticus Kodiak and I am just about to finish listening to the first in this series (on tape while I commute) called Keeper--also an interesting enough character that I'll look for more to while away the highway miles.
The other author I got temporarily hooked on is Vince Flynn. It was another one of those serendipitous discoveries while browsing the books on tape at Corvallis public library and I liked it well enough that when I ran across one of his paperbacks on the book exchange shelf at the condo where we were staying, I grabbed it. His professional spook and assassin is Mitch Rapp who works for the CIA. Lots of D.C. political intrigue and plenty of fodder for those who think most of our government is corrupt at so many levels. I consumed (in print or on tape) Act of Treason, Consent to Kill, and Executive Power.
Then I scarfed up an oldy by Martha Grimes, and finally read one of those I felt I needed to read in order to be considered a legimate fan of children's and young adult literature, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. I have been slowly trying to fill in what I perceive to be gaps in my childhood reading--those books that serve as the benchmarks for everything that has come later, such as Charlotte's Web. And finally I re-read The Golden Compass after going to see the movie and started a couple of other books...but I'll save those for a later post.