The Spellshop, by Sarah Beth Durst

The Spellshop is an utter delight of a sweet, satisfying girl-finds-friendship-love-community-and-magic story—and it is stressful as all heck! Do not be deceived by that warm, glowing cover (what a gorgeous cover!): this book begins with a library on fire, and the tension doesn’t let up. I was seriously worried, ok?  Because Kiela and Caz and the weird and wonderful inhabitants of Caltrey need to be safe and happy and thriving, and it's touch-and-go there for a while. 

Personally, I think Sarah Beth Durst cheated. Knowing that her readers probably like books, she made her main character a librarian saving books from a fire. So we have to like her! Kiela is actually a really interesting character, because, other than saving the books, she's not particularly likeable. Introverted to the point of shunning all human contact, paranoid and suspicious (for very good reasons, yes), she makes things hard for herself by building walls between her and everyone who could help her. The tension of whether and how those walls will be torn down is added to—and gradually supplants—the tension of is she being chased? will they find her? what will they do to her when they do? And once she starts caring about more people the stakes just keep going up, because now it's not just the books and Caz at risk.

Caz might be the best thing about this book. Durst is excellent at creating magical sidekicks, and Caz is fighting with Monster (from The Girl Who Could Not Dream) for first place in my heart. (Might have to reread Dream and get back to you on that.) Caz certainly wins for most unique; also I love that the talking plant created by a rogue librarian is a spider plant—what library would be with out one!

The romance is possibly a little too perfect, but we didn't come to this book looking for realism, did we? We came because we wanted a guy who builds bookshelves and keeps secrets, respects boundaries but is patient enough to coax Kiela out of her thorn-encased heart.

I thought the resolution was interesting and satisfying—I won't spoil anything, but it was nice to see alternate ways of handling conflict.

Sarah Beth Durst is a wonderfully diverse writer—The Spellshop is different again from anything else she's written—and I look forward to seeing what she comes up with next!

MMGM: The School Between Winter and Fairyland, by Heather Fawcett

I heard of Heather Fawcett because a lot of people are talking about her latest book for adults, Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Fairies. While putting that one on hold at my library, I noticed that she has a number of books for younger readers that were available to borrow. 

The School Between Winter and Fairyland is blurbed as "a fresh and exciting twist on magical boarding schools," and that it certainly is. I love that our protagonist isn't a student at Inglewood School: she's a beastkeeper. It's definitely a callout to Hagrid from Harry Potter, and anyone who has always wanted to spend more time with him and his magical beasts will love this novel.

I love that Autumn is part of a family, and that families are central to the plot and theme of the novel. Gran is the chief beastkeeper, and assigns chores to Autumn and her three brothers—and if you make Gran mad you'll be deworming the gwarthegs! I love the unique versions of mythical monsters Fawcett comes up with, and how they are all dangerous, but, like any wild animal, if you understand them and treat them properly you don't have to be afraid of them.

The plot was twisty and engrossing, with a real sense of peril but also lots of humorous and heartwarming moments. Autumn's love for her missing brother is a powerful thread driving all her actions; her reluctant friendship with Cai is beautifully developed. The boggart is another great character, loyal and frightening, and then there's Choo the relentlessly friendly dog.

This book was similar to The Phoenix Feather in the way it played with the trope of the Chosen One and notions of heroism. If the world isn't divided into people and monsters, us and them, good guys and bad guys, then a dragon-slaying hero isn't going to be much use. But there are still things that need fighting, and friendship, trust and understanding will be much more effective than swords.

Knowing that Fawcett is such a good writer, I'm now very impatient for my hold on Encyclopaedia of Fairies to come up! I've also put The Grace of Wild Things on hold: a fantasy retelling of Anne of Green Gables! And Fawcett is Canadian; she lives on Vancouver Island, not very far from where I am!

The Marvellous Middle-Grade Monday crew hangs out at Greg Pattridge's blog, Always in the Middle. You can always find great Middle-Grade picks, every Monday.

This Friday, I will be back with a fun author interview! Michael Roth will talk about dogs, llamas and picture books, and give a little insight into his self-publishing journey. Hope you can join us!

MMGM: The Barren Grounds, by David Alexander Robertson

I am a sucker for foster child/found family stories—don't know why; I just can't stand the thought of any child not feeling love and belonging. So The Barren Grounds drew me in right away when it introduced Morgan in her new foster family. They are trying so hard to welcome her and honour her aboriginal heritage, and she is rude and prickly because she can't let herself get hurt again. 

The most important relationship in the story is between Morgan and her younger foster brother Eli, whom she both sympathizes with and resents because he at least has memories of his family and his culture, whereas she was given away when she was a baby. Eli's skill at drawing is the magic that creates a portal in the attic, and Morgan has to go through the portal to find Eli and bring him home.

