The editor's choices for the most memorable books reviewed in Notes from the Windowsill.
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Also check out our picks from 1995 and 1996.
The Ear, The Eye, and the Arm by Nancy Farmer. Orchard, 1994; Puffin, 1995 (0-14-037641-0) $4.99 pb
Set in 22nd century Zimbabwe, this Newbery Honor winning book deftly mixes futuristic fantasy with traditional African culture, to create an exciting adventure that stirs both the heart and the imagination.
Like many privileged children, thirteen-year-old Tendai, his sister Rita and little brother Kuda live very sheltered lives, far away from the dangers of the outside world that their father, General Matsika, is dedicated to fighting. In their sterile home of robot servants and robot dogs, the children learn a lot about languages, diplomacy and military strategy, but virtually nothing about ordinary survival skills; even the terrifying gang, "The Masks," are only a name to them. But despite the frequent services of the family "Mellower," a professional Praise Singer whose job is to tell people how wonderful they are, Tendai isn't happy: an unusually sensitive and imaginative boy, he could never become the soldier his father wants him to be, and always seems to be disappointing him. When a chance comes for the children to break away for once--"all alone, without bodyguards or the police or Father"--Tendai is eager to explore the outside world. But what should have been a simple day trip quickly turns into an often terrifying adventure that seems to have no end.
As Tendai struggles to rescue himself and his siblings from some of the darkest corners of Zimbabwe, he not only discovers unexpected strengths in himself, but gains a new understanding of the tribal spirit that underlies his country. The people he meets are often odd, contradictory mixes of compassion and selfishness, kindness and cruelty--but all of them are the children of the land, heirs to a great, ancient spiritual force. Tendai's journey will ultimately end in a battle between that force and a spirit of pure evil that threatens his land.
Meanwhile, the children are being tracked by three detectives known as Ear, Eye and Arm because of physical mutations that give them unusual abilities of hearing, sight and empathy. But despite their powerful gifts, the Ear, the Eye and the Arm are always just one step behind the children... and always, in the background of the tale, the horrifying threat of the Masks gang is looming.
Farmer builds her plot beautifully, with carefully constructed suspense and just enough clues to build to a dramatic, stirring ending. Her vision of a future in which technology hasn't driven out ancient beliefs is very involving, yet also allows for a great deal of pointed satire. In one memorable scene, Rita finds a garden gnome in an Englishwoman's garden and identifies it according to her culture: "It's a fetish... I didn't know the English tribe had them." The rather cruel parody of upper-class English values in this section reveals that this is essentially the truth. Racism is apparently no part of this future but the character of the Mellower, a weak-willed, irresponsible white servant raising black children, calls to mind racist images of black characters like Prissy in Gone With the Wind. His part in the story is far more serious and important than just a pointed stereotype-reversal, however: the Mellower, with his hypnotic Praise Singing, unwittingly reveals the dangers of complacency and of concentrating too strongly on raising self-esteem. (Interestingly, the very new-agey sounding concept of Praise Singing is actually an important, traditional part of many African cultures, according to end notes.) Moreover, despite his faults the Praise Singer is a skilled storyteller, who helps Tendai to understand the ways of his ancestors; obviously, Tendai concludes, the Mellower is possessed by a shave, a helpful spirit of the Shona tribe. It seems probable that this represents an answer to those who might claim that Farmer, being white, has no right to write about Africa and African ways--and it's a damn good one.
Clearly, The Ear, The Eye, and the Arm is multi-themed and multi-layered, a book that challenges readers to think in many new and interesting directions. Fortunately, it also involves and delights them. * (10 & up)
February 1997, Volume 5, No. 2
Lily's Crossing by Patricia Reilly Giff. Delacorte, 1997 (0-385-32142-2) $14.95
Rockaway Beach during World War II is the atmospheric background for this tender story of friendship and growth. Lily Mollahan loves summers at the beach, where she's free from school, and piano lessons, and way she never seems to live up to people's expectations. And this year she really intends to work on her "list of problems"--especially her tendency to make up extravagant stories. But the summer of 1944 isn't like any other summer: Lily's father is being sent overseas, her best friend at Rockaway is moving away, and Lily is left alone, except for her perpetually nagging grandmother. Then she meets Albert, a young refugee from Hungary, and Lily finds herself telling her worst lie ever, bragging that she plans to swim out to an army ship and join her father in Europe. When Albert decides to go too, so that he can find the little sister he left behind in France, Lily discovers that her impulsive lie has put his life in danger.
With scrupulous attention to detail, Giff carefully creates the world of 1944--so carefully in fact, it doesn't feel quite real at first. But with Albert's appearance, the story comes to life; his interactions with Lily are believable and engaging, as they slowly become friends and begin to share their pain and loneliness. Through Albert's experiences, Lily comes to understand many new things about herself and her life, including the fact that her grandmother really does love her; her inner growth is depicted with perception and without didacticism. With the background of summer days near the wild ocean adding a special tang, this is a poignant look at the homefront experience and the special bonds of friendship. (8-12)
Awake and Dreaming by Kit Pearson. Viking, 1997 (0-670-86954-6) $13.99
"Choosing a new book was like looking for a treasure. Theo always took a good long time. First she examined some paperbacks on a revolving stand. But they were mostly novels about one girl or one boy with a problem... That wasn't what she wanted... This new library was the best kind--it didn't throw out its old books. They looked ugly, with their thick, plain covers. But the dull outsides concealed the best stories."
Almost from its beginning, I knew Awake and Dreaming was going to be a story that would resonate strongly with me. Like its heroine, I was a poor child of a single mother, moved around a lot, and found most of my comfort in books, especially stories about large, happy families. (The above passage ends with Theo joyfully discovering All-of-a-Kind Family.) But even as I relished the description of Theo's attitude towards books, I was struck by its irony: because Awake and Dreaming already seemed very much a "one girl with a problem" kind of story itself. To my delight, it turned out that that very paradox is actually the heart of this unusual and fascinating story.
Neglected by her mother and too miserable to make friends, nine-year- old Theo lives in books as much as possible. "Her favorites were stories about families or stories about magic. Perfect books combined both." And Theo knows exactly what she would do, if somehow she could find some magic: "There would be four children, two boys and two girls. She would be the fifth, cozily in the middle with an older brother and sister to protect her, and younger ones to play with. There would be a calm mother and father who never yelled or hit..." It is just when Theo needs magic the most, when her mother is leaving her with an unknown aunt while she goes off with a boyfriend, that she finds her wish coming bizarrely true; somehow her mother disappears and she is at home with the Kaldors, the absolutely perfect family of her dreams. But is it actually a dream? And if it is, what will happen when she wakes up?
I can't dwell on the plot of this book without destroying a number of beautifully wrought surprises. But this isn't simply a story that makes you gasp at its clever twists and turns; contained within them is a wonderfully insightful examination of the lines between reality, fantasy and fiction, and of the meanings of fiction in children's lives. The latter is something I've been trying to explore in nonfiction for years; it is astonishing and deeply satisfying to see it explored in fiction itself.
Awake and Dreaming isn't a perfect book, partly for reasons which are inherent to its structure: it is actually necessary that several portions of the book be rather dull. It's also flawed by some implausible dialogue and too much "telling" instead of "showing"; perhaps, on the whole, it really is more satisfying as a commentary on fiction than as fiction itself. But even just as that it offers terrific rewards--especially for lovers of children's literature, who may find new ways to understand why these books mean so much to them. (8 & up)
Westminster West by Jessie Haas. Greenwillow, 1997 (0-688-14883-2) $15.00
In this remarkable look at her own hometown, Haas weaves events from the past into a story that is vital and resonant today, a multi-faceted novel touching on relationships between mothers, daughters and sisters, the roles of women, and the nature of trauma and psychosomatic illness.
The year is 1884 and the small Vermont town of Westminster West is being threatened by a mysterious arsonist; three barns have already burned down. But Sue Gorham has a more immediate problem; she's fed-up with doing all the hard work while her sister Clare, the "delicate one," gets rest and attention. Then Sue finds her father's old diary in the attic and learns some painful truths about her parents. What starts as a sleepless night for her rapidly deteriorates into a serious nervous condition under her mother's anxious care, shifting the balance of power in the family--and once she's experienced it, Sue finds that she can't bear to give Clare back the power of being the delicate one. Then the firebug strikes at the Gorham farm, and Sue and Clare must each make a choice about what is really important to them.
Based on true events, Westminster West is set during a difficult time for farm women, one in which they still needed to work extraordinarily hard, yet were also beginning to be expected to be "ladies"; as an older woman puts it, "you've got all the work we ever had, and you've got to keep your hands nice, too!" To Sue, it seems as if "everything she'd learned about becoming a woman was a form of disguise. Mask your strength. Lower your voice. Never seem to be angry or perspire." Perhaps that's why a half-feigned illness so easily becomes genuine, and so very difficult to give up.
Beautifully organized and thoughtfully characterized, this story gently leads the reader to some fascinating insights about human nature. Although Haas admits that this interpretation of Sue and Clare's story is her own invention, she makes it hard to believe it could have happened in any other way. * (10 & up)
Letters to Julia by Barbara Ware Holmes. HarperCollins, 1997 (0-06-027341-0) $14.95
Imagine a contemporary YA novel written by an author channeling L .M. Montgomery and you might get a feel for what Letters to Julia is like. The soul of "Emily of New Moon" pervades this epistolary novel about a beauty-loving young writer trying to cope with her obsessively feuding parents and finding the mentoring she needs from a sympathetic editor.
