I’ve been to the library three times this week.  The first time was for the Friends of the Library book sale.  That was insane.  I did come out of it with some books, but they are in the car so I can’t tell you what they were.  Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted was among them, as was The Chocolate War.  Also a book called Pirate Island.  I had to get it because it had the word “Pirate” in the title.

Here’s what I checked out this week: American Born Chinese, Gene Luen Yang Aria of the Sea, Dia Calhoun The Midnighters Trilogy, Scott Westerfeld A Drowned Maiden’s Hair, Laura Amy Schlitz The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things, Carolyn Mackler Flight Volumes 1 - 3, Kazu Kibuishi The Last Days, Scott Westerfeld Make Lemonade, Virginia Euwer Wolff Peeps, Scott Westerfeld So Yesterday, Scott Westerfeld Weedflower (CD), Cynthia Kadohata

At Borders this week I bought all of Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies trilogy, as well as Dana Reinhardt’s Harmless.

Because I haven’t turned in any of the not-yet-reviewed books from my last trip, or Pucker, I have a total of 21 books out now.  It feels like summertime when I was little.

Let me say this right up front: this is not a story about kissing, or wrinkles, or things that are sour.  It’s a story about redemption.

Thomas Quicksilver was born in Isaura, a world that exists parallel to our modern Earth.  In Isaura, everything is pre-ordained.  Family dinners are dictated weeks in advance, not because anyone wants it to be so, but because a group of fortune tellers called The Seers have predicted what they will be.  Each day, the citizens of Isaura visit the Seers to learn what their fate is for that day, and how it can be changed for the better.  In Isaura, most of the hard labor is performed by a group of people called the Changed: individuals who were deformed or handicapped in some way on Earth but are made whole when they come to Isaura.  Both of Thomas’s parents were Seers, but he and his mother were exiled to Earth after the death of his father.  Thomas was the one who found his father, lying on the kitchen floor dead and stripped of his Seerskin, a glittering golden membrane that makes it possible for Seers to do their work.  His mother had been skinned as well.  Thomas, afraid and alone, hid under the sink until he thought he could sense Cook, a woman who had cared for him his whole life, coming.  He reached up to grab her, but instead, pulled the curtains out of the kitchen window down upon himself; she wasn’t there yet, and the candles that were burning in the kitchen when he found his parents had set the curtains aflame.  Thomas was burned to the point of deformity.

On Earth, Thomas’s mother can use her precognition even without her Seerskin, and makes a living by telling fortunes.  Eventually, she starts to sense everything that is about to happen to everyone near her, to the point where she can’t be around people anymore because her head has become so crowded with images of their futures.  She tells Thomas she needs him to return to Isaura, disguising himself as a candidate to be Changed, and recover her skin.  He reluctantly agrees to do so, but once he is in Isaura he finds himself distracted.  It turns out if he hadn’t been so severely burned, he would have been stunningly handsome.  The Changed girls all want to spend time with him, and he enjoys the attention he’s never had.  He falls in love with another of the Changed, begins to feel himself at home again in Isaura, and is tempted to forget about saving his mother and just stay there.  Thomas is torn between his desire to live a life he’s never known and his obligation to help his mother.

This is a book about redemption, though it comes to it in a roundabout way.  Melanie Gideon has created a fascinating world, and paints a picture of a society that is apparently serene, but exists only because of a disturbing social structure.  The world-building Gideon has done here is Pucker’s greatest strength.  Even when I was tired of Thomas Quicksilver, I still wanted to see how things would turn out for his world.

Thomas Quicksilver is not a flawless hero, and the flaws he has aren’t charming.  He is, however, an accurate portrait of a teenage boy.  If you put down Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix because you found Harry’s behavior obnoxious, you shouldn’t read Pucker.  If, however, you kept reading either because Harry’s teenage antics amused you or because you wanted to see how he would grow through it all, then Pucker will provide you with a similar vision of a young man’s growth.  Thomas Quicksilver does some things that make him near despicable, not the least of which is dating a set of girls all at the same time, disparaging them while doing it, and pursuing another girl who is the one he actually loves.  Still, these conflicting actions made him all the more believable to me.  Teenage boys chafe against authority, love being an object of desire, and - especially when denied a “normal” experience, as Thomas has been - might drink too deep once offered life’s pleasures.  While some of Thomas’s actions hurt his likability, they absolutely cemented his plausibility.  In a book set in a world so different from our own, we need a foothold to understanding the world.  Characters who feel the same things we feel and do things we or people we know might do can be that foothold, and that’s how Pucker succeeds.

I would recommend this book to fans of the more recent Harry Potter books and anyone who likes stories where utopias are maintained through dystopian circumstances.

