“If You Hold a Seed” by Elly MacKay

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children's literature, dreams, Elly MacKay, growth, imagination, seed, tunnel books

Paper artist Elly MacKay’s venture into the children’s book market is a natural fit. The process behind her ethereal illustrations, evolved from the tunnel books she made as a child, yields not only the depth expected in this method of composition but the dream-like haze that surrounds our memories of earliest childhood and imaginative play. Traditional tunnel books create a 3-dimensional image by composing a picture in layers. When those layers are arranged one behind the other, with a space between each layer, they reproduce a sense of depth. The effect is similar to what you might see through a ViewMaster, but without the viewer. Elly accomplishes this effect with yupo paper, beautiful shades of ink, a delicate drawing hand, and a handmade “miniature theater” where, with a bit of magic, she stages her

18th century tunnel book attributed to engraver Martin Engelbrecht (1684-1756) of Augsburg, Germany

creations before photographing them. In her first book for children, If You Hold a Seed, story and technique come together as a young boy discovers the potential in a small seed and the value of patience.

The layered illustrations draw the reader in, filling each page with softly-colored light and shadow. As one season becomes another and as the years go by, boy and sapling grow together. The marvelous thing is that the wait is tempered by observable changes to both. This a wonderful choice for soothing bedtime read-aloud sessions—books that can stand the test of multiple readings, either nightly or consecutively, are invaluable. If You Hold a Seed is a lovely addition to any parent’s arsenal.

Visit Elly MacKay’s website where you will find information about her current projects, her creative process, and additional links to her blog and her Etsy store, Theater Clouds.

Disclosure: If You Hold a Seed was kindly sent by Running Press at my request after I learned it was in production. I discovered Elly MacKay’s Etsy store a few years ago and have been a fan of her work ever since.

“Two Graves” by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

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Agent Pendergast, Brazil, deception, Douglas Preston, FBI, Helen Esterhazy, Lincoln Child, Nazis, NYPD, Two Graves, Vincent D'Agosta

The occasion of a new entry in the Agent Pendergast series comes with the knowledge that sleep will be forfeit. Two Graves, in addition to being the 12^th book featuring Agent Aloysius Pendergast, is the third book of a trilogy about his wife, Helen, that starts with Fever Dream, reviewed here previously. All the questions are answered, the frayed ends drawn together, and, in light of several revelations, the stage set for what promises to be new adventures exploring the human soul’s capacity for both depravity and heroism. In the first part of the book, Pendergast’s demons come out to play as he frantically (make that doggedly; Pendergast doesn’t do frantic) pursues the people responsible for kidnapping his wife just minutes after he is reunited with her. In the earlier books, he has always appeared as an impeccably tailored machine: his slim frame is surprisingly strong, he has a supernatural facility for opening locks, the breadth of his knowledge is staggering (his mental faculties so well trained that he can recreate people and explore familiar terrain with a little focused concentration), his skin pale, his eyes silver, his manner aloof, his wallet bottomless. He appears suddenly and silently and has a tendency to glide away. We have become familiar with his background and contradictions but now the pale man in the dark suit, fighting against the evil in the world as he controls the darkness in himself, reveals his very human weaknesses. The effect is as disconcerting as the man.

As always when reading a Pendergast mystery, I take note of new vocabulary and fresh usage. I love to be sent rummaging for a dictionary; it doesn’t happen often and it is one of the features of this series, aside from the brilliantly improbable violence, I look forward to. There are wonderful descriptions: mountains “serrated” the horizon and there is a “warmthless” sun. To my vocabulary list, I have added “riprapped” (formed by chunks of concrete thrown together without order), “espagnolettes” (on a French window, a pair of rods extending above and below a knob mechanism that lock the window to the head and sill of its frame), “quirt” (a riding whip with a short handle and rawhide lash), and “nogging” (rough brick masonry used to fill an open framework). Though Two Graves is part of a series, acquaintance with the previous books is helpful but not required—Pendergast himself fills in the gaps as he puts the pieces together. In addition to Agent Pendergast’s private mission, Corrie Swanson, a young law enforcement-hopeful mentored by Pendergast, returns to complete her adventure; Dr. Felder, a criminal psychiatrist, sets about resolving his issues with Pendergast’s ward, Constance Greene; Detective Vincent D’Agosta suffers the insights and insults of his association with the agent in their pursuit of a serial killer; and Pendergast’s chauffeur, Proctor, is given a chance to showcase his formidable combat skills (as well as deliver the only humorous line in the book). Martin Short’s voice as a tooth fairy is in my head: “A hit. A palpable hit.”