Found family, siblings and portal fantasies are all buttons for me, and the snowy icing on the cake was the wintery setting: in Winnipeg in the real world, and in the trapped-in-winter land of Aski. Robertson's depiction of a winter forest landscape rang very true and familiar to me. This is such a Canadian book! (I was only annoyed at Morgan not wearing enough clothes when she went through the portal: she would know how to dress better than that!)(At least she remembered her mitts.)

The homage to Narnia is genuine, and the integration of aboriginal mythology and values into a Lion Witch and Wardrobe retelling felt both fresh and satisfying. The environmental message (and the metaphor of colonialization) is clear but not, I think, too didactic.

The story itself is fast-paced and fun, a fairly simple adventure quest with enjoyable banter and realistic character development. I liked how Eli's and Morgan's different strengths were acknowledged, and I loved the bickering between Ochek and Arik. (I am embarrassed to be a Canadian who did not know there was such an animal as a fisher: kind of like a really large weasel. You would think I would have learned about them at some point!)

This is a strong beginning to a middle-grade fantasy series for any readers who like wilderness adventures and portal stories, and a book that should become a Canadian classic.

Photo By Douglas H. Domedion

For more great Marvelous Middle Grade Monday reads, check out Greg Pattridge's blog, Always in the Middle

Digger, by Ursula Vernon

I just finished making my way through all twelve volumes of Ursula Vernon's webcomic Digger, and what a glorious, mind-bending, hilarious ride that was! It's all available now for free online, so you can go become obsessed too!

You know already I'm a rabid Ursula Vernon/T.Kingfisher fan. Well, now I'm rabider. (The vampire squashes may have had something to do with it: you have to keep your eye on those.) I also have an addition to my list of favourite heroines*: she's a practical-as-nails engineer who doesn't truck with magic or gods or prophecies, she's a mean hand with a pickaxe, and she's a wombat.

Yup. A wombat. Do you even know what a wombat is? I had to look them up. They're adorable. Digger-of-Unnecessarily-Convoluted-Tunnels, however, would give you a Look if you called her adorable. (And possibly favour you with a pithy wombat curse: her curses are the best!)

The thing about this comic is that it apparently started on a whim, and Ursula thought it would last for a few panels and be done. She threw together a bunch of random stuff like wombats, the elephant-god Ganesh (or a statue of him, anyway), an exiled hyena, a baby shadow-thing that doesn't know what it is, other awesome creatures I don't want to spoil for you—and if it were only the random juxtaposition of weird things with clever dialog and delightful art, it would be wonderful. But she kept going, and somehow she gathered up all her threads of weird randomness and wove them into a narrative of heartbreaking, breathtaking wisdom about how to be a decent, compassionate being in a world that doesn't make sense.

And because it's Ursula Vernon, the humour is laugh out loud, snort your tea all over the screen funny, and the philosophy can sometimes explode your brain.

Also, this web-archive includes comments from fans that greatly enhance the reading experience, as they reference everything from Star Trek to Terry Pratchett to Lord of the Rings, and debate archeology and geology and mythology and everything else.

Definitely worth a week or two of your life (there are around 800 pages!). It won a Hugo, after all.

Ursula Vernon writes for children, but I would say Digger is more appropriate for her T. Kingfisher readers (that's her pseudonym when she writes for adults). Not because of anything particularly graphic**, but, well, here are a few pages and you can judge for yourself:

And if those few pages don't make you want to read Digger immediately, then it probably isn't for you, and I despair of you, my child, I really do!

*which is going to get a blog post, really, I promise!

** I mean, other than the fact that it's a graphic novel. Get it? Graphic ... never mind.

Spark, by Sarah Beth Durst

What if something that was making your life wonderful was also making someone else's life miserable? If you found out about it, what would you do?

This seems to me one of the central moral questions of our time, and Spark is a lovely, gentle but remorseless engagement with it. This is such an important book; all adults should be required to read it!

It's also a sweet, fun story about following your heart and finding your voice and figuring out where you belong. And it has dragons! (Well, storm beasts. But close enough as makes no mind!)

Durst says she got the idea for this book from the first line: Mina was quiet. "But I didn't want it to be the story of a quiet girl who learns how to be loud. I wanted it to be the story of a quiet girl who discovers she's strong, exactly as she is." I love that.

I loved Mina, I loved her passion, her intelligence, her patience and her frustration. I appreciated the depictions of her boisterous family and the way she loves them and belongs without being like them.

I adored her storm beast Pixit and their relationship, they way they remind each other of their strengths and bring out the best in each other.

I was so happy with the school scenes—Mina is unlike all the other students, but she finds friends and figures out her talents and discovers that she belongs. It's an outcast story without any bullying, and isn't that a good thing to have examples of?

The world of Alorria was fascinating and colourful; simplistic in the way middle-grade fantasies often are, but with enough complexity to be believable and to generate an interesting plot. The concept of storm beasts and the use of them to control weather was a lot of fun. The prime minister is a great character. I thought Mina's solution to her dilemna was brilliant and quite relevant to our own world.

