Book Review: Hannah's Dream

Title Hannah's Dream
Author Diane Hammond
Genre Literary Fiction
Rating A+

Summary Hannah is a 40-some-odd-year-old elephant living in less than stellar conditions at the Maxine (Max) L. Biedelman Zoo in Washington. But Hannah's got something good going for her--her keeper, Samson (Sam) Brown, has been with her as long as she's been at Max's and he loves her like the baby girl that his wife lost in childbirth almost 40 years ago. Sam is surrounded by a colorful cast of characters that work against tough odds to make Hannah's dream come true.

First Line "Samson Brown loved exactly two things in this world: his wife and his elephant."

Review Most people wouldn't necessarily flip their lid over this book. It's one of those stereotypical literary fiction books where "nothing happens," but I fell in love with it... eventually.

The beginning was moderately slow-going for me (up to about the first 20 pages, which was for me the first two days of reading). Usually I'm a fast reader, but this was a book club selection and I try to pace myself so that the book's still fresh in my mind at the discussion meeting, so I try to take the whole month reading the book (which was ~10 pages per day on Hannah's Dream). So there I am, at the end of two days, thinking, "This is going to be one long month of reading."

And then day three...

And there was no day four because I couldn't stop. The book picked up as soon as the merry band of mis-matched characters came onto the scene. The zoo is inhabited with an eccentric mix of characters that enchanted me and are likely to stay with me for a long time. The characters who were supposed to be "bad," were flawed, for sure, but Hammond gives you their back story and they're not simply bad, they're broken down by their hard lives of struggle. I cried at times reading this book because it was heart-breaking; especially as I saw interplay between Hannah's poor living conditions and the poor conditions that many humans have to live through, and it brought up some interesting questions for me. For example: how much does prior history direct present actions and how do my judgements of others account for the other person's perspective?

The other fantastic thing about the characters is that none of them run together. There are eight characters who have regular interplay with Hannah, but they all stick out in my mind--none were "throw away" characters. Hammond was superb in giving them idiosyncrasies, not simply to be zany, but to individualize them and to enhance the story. Even one character's ex-wife who's never even really "in" the story was a richly-drawn character. Well done on that.

The other thing that I appreciated is that Hammond didn't get too preachy on animal rights. The well-educated animal trainer says at one point that she believes in what many zoos do in regards to education and research, and she doesn't personify animals, but can still recognize that they're senescent beings. That was a good balance, in my opinion, because I'd been concerned that this was going to be some zealot's cry against animal captivity or something.

I'd recommend this book to people who love character-rich novels, can handle a little bit of slow pacing, and can appreciate a good cry. (Because you will cry at the end.)

Book Review: Something Rotten

Title Something Rotten
Author Alan Gratz
Genre YA Literary Fiction (disguised as Commercial Fiction)
Category Mystery
Rating A+

Summary In a self-proclaimed YA rip-off of Hamlet, Gratz tells the story of Hamilton Prince who's trying to figure out who killed his dad, Rex, in the town of Denmark, Tennessee. Enter high school super sleuth, Horatio Wilkes (who's actually just logical and cool-headed amidst stress).

First Line "Denmark, Tennessee, stank. Bad. Life dead fish fricasseed in sewer water."

Review How can I say anything bad about this book? I can't. The only bad reviews this book gets are from people who were expecting a modern re-telling of Hamlet to have a twist ending. It doesn't. The same person who did the killing in Shakespeare's classic did the killing in Something Rotten. New endings and surprise twists aren't the purpose of this book.

This book is so beautiful in it's simplicity, wit, and ability to get you to want to read Shakespeare. I am now yearning to go back and re-read Hamlet and pick up on all the things I missed because I didn't understand them (and my high school English teachers didn't have the time, curriculum-wise, to move beyond "Who are the characters?" and "What is the plot?"). Symbolism is rife, dialogue is rich, and now it makes sense.

I think this book (and Gratz's two follow-up Horatio Wilkes mysteries that tackle Macbeth and A Midsummer's Night's Dream) should be required reading in high school before Shakespeare. The added beauty of this book is that, although it's clean enough to slip right into any high school without making waves with the book-banning legislators, it's relatable, relatively contemporary (save Gratz's affinity for outdated cult-classic music that most kids have never heard of these days), and honest. Drinking happens, sex is alluded to, and high school is really high school. But it's all done so well.

I recommend any wannabe-YA writers to check Gratz out, and read this advice he gave, so you can watch a master at balancing reality with morality (it's semi-possible). He's not the only person doing it (John Green's a good one too), but Gratz isn't getting nearly the play he deserves.

A+ (+++) for him, and I'll be getting the rest in this series for darned sure.

Friday Finds--Quickie Style

I truly don't have that many Friday Finds this week. Only four. Can you believe that?

Here they are:

After by Amy Efaw – This YA novel (to be released in August 2009) tells how a girl who has it all (grades, sports, etc.) could get pregnant and dump her baby in a dumpster, and what life like “After the Day” was like. Found this from the Friday Finds post at Popin’s Lair.

Love is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield – I’d seen this memoir featured at B&N, but the write up on my Book Lover’s Page-a-Day calendar put me over the edge. “Rock music critic Rob Sheffield transforms his grief and encyclopedic knowledge of music into an unusual and moving tribute to his late wife, Renee, and the music they loved. When Renee died suddenly of an embolis, Sheffield had to process it the only way he knew how: through music. Building his chapters around 15 mix tapes they made love to, danced to, and did the dishes to, his portrait of love is also a cultural map of the 1990s and the sound tracks of our lives.” Sixty-five percent of reviewers on GoodReads.com put this at 4 or 5 stars with another 30% at 3 stars.

Admission by Jeann Hanff Korelitz – 5 Minutes for Books reviewed this literary/nuanced tale of a Princeton Admissions Officer who has a “mysterious” life that’s revealed throughout the tale. The reviews on GoodReads.com were more good than bad (most neutral reviews were because the tale took to long to get into the plot, so I’ll be prepped for that going in; and the low reviews were because the protagonist isn’t likeable, but I don’t necessarily require likeable characters in my books). I was still roughly on the fence and went to put it on my wish list at the library and there were 44 holds, so I went ahead and took the plunge to put it on hold… hoping that the masses are right about this one.

Undercover by Beth Kephart – I recently finished reading a YA twist on Hamlet (Something Rotten by Alan Grantz... review coming later), and I love this kind of thing… authors re-telling classics in an easy-to-understand contemporary format to get teens interested in great works of literature… this inspires my writing. SO, I definitely wanted to read this book, a YA version of Cyrano de Bergerac with a gender twist. I’ve put it on hold at the library thanks to the tease by Staci at Life in the Thumb.

How about you? What great finds did you find this week?

Kids Do It Better

I have an obsession, maybe of the unhealthy variety, with getting kids and teens to read. I'm not just talking about reading in general, or reading "drivel," but how to get kids and teens to appreciate the really great works of literature that have become classics or staples of curriculum for very valid reasons.


Many people are frank in their admission that they didn't (or don't) like reading books that were assigned in school. That goes for me; of the 12-15 books that I was assigned to read in high school, I only read one completely (Lord of the Flies... because I was obsessed with the movie and was nursing quite the crush on a young Balthazar Getty), read one partially (Brave New World), and skimmed or skipped a bunch more (Red Badge of Courage, The Great Gatsby, The Martian Chronicles, Gulliver's Travels, Les Miserable, The Brothers Kazamarov, Metamorphosis... this list could go on for a long time). It wasn't much better in middle school (all I know of To Kill a Mockingbird is a result of the movie) or in college (Homer's epics were quite the bore), but since then I've wizened up.

The big turn came (my metamorphosis, if you will) after reading How to Read Literature Like a Professor. That book should be required reading before any work of classic literature is assigned. Now that I'm armed with the secrets to understanding bigger-than-life symbols, now that I've learned to stop reading like a 20th-century female WASP, now that I appreciate the way that books have shaped legions of people, now I'm armed to be a reader.