On the authors’ website you will find discussions, interviews, pictures, and descriptions of all their joint and individual projects. On their Facebook fan page, there is a giveaway contest for a signed first edition of Relic (be still my heart—I want this badly), which is the first book in the Pendergast series and the title of the 1997 movie starring Penelope Ann Miller.

“Cold Days” by Jim Butcher

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Chicago, Demonreach, Dresden Files, faery, Harry Dresden, Jim Butcher, Lake Michigan, Mab, Nevernever, Santa Claus, Winter Knight

This latest book in The Dresden Files series may be the best yet. It felt as much of a homecoming for me as it was for Chicago’s only professional wizard, Harry Dresden—finally back to his human form after spending his time in the last book as an unappreciated ghost. The new wrinkle is that his recovery from a fatal shooting has come courtesy of Mab, Queen of Air and Darkness, and there was a price: Harry is now her new Winter Knight, a job previously held by a world-class sadist, and he must do as she bids. The seductive new power, which gives him control over ice and cold, comes with pre-programmed cretin settings which Harry must suppress if he wants to retain his humanity. As usual in this series, however, Harry must adjust to his new circumstances on the fly—someone is about to open the door to a literal well of demons (established by Merlin himself) hidden on an uncharted Lake Michigan island. If they are successful, the human populace, including Harry’s young daughter, will die.

There is a lot going on in this novel but it’s not all doom and gloom and Faery Queens and Ladies with agendas on top of rampaging hormones. There’s a lot of humor in Dresden’s interactions, mostly because Harry has a gift for taking the edge off life-and-death situations with understatement and snark. Best of all, he gets his old Scooby gang together to help: Karrin, a former Chicago police detective with a Harley and her own arsenal; Butters, a medical examiner turned expert on all things supernatural; Andi, Butters’ werewolf girlfriend; Toot, a winged faery warrior and pizza fanatic; Thomas, a drop-dead gorgeous vampire and Harry’s brother; Bob, a once-powerful wizard, now disembodied occult encyclopedia, who is confined to a skull; and Molly, Harry’s sensitive and talented apprentice. Harry’s friends have been through a lot either with him or on his behalf and it is a testament to his basically good heart that they continue to sign up for more.

The action is continuous and surprising and Butcher does a great job making sure there are no unanswered questions. I love imagining Dresden and his crew keeping the streets of Chicago safe from Nevernever incursions; every city needs a wizard. Oh, and Santa Claus, who makes a key appearance, is a total badass. Like I’ve been saying: Fun.

Check out more of The Dresden Files books as well as new graphic novel additions on Jim Butcher’s website.

“The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making” by Catherynne M. Valente

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Catherynne M Valente, children's literature, dragon, Fairyland, fantasy, September

    The long, scientific monograph-worthy title of Catherynne Valente’s fantasy adventure reveals two points about the plot: a girl does something both marvelous and strange—and she has gumption. Stories about girls with gumption get me hooked every time and 12-yr-old September will need every ounce she possesses. At her age, I expect more than a few of us would have welcomed the novelty of an adventure via the old portal-at-the-back-of-a-wardrobe trick or, in September’s case, a seat on the back of a flying leopard, thoughtfully parked by the snappily-dressed Green Wind outside a convenient window, just as September tires of washing the pink-and-yellow teacups. As their journey starts, the Green Wind tells her about the Marquess who enforces Fairyland’s rules.

I am afraid that if you trample upon the rules, I cannot help you. You may be ticketed or executed, depending on the mood of the Marquess.”                                  “Is she very terrible?”                                              The Green Wind frowned into his brambly beard. “All little girls are terrible,”he admitted finally, “but the Marquess, at least, has a very fine hat.

So, without receiving much in the way of assurance, off they go. Naturally, the Green Wind hasn’t told September everything she needs to know and we choose to believe, as her mission becomes more complicated and more dangerous, that he has no real knowledge of what lies ahead of her.

One of those details omitted by the Green Wind posed a few humorously disconcerting moments for me. There are many ways to get into Fairyland but, essentially, you either fall into it somehow (remember the wardrobe?) or you are taken there, as September is, by a guide. The Fairyland folk refer to her as one of the “ravished”—the Green Wind explains all of this very nicely at the end of the story, but every time the word was used until then, I had a flash (ever so brief, mind you) of bare-chested men in swirling kilts and amply-filled lacy bodices. It becomes clear that the means of your arrival to Fairyland dictates much of how you’ll fare and, as it turns out, September’s status as ‘ravished’ is the better of two possibilities. The action races along; there is a stop in a wonderfully upholstered city and an amazing cast of characters (among them a dragon and a lamp) in a series of errands, misfortunes, and triumphs as September tries to do a good deed for a friendly witch. Did I mention the enchanted shoes? But Fairyland isn’t quite the place September imagined it would be: good Queen Mallow has disappeared and Fairyland under the Marquess’s reign has become a place of harsh laws and arbitrary punishment. September, to her great annoyance, may be the only one who can make it right again.

This is a wonderful read-aloud book that will inevitably remind you of a few classic favorites but with enough twist to make it all new again. Young readers will appreciate the range of oddities and, despite some dark moments, be reassured that everything works out in the end, though not without some sacrifice (sort of like life though it would be nice to be able to pick up a sceptre or two on a jeweled beach to help with expenses here, too). Here’s a great thing: the sequel, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There, is already in your favorite bookstore.

For more about this excellent author and her recent projects and news, visit her website.

Counting with the Count: BabyLit’s “Dracula”

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Alison Oliver, BabyLit, classics for babies, counting, Dracula, Jennifer Adams

A smile arrived in the mail: Dracula, the most recent board book in Jennifer Adams’s beautifully produced series, an unexpected delivery from publisher Gibbs Smith. This book joins other classics in Adams’s BabyLit series such as Alice in Wonderland and Jane Eyre which I reviewed here. Bram Stoker’s original horror classic would not appear to lend itself to distillation for children but this is a counting book and there are always things to count in a vampire’s castle, as any Sesame Street graduate will tell you. In Jennifer Adams’s Dracula, the foundational elements of the story, represented by its characters and props, are grouped from one to 10 and there is no hint of the original plot in sight (in case you were worried).

In keeping with the atmosphere of the original novel (and of vampire stories in general), Alison Oliver’s light-hearted, textured illustrations utilise a palette of purple, lavender, grey, black, and white. Echoes of Edward Gorey are felt in the touches of red that brighten each page.

The sweet vampire on the cover only makes a tiny appearance on one of the pages (I’m not telling which)—I wish I could have seen more of him. There is no vampire in this vampire book which is ultimately a good thing for your literate toddler. Have no fear adding this classic title to your child’s library.

I discovered that Gibbs Smith Press has also released a Dracula doll as well other merch that complements the BabyLit series. Read more about Jennifer Adams and Alison Oliver here and here, respectively.

“The Third Gate” by Lincoln Child

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Archaeology, curse, Egypt, Lincoln Child, mummies, Narmer, Near-death experience, Sudd, swamp

Lincoln Child’s The Third Gate is a stand-alone adventure, perfect for reading in bed long past the time you should be reading in bed if you have any hope of heeding your morning alarm. The reason has several components: The long lost tomb of the Egyptian “god-king” Narmer, the first to unite upper and lower Egypt, filled with expected treasure (and something unexpected); the Sudd, an impenetrable swamp that seems to contain the accumulated waste of the earth as a thick, deadly soup; legendary explorer Porter Stone, who has enough wealth to organise what amounts to an archeological dig on steroids; and a character I’d like to see more of—Dr. Jeremy Logan, a self-described “enigmalogist” {I kept stumbling over the pronunciation of this word (it doesn’t roll off the tongue) until another character, in disdain, said “enig-MA-logist” and saved me from myself}, a title that embraces all forms of the unknown from historical and scientific mysteries to the mystical and supernatural. This wise, gentle man is plonked onto a highly advanced mobile archeological base tethered in the middle of a nightmare to investigate strange occurrences that may or may not have something to do with Narmer’s unusually formidable curse. Seriously, you don’t need anything else to have fun.

Despite all the breath-taking technology at Stone’s disposal, his historic venture is at the mercy of the personal demons and weaknesses of his carefully chosen staff as much as to the sense of powerful evil that seems to shadow every stage of the exploration. No matter how well he tries to insulate himself from the surrounding environmental cesspool, equilibrium is not in his favor. There are interesting discussions about the way archeological finds should be handled as opposed to how they are handled on this dig. And in the struggle between scholarship and greed that affects some of the researchers, even the great Porter Stone forgets procedure in the advent of his discovery. The accidents and strange sightings accumulate and intensify as Logan, searching for a connection, is eventually drawn to an associated study of near-death experience and its beautiful, extremely fragile subject. The truth comes on swift wings, to borrow standard curse parlance, and takes them all by surprise.

Please check out Lincoln Child’s official website for more information about this book and his other projects.

Victory for Undershaw!

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Arthur Conan Doyle, Hound of the Baskervilles, John Gibson, Planning permission, Sherlock Holmes, Surrey, Undershaw, Undershaw Preservation Trust

Brilliant news from Undershaw Preservation Trust founder John Gibson:

This has been a long and difficult battle to save Undershaw and we are absolutely thrilled with the decision to quash planning permission to redevelop the property. This is a place which is steeped in history and should be treated with reverence.

We are very hopeful that this decision will signal a sea-change in attitude towards this historic property and  that it will lead to it being rightly preserved as a single building – hopefully as a museum or centre where future generations can be inspired by the many stories which have been created within its walls.

There is still a lot of work ahead, of course, but it is so gratifying to see legal precedent and popular opinion converge to ensure the preservation of this historic property. Somewhere, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is touching a flame to his pipe and smiling.

Please see the update in my previous post for some links to merchandise (books, posters, and more) being produced to support this project.

I Won! Here’s the Prize: “Magpies” by Jeff Wood

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contest, family, fiction, fiction writing, Jeff Wood, memory, sci-fi, The Oort Cloud

Jeff Wood, the founder of Clowncar Publishing, recently held a contest on his fan page and I was honored to be declared the winner. Using the bits and bobs he could glean from my facebook page as inspiration and with a self-imposed two-day time limit, Jeff wrote a short piece of elegant fiction about the hold of memory and family that reads like poetry. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do:

Magpies

by Jeff Wood

 As she opened the splintered door to the attic a cloud of miller moths burst into the air, motes of dust trembling in their wake as she climbed the stairs, every Spring now for twelve years: putting up the heavy quilts, the coats and sweaters, taking down the summer clothes and light blankets. She looked forward to it, yearly. The theater of memory, the lure of the closed box. First one right up near the door, old Christmas lights, the ones her husband had drunkenly attempted to disentangle on the naked hardwood floor that last Christmas together. She never bothered to disentangle things, she put them in a box and trucked them to the attic: out of sight, out of mind. Put away the winter things, bring in the summer. Dust devils swirled at her feet as she walked, moths like flocks of birds. Next up, boxes from her daughter’s room. She had left for college nine months ago, come home hurriedly for Thanksgiving and Christmas, was due for summer break in a scant few days. She had intended her daughter’s room to be kept the same, a diorama, a tar pit, but life moves on and she soon learned there is no such thing as an unused room, even if all it holds is memory.  The bed soon became covered with fabric, the end-table a space for needle and thread, yarn and loom. She had needed room and so packed up some the clutter and moved it up here. Trophies. Video games. Orphaned cards from the Sorry board. She pulled out a favored stuffed monkey and tried to remember what her daughter had named it—Ferfy, Foofy, Floopy—and as she tilted her head to ponder a familiar shape peered from around another box: a worn wooden crate belonging to her Grandfather Wright, a relic from his merchant days.

Moths fluttered, dust settled on cardboard. She was not much tempted to open it, content in the comfort of her daughter’s things, the smell of them, the touch. Grandpa Wright had built raised flowerbeds for his wife using the same wood the crate was built from, and his wife had coaxed a garden from it what, forty years ago? And decades later, with his wife passed and his children scattered, they had pleaded with him to stay at the hospital but he insisted on going home, insisted upon the garden, surrounded by his wife’s flowers, butterflies and bees humming among the petals, the sky full of magpies. She had been with him out in the garden that afternoon, not very old, ten maybe, eleven. He had been showing her a daylily and in mid-sentence seemed to simply go to sleep, his eyes closing, and she caught a notion of what might be happening and his head tilted to the side and his jaw dropped open and the air was suddenly alive with birdsong, she had never heard so many birds before, how could the world contain so many birds, so much song? She ran to tell her parents, sat on the porch with them waiting for the ambulance. Flashing red and blue lights strobed in the trees as they rolled him out of the house on a stretcher. The magpies had been long ago scared away by the siren. The ambulance rushed away in a loud blare of horn and they all walked back inside the silent house. Her father closed the front door solidly and began to weep.

She snapped back to the present with a sneeze, clearing her nose of dust. There is no such thing as an unused room. She began to repack her daughter’s things, readying her home for the coming visit, moths above her like birds on the wing, motes dancing in the attic light like kites.

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I was so pleased with this lovely result from a simple contest that I made it a point to check out Jeff’s author page on Amazon where you can see a short biography and where a novel, two sci-fi novellas, and several short stories are available inexpensively as Kindle Editions. And check out his blog, The Oort Cloud, too—definitely the home of a clever, curious mind.

Your Baby Should Read “Jane Eyre”

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Alice In Wonderland, Alison Oliver, BabyLit, board books, Cheaper By The Dozen, children's literature, classic literature, color primer, Dracula, Frank Gilbreth, illustration, Jane Eyre, Jennifer Adams, number primer, Pride and Prejudice, Romeo and Juliet

My father introduced me to Cheaper By The Dozen by Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey when I was in grade school but it wasn’t until I was in college that I got to see The Shoe—the improbably little house on Nantucket Island where the 12 children in the Gilbreth clan spent their summers. Frank Gilbreth was a renowned efficiency expert and he believed in taking every opportunity, and in using every surface, to educate his children. The walls of the rooms were covered with planets and charts, labels and lists, because he felt there was no reason education had to stop just because the table had to be set or teeth had to be brushed. Information seen every day could not help but percolate into young brains, smoothing the way for adventures in more traditional education. My father loved this book and, in addition to occasionally calling his car “Foolish Carriage,” he indulged in his own form of perpetual education.

In all the time I knew him, my father never answered a question or made a comment without employing a quotation if it would serve his purpose. On the way to do something he deemed odious, like yard work or grocery shopping, or when sending me off to finish homework or, say, a graduate thesis, he would paraphrase Jeeves paraphrasing Macbeth and say, “If it must be done, ‘twere best it be done quickly.” Lady Catherine de Bourgh was a favorite; Jane Austen’s snooty aristocrat was invoked whenever he discovered we were doing something new—“Had I learned to (skate, swim, sew, play lacrosse), I would have been a great proficient” or when simply entering a room, “I must have my share of the conversation.” The chorus of groans in response gave him great satisfaction but I won’t deny that when finally reading those classics for myself, they had the immediate appeal of the familiar. I had grown up with them, after all.

All of this ran through my head when Jennifer Adams’s BabyLit series of satisfyingly thick board books were brought to my attention. Classic literature distilled down to the barest essence of word and image for the very teeny tiny set; both my father and Mr. Gilbreth would be proud. With bright, vintage-y graphics by Alison Oliver, Adams has created a clever, visual introduction to famous literature that includes Alice In Wonderland, Jane Eyre, Romeo And Juliet, Pride And Prejudice, and even Dracula (still in the works). Itty bitties will absorb highlights of the stories—a bat in the Mad Hatter’s teacup or the lone figure in the window of Thornfield Hall—while their well-read adults are treated to reminders of the original sources. These are gorgeous little gems that will not only add some amusing cachet to your baby’s bookshelf but perhaps also sprinkle the tiniest seeds for their future enjoyment of literary classics. It certainly can’t hurt.

“DEATH COMES TO PEMBERLEY” by P. D. James

Tags

Chatsworth, Death Comes To Pemberley, Elizabeth Bennet, Jane Austen, manor life, Mr. Darcy, mystery, P. D. James, Pemberley, Pride & Prejudice, Seth Grahame-Smith, The Duchess of Devonshire

For those of us who have long admired the verbally adept, socially constrained, interactions between Elizabeth Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and their mountain-twisty road toward love, there is a natural curiosity to want to peek in at the windows at Pemberley to see how it all turned out. Many authors have tried to continue their story (just google ‘Pemberley’ and be amazed); the almost unanimous vitriol they received in Amazon reviews alone made me glad that I resisted the temptation to investigate. Also, beyond my own mental constructions from Austen’s book, my imagination doesn’t have musical accompaniment and I wanted to preserve the image of Matthew Macfadyen as Darcy, walking across the foggy moor at dawn, his shirt uncharacteristically open at the neck, long dark coat lifting away from him as he walks purposefully toward Elizabeth, the joyous notes of Dario Marianelli’s beautiful piano score rising around him. I am pleased to report that the image remains intact. This is P. D. James, after all; rather than attempt to create extended biographies for Austen’s popular characters, in Death Comes To Pemberley, she provides a more oblique view of their relationship by putting them in the path of a murder investigation, all the more interesting because it is Wickham on the block.

At first, I experienced a twinge of disappointment that their witty exchanges were not continued (except for a brief bit at the end) but, on reflection, I understand just how clever Miss James has been. The novel is set six years after Elizabeth and Darcy’s marriage and there are actually very few scenes in which they are even in the same room. However—there are two boys in the Pemberley nursery, Jane and Mr. Bingley and their children are comfortably situated nearby in a house called Highmarten, and all the familiar and familial relationships are in place. In the course of working within the legal parameters of the time, Darcy’s position in the community is made clear, as is Elizabeth’s. We learn about the Darcy family, the history of Pemberley and its importance to the area. We find out what Wickham and Lydia have been up to and many additional details about how their marriage was brought about and at what cost. Miss James manages to preserve the integrity of the original novel while delivering all this information in the background of what is really a very good mystery: Who killed Major Denny in the Pemberley woods? Sometimes it’s best to leave things well enough alone. Thank you, Miss James. Well done.

For a good look at the model for Pemberley used in the movie version I mention, please check out Round About Chatsworth by Deborah, The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire. Her life is an amazing story on its own and I have long admired her efforts to bring Chatsworth into the present century. I can also recommend Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith because it, too, preserves the basic spirit of the original though superimposed with zombies, which is always a good idea. Learn more about P. D. James on her official website.