Now that I'm reading lots of kidlit blogs, I find myself needing to make lists, all the time.  

I find books that I need to read because they relate to the ancient Mediterranean, which is my area of expertise  (I so long to have a classroom so I can reward students for hard work by giving them time to read fiction from a library of class-related books that I keep on a shelf.  But instead, I have a cart, which does not have enough room for the books.)

I find books that are not out yet, which I want to give as gifts.

It's so exciting and a little overwhelming, too.

Do you find yourself needing to keep track of lots of lists of books?

I guess Good Reads is the place to do this, isn't it?

This week, I've been thinking a lot about gender and societal expectations.  It started with Vivian's post, "Girl Power, At What Price?" at HipWriterMama.  In that post, Vivian wonders how the pressure to have, do, and be everything is affecting girls today.  It continued as I tried to sum up the first several chapters of Celia Rees's Pirates! for my roommate, and I mused about how common it is to have a story where a wealthy girl loves a man below her station, but it rarely seems to go the other way.  It continued when I read Becky's review of At the Sign of the Star.  Meg Moore, the main character in the book, dreams of a life where she can do more than just wifely tasks like sewing and mending.

All of this came to a head in my mind this morning, when I started thinking about what it means to be a woman, and especially what it means to be a strong woman.  I know I'm saying nothing new here, but it saddens me to think that roles that have been traditionally assigned to women are often rejected as "not enough."  I don't mean to say that people should settle for something in life that doesn't satisfy them.  What I find disconcerting is that when women seek to take on traditionally male roles, they often explicitly devalue traditionally feminine roles in their speech and actions.  When some women suggest that managing households is an inferior task to being out in the world, I feel as though they aren't really helping "the cause."  I'm having trouble expressing myself well here.  I suppose what I'm getting at is that I feel women should choose the work that fulfills them most and that they find most valuable.

This brings me to this week's question:
In what ways do children's and young adult novels shape readers' notions of gender roles?  How can and do they present more options, especially to girl readers, for how to spend a life?

I'm looking here for titles, trends, and examples of literature where girls get to choose who they are going to be, or that explore when and why they don't get to choose who they are going to be.  We have resources like Jen Robinson's 200 Cool Girls of Children's Literature and readergirlz.  What else is out there?  What has shaped the women we are now, and what will shape the girls of the future?  What role does children's and young adult literature play in affecting boys' and men's views of women?  How can we show girls the myriad of possibilities open to them without coloring their view of which possibilities are best?

What do you think?

On Thursday, TadMack at Finding Wonderland issued a few Most Egregious Misuse awards.  She focused on punctuation errors.  I myself hate finding extra apostrophes places, and often find myself wanting to take a red pen to signs.

It’s not just punctuation that is the problem, however.  Misuse of words is rampant, as well.  I recall once in high school a classmate of mine called something a “gregarious error."  She was the subject of much mockery.  You see, it’s always better to use the word that best communicates your meaning.  Sometimes you want a less common word for this, because its meaning is more specific than that of other words.  (See how I avoided putting an extra apostrophe in “its”?  It would have been very embarrassing if I hadn’t.)

In some cases, however, I think people use odd words just to sound more educated, or because they are bored with their usual vocabulary.  This is not okay, if they don’t know the meaning of the words.

For example:
While catching up on my kidlit newsletters I came upon an article about a new line of children’s nonfiction books.  In this article, the publisher of these books was quoted as saying their illustrations “provide an infinitesimal range of perspectives."

Let’s take a look at “infinitesimal,” shall we?

From m-w.com:
 Main Entry: ²infinitesimal
Function: adjective
1 : taking on values arbitrarily close to but greater than zero
2 : immeasurably or incalculably small <an infinitesimal difference>

I don’t think one would want to publish non-fiction that provided only an infinitesimal range of perspectives.  It would be very limiting, wouldn’t it?