Book: Pucker (Affiliate Link) Author: Melanie Gideon Publisher: Razorbill Original Publication Date: 2006 Pages: 288 Age Range: Young Adult Source of Book: Library Other Blog Reviews: Wands and Worlds, Scholar’s Blog, Si, se puede

When you have too much sadness, the magic drowns in it, like people in water.  If you think things hard enough, they become true.  But if you have sadness inside, all that comes out of your head is sadness.  (p. 35)

Sometimes a book finds you at the right time.  That’s what happened to me with Silvana de Mari’s The Last Dragon.  I was in the middle of reading this book when I lost a friend of mine to her own mental illness.  It was exactly the book I needed at that time.

Yorshkrunsquarkljolnerstri, “Yorsh” for short, is the last elf.  He lost his mother at a young age, and his grandmother sent him away while she remained in their house and drowned.  Though he is one born lately, as he so often reminds his companions, he has already experienced much misery.  As Yorsh and the two humans he meets travel through the city of Daligar, he reads a prophecy concerning the last dragon and the last elf breaking the circle.  He immediately recognizes himself as the last elf, and knows he must find the last dragon.  Armed with his father’s traveling map and the support of two humans shunned for helping him, Yorsh sets out to find this last dragon and break the circle.

This book strikes a delicate balance between pathos and humor.  Yorsh’s disdain for what he perceives as human lack of intelligence is juxtaposed with his own naivete, leading to misunderstandings that while intended to be funny, could become grating if the book relied on them exclusively for its humor.  Fortunately, this sort of comedy is just embellishment on a book that is of great substance.  As Yorsh grows, he learns about the world around him, and his eyes are opened.

At the heart of the book is the idea that you cannot trust your own preconceived notions about people you’ve never met.  Yorsh’s ideas about humans, humans’ ideas about elves, and everyone’s ideas about dragons turn out to be extremely off-base.  Around this theme, Silvana de Mari builds a world populated with characters both endearing and terrifying.  This is a dystopian society, but its children live lives filled with hope, despite their desperate conditions.  Yorsh, the last dragon, and these children unite to change their world for the better.

While The Last Dragon gets off to a slow start, its characters are so touching that it’s worth it to read all the way to the end.  Yorsh and his companions are darlings, and you want to see how they fare in their quest to improve their world.  I would recommend this book to lovers of fantasy, as well as readers who may need some hope in a dark time of life.

Book: The Last Dragon (Affiliate Link) Author: Silvana De Mari Publisher: Miramax Original Publication Date: 2006 Pages: 368 Age Range: Middle Grades Source of Book: Library Other Blog Reviews: Original Content, Si, se puede, Wands and Worlds, The Brookeshelf,

Yesterday, my family friend Sarah (

) and I went to the North Carolina Renaissance Faire.  Sarah was the prettiest peasant anyone has ever seen.  I was dressed as a fairy.  I had a crown, and there was some debate as to whether I was a princess or a queen.  I’d always rather be queen, but I didn’t argue when anyone called me a princess.  My picture was taken a couple of times.  My favorite part of the day, aside from Sir John Wenchworthy, Earl of Hangover and purveyor of Princessories (aka The Hot Pirate Guy, aka half of The Hot Pirate Couple) singing every time I walked past his booth (and I did walk past his booth many times), was all the small children pointing at me and whispering to their parents in awe “It’s a fairy!"  At one point a little girl asked me if I had any fairy stones.  I told her no; later I heard her ask her dad if she could approach another fairy and ask her for fairy stones.  Her dad told her no, and I got the sense that she was frustrated with the lack of fairy stones and her dad was tired of his daughter harassing poor unsuspecting fairies.  I knew they sold such stones at Princessories, 10 for a dollar, so I went back there and bought some.  I then returned to the stage where the little fairy was watching a show, tapped her on the shoulder, and gave her a fairy stone.  Her dad thanked me, but I think I sensed a note of “Great, now she will expect every fairy to give her a stone” in his thanks.  The third highlight of the day was talking to Animal X of Dreamweaver Productions.  Her work influenced my costume so heavily that I was mistaken for an employee.  She’s auditioned for Project Runway, so keep an eye out for her.

Being in the midst of all this 16th century fun, and having recently read The Royal Diaries: Elizabeth I, Red Rose of the House of Tudor, I found this week’s question:

What is the recipe for good historical fiction?

There are a lot of demands on historical fiction.  It’s got to be true to its period, while still telling an interesting story.  That is, I imagine, a difficult balance for an author.  How can an author achieve that balance successfully?  Who are some authors that have done so?  Is one period more suited to historical fiction than others?  Leave your answer in the comments here or post it at your own blog.  If you post it at your own blog, be sure to leave a link here!

Last Week’s Question
What does it mean to have a “thorough knowledge of children’s literature”?

Thanks to all who answered!  You can read the answers at the original post, Tea Cozy, and Bri Meets Books.  Thanks also to all who linked the question from your own blogs.

While I intend to continue teaching for a while, I am researching library schools now.  So if you have recommendations, do make them!  I’m looking for a program that would prepare me to work either as a school librarian or a children’s/teen librarian in a public library.  I want to be able to move across settings, but I want to specialize in youth services.

I’m a Latin teacher, so it’s only fitting that I post Latin poems.  From now on, you can expect from me for poetry Friday a Latin poem, and my English translation/adaptation of it.  All Latin texts will come from The Latin Library.  We’ll start with Catullus.

I. to Cornelius To whom am I giving this clever little new book just polished with dry pumice? To you, Cornelius: for you were accustomed to consider my trifles to be something already then, when you dared to explain the whole history of the Italians in your three books, Jupiter, books learned and laborious! Therefore have you whatever of this book, for what it’s worth; o patron virgin, may it remain enduring for more than one age.

I. ad Cornelium

CVI dono lepidum nouum libellum arida modo pumice expolitum? Corneli, tibi: namque tu solebas meas esse aliquid putare nugas iam tum, cum ausus es unus Italorum omne aeuum tribus explicare cartis doctis, Iuppiter, et laboriosis. quare habe tibi quidquid hoc libelli qualecumque; quod, patrona virgo plus uno maneat perenne saeclo.

Other Catullus Translations of Mine: II. The Tears of Lesbia's Sparrow III. The Tears of Lesbia's Sparrow IV. to Lesbia

If you want to know what I looked like about 20 years ago, be sure to check out this blog’s new look.  There was a stock picture in the new design until yesterday, but now, the reading girl is me.

When I think of Library School, I think of the Florida State University School of Library and Information Studies.  It’s called the College of Information now.  When I was in second grade, my dad went to library school.  He wanted to be a law librarian.  I spent a lot of time there.  I remember it better than I remember my mom’s part of the university, which was the Department of Religion.

I first checked out D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths from the children’s library there. I made rubbings from a big clay fountainy thing in the front hall of the building. I spent a lot of time sitting outside the computer place (it’s probably all different now) being bored.

The grad students used to keep puzzles on card tables there, and my mom and I would do them.

My eighth birthday was spent in that building, being anxious and uncertain about the future.  And bored.  For some reason whenever I sat in front of the computer part of the library school, I never had a book.  Or perhaps I only had a few, and finished them too quickly.

It’s all coming together a bit now.  I’m reading Peter Pan.  It feels like home, because the Comden and Greene musical is fairly faithful to the book, and I know the musical very well.  I watched that musical on a big projector in the library school.  It may have been around the time of my dad’s graduation.  I’m not sure.  I remember eating petit-fours.

This is how my memory is constructed.  I like to make books part of my memories of a place, as much as smells or sounds.  Library School will always equal D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths to me.

There are few things quite as thrilling as getting a package from Amazon.  Amazon usually means media for me, and I love media.  Especially books.

Today’s box brought On Pointe, the readergirlz pick this month, and the 2007 Children’s Writer’s and Illustrator’s Market.  I’m enjoying both.  I’m especially excited about the articles in CW&IM.  There’s some synchronicity in my life, as the only book at the airport that looked interesting was Death Dance, leading me to read two books about dancers at once.  I don’t have dance class tonight because it’s spring break for most of the younger students, but I figure reading about dance should make up for it.

I wish I could figure out what my favorite Amazon box ever contained.  Do you have a favorite package you’ve ever received?  Especially a book you or someone else ordered for you, perhaps?

Here’s a new feature: each weekend here at

, I will post a question and invite other bloggers to answer it, here or in their own blogs.  I’ll also provide an explanation of how I came up with the question.

This weekend’s question:

What does it mean to have a “thorough knowledge of children’s literature”?

It’s no secret that one of my aspirations is to be a librarian, specifically a school media specialist or a public librarian for children/teens.  In looking at my local library’s job listings, I came upon the description for the children’s librarian, which included a “thorough knowledge of children’s literature” as one of its requirements.  This seems vague to me, and I’m wondering what it would take to have such knowledge.  My plan is to get a library degree and take lots of classes in children’s literature, classes with titles like “Young Adult Literature and Related Materials” and “Children’s Literature and Related Materials."  But are two semesters of class enough to grant me a thorough knowledge?  It doesn’t seem likely.  What about a lifetime of reading?  I’ve been away from Children’s Literature for a while, though I’m coming back to it now.

I’m curious to hear your answers.  Can you set me on the path to thorough knowledge?  Post your definition in the comments or in a post at your own blog.  If you post at your own blog, be sure to leave a link!  I’d love to hear from bloggers who might not read my blog as well, so if you do blog about it and get responses from others, please let me know.