I'm also ready to take up arms in the fight to get kids to read good books, not "moral" or "clean" books, per se (banning isn't on my agenda); rather, how to get kids to read books with substance and to think about them. If you want to spend a couple hours ripping through Twilight, be my guest, but in the end, be prepared to have a discussion with me about the symbolism of vampires (and if there was any over-arching reason she made her "good" vampires to be vegetarians) and how the author's faith affected her writing (even if she isn't meta enough to realize that it does).

But in the mean time, while we wait for teenage girls to progress beyond "Edward's so dreamy," there are some people doing awesome things for young readers. I encourage all the faithful librarians, teachers, home-schooling parents, involved parents, interested adults, book sellers, and anyone else with a shred of sense to check out these resources: Guys Read, Guys Lit Wire, and Readergirlz (even if the name is cheesy).

They're doing the early work--getting kids to dip their toes into the collective pools of literature--and those of us who have hand-to-hand, day-to-day contact with kids, need to take it a step further and engage them to read in a way that stretches. Encourage them to read Rick Riordan's books in middle school so they'll be piqued for Homer in high school and college; get them to check out Alan Grantz's books before they're expected to tackle Shakespeare; point them toward books like Undercover or Waiting for Alaska before they jump into Cyrano or anything by Faulkner.

I welcome anyone else who has suggestions on good "introductory" type books or other online resources for getting kids and teens to read to join in on the thread. Please comment away, fellow book lovers.

More Press for Murnighan

I posted a couple of weeks ago about this book, Beowulf on the Beach by Jack Murnighan, because I'm participating in the Books on the Nightstand's summer reading challenge.

Since then I've picked up the book and read the sections on the Old and New Testament of the Bible--to give a frame of reference because those happen to be "books" that I've read many, many times for personal reasons, and I wanted to get his take on them.

He definitely is irreverent and sees literature as something that should touch all parts of the body. It was a good exercise, after having read the introduction, because it allowed me to see that, although he and I may approach the same piece of literature differently because we're coming to the literature for different reasons, every piece of literature can be approached. Nothing is too esoteric. That being said, I read his chapter on Middlemarch (my first summer reading book), and I'm looking forward to diving into that book with a feminist's eye.

So, color me surprised when I saw that his book was featured on The Very Short List yesterday. I think they sum it up well when they say, "Many of Murnighan’s conclusions are off-base (see, for instance, his chapter on Balzac’s Père Goriot). But as with the collected writings of Pauline Kael, disagreeing with the critic can be more fun than turning to the work itself."

I think I'm going to enjoy my reading, reviewing, thinking, and disagreeing this summer. Thanks, Professor Murnighan, and congratulations on the press coverage (VSL is a big deal).

Teaser Tuesday (with an Ironic Twist)

I love Teaser Tuesdays (where you post a brief "tease" from your current read) because I can pick up nuggets of books that aren't on my radar. I'm hoping that a good number of you will like the nugget I'm about to bake for you here.

This week's tease comes from Something Rotten by Alan Gratz, which is a Young Adult mystery that's a contemporary/stylized version of Shakespeare's Hamlet. This quote from the narrator, Horatio Wilkes, comes just before a play where they'll find out who killed Prince's dad:

"The play roughly followed the plot of Shakespeare's Hamlet, focusing on the minor characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Personally, I'm a little tired of every author without a bright idea of his own putting a modern spin on a 'classic,' but I was a big fan of Rosencrantz and Guilderstern Are Dead," (pp. 129-130).

Gratz is wonderfully ironic, tongue-in-cheek, and quick-witted in Something Rotten (which is the first in a series of Shakespeare-inspired YA novels). I would heartily recommend this book to be used by teachers, home-schoolers, or just interested parents who want to open their kids' reluctant eyes to the beauty of Shakespeare. I think it could be a fantastic corollary to curriculum, introduce the plot of the play in an easy-to-understand format, before reading/acting/watching the play.

Read more Teaser Tuesdays.

Book Review: North of Beautiful

Title North of Beautiful
Author Justina Chen Headley
Genre YA, Literary Fiction
Rating C+

Summary Terra has a port-wine stain birthmark covering one side of her face that affects the way she sees herself and the world sees her. Compound this by adding in a domineering dad, a family who cow-tows to his controlling ways, a know-it-all best friend, and a boyfriend who's only into her for her killer body (that distracts from her not-killer face). Enter Jacob, the sensitive and cool guy of her dreams who gets her... and drama unfolds.

First Line "Not to brag or anything, but if you saw me from behind, you'd probably think I was perfect."

Review This book was a mix of the good and the bad (balancing out to an ever-so-slightly above average literary grade). Let's start with the good, shall we?

I liked the plot of this story, and that's what kept me reading. Although I'd read reviews of this book and pretty much knew straight away (knowing what I knew of the long-distance trip that happened with Terra and some other peeps), I still liked where the story was going well enough to keep reading. I guess I'm kind of a sucker for stories of self-discovery, even when the self-discovery is over-wrought and you see it coming a mile away.

I liked some of the characters. To me, the growth that the mom and dad experienced, and the revelations that Jacob experienced, were really interesting. Terra wasn't fully interesting in my opinion, but she wasn't completely irritating either, so that's saying something, right?

But the bad: I didn't like some of the characters' views of other characters. Most notably, I didn't understand why Terra kept fawning all over Jacob as the cool goth guy who wouldn't give her the time of day and probably had tons of chicks all over him. Really? Is that a typical stereotype? Cool goth guys? Maybe Headley was playing against type, but, if so, she should have described Jacob differently or made Terra a different kind of character so it would seem natural that a guy wearing a black trench coat would seem cool (at least in Terra's opinion). Because, to me, he seemed more like guy that's likely to massacre his school and less like a lady killer. Just saying... especially knowing that Terra's boyfriend is a jock hottie--much more the YA stereotype of a guy that's too cool for a girl like Terra.

But I think this whole Jacob-is-cool thing could have been done more convincingly if Terra had been characterized more appropriately. See, Terra's an artist, but she doesn't look, act, or speak like the stereotypical tortured artist type who would be drawn to the dark, brooding fringe guy with a soft spot for his little brother and good makeup application techniques. I think if Headley had drawn these characters a little more specifically, the initial attraction wouldn't have been so jarring. Sure, as we go along, Jacob is sensitive and you find you like him a bit more than Erik-the-jock (who is surprisingly redeeming), but that's after the fact that you've been weirded out by Headley's description of him... Example (these are from the same outing/day):

"The best Christmas present I received arrived three days late and came wrapped in funereal black. Jacob unfurled out of the dark morning, a bat flying from its roost," (p. 166).

"Jacob swung around on the chair, leaning against the window and stretching his crossed legs out in front of him. With any other guy, sitting cross-legged might have looked somewhat effeminate, but not Jacob. He looked like a coiled snake, ready to bit me. I wouldn't have minded," (p. 174).

Doesn't that seem a little incongruous? He's dressed like a serial killer and described as looking like a coiled snake, which to me conjures up bad images, but the voice of the narrator is fawning. It's weird, right? Or maybe it's just me, but it seemed like lazy characterization.

The other bad thing: The heavy-handed map motif. Sure, we all know from English 101 that travel is symbolic of a journey of discovery. I get it. I even like when an author uses a motif (i.e., recurring theme) to tie the story together, but the map stuff in this was really obnoxious. She would have benefited from a stronger editor who could have removed some of the references, made it more subtle, and less annoying.

As I stated earlier, I'd read some reviews, so I knew going in that a lot of readers found the map talk to be obnoxious, so I readied myself, but it's actually impossible to fully prepare yourself for the onslaught of cartography references throughout this. I actually found that map-ish things weren't so much a motif, but more a crutch so Headley didn't have to stretch too far to come up with unique imagery or metaphors.