A Fuse #8 Production is an awesome blog.  I’ve known this for a while.  Just today, I read a recnt post of Betsy’s that pointed me to my new favorite blog:

The Longstockings!  At The Longstockings, eight writers in striped socks talk about all kinds of exciting things.  I’ve not read any of their books, but the blog has me thrilled and wanting to run out and pick them up.  My TBR piles, if combined, would probably be as tall as I am, so it’ll have to wait.

In honor of Script Frenzy, I’m posting some soliloquies from my favorite scriptwriter - Wm Shakespeare.  He was a Taurus, you know.

First, from Hamlet II.2:

O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann’d,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in’s aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn’d defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i’ the throat,
As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?
Ha!
‘Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be
But I am pigeon-liver’d and lack gall
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave’s offal: bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!

From The Tempest I.1

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

From As You Like It II.7
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

From A Midsummer Night’s Dream, V.1
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

Script Frenzy is in full swing. Can I knock out 667 words before midnight tonight? I think I can. That's something like three and a half pages. I'm "pants"ing it, as writers say, meaning I have a concept but no outline. I've got a beginning and an end, and the middle will be the exciting part. I apologize if, for the next month, it seems as though I should change this journal's name to scriptitans (which is a real Latin word meaning "writing eagerly and often"). I think we'll be okay though. I can't tell you what I'm writing except to say it's a play. Other than that, it's a secret. Sshhhh! (If you really care to know about it, you can e-mail me, and I'll decide whether to let you into my elite cadre of people who know. Right now I think that cadre includes Little Willow and no one else.)

I shall not be neglecting my readerly duties. Work is (at last) winding down. Unemployment during the summer months is a sad thing, but if you budget for it, it can be awesome.

Things to Come:
A Thinking Blogger Award post (Thanks, Kelly!)
Reviews of the books on my Read in 2007 list
Commentary on other kidlit stuff, depending on what I find in my inbox and publications
Interviews!
My 48 Hour Book Challenge Posts

As the only Japanese girl in her class, Sumiko knew what being lonely felt like.  Still, she was usually satisfied to work on her uncle’s flower farm and attend school.  Then, she was invited to a birthday party!  Sadly, once she got there, the birthday girl’s mother asked her to leave, because she was Japanese.  This incident presents the rest of the book’s plot in microcosm: after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Sumiko’s family is split up and her uncle and grandfather are sent to prison camp, while her aunt, cousins, brother and herself are interned.

Weedflower was my first audiobook ever, and I suspect that has affected my opinion of it.  Simply put, it did not blow me away, but I really liked it.  It got off to a slow start, but the pace quickly picked up, and I found myself caring very much what happened to Sumiko and her family.  I think Kadohata’s greatest achievement with this book is presenting a huge historic event from a girl’s perspective.  What this means is that we get a limited awareness of what’s going on in the outside world; Sumiko only knows what’s going on to the extent that it affects her life directly.  A lot of historical fiction falls prey to its larger context, losing the personal in the grand saga of history, and educating readers in such a way that the narrator/protagonist seems to know a lot of things she really shouldn’t.  Kadohata deftly avoids this trap, but still presents a picture of life in the middle of World War II that makes us aware of what was going on.

I would recommend Weedflower to readers who enjoy historical fiction, especially about World War II, or anyone looking for a good story about how a girl grows up.  I will warn you, though, that it is not a cheerful tale.

Book: Weedflower (Affiliate Link) Author: Cynthia Kadohata  Publisher: Atheneum Original Publication Date: 2006 Pages: 272 Age Range: Young Adult Source of Book: Library [Audiobook] Other Blog Reviews: Fairrosa’s Reading Journal, propernoun.net, A Fuse #8 Production, MotherReader, Jen Robinson’s Book Page

Hi there, remember me?

I’ve been neglectful of this here reading blog.  I’ve been ill and overworked, mostly, and so I have been reading more and saying less.  I am still here, still excited to be part of this whole world of lit(especially kidlit)blogging, and am looking forward to renewing my dedication to it in the weeks to come.  I’ve been reading books a good bit, skimming and scanning blogs, and have my very first issue of The Horn Book waiting to be opened.

After a week-long hiatus, I have a new question for you!

How much and in what ways might readers benefit from or be hurt by contracts like the new boilerplate at Simon & Schuster, wherein a book effectively never goes out of print, but is always available via Print-On-Demand?

This may look like an easy question to answer, but don’t be deceived.  First, you may want to head over to Bookseller Chick and acquaint yourself with what I’m talking about.

In brief: In most contracts, when a book’s sales fall below a certain number, it goes out-of-print and the rights revert to the author.  The author is then free to sell the book to another publishing house.  In the new contract at Simon & Schuster, the minimum sales number would be removed, effectively allowing Simon & Schuster to keep rights to a book until it became public domain.

I’ve often been frustrated by finding a book I want to be out of print; I could see how having print-on-demand as an option would be good for readers.  On the other hand, it’s safe to assume that if a book has been relegated to Print-on-Demand only status, the publisher is not out there trying to get the book into the hands of new readers.  If the author owns the rights to the book and successfully sells the book to a different publisher, that publisher might make a bigger push for sales, thus bringing the book to a wider audience, thus benefitting new readers who might not have been looking for the book.

I’m not asking about author vs. publisher here, just potential reader benefits on each side.  If I’m a person looking for a specific book, it’d be nice to print it up.  If I’m a person who encounters a book I wouldn’t have looked for, but I do find it thanks to publisher action, then the out of print option is preferable.

What do you think?

The Previous Question:
How do readers benefit from author interviews?

Read answers at the original post.

Anyone who knows me well can tell you I have a pirate problem.  On my last day of student teaching, there were pirate festivities.  For Talk Like a Pirate Day and multiple Halloweens, I've dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow.  And yelled at people if they left off the "Captain" part.  At the tender age of 7, I played Captain Hook in the Day Camp's production of Peter Pan.  (Written and Directed by me.  I wanted to be Peter Pan but they said my hair was too dark.)

Anyway.  In honor of PotC: At World's End being released today, I give you Robert Louis Stevenson's Pirate Story.

 Pirate Story

by Robert Louis Stevenson

Three of us afloat in the meadow by the swing,
Three of us abroad in the basket on the lea.
Winds are in the air, they are blowing in the spring,
And waves are on the meadow like the waves there are at sea.

Where shall we adventure, to-day that we're afloat,
Wary of the weather and steering by a star?
Shall it be to Africa, a-steering of the boat,
To Providence, or Babylon or off to Malabar?

Hi! but here's a squadron a-rowing on the sea--
Cattle on the meadow a-charging with a roar!
Quick, and we'll escape them, they're as mad as they can be,
The wicket is the harbour and the garden is the shore.

More Emily Dickinson!

Because I could not stop for Death (712)    
by Emily Dickinson

Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me – 
The Carriage held but just Ourselves – 
And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring – 
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain – 
We passed the Setting Sun –

Or rather – He passed us –
The Dews drew quivering and chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet – only Tulle –

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –

Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity –

Lloyd Alexander died today.  People know him best for his Chronicles of Prydain.  They fueled my imagination when I was a child, and I did love them.  But where he really captured my interest was with the Vesper Holly series.  I like to have a character with whom I strongly identify in a book, and Vesper Holly was that character.  Vesper Holly, Teen Archaeologist.  I don’t remember much about the series except that I loved it and I read it while my parents were at the gym.  I think I shall have to get it from the library in memoriam.  The internet has shockingly little information about the series.  It doesn’t have its own Wikipedia entry.  It’s just briefly mentioned in the entry for Lloyd Alexander.  We may have to set about fixing that.  Who’s with me?

Contact:
Tavia Stewart
510-628-0327
Tavia@ScriptFrenzy.org

FROM THE PEOPLE WHO BROUGHT YOU NATIONAL NOVEL WRITING MONTH . . .
SCRIPT FRENZY IS BORN!

The Office of Letters and Light is proud to announce a 20,000-word scriptwriting challenge

www.ScriptFrenzy.org – May 10, 2007 – There are some who say writing a script takes awesome talent, strong language skills, academic training, and years of dedication.

Not true. All it really takes is a deadline – a very, very tight deadline – and a whole lot of coffee.

For the last eight Novembers, we have been running National Novel Writing Month (www.nanowrimo.org), a month-long 50,000-word “seat of your pants” noveling adventure. With over 75,000 participants and 12,000 winners in 2006, NaNoWriMo has officially become the largest writing contest in the world!

Because we felt that one deadline-driven event a year was not enough, we decided to add another: Script Frenzy, which launches this June! Script Frenzy is an international writing event in which participants attempt the creatively daring feat of writing an original, full-length screenplay—or stage play—in a single month.

As part of a donation-funded nonprofit, Script Frenzy charges no fee to participate; there are also no valuable prizes awarded or "best" scripts singled out. Every writer who completes the goal of 20,000 words is victorious and awe-inspiring and will get a Script Frenzy Winner's Certificate and web icon proclaiming this fact.

Since the Script Frenzy site launched on May 1, thousands of people have already signed up. Many of those people are right in your backyard. In June they will meet at local cafes and libraries for collective write-ins, because if you’re going to attempt something as crazy as a 20,000-word script in a month, you might as well have company.

Sign-ups are taking place now. Please contact Tavia Stewart if you’re interested in hearing more about Script Frenzy or visit the event website at www.ScriptFrenzy.org.

About the Office of Letters and Light

The Office of Letters and Light has its roots in National Novel Writing Month, an organization founded in Oakland, Calif., in 1999 by freelance writer Chris Baty. In 2006, Baty and staff created the Office of Letters and Light to run National Novel Writing Month and launch similar new events. In September, 2006, the Office of Letters and Light was officially granted nonprofit status. For more information about all of our programs, visit www.LettersandLight.org.

###

In June, I’ll be participating in the Summer Blog Blast Tour, organized by Colleen Mondor of Chasing Ray.  As I do my research on my assigned authors and prepare their questions, I think a lot about why we’re doing this.  Thus this week’s question:

How do readers benefit from author interviews?

Little Willow is a prolific author interviewer.  I always enjoy reading her interviews.  I also love the interviews at 7 Impossible Things Before Breakfast.  But I’m having trouble finding a way to explain exactly what I get out of these interviews.  Insight, of course, into the author’s process, but these interviews are always unique, asking new questions.  Everyone asks “Where do you get your ideas?” or “What advice do you have for aspiring authors?"  Little Willow asks questions like “As a reader, what is your favorite section of the bookstore?” while the ladies of 7-Imp ask “If you could have three (living) authors over for coffee or a glass of rich, red wine, whom would you choose?"  These questions show me the author as reader, which makes the author a person to me.

So what do you think?  What do you get out of author interviews?

Gelett Burgess. 1866– 36. 
The Purple Cow 
(Reflections on a Mythic Beast Who’s Quite Remarkable, at Least.) 

I NEVER saw a Purple Cow; 
I never hope to See One; 
But I can Tell you, Anyhow, 
I’d rather See than Be One.

Oh how I love this poem.  It is so silly.

My Area of Expertise: The Ancient Mediterranean.

The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan
The Sea of Monsters, Rick Riordan
The Titan's Curse, Rick Riordan
Iris, Messenger, Sarah Demming
The Last Girls of Pompeii, Kathryn Lasky
Ithaka, Adele Geras
Troy, Adele Geras 
Nobody's Princess, Esther Friesner
Corydon and the Island of Monsters, Tobias Druitt
Corydon and the Fall of Atlantis, Tobias Druitt
Goddess of Yesterday, Caroline B. Cooney
The Shadow Thieves, Anne Ursu
The Siren Song, Anne Ursu


Other suggestions please?

At the beginning of the school year, the school newspaper sent a kid around to interview all the new teachers.  He had lots of questions, boring ones like "Where'd you go to college?" (which he managed to misquote me on), and less boring ones such as, "What cartoons do you like?" but the question that nearly stumped me because my heart was torn in two was "Who's your favorite superhero?"

In the end, he quoted me as saying I liked the X-Men, I think.  But what I really said was, "Spiderman!  No, wait, the X-Men!  Well, I like all the X-Men but I like Kitty Pryde the best.  So.... AH!  This is such a hard question!  I guess I'll go with Kitty Pryde and Spiderman."

This brings me to tell you about tomorrow.

Tomorrow is an important day.  Cinco de Mayo.  My boyfriend's birthday.  Free Comic Book Day.

It's appropriate that Free Comic Book Day is my boyfriend's birthday, as he is the one who got me into comics.  It's also appropriate that Spiderman 3 is coming out today, the day before Free Comic Book Day and my boyfriend's birthday.  It's such a unique confluence of events that brought us here.

So, go get a free comic book.  You might run into MJ there, in which case she'll say this:

(They actually made that a line in Spiderman 2 and I about died of happiness.)

Still more Catullus.  Latin text from The Latin Library; translation/adaptation mine.

V. to Lesbia Let us live my Lesbia, and let us love, and let us assess the gossip of too severe old men at a single penny! Suns can fall and return: When our brief light has once gone out, We must sleep one perpetual night. Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred, then still another thousand, then a hundred. Then, when we will have made many thousands, we will mix them up, so that we do not know, nor will any bad person be able to envy us, when he knows there to be so many kisses. V. ad Lesbiam

VIVAMUS mea Lesbia, atque amemus, rumoresque senum seueriorum omnes unius aestimemus assis! soles occidere et redire possunt: nobis cum semel occidit breuis lux, nox est perpetua una dormienda. da mi basia mille, deinde centum, dein mille altera, dein secunda centum, deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum. dein, cum milia multa fecerimus, conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus, aut ne quis malus inuidere possit, cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.

A meme of my very own!

What’s the first book you remember reading?  Give us the title, author, date of publication, and your age when you read it.  Look it up at Amazon.  Is it still in print?

Mine is Stop!  Go!  Word Bird by Jane Belk Moncure, published in 1981.  I was three when I read it.  It is no longer in print.

(If you want to leave out any of the information aside from the title, feel free.  Especially your age when you read it, as some people may be embarrassed because they started reading especially early or especially late, though I can’t imagine anyone in the litosphere criticizing anyone else based on when they started to read.)

Here’s a new feature for lectitans: Reading the Classics.  I’ll be reading classic books and posting my thoughts on them, links of interest, etc.  The first book I’m using for this feature is J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan.

In case you didn’t know, Peter Pan is about Wendy Moira Angela Darling, her brothers, and their adventures in the Neverland with a boy named Peter Pan.  Peter ran away from home shortly after his birth, and refuses to grow up.

It may strike you as odd that I went to the age of 25 without having ever read Peter Pan, especially having been exposed to many incarnations of it.  I didn’t spend my life avoiding reading it.  I just never thought about picking it up, until I recently started reading J. V. Hart’s Capt. Hook and decided I should perhaps read the source material first.

Reading Peter Pan was like coming home.  As a child I watched the Betty Comden/Adolph Greene musical Peter Pan (starring Mary Martin as Peter) time and time again.  I loved that musical.  I still do.  The musical is quite faithful to the book, and so I found myself reciting lines as I was reading, and exerting great control over myself to keep from bursting into song.  I especially enjoy the aspects of Barrie’s writing that sound as though he himself were reading a child a bedtime story.

Peter Pan is on first glance a simple story, but it has inspired so many imaginations and led to so many adaptations and spin-offs that I can’t help but examine it on a deeper level.  I have nothing new to say about the book, I fear; its themes are clearly growing up and the passage of time.  What I find interesting and haven’t read a lot about is the contrast between Wendy and Peter.  Peter never wants to grow up, and Wendy is very eager to be a grown up.  She wants to do grown up things, keep a grown up house, raise children as grown ups do.  Playing at being a little mother is what Wendy does best.  I identify with her heavily, especially in the 2003 film adaptation, where she is the storyteller and likes to swordfight.  (The newest Wendy is by far my favorite Wendy.)

I don’t particularly like the Disney Peter Pan, though I find Disney’s Tinkerbell charming.  The musical is my favorite adaptation.

For me, the most interesting character is Captain Hook.  Cyril Richard’s Captain Hook in the musical first sparked my love of pirates.  Ask any of my friends or students, and they’ll tell you I have a pirate problem.  It didn’t start with Captain Jack Sparrow.  It goes all the way back to Capt. Jas. Hook and his beautiful red coat.  Captain Hook is an adult, but he lives in the Neverland.  How did an Etonian end up in the land of children’s imagination?  I guess I’ll have to read Capt. Hook to find out.

My favorite adaptation/spinoff from the Peter Pan story is Christopher Golden’s Straight on til Morning.  It’s a dark version of the tale, set in the summer of 1981 (a grand time if you ask me).  I highly recommend it.

Peter Pan seems above review to me; what is there to say about its quality?  Time. popularity, wars over its copyright, and its many derivative works have revealed all that’s necessary in that case, I think.  I enjoyed reading it.

For a comprehensive look at Peter Pan and the works it inspired, read Little Willow’s article, Peter Pan and Friends.

There has been much debate recently about blog reviews and their trustworthiness.  Becky has an excellent summary of the whole affair over at Becky’s Book Reviews.  This week’s question is inspired by this debate.

This week’s question:

What is the purpose of a book review?

Is it to make an audience aware of a book they might have overlooked?  Is it to steer an audience away from a book that may waste their time?  Is it bad to only write one kind of review: positive or negative?  Is it good to think about who might like a book, even if the reviewer finds it unsatisfying?

I’ve been pondering all of these sub-questions myself.  I haven’t weighed in on the great blog review debate, because I feel like I’m so new to the whole litosphere that I can’t make a well-educated statement.  For my book reviews, I will say this: I won’t review a book I didn’t finish, and I won’t finish a book I don’t like.  It follows, then, that I will only review books I like.  There is a great range, however, in my depth of appreciation for a book.  Some books (Millicent Min, anyone?) I adore.  Others I like but don’t love (The Last Dragon).  I don’t write traditional reviews.  When I write a review, I start with a quick summary.  I then try and get to the larger themes of the book, what the book means on a universal level.  Lastly, I recommend the book for certain reader groups.  I am not looking to be unbiased or provide critical analysis; that’s just not what I do here.  This is a personal reading journal, and so my reviews are personal reviews.  If you are looking for objective reviews, you should probably go someplace else.

Last week’s question: How much can we know about the author herself based on the content of the book?

This question provoked a lot of discussion.  You can find answers at the original post, Tea Cozy, Cats and Jammers Studio, And if I come to ledges… , Andrew Karre’s Flux Blog, Finding Wonderland, and Bri Meets Books.

More Catullus.  Latin text from The Latin Library; translation/adaptation mine.

III. The Tears of Lesbia’s Sparrow [yes, again] Mourn, o Venuses and Cupids, and whatever amount of lovely people there are: my girlfriend’s sparrow is dead, the sparrow which she loved more than her own eyes - for he was honey-sweet to her, and he had known her so well as a girl knows her mother, nor did he move himself away from her lap, but hopping around at one time hither and another time thither he was chirping always to his mistress alone: now he goes through that shadowy journey, from which they deny anyone to return. But let it go badly with you, evil shadows of Orcus, who devour all beautiful things: stay away from my so-beautiful sparow. O bad deed!  O unhappy sparrow! Now by your work my girl’s swollen eyes grow red with weeping.

III. fletus passeris Lesbiae

LVGETE, o Veneres Cupidinesque, et quantum est hominum uenustiorum: passer mortuus est meae puellae, passer, deliciae meae puellae, quem plus illa oculis suis amabat. nam mellitus erat suamque norat ipsam tam bene quam puella matrem, nec sese a gremio illius mouebat, sed circumsiliens modo huc modo illuc ad solam dominam usque pipiabat. qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum illuc, unde negant redire quemquam. at uobis male sit, malae tenebrae Orci, quae omnia bella deuoratis: tam bellum mihi passerem abstulistis o factum male! o miselle passer! tua nunc opera meae puellae flendo turgiduli rubent ocelli.

When Kaye was a little girl, she had faerie friends.  When she and her glam-rock mom moved, the faeries disappeared.  As Kaye grew older, she began to think the faeries had just been a product of her imagination.  But when she returns to her childhood home, Kaye discovers not only that her faerie friends are real, but that she herself is a faerie.  Her friends convince her to help them escape seven years’ bondage to the Unseelie Court, a court of dark fae.  Kaye enters a frightening world, where magic works and faeries struggle for power.

Tithe is a book for young adults.  It is not a book for children.  If you are a parent considering giving this book to your child, read it first.  I would not put this in the hands of anyone I didn’t consider a grown up.  What does that mean?  I have students to whom I could comfortably recommend this book.  I also have students to whom I would never recommend this book.  Tithe is dark, both in its real-world and its fantastical elements.  Reading through the reviews at Amazon, I found a lot of complaints that it was too grown up to be a young adult book.  I also read a lot of complaints about the behavior of the central characters.

Kaye and her friends are New Jersey trailer trash.  They wander through life without significant purpose.  Kaye is a high school dropout, forced to leave school so she could support her mom’s career in rock music.  Kaye’s friends are ravers.  They smoke, they drink, and they commit acts of debauchery.  The same could be said of any of the faeries in the book.  Tithe presents a view of teenage life that many readers would prefer to ignore.  That doesn’t make it a bad book.  It makes it an honest book.  Even though we haven’t experienced something firsthand, we can see when things are true.  While I would never have been friends with Kaye in high school, my best friend associated with a crowd of kids who would have.  I knew those kids, and I was polite to them, but I avoided them.  That didn’t make them imaginary or contrived.

Tithe’s greatest strength is its examination of illusions, obligations, and consequences.  At various points, Kaye learns that her friends, both human and fae, are not what they seem.  She learns about the nature of obligation.  And her actions have distinct, permanent consequences.  Another strength is Black’s use of traditional faerie lore.  The Seelie and Unseelie courts, as well as the Unseelie Queen Nicnevin, are elements taken from Scottish faerie legend.  Holly Black moves them across the Atlantic and sets them in New Jersey, where broken-down boardwalks are more common than fantastical forests.  Where she works her magic is she makes them seem like they belong there.  There is nothing unnatural about the Faerie we see in Tithe.  At no point did I think, “Faeries?  In Jersey?"  Black’s seamless interweaving of modern and mythical elements is a rare talent.

Tithe made me very uncomfortable.  It also made me cry.  Those two things, taken together, mark good art.  Tithe is, above all, compelling.  When it was over, I was confused because I had been so engrossed in the world of the book.  Lucky for me that Valiant and Ironside are set in the same universe, isn’t it?

Book: Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale (Affiliate Link)
Author: Holly Black
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Original Publication Date: 2004
Pages: 336
Age Range: Young Adult
Source of Book: Library
Other Blog Reviews: Twisted Kingdom, Stainless Steel Droppings, CheriePie’s Book Reviews, Wands and Worlds