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penmage
49. The Old Country, by Mordicai Gerstein
Gisella's family lives in the war-torn Old Country. They are simple farmers living simple lives, until her brother is conscripted into the army, and a fox steals some of their chickens. Determined to fix the little she can, Gisella promises to hunt down and kill the theiving fox. And before she goes, her Great-Aunt Tanteh warns her, "never look too long in the eyes of a fox." And so Gisella enters the woods, in which not everything is what it seems and she can understand the speech of the animals. She finds the fox - but in the forest world, the fox is entitled to a trial. While facing off the fox, Gisella looks too long into her eyes, and before she knows it, the fox has stolen her body and has run off to steal her family, as well. But this is only the beginning. For when Gisella-as-fox returns to try to win back her body and her family, she will find that they have been swept up by the war and captured by the enemy - an enemy that is destroying not just her family, but the very fabric of the world itself.
This is a beautiful book. It is a story-within-a-story, told by Great-Grandmother Gisella to her great-granddaughter. It feels like all the best folk tales and fairy tales, but touched by modern elements of war. There are talking animals and old women with magical secrets, but there is also an adventure that sometimes feels like something out of a folk tale and sometimes feels like something out of the headlines of the newspaper. It is a fable and a true story at the from its intriguing opening to its delicious end. This is the kind of story you read aloud, first to yourself and then to the people you love, and then to children. As many of them as you can find. It is the best kind of modern old fashioned folk tale.
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50. Dragon's Keep, by Janet Lee Carey
For six hundred year, Pendragon kings and queens have ruled Wilde Island, though none in England recognized their lineage. King Arthur's younger sister Evaine was the first queen of the isle. On the eve of her banishment, the wizard Merlin prophecied that the twenty-first queen of Wilde Island would be the one who would redeem the name Pendragon, end war with a wave of her hand, and restore the glory of Wilde Island.
Rosalind is the princess of Wilde Island, one day to be its twenty-first queen. To fulfill the prophecy, she must be perfect, a queen worthy of restoring the glory of her name and her home. But Rosalind was born with a dragon's claw in place of a finger. And so Rosalind's mother protects her daughter's secret, forcing her to wear golden gloves and discreetly killing all who learn of Rosalind's deformity. But her flaw is part of her fate, and soon the dragon that plagues Wilde Island carries her off and forces her to tend to his brood. The dragon sees something different in Rosalind's claw, and as her life changes drastically in his charge, Rosalind begins to learn that perhaps her fate is different - and more wondrous - than she could ever have imagined.
This is a harsh fantasy, one with desperate mothers who do desperate things to protect themselves, their children and a legacy that is their responsibility. It is a world where bad things sometimes happen to good people, and where little girls have to grow up fast. And it is a brilliant book. There are many dragon books out there, but none of them are like this one. It reminded me a little but of Susan Fletcher's Dragon's Milk at parts, but for the most part it is a wholly original, beautifully told, sometimes painful but not for the reasons you expect story. Rosalind is a wonderful heroine, who grows and changes throughout the course of the book from a girl who does what she's told and believes what her mother says to a girl who thinks for herself and acts to protect the people and places she loves. It is beautifully told. I highly recommend it.
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51. The Improbable Cat, by Allan Ahlberg
It was a quiet summer night when the little grey kitten came limping into David's backyard, miawing pitifully. His family instantly fell in love with the kitten and welcomed it into their home. David, allergic to cats and loyal to his dog, stayed far away from the cat, and was therefore the only one to notice when his family started to act suspiciously strange. At the beginning, they only started to be spacey and irritable, but then it got worse. His mother would go shopping and only bring home large amounts of expensive fish and meat - for the cat. His father took to smoking again. His sister, once lively, would only sit on the couch, stroke the cat, and watch game shows. And that wasn't all. The cat was growing at an enourmous rate, far quicker than a normal kitten should. When David returns from a camping trip, he finds his house in shambles, his father drunk, and the cat - has turned into something enourmous and uncatlike. It will take all of David's skill and courage to figure out how to oust the cat and save his family.
This very short book reads like a ghost story told around the campfire. It is atmospheric and genuinely scary, and pulls you in and makes you turn the pages faster and faster, eager to find out what the cat is, and what David can possibly do to save his family. But the end is weak. Like many ghost stories, it doesn't tie everything up - indeed, it clearly admits that sometimes you never really know what happened and how, just that it happened. But I still wanted to know! I wanted to know what the cat was, and what it wanted, and what David's father meant when he said "Not much longer now, don't spoil things." I wanted to know!
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Date: 2007-02-21 05:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-21 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-22 05:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-21 06:26 pm (UTC)