I've consistently been impressed with Sarah Beth Durst's work. She is incredibly imaginative, thoughtful and has a deep understanding of psychology. My copy of Spark had a sample chapter from The Stone Girl's Story,  and I'm now anxious to get my hands on that one!

Since we just celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving, I'll compare Spark to the tasty and very different stuffing my son made for his turkey: it had walnuts and apples and pomegranate seeds, so it was colourful and crunchy and had all the sweet, sour, savoury and salty flavours. (His gravy was great too: had notes of lemon and fennel and white wine.) I love that my kids are all better cooks than I am!

Note that today is your last day to nominate books for the Cybils award. Spark has been nominated in the Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative Fiction category, along with a lot of other great books. If there's one you know of that's missing, hurry and nominate it!

MMGM: The Girl Who Could Not Dream, by Sarah Beth Durst

There is so much to say about this book, I don't even know where to start. The sheer amount of imagination packed into it . . .

What if dreamcatchers could store the dreams they caught, and what if a dream distiller could extract the dreams and funnel them into bottles? Would you want to buy one? If you were a little girl living above the shop that sold bottled dreams, would you sneak downstairs and drink an unlabeled dream, just to see what it was like?

And if there was a monster in this dream, would you introduce yourself to it and tell it how nice its tentacles were?

That's our main character, Sophie, so you know right off the bat that she's all kinds of awesomeness. In a marvellous twist on "it followed me home can I keep it," Sophie discovers she can bring a monster out of a dream. "He's really very sweet. Can I keep him? Please?"

Monster is possibly the very best talking creature ever to appear in a book, and you have to read this book just to meet him. He is utterly hilarious. (Sometimes he does Sophie's homework: "Last time you wrote every letter upside down. I had to claim it was an artistic experiment.") He's also smart and fierce and loyal and loves cupcakes.

The Girl Who Could Not Dream is a sweet, cute, funny book about some very scary things. The smooth-talking kidnapper Mr. Nightmare, with his perfectly normal suburban house, frightened adult me. But Sophie is stalwart, kind and straightforward, and she thinks outside the box. With Monster by her side (and, yes, the odd pink ninja bunny) she is prepared to rescue her friends and parents from someone with a very twisted idea of what dreams are for.

The writing is vivid, tangible, tasty—I loved the descriptions of the dream shop and the dream-distilling process—it would totally work that way! All the characters are people you could meet (while you're walking down your street)—I was particularly impressed with Sophie's loving, protective parents, who would do anything to keep their daughter safe and happy—they just ended up being afraid of the wrong thing.

This is a book about families and friendship, about secrets and truth, about trusting the right people and being afraid of the right things. (Yes, sometimes you should be afraid of pink bunnies. Depending on who you are.) It was delightful, exciting and substantial; I would happily return to this world and spend time with these people again. And maybe drink a dream while I was there.

The Girl Who Could Not Dream is a sticky, flakey pastry and a mug of dark hot chocolate you bought in the bookstore/cafe a kindly older couple recently opened in a renovated old house in your neighbourhood.

It's been a while since I've had a middle-grade book to review, but I've been getting lots of great suggestions from Shannon Messenger's weekly blog round-up. Thanks for connecting us together, Shannon, and best of luck with your most recent book launch!

MMGM: a scary book and a not scary book

What do these books have in common? They've both been nominated for a Cybils award, and they're both written by Canadian authors! (And I've read them both in the last week. So they have tons in common. Despite being completely opposite in nearly every way.)

The not scary book first:

Clover's Luck is the first book in a series called Magical Animal Adoption Agency, and can you think of a more brilliant idea for an early chapter book series? because I can't! This book is as cute and sweet as it looks, but it's also funny and clever.

Clover earnestly attempts to match up various magical people with the most appropriate magical pet, even though she herself has been terribly unlucky when it comes to pets. The animals are delightful, and the details of their care and feeding are a lot of fun (eg: Clover deduces that hot peppers are the best food for the fire salamanders). To complicate matters there's a witch with increasingly ridiculous disguises and a fiendish (but not at all scary) plan.

Clover's combination of diffidence about her own skills but genuine care for the animals makes her a truly engaging protagonist. Young readers will be charmed by the magic and will be rooting for Clover. I know I can't wait to read the next one and see what will hatch out of the egg that arrived at the end! The illustrations, by the way, are perfect: soft sketches that just capture the personality of each animal.

Full disclosure: I know Kallie, and I'm beyond thrilled for her that this series is coming out. I wouldn't have reviewed the book if I didn't like it, though, so it's honest praise!


And, two days too late for Halloween, a very creepy book that rivals Coraline for scariest story I've ever read:

First of all, you have to go find The Nest in a bookstore and pick it up. It has the coolest cover ever! So effective! You can't get the 3-D aspect of it from a picture, and I imagine that a library copy is all taