I Kill the Mockingbird by Paul Acampora

I Kill the Mockingbird is a middle grades novel which focuses on three friends in the summer between their 8th and 9th grades. The main character is Lucy, and she shares the action with friend-but-maybe-more Michael and matchmaker-friend Elena. Together they decide to honor a recently deceased favorite teacher by "doing something" to make everyone want to read To Kill a Mockingbird. The internets were talking about this one a few months ago, so when I saw it on a recent book buying spree, I picked it up. Hard back. Independent Bookstore. Doing my part, people. Just doing my part.

So. The aforementioned internets buzz is mostly favorable. It talks about how great it is that the book can be focused on Harper Lee's classic To Kill a Mockingbird without being reductive or just some sort of sad spin off. It refers to the quick dialogue between these teens and their great social activism. It winces a little at some pandering to independent bookstores (What? It happens.) and the vague motivation for the great social activism, but overall decides it is a lovely little book. Pats it on the head.

But. BUT. I can't just leave it there. The whole time I was reading this book I was wishing it could have been better. Because all the things above are true. It IS great that it isn't reductive, and some of the dialogue is sharp, and who doesn't like to encourage teens to DO SOMETHING about what they care about? It's all good.

Unfortunately, y'all, it is not all good. It is, instead, a decent idea that is not very well-written and that has gaps in crucial concepts. Let's begin with the not very well-written. The aforementioned lack of actual motivation for the action is a big point, not something to just set aside. Because we never see or understand what a great teacher Fat Bob was (Yes, actually the character's name*), it is impossible to believe the attribution of this great movement to his memory. Lucy comes up with it in a throwaway manner, and as the action proceeds, it has less and less to do with any actual memorializing and more about this fun idea, which would have been enough. Teenagers do stuff sometimes just because it's fun.

It's also doesn't make any actual human sense at times. There is a scene where the three kids are walking through a mall bookstore. They decide to ride the escalator to the second floor. Lucy bumps Elena with her hip while on the escalator. Elena bumps Lucy with her hip just as Lucy is about to get off the escalator, and Lucy trips. Then this happens:

Elena grabs for my arm, but instead of stopping me she shoves me toward a small table covered in books. I plow into it like a tall, skinny bulldozer. The table tips and knocks into a couple low shelves. Books fly everywhere. The next thing I know, I'm sitting on the floor surrounded by paperbacks covered with artistic renderings of pirates and ball gowns and big-busted ladies wearing looks of despair. I pick up one of the books and study the cover. "This is romance?"

Elena rushes forward. "I'm sorry! I didn't meant it. Are you all right?"

Michael joins us. "What happened?" (47-48)

I can't explain how stabby this makes me. I was on my feet, trying to get my husband to reenact some grabbing for my arm that could transform into a shove. It doesn't work. It also doesn't work that ALL that action could happen before "Elena rushes forward." From where? She was right next to Lucy. She was the one shoving her, remember? And then, Michael, who is right there when the hip bump/grab/shove happens, "joins us" having apparently missed it all. Not possible. And this is not an instance where I need to suspend some disbelief (as some of the cheery reviews suggested adults might have to do to enjoy it); it is thoroughly unnecessary unbelievable material.

Like when these friends (who have been friends so long they know what is in every drawer of each other's kitchens) want to build a website but think they don't know how, and Michael reveals he took a web design course at the community college last summer. How would they not know that? Did they spend all the previous summer assuming he was with them? Or wondering where he was during the day but never asking him? Or when Lucy is outside as the sun is setting, waiting for it to get dark before she does a thing I won't tell you because spoilers. We get "Soon, the stars begin to twinkle in the sky. While my eyes adjust to the darkness, I enjoy this clear, beautiful night that is filled with cricket songs and fireflies and ukuleles" (148). May I just suggest that if you are outside as night is falling, YOUR EYES DON'T HAVE TO ADJUST! THEY HAVE BEEN ADJUSTING ALL ALONG.

Just stabby, I tell you.

