TSS - Review - The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Finished: 2/16/09
Source: my sister (Thanks, Carolynn!)
Rating: 9/10

Synopsis from B&N:

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead. There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack—who has already killed Bod's family . . . Beloved master storyteller Neil Gaiman returns with a luminous new novel for the audience that embraced his New York Times bestselling modern classic Coraline. Magical, terrifying, and filled with breathtaking adventures, The Graveyard Book is sure to enthrall readers of all ages.


My thoughts:


It's almost difficult to put into words exactly how good this book is. I don't hesitate to say that I'm a Neil Gaiman fan - I believe he is one of the best storytellers of our generation, and I always have high expectations for his work. So when I say this novel exceeded my expectations, what I mean is that I'm not sure I have, even yet, realized exactly how brilliant it is.

Gaiman talks in his introduction about how much he owns to Kipling's "The Jungle Book", and the parallels are easy to see - a real, live boy, raised apart from his family by creatures not like himself, figuring out which world he truly belongs in - Gaiman does this sort of thing in many of his novels, and I think it works particularly well here. His characters are interesting, a little creepy, and somewhat mysterious, and he always leaves the reader a little bit of room for their own imagination.

He also doesn't force a "happily-ever-after" ending - I don't want to give too much away, but he allows the natural progression of the story, even though it doesn't end with happiness and joy, and the book is better for it. It is never a light, happy read - it does, after all, take place in a graveyard - but Gaiman's humor keeps it from feeling like a downer. Bod does his share of silly, impulsive things, and there are beautiful moments, as well, that make reading the book a pleasure.

Each time I think about it, I remember something else I loved. This is a novel I will certainly read again, and I'm sure discover more to enjoy. I'm thrilled for the author that it won this year's Newbery - I believe it deserves the praise.

TSS - Review - By the Shore

By the Shore by Galazy Craze

B&N Synopsis:

Published to great international acclaim, Galaxy Craze's best-selling debut, By the Shore, launched a young actress into literary fame. In clear and sparkling prose, her novel evokes a fragile, bittersweet world of youth on the cusp of adulthood and "captures perfectly the hopes and hurts of childhood" (The New York Times Book Review). Twelve-year-old May lives in a less than thriving oceanfront bed-and-breakfast run by her single mother. Her life is filled with the frustrations and promise of youth, complicated by a loving if distracted young mother who strives to care for her two children without forfeiting fun and passion. May puts her faith in the things that elude her - her absent father, the London city life left behind, the acceptance of the popular girls who have boyfriends -- and wonders if her life will ever change. When a kindly writer and his glamorous editor come to lodge in the weeks before Christmas, opportunities are in the air. But then May's playboy father, estranged from the family for years, drops in and threatens to freeze the delicate new possibilities stirring in all their lives.




My thoughts:

I initially picked up this novel because I am slated to review its successor, Tiger Tiger, for CurledUp.com, and I really, really hate to read the second book before the first. (I know, I'm a little anal about that.) I'd read some pretty wildly disparate reviews of the two books, so I didn't quite know what to expect - I was very pleasantly surprised.

By the Shore captures perfectly the voice of its 12-year-old narrator, May. The prose itself is quiet, almost tentative, much like a young girl taking her first steps into adulthood. May is sweet, lovable, funny, wise, bratty - very much what you would expect of a young girl. She is smart beyond her years, due to her mother's somewhat haphazard care, and yet still clings naively to the hope that her father will return and create one big, happy family. Eden, her brother, and Lucy, her mother, are both compelling, and the three characters form the strong backbone of the novel.

I was captivated from the first paragraph:

"It can be dangerous to live by the shore. In the winter, after a storm, things wash up on it: rusty pieces of sharp metal, glass, jellyfish. You must be careful where you tread. Sometimes I see a lone fish that has suffocated on the shore and think for days that there are fish in the water waiting for it to return. Then I think, There is nowhere to be safe."

Something about this earnest, sweet young girl just grabbed me, and I read her story with fascination. Oh, how I wanted her to be happy, and not to learn the hard lessons I could sense would be coming her way.

"When they had gone into the house I pushed myself up off the ground and walked over to the tree where Eden had been playing. There were some acorns, leaves in piles, small stones and twigs: a whole world of something I couldn't see anymore. When you are six years old you can sit at the bottom of a tree and everything becomes alive around you. The moss is a soft green carpet, the stone a sofa, the hollows of a tree a house. The wind was a low voice around me. It was getting darker out. The kitchen light was on and I could see the yellow walls and the long shadows made when someone walked past the light. I stared down at the base of the tree, but all I could see was a pile of twigs and leaves, and a few stones. This is how I know I'm getting older: a stick is just a stick."

It certainly has is weaknesses - the romance between Lucy and the visiting writer is predictable, May's father is, of course, a huge jerk - but the bond between the three main characters, and the voice of May, made me overlook the problems and fall in love with this novel. I'm so happy I decided to read it, and now can't wait to start the next one!

Finished: 1/23/09
Rating: 8/10

TSS - Review - Big Big Sky

Big Big Sky by Kristyn Dunnion


Rustle is a scout, part of a group of five young women trained to be soldiers. They live on Earth, but their landscape is vastly different from what we know. After a race of aliens called ScanMans invaded the planet, killing all human adults, the children were left behind. Taken and reprogrammed with new memories implanted, they believe that they were Found, rescued by the ScanMans from their horrible previous lives. Some of the children were killed, some used for experiments. Some, like Rustle, were trained to be warriors and assigned to a Pod.

Each Pod does everything together - trains, eats, sleeps, even occasionally plays. There are no children anymore; the ScanMans exterminated all males, so only females are members of Pods. Pod members are one another's family, so close that they can sense each other's thoughts. Within Pods, some members form couples and are "fused" to each other. Rustle and Loo are fused - each loves the other with an undying love. But when strange changes begin to happen to Rustle both physically and emotionally, Loo is afraid to question her about it. Pod members who start to Deform are taken to the Living Lab, and they are never seen again.

Rustle is not the only one who is changing, however. Her Pod mate Roku has been acting strangely also, and one night confronts Rustle about the changes she is experiencing. Rustle, too afraid to talk to anyone about her condition, shuts Roku out. The next day, Roku is gone. Rustle wonders if, perhaps, that was her last chance to confide in a sympathetic soul.

When Roku's disappearance is noted by the ScanMans, their Pod is called to the Living Lab for questioning. Knowing that her changing condition will be discovered, Rustle panics and allows Loo to see, for the first time, her altered state. When they accidentally stumble upon their own fakies - genetically programmed reproductions of themselves - they know they are destined to be Deplugged. Rustle and her Pod mates stage a daring escape, away from the Living Lab and into the wildness of Earth.

Once outside the confines of the ScanMans holdings, their Pod leader, Shona, is revealed as the person who betrayed them. On their own and struggling to survive, Rustle and Loo are separated and must learn to survive on their own. Knowing the ancient stories of settlements of people living apart from the ScanMans influence, both decide to try to make their way to civilization.

Rustle is recaptured by the ScanMans and taken back to the Living Lab, where unspeakable things happen. Loo is rescued by Roku, who has undergone changes of her own, and the two struggle to find the settlement. Fighting for their very survival, the three Pod mates must try to learn the rules of their new world and, perhaps, make their way back to each other.

Kristyn Dunnion's Earth is a very scary place. Completely taken over by the alien race, nothing seems familiar, and the reader is required to immediately acclimate to a host of different scenarios. Even the language is different: wary scary, blaaty whafa, obeyence, mindcore - these are just a sampling of the new terminology liberally distributed throughout the story. Dunnion does not allow for a learning curve but immerses the reader in her strange, new Earth completely on page one. This sets the tone for her bleak, dystopian landscape and the horrors the three young women discover.

Dunnion shifts the narrative between each of her main characters, allowing the reader to see the story through different sets of eyes. Her unique writing style fits the characters, and the transitions between narrators is seamless.

Big Big Sky is an incredibly difficult book to put down. Dunnion's narrative is fast-paced, and each page brings a new challenge. Rustle, Loo, and Roku are all smart, funny, and sympathetic. Once introduced, the reader can't help but want to know what happens next. As each young woman discovers something new - about her past, about the truth of their lives with the ScanMans, or about her own true personality - she becomes more and more real, and by the end of the novel they all feel like friends. This excellent novel is highly recommended for fans of science fiction and dystopian narratives.




Elizabeth Schulenberg/2009 for curled up with a good kid's book