Liz Beech is fifteen when she first writes to Julia Jones--the editor of her English teacher's best friend's sister--but she already knows that she is destined to be a writer, and she is already suffering the loneliness of a misunderstood artist. "No one ever seems to care whether things are interesting or beautiful. Or else their idea of interesting and beautiful is so different from mine that I can't relate." Julia Jones agrees to read Liz's work, and her encouraging letters give Liz a sense of connection she desperately needs, living in a world where, "there's nobody here from my tribe." But Julia, who is feeling lonely and directionless after the death of her parents, also needs something from Liz's friendship, perhaps more than Liz is able to give.
Told in the form of Liz and Julia's letters, chapters from Liz's novel and entries in her journal--which she tries, but fails to keep as "The Journal of a Literary Person" and not a diary--Letters to Julia is a stimulating look at the growth of a friendship and the blossoming of an artist. I was sometimes disappointed in the plot, which goes in some unexpected and (to me) unsatisfying directions, but the individual characters of Liz and Julia shine brightly and sincerely through their letters. The less sympathetic characters aren't as successful--in particular, Liz's crazy family never seems real--but Liz and Julia's passionate responses to the beauty of literature and poetry and art are so compellingly drawn, other young artists will yearn to be able to join in their conversation. (11 & up)
Is It Larger? Is It Smaller? photographed by Tana Hoban. Greenwillow, 1985 (0-688-04027-6); Mulberry, 1997 (0-688-15287-2) $4.95 pb
One of Hoban's most fascinating collections of photographs wordlessly explores the concept of size by showing exquisitely composed pictures of everyday scenes. Each picture has several objects which are similar, yet different sizes: a row of icicles, a family's toothbrushes in a glass, a child's hand resting on an adult's. In one marvelously composed photo, a boy tenderly holds a rabbit over his shoulder: the eye is immediately drawn to the amazing difference between their ears. A wonderful book to share with an inquisitive toddler. * (2 & up)
The Saturdays and The Four-Story Mistake written and illustrated by Elizabeth Enright. Puffin, 1997 (0-14-038395-6; 0-14-038394-8) $4.99 pb
It's always disconcerting to me, as a children's book reviewer, to be reminded of how often adult reviewers miss what children see so clearly. These aren't the books Elizabeth Enright won Newbery awards for--and if the blurbs on the back of these reprints are anything to judge by, they were well-received without making much of a splash. But I can think of few books--particularly those in the realistic fiction genre, and without "Junior Classic" status--that have had such a hold on the hearts and memories of young readers. The Melendy books are simply the family stories.
Maybe it's partly because there's just so much family in them. There are four young Melendys to start with: Mona, Rush, Randy and Oliver. (They'll acquire another brother in a later book.) There are pets galore, particularly after the second book, in which the family moves from New York City to a big house in the country. And though they're motherless, there's no lack of adult relationships in their lives: in addition to their father, their loving housekeeper Cuffy, and the good-natured handyman Willy, the Melendys seem to have a knack for making adult friends wherever they go. No Melendy kid ever has to be lonely or bored for too long--there's always some project going on, some exciting plan to cook up, or a story to listen to. Stories told by adults about their childhoods crop up all the time in these books, a fascinating connection of the past with the present which is still effective, even though the "present" of these books is now more than fifty years old.
Though relationships are so important to the books, they wouldn't be nearly as good as family stories if the characters weren't also very individual. Randy has always been my favorite: she is creative, sensitive and impulsive, the one who falls overboard in a boat in Central Park and almost sets the house on fire. Rush and Oliver tie for second place; I can't decide if it would better to have a smart, funny older brother like Rush or a calm, solid younger brother like Oliver. Only Mona never much appealed to me--she's too much into "girly" stuff like clothes and perfume for my tastes. Naturally the kids do a lot together, but unlike many family books, they are also given quite a bit of time apart--in fact, the entire point of The Saturdays, at least at first, is for them to have adventures on their own. For them, it's a chance to explore their own interests and feel grown-up; for us, it's a chance to see inside each character and get to really know and like them--to see them as real people with real feelings, rather than just parts of an ideal group.
These long-awaited reprints (the third and fourth books will be following soon) make these wonderful books available for a new generation of readers. Will they be as entranced by the story of how Mrs. Oliphant was once kidnapped by gypsies, as amused by Oliver's nonchalant trip to the circus all alone, as intrigued by the discovery of the secret room in the attic? Will they crawl into these books and live there the way I did? For their own sakes, I sure hope so. * (8 & up)
Step by Wicked Step by Anne Fine. Little, Brown, 1996; Dell Yearling, 1997 (0-440-41329-X) $3.99 pb
Five barely acquainted children, picked at seeming random, arrive ahead of the rest of their school at old Harwick Hall, a desolate--some say haunted--mansion. In the light from a flash of lighting they discover a hidden room, and in it, a dust-covered manuscript: the tragic life-story of Richard Harwick, who ran away from home after his mother's remarriage and lost his entire family.
Sounds like the beginning of a bad gothic novel, doesn't it? But as Claudia, Pixie, Rob, Ralph and Colin read Richard's story, they realize just what it is that the five of them have in common: each of them, like Richard, has a stepfamily. And what had seemed to be a night for horror becomes instead "a night for stories": their own stories about stepparents, told "step by wicked step."
An unusually believable and insightful look at the aftermath of divorce and remarriage, Step by Wicked Step leaves almost no story untold. Claudia's story is a fairly simple one of deciding that it's not fair to hate her new stepmother; Pixie comes to a more complex understanding that her new stepmother is having as much trouble "adjusting" as she is. Ralph shares the problems of having more than one stepmother come and go; Rob describes the unexpected outcome of his sister's antagonistic relationship with their stepfather. The saddest story is Colin's: as far as he was concerned, his stepfather was his father--but his mother saw things differently.
Step by Wicked Step shows that sometimes stepfamily stories end happily ever after and sometimes they don't--especially when, as too often happens, children's feelings are unnoticed, ignored or not taken seriously. But as the five come to realize, Richard Hardwick's solution is never the right answer. * (8 & up)
September 1997, Volume 5, No. 1
Galax-Arena by Gillian Rubenstein. Simon & Schuster, 1995 (0-689-80136-X) $15.00; Aladdin, 1997 (0-689-81235-3) $3.99 pb
In a very bleak future, where urban decay and racial tensions have escalated to a terrifying degree, Joella, her brother Peter and her adopted sister Liane are kidnapped for a bizarre purpose: to become acrobats in an outer-space gymnasium, where aliens feed on the fear of the performers. In the world of the Galax-Arena, they are no longer children--"without parents, how can there be children?"--but part of the peb, a group of kidnapped youngsters who have become little better than vain, vicious, performing animals in captivity. As Peter and Liane, the family "stars," join the peb, Joella can only watch in fear, knowing that she is useless as a gymnast and will soon wind up as an alien's pet--or worse. But though Joella is not physically adept, she has another talent: the ability to see even hidden truths. And the hidden truth about the Galax-Arena may hold hope for their escape.
Reminiscent of William Sleator's classic young adult novel House of Stairs, in its portrayal of how fear, hopelessness and desperation can--but does not always--lead to a loss of humanity, Galax-Arena is a staggering, shocking book with a great many undercurrents, not all perhaps intended by the author. The very grim look at what happens to children when all elements of a "childhood" are taken away from them is quite relevant today, and not only in dangerous urban settings--many child performers, especially gymnasts, seem forced to risk more and give up more every year in order to succeed. For me, Galax-Arena was not just a cunningly disorienting and frightening story, but a painful reminder of how extraneous children really are in our society; despite much lip service about their importance, our actions speak louder than our words. The premise of the story may seem implausible at first, but at heart it's uncomfortably close to reality. Perhaps that's why Galax-Arena is so much bleaker even than House of Stairs: it carries a truth that offers little hope for our future.
October 1997, Volume 5, No. 10
Stonewords: A Ghost Story by Pam Conrad. HarperTrophy, 1997 (0-06-440354-8) $4.95 pb
Winner of the Edgar Award for best juvenile mystery, Stonewords is a horrifying yet hauntingly beautiful story about love and forgiveness. Because Zoe's mother is "a little crazy," the four-year-old Zoe is taken to live with her grandparents, Grandma and PopPop. That's when she first meets Zoe Louise, a girl whom no one else seems to see or hear, a girl who never grows older. Zoe Louise becomes Zoe's first and closest friend: "Sometimes we fought. And sometimes we got along like best friends, like something out of a book... I guess that's why I grew to love her as much as I did." But their friendship has always had an uneasy side for Zoe, who can't understand the rules of Zoe Louise's strange existence; by the time she realizes that Zoe Louise is a ghost, her friend has started to physically deteriorate in macabre ways. Torn between pity and dread, Zoe resolves to save Zoe Louise--but she can only do it her love can overcome her fear.
Elegantly combining tenderness and terror, Stonewords turns a chilling ghost story into a rare exploration of what it means to love. Surprisingly, the genre is perfectly suited to the theme, demonstrating how love can be mixed with anger, and even revulsion, without losing its essential power. It's a truth that stirs something deep in the soul, beautiful in its rightness even when it's horrible. * (10 & up)
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