| Please Note: These lists have been compiled by
Tammy over the years for different occasions including various library
and educational conferences, SF cons and fan requests. As a result,
there is some duplication of recommended titles between lists. We
apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause,
- Tim, Your Admin |
I know some of these were published before this fall, but
this is when I caught up to them!
- THE PRINCESS ACADEMY by Shannon Hale. This is very different from
Shannon's THE GOOSE GIRL and ENNA BURNING. It's not as dark, but that
doesn't mean it isn't serious, either. The seriousness is on a very
different plane from that of the first two books. When it comes time for
the prince to marry, a prophecy is taken to see from which province of his
realm his bride must be chosen. This time the prophecy nominates the
marriageable girls of not a province, but a mere territory, the mining
region of Mount Eskel. Since these girls are educated only in mining the
silvery blue rock linder, their sole cash crop, a noble tutor, Olana, is
sent to prepare them for a year. At the end of their princess lessons,
they will be presented for the prince's inspection at a ball. Miri is one
of the girls. She is a loner: her mother died bearing her, and her father
forbids her to work in the quarries. At first the other girls hate her
because she costs them their first visit home from the distant academy.
Miri, though, is resourceful. She works out ways to deal with the others,
to learn the lessons in books, to use the magical quarry speech, and to
get word to their families that the traders have been giving them bargain
prices for linder that makes the traders rich. I like how we get to know
the other girls and their varied reasons for wanting to catch the prince's
eye, as well as Miri's very mixed motives for doing this. Slowly the
villagers themselves become three dimensional, and use their kinship with
each other and their mountain to deal with their distant rulers and their
autocratic ways. This book starts as Miri's story, but slowly and
carefully Shannon opens up the perspective to show us her father, the
teacher Olana, the other girls, the traders, the boy named Peder who Miri
likes, even the prince. Miri's victories are not handed to her, any more
than the girls' victories are handed to them. This is a solid story of
girls bonding out of common interest and pride as well as friendship,
making it wonderfully realistic. As always, Shannon doesn't give readers
the Disney ending, but one that is satisfying.
- VALIANT by Holly Black. The Spiderwick books were fun, but I wanted
Holly to return to writing for teenagers, as she did in TITHE. Happily I
can say "She's baaack!!!" VALIANT is as dark and gritty as TITHE.
Don't look for Tinkerbell cuteness and fragile butterfly wings from Holly.
She will just hurt you. In VALIANT, runaway Val joins a group of teenagers
who live homeless under Grand Central Station in New York. They are
glamorous, cynical, sexy, and dangerous, half frightening to Val and half
enchanting in their own right. Eventually they teach her about Never, a
drug that makes them able to do magic. Some of them deliver Never, made by
the troll Ravus for faeries who have been exiled to New York from the
realms of their birth. Never keeps them from being slowly poisoned by the
cold iron that is fatal to their kind. Like them, Ravus is an exile from
his home, sent away for murder. Ravus and Val meet and form a delicate
friendship as she works for him, delivering Never. At the time of Val's
arrival, Ravus develops a real problem: his customers are dying. Suspicion
falls on Ravus and the drug he makes. The faerie court is coming to judge
his guilt. In the meantime, Val, whom he trusts, has become a Never
addict. Like any addict, she begins to steal the drug for herself and her
addicted friends. The tension--will Ravus find out, and what will he do,
coupled with the danger of his being found guilty by the faerie court--is
exquisite. Val has to make some very tough choices and face the loss of
the one she has come to love, a loss she knows she deserves. Holly demands
high prices of her characters for a possibility of great gains, and you
can't be sure things will go the girl hero's way in the end. This isn't
TITHE, but then, I didn't want another TITHE, I wanted something new and
übercool. Coolness VALIANT has in abundance. People who object to grit and
an uncompromising look at drug addiction will want a safer book written by
somebody else. Holly will never be safe.
- THE GODS IN
WINTER by Patricia Miles. On September 28 Front Street Press will
reissue a book I love dearly. An English family moves to a house on a
rambling estate in Wales as Mum's expecting a baby. On their way they see
a girl who may or may not have been kidnapped drive into a huge hole in
the ground with a man in his great black motorcar. In their new home, a
helper arrives to assist them pending the baby's arrival, a Mrs. Korngold.
In her wake come Odd Things: pictures that move, visions of the world as
viewed from very lofty heights, a transformation of the obnoxious visiting
cousin, and strange party guests who ask her to please change her mind.
Mrs. Korngold is strangely compelling to the members of the family, aloof
one moment, sloppily drunk another, competent and brisk yet another time.
She reminds the story's narrator of a refugee. She also responds very
strangely when someone mentions the girl and the man in the motorcar.
There's some confusion about her presence--apparently the home help hadn't
sent anyone to their house--but she's there, and she looks after the
children well, leaving them a little different than they were after a
very, very, very long winter, when at last her daughter returns to her.
- A.D. 62: POMPEII by Rebecca East. Don't get all excited by the title.
The fireworks don't happen in Pompeii for another 17 years. This story is
about a time traveler named Miranda, a scholar from our time, who goes
back to the era she knows best with an implanted device that will take her
home. She ends up in the sea, which may explain why later, when she is
trying to escape a bad situation, the implant won't activate. Before this
happens, however, she continues to explore her new surroundings, striking
up a friendship with an educated and egotistical fellow slave who arranges
for her to be sold into the same household as he is. Making mistakes,
discovering that the Latin of our time is not the real, colloquial stuff
of Pompeii, Miranda adjusts awkwardly to her place, learning the awkward
politics of slave and master, wife, child, and concubine. She discovers
that her storytelling and songs will bring her status in the household,
and her need for solitude beatings. And her knowledge of the future may
doom her, or save her, depending on how she uses her wits. This is a
gentle book that immerses the reader in the time. I never felt the writer,
or Miranda, looked down their noses at these Romans. Their customs are
alien, and there are some things we would not do that are part of their
daily lives. Miranda can only change so many things. Every now and then
the author lays a little too much information on us, but the story soon
picks up again. I recommend this to any of my readers age 12 and if, and
if you're reading adult romances at ten, you'll like this as well. It's a
treat for those of us who love good fiction with realistic Roman settings.
Books I have
recommended on previous versions of this page
Of the gazillions of questions that writers
are asked, most are about how they write, where they get ideas, how to get
published, and so on. Since I've found some good books along these lines, here
they are--Books I recommend for those who want to write, whatever their
ages:
-
A TOUGH GUIDE TO FANTASYLAND by Diana Wynne
Jones.
I've recommended it before; I'll recommend it till the cows come home.
Reading this book is the best possible education you'll ever get on things
that appear in fantasy novels all the time, including the ones which make no
sense, and the ones which are done to death. If you write fantasy already
it's an uncomfortable read, because some of these errors we've committed
ourselves, but it's funny, it's clear, and it makes sense. (Currently
out-of-print, but available second-hand on
Amazon and Barnes & Noble -
and will be reissued later this year by
Firebird Books.)
-
AUTHOR TALK, compiled and edited by Leonard S.
Marcus, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2000: Marcus
interviewed a number of top kids' writers (Judy Blume, James Howe, Karen
Cushman, Lois Lowry, to name a few) for this book, but it's of interest even
for those who mean to write for the older markets because he gets each
writer to describe his/her work style, sources for ideas, work space, and
how they came to what they do. He also includes a manuscript page for each
author which the author has already gone over and rewritten, so the reader
can see the kind of work individual writers will put into getting the story
right. I like this book because it shows, vividly, the mantra I'm telling to
writers when I go on author visits: "Whatever works." There's no right or
wrong way to write, no right or wrong subject to write about, no right or
wrong source of ideas--there's only what works for each individual writer.
Check it out!
-
ON WRITING by Stephen King, Scribners hardcover,
2000. Yes, yes, I know, it's Big Bad Steve, the guy with the violence and
the monsters and the sex in his books. Still, when it comes to writing a
book about writing, he's awfully qualified, don't you think? Not only did he
once teach English literature for a living and study it in college, but his
literary tastes continue to range all over the map. I think he has to be the
most adventurous writer being published in fiction today: he's written
out-and-out horror, psychological suspense, fantasy, science fiction,
revived serials (THE GREEN MILE), and tackled a number of forms on
the Internet while the rest of the writing community worried about getting
ripped off. I'd say he's well worth listening to, and the book is definitely
a keeper. While I don't agree with a few things he says about how to write,
obviously what he does works for him and may for someone else. We also get a
good luck at how he got started as a writer, both as a kid and as a young
dad, and we also learn more about the accident that nearly crippled him
permanently (it did cripple him for months), and the way he found to come
back from it and to start writing again. Younger kids, check this one with
your folks before bringing it home, because Big Steve uses bad language all
over the place, but I can't think of a book that gives writers serious
insight into the workings of the mind that must be onto something good, or
he wouldn't appeal to so many readers so much of the time, and that includes
me. (Oh, no, I did a Fangirl Turn. I guess I was due.)
-
ANTHEM: the 50th Anniversary Edition by Ayn Rand, Signet
paperback: Technically this isn't a book on writing, but a science fiction
novel in which humanity is trained to think of itself as "we"
--no
individuals, no getting careers you want, no marrying the one you love. The
story itself, which rocked my world when I was 14, but which impressed me
less at 33 and 46, is actually short, only half of this edition. The
treasure is in the other half--the manuscript pages with all of Rand's
corrections and additions, all the editing she did herself. When I do school
visits I bring along copies of my first and second drafts to show kids what
writers do to improve their work and how editors help writers improve their
work. Here is an incredible opportunity to observe one writer's thinking as
she rewrote: would you make the changes she did? Why did she choose to
rewrite some parts and not others? This is a kind of real world textbook for
writers, well worth time and study.
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