Bad writing aside, let's discuss how problematic it is to make social media and the internet a major plot point and then not accurately portray how those things work. Though lolcats would tell us otherwise, it is ridiculously difficult to "go viral." A website (which you apparently can just "make" using whatever name you'd like and not have to worry with any of the details involved with registering a domain, etc...) and posters in a 2-hour bus radius of Connecticut and brand new accounts with Facebook and Twitter and Instagram do not mean that within a week or two, you will have a national action campaign going. It's just not going to happen. Someone must have mentioned this to the author because there is an awkward attempt to explain how hard they work to engage their audience ("we communicate every day with anybody and everybody who stops by one of the Mockingbird sites") which is just so sad. Even that Facebook and Twitter and Instagram are listed like this, as though merely mentioning them gives you net cred or something. Later, Tumblr gets a mention. Bonus cred!

Clearly I was bothered by these things. As I mentioned, I wanted the book to be good for a couple of reasons. First, I agree with many of the points the author seems to be trying to make here. I would love to get behind a book with these messages. Secondly, Acampora does something refreshing and important by making unveiled but unloaded references to God, prayer, and the fact that Lucy and her family are Christians. Too often, we relegate any mention of Christian faith to the Christian bookstore as though Christianity can only be a balm to a believer or a tool to convince or condemn an unbeliever. Christianity is a truth in the lives of many, many teenagers, and I don't know of a single "mainstream" or real representation of what it means to be a teenager who believes in Christ. Despite all my stabbiness, I tip my hat to Acampora's ability to use faith as nothing more (but certainly nothing less) than a critical part of a character's identity.

Let me close with a reminder to myself. It doesn't have to be a perfect book, or even a very good one, to offer you something to think about. This book did that with this statement about cancer:

I'm not one of those people who think that cancer is some kind of jousting match. People live or die based on good medicine, good luck, and the grace of God. The people who die from it did not fail. The people who live will die another day. (60)

That, I like.


*I was going to include a section about how inappropriate I found this whole situation, but just go to The Book Smugglers. It is covered well there.

 

 

 

Year-in-Review

You're lying in bed just before dawn, covered by sleep and soft light. You might stir slightly when the dog shifts in his crate, but otherwise, all is peace and goodness and rest. Then you are rattled awake by the insistent beep - not of your alarm - but the one that all people everywhere know means a truck is backing up. And this one is apparently in your driveway. And you have no idea why. 

Scared? Yeah, me too.

But here I am, behind the wheel of the oversized truck backing up to the blog, ready to dump a year's worth of reading into storage. Don't worry. I'm not actually going to write about everything I've read this year, but I thought I'd highlight a few key moments and at least keep a record of what I read. Go back to sleep if you can.

I tackled two BIG books this year, and unbelievably, I read real book versions of both. The first was Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas. It was thought-provoking, and I was glad to "live with" Dietrich Bonhoeffer for so many months, but the book wasn't particularly well-written. Or maybe I should say it wasn't well-edited? There were just several hundred redundancies (and maybe pages) I would have eliminated. Still, good. The other was The Iliad, which I've read before, but this was a new translation from Barry Powell. The introductory material, the physical book itself, and the translation are excellent. Powell also has a new translation of The Odyssey, which Oxford UP kindly sent me as well, and I am really looking forward to reading it this summer. I've been teaching the Fagles translation, but these Oxford editions are tempting me to switch. There's so much I could say about The Iliad, but it would take too long, so maybe at some point, it will get its own post. Suffice it to say, most of what you think The Iliad is about it kind of isn't. I've got lots of thinking still to do on the subject. I also read Madeline Miller's Song of Achilles, and it blew my doors off.

I've read a fair amount of YA and kid lit as usual, but three are worth mentioning. First is Neil Gaiman's Fortunately, the Milk. This book made me laugh out loud more than I can recall a book ever doing. So funny. Here's a great line: "We have spoons. Spoons are excellent Sort of like forks, only not as stabby" (6). The second is actually two: Young Fredle (which we listened to) and Angus and Sadie by Cynthia Voigt. If you are a dog person, or an animal person, or a person who likes words, you will love these books. Angus and Sadie is chronologically first, but we read Young Fredle first and liked it that way. The third is Tove Jansson's Comet in Moominland. The quirky in this book is off the charts, and we'd love to read the next in the Moominseries, but it keeps not being at the library. Hmm....

Another standout from the year was from one of my favorite authors, Wendell Berry: Jayber Crow. Oh, if I could only quote you the whole book. I'll try to choose just one:

And yet I had laid my claim on the place, had made it answerable to my life. Of course, you can't do that and get away free. You can't choose, it seems, without being chosen. For the place, in return, had laid its claim on me and had made my life answerable to it.

Just flipping through the notes on my kindle make me feel I need to reread that one - and soon. I still am not able to fully engage with what I read on the kindle. I speed through, somehow, but I don't hang on to things like I do with a book, or even with audio, which leads me to my next and last highlight of the year. I listened to Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding. It took me forever, and I kept having to renew it from the library's digital service, but I enjoyed it, and I especially enjoyed this part from chapter 36:

For Schwartz, this formed the paradox at the heart of baseball or football or any other sport: you loved it because you considered it an art, an apparently pointless affair undertaken by people with a special aptitude, which sidestepped attempts to paraphrase its value, yet somehow seemed to communicate something true or even crucial about the human condition - the human condition being basically that we are alive and have access to beauty, can even erratically create it, but will someday be dead and will not.

Being an audio "read," I may have mispunctuated, but man, that's a good sentence. And true. So true.

Oh crap. That can't be the last one because I also read Cheryl Strayed's Tiny Beautiful Things, which is one of the most perfect and amazing things I've encountered in awhile. Even though I don't use profanity myself much, it doesn't get much better than this. OH and The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis and Malcolm Gladwell's David and Goliath and.... and.... and...

Well, there was a lot of good. Here's the whole list:

The School for Good and Evil      Somani Chainani
Over Sea, Under Stone         Susan Cooper
The Dark is Rising                Susan Cooper
Junonia                                Kevin Henkes
Jayber Crow                          Wendell Berry
Fortunately, the Milk           Neil Gaiman
Peter and the Starcatchers   Barry and Piersant
Ender's Game                       Orson Scott Card
Insurgent                              Veronica Roth
Longing for Home               Frederich Buechner
Black Beauty (audio)            Anna Sewall
Bonhoeffer                           Eric Metaxas
Little Women (reread)          Louisa May Alcott
Song of Achilles                    Madeline Miller
Tiny Beautiful Things             Cheryl Strayed
The Silver Chair (audio)        C. S. Lewis
Allegiant                               Veronica Roth
Young Fredle (audio)            Cynthia Voigt
Angus and Sadie                   Cynthia Voigt
The Weight of Glory             C. S. Lewis
David and Goliath                 Malcolm Gladwell
Mr. G                                    Alan Lightman
Comet in Moominland          Tove Jansson
Preface to Paradise Lost       C. S. Lewis
The Creation                       Edward O. Wilson
Looking for Alaska (reread)    John Green
An Abundance of Katherines    John Green
The Art of Fielding                      Chad Harbach
Paradise Lost                         John Milton
The Iliad                                  Homer, Barry Powell translation
Flora and Ulysses                  Kate DiCamillo
The Garden of Eve                 K. L. Going

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

I've always thought it was a cliche.  You know, when someone says she loved a book so much she started it over as soon as she finished.  I didn't believe people actually did that.  I hardly ever reread books at all (aagh...the burden of all the unread books in the world), so it follows that I wouldn't spend my scant reading minutes rereading something I just read.  Why would I do that?  Now, I have been so moved by a book that I feel paralyzed after finishing it.  I just want to sit with the book for awhile, to recall its beauty and revel in its pain, to not speak of it or anything else until I have adequately allowed that moment to just happen.  

But flip it back to front and start again?  Never.

Last Saturday, I worked LATE - serious sleep-deprivation late - and when I finally pulled myself away from the computer, I hesitated with my hand over the cover of the book I'd gotten from the library the week before. I knew I would want to start it, but I also knew I needed to just go to sleep. I also knew (as many of you do) that I need that pre-sleep reading time to focus my too-active brain on something, so I grabbed it up and headed for the dark room. And 100 pages into The Fault in Our Stars, I was still up. The next night, there I was, up until 2 again, reading while comforting the dog during a thunderstorm (I mean, while I'm up, right?). And the next afternoon in the hammock. And again that night when I went to bed at 8:30 and read until I was finished. Once I had closed the book, I did have that paralysis. I did just need to sit and not speak for a time to let the last notes of this song fade appropriately and respectfully.   

And then, I did this:

Sara ‏@wordyevidence

Just finished The Fault in our Stars. thanks@realjohngreen#startingovernow

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9:48 PM - 15 Oct 12 · Details

And I did.  I flipped it back to front and started again.  Not because it was perfect (it's not) or because I was so moved (I was), but because I had read it with such hunger that I didn't take the time to mark all the good stuff (there is plenty).  So, this is not a review.  I have to finish rereading it to put proper thoughts together and to share all the good (no, great) stuff.  And to properly critique the uneven parts.  And to urge you, as if you haven't already been urged, to read. this. book.  Oh wait.  That part I can do.

A Maze Me by Naomi Shihab Nye

A few weeks ago now, as National Poetry Month was just getting underway, I asked the librarian to point me toward the children's poetry, thinking I'd see a shelf section or two.  I was shocked to find poetry filling the entire row on one side!  It was a treasure trove, I tell you.  

This morning, after the lunches were made and before the kids were up, I grabbed up one of those poetry books, thinking to get a post on poetry for kids started today.  But Naomi Shihab Nye's A Maze Me: Poems for Girls has derailed my plan because I want to focus entirely on this book.  At length.  Because it is stunning.  Even if you don't have a daughter, you should run out and get your hands on this book and swallow it whole.  It is delicious.

Naomi Shihab Nye is no Jack Prelutsky.  Both are ridiculously prolific, but Prelutsky writes poems for children.  He is beloved and was even the inaugural Children's Poet Laureate in 2006.  However, I don't really like his work.  It is silliness writ large.  For this reason, children do like his poetry, and that is, of course, often what matters most.  But I fear it demeans the art, the form of poetry for children, as though they were incapable of appreciating a great line without utter silliness infusing it.  Silliness is great fun, but life ain't always silly - even for small children.  In contrast, Nye is a poet who includes some work for children in her extensive publication list.

A Maze Me is devoted to girls, the experience of being a 12-year-old girl, with all its requisite ups and downs.  But it is no drama queen.  It is often quiet and thoughtful and while I didn't think EVERY poem in the collection was a star, there were enough to keep me gazing long past when the kids got up this morning.  For instance, in "Ringing," she describes a vegetable truck, the bygone days of milk trucks, and even ice-cream trucks before declaring:

They are all bringers.
I want to be a bringer. 

I want to drive a truck full of eggplants
down the smallest street.
I want to be someone making music
with my coming. (15)

In the introduction, Nye describes being 12 and not feeling ready to be 13, though most of her friends were anxiously awaiting the change. She writes, "But I did not feel finished with childhood," (1) and later when she describes  memories of her earliest childhood and declares, "My whole job was looking around," (3) you can understand her desire to hold on to that job, that smallness.  She goes on to discuss the no-mans land feeling of junior high and how "What do you want to be? people always ask.  They don't ask who or how do you want to be?  I might have said, amazed forever" (4).  And it strikes me that this fullness, this curiosity, this awareness of how important it is to look around, to be amazed, is what makes her poetry so alive, complete, and utterly accessible to young people.

In all, I wrote down 12 poem titles that I felt were absolute necessities to share with you.  You simply could not finish this review without hearing every word of them.  Nonsense, of course.  Still, I want to share "Supple Cord" because it reminds me so of my children sharing their small room those first several years.  I want to share "Having Forgotten to Bring a Book, She Reads the Car Manual Aloud" because I laughed out loud and also because I have done that exact thing.  Or "People I Admire" because it is about gardening or "Sometimes I Pretend" just because it is so smart.  But I will share only two:

"Some Days" (34) 

Your handwriting stands
like a small forest on the page
You could enter it anywhere 

Your room looks new to you
maybe you moved a lamp
arranged a pillow differently
on the bed 

Such small things
change a room 

Single candle
on a desk you finally cleaned
sharpened pencils waiting
in a white cup 

I devote myself to short sentences
Air answers
Breath remembers
A streak of light signs the floor

I love the descriptions here, the final line, the image of handwriting as a small forest.  Her ability to capture the changing nature of self through things is so perfect for this age.

"Necklace" 

I hope Sunday's slow and long,
steeped like a pot of mint tea.
Soft sun and deep thinking. 

Saturday was a crowded calendar page,
a mound of chores. 

Could Monday be a porch?
Facing the week.
Wednesday a meadow? 

Thursday, let's leave
small baskets at everyone's door.
Flowers, notes, stones.
No one does that anymore. 

Could a week be strung on a silver chain?
A boat?
A tree?
Tuesday as a tree?

I chose this one because it is an example of one of Nye's common techniques: asking a great question.  And though that question may not have a definitive answer, it lingers.  I know I am going to view my Monday as a porch.  How about you?

The Magician's Nephew by C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis.  Friend of Tolkien.  Biblical scholar.  Spiritual philosopher.  Author of perhaps the best series of books for young people.  Ever.

That's right.  I'm throwing down the gauntlet.  And I've only read 2 of the 7 in the series (apparently).  And I am a diehard Harry Potter fan.  And I have just recently been gushing over the Little House books.  And I absolutely adore Anne of Green Gables and the rest.  Nevertheless, I am coming out with that bold proclamation based solely on how good The Magician's Nephew is.  As I mentioned earlier, I have long-loved The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, so it should not surprise me that this one is as good.  But somehow it did.  And perhaps it is because I read it for the first time as an adult.  Perhaps I'm able to see the breadth and depth of it more than I would have been able to as a child.  It is a gorgeous, entertaining, funny, and provocative beginning to the world of Narnia and to the series of books that will allow us to spend more time there.

I do take issue with the current trend to place the book first in the series.  Though it is the chronological beginning, it was written later and published sixth, I believe.  Apparently, Lewis never intended to write any more books beyond The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but someone asked him how the lamppost came to be in Narnia, and he began work on The Magician's Nephew as a means of solving that puzzle.  I can see how it makes a better narrative to read it after reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  It just feels like it should come second or later.  Now that I know all that, I'm going to have to decide how to read them with the children.

I presume it is not a spoiler to note the heavy biblical allusions employed throughout the series?  If that doesn't sound familiar to you, you might want to stop reading.  It was completely familiar to me, and as a believer, it is one of the reasons this book was so tremendously powerful.  But even knowing Lewis' intentions beforehand did not prepare me for Aslan's genesis of Narnia.  Honestly, the Biblical creation story doesn't do much for me from a literary standpoint (although I do like the version in The Message), but this telling of Creation moved me beyond words.  It is just so fully alive and joyful and artful.  Here's an example:

Then two wonders happened at the same moment.  One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count.  They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale: cold, tingling, silvery voices.  The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars.  They didn't come out gently one by one, as they do on a summer evening.   One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaped out. (107)

Another thing that makes this book so amazing is Aslan.  In a mere 2-3 pages, the reader gets an immediate understanding of who and what Aslan is and cannot help but be inspired by him.  When Digory asks Aslan to heal his mother, Aslan's tender response bears witness to God's enduring love for us.  I love this exchange as well:

"Well, I do think someone might have arranged about our meals," said Digory.

"I'm sure Aslan would have, if you'd asked him," said Fledge.

"Wouldn't he know without being asked?" said Polly.

"I've no doubt he would," said the Horse (still with his mouth full).  "But I've a sort of idea he likes to be asked." (163)

Such a quiet reminder, an answer to anyone who has ever wondered why we pray.

Though I loved this book's connections to my faith, it would still be magical and wonderful if you didn't make any of those connections.  And that is why I think I can say it is the best: because it can so successfully be so much to so many.

PS: A quick Google search told me that this book might be the next in the film series.  I haven't seen any of them, but they look great.  Anybody read and seen them and have an opinion on the adaptation?

The Founding of Narnia

There is little I can do to contain my delight.  And to think that I will have to leave this work unfinished to sit in an unbearably dull meeting for three hours is downright unfair.  But while I listen to someone drone on about things I already know and do, my mind will be back in Narnia.  The Magician's Nephew is the first in C. S. Lewis' magical Chronicles of Narnia series, and though I thought I might have read them all as a younger person, I am proving that thought wrong with this book.  I have loved and loved again The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe without ceasing, and now I can see that the entire series will hold for me the same sense of awe and wonder that infuses The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  I'll post a more complete commentary once I finally get to finish it, but for this morning, I will simply record these important thoughts:

"Watchin' and listenin's the thing at present; not talking." (114)

"Hail, Aslan.  We hear and obey.  We are awake.  We love.  We think.  We speak.  We know." (127)

For what you see and hear depends a great deal on where you are standing; it also depends on what sort of person you are. (136)

Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed. (137)

And now that I've put those down, I can see that even my disdain for the meeting I must attend can be tempered by these lessons.  What I see and hear today will depend a great deal on the person I choose to be when I walk in the room.  Thank you, C. S. Lewis.

Billy Creekmore by Tracey Porter

A few years ago, I would regularly come home from the library with a nice stack of books to read.  I haven't had that pleasure in awhile, and though I don't like this reality, there is a good reason.  The good reason is that I already own too many unread books.  Most avid readers (and book bloggers) talk about their beloved To-Be-Read (TBR) shelves as a permanent fixture in their homes.  I like having so many wonderful books, but I would really like to do away with my TBR shelves (and yes, that is plural!).  So, a few years ago, I stopped borrowing books from the library and ceased with PaperbackSwap and their ilk in an effort to reduce the numbers of TBRs lingering in my home.  Before we moved, I even took a few unread TBRs to the used bookstore.  Yet, I kept buying books.  The unbelievable used finds and the $4 table at the conference proved too difficult for me to resist.  So, I remain swamped with TBRs, and thus, I have a desire kindling in me to go on a book-buying fast, so watch for signs of such a decision.  For now, though, I will keep plugging away at my TBRs and look forward to the days when I can freely peruse the library stacks and come home with a fresh pile of borrowed TBRs.

All that neglect of the library went out the window a few weeks ago, though, when I was browsing the kids' section with my children and found Billy Creekmore by Tracey Porter.  I love YA novels.  Some of my favorite books of all time were written for young people.  I also have a particular interest in Appalachian literature and the coal mining industry.  So, Billy Creekmore was an automatic fit for me.  Billy is ostensibly an orphan, living at the Guardian Angels Home for Boys, at the novel's opening.  From there, he goes to WV where he gets folded into the coal mining community and the UMW struggle.  When he is run out of town by the mine operator's gun thugs, he joins up with the circus. There are the requisite struggles along the way, and the ending is appropriately feel-good without being too schmaltzy, so overall it was a successful read.

I can't say it moved or changed me much though some of that stasis could come from my existing familiarity with the subject matter.  I remember the first time I read a novel that exposed the realities of the coal mining industry and the United Mine Workers to me, and it did change me (thank you, Denise Giardina).  This book, while it doesn't focus exclusively on coal mining, provides a basic first taste of the inhumanities of the industry, especially during the time when the UMW was attempting to organize.  It remains an incredibly difficult way to live and work, but before unionization, miners and their families had literally no standing to demand better conditions.  For a YA novel, it handles some difficult subject matter, but everything does these days, and honestly, I'd rather my young people encounter such challenges as injustice and inequality than the more cliched sex and drugs. 

The parts about the circus were not as interesting to me, not as finely drawn.  They felt rather tacked on, a vehicle by which Billy could once again experience family.  But as a means to this end, it worked better for me than some unrealistic happy reunion with his long-absent father.  I appreciated the complexity of emotions that Billy experienced through the final chapters; it was in keeping with the rest of the novel.  And though I didn't always care for the dialect employed (isn't dialect usually more a distraction than a contribution to the novel?), Billy's character was a likable narrator with a unique story to tell. 

Now, enough with the kid stuff - I've got William Carlos Williams to finish tonight and unstructured book group tomorrow.  Plus, classes?  How's a girl expected to get it all done when pesky work gets in the way?

The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy

I finished National Book Award Winner The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall last night. I heard a lot of buzz around this book at the time of its release, but I'm just now getting around to reading it. And I wanted to like it a lot more than I did. I wanted to be captivated by these characters. I wanted the story to transport me. I wanted to love it. And I did not.

I think part of the problem is that the whole book feels like merely a setup for books to come. J.K. Rowling was able to see each of the books in her Harry Potter series as chapters in the longer "book" that was the series, and each links beautifully to the other without wasting time and energy reminding us of what has come and who is whom. The characters are richly drawn and engaged in action right from the start. This book, by contrast, feels like a prolonged introduction to rather thin characters - not exactly one-dimensional, but awfully close. Skye is the tomboy rebel; Jane is the dreamy writer, Rosalind is the responsible preteen, Batty is the baby. They don't cross those lines, and though there is quite a bit of action, it is so scattered as to cause the reader to lose focus. None of the sequences really leads to anything; they are vignettes. Like Curious George, whose far-fetched adventures are linked merely by the thinnest circumstances, these girls get into "trouble" that doesn't really amount to any developing action. Plus, with the dead mother, absent father, and multiple siblings thing, it feels formulaic. It's been done. And since we're enjoying the Boxcar children so much right now, it becomes extraneous.

There wasn't anything wrong with the book, and I don't think I'll mind if the kids find it on the shelf, but I won't necessarily insist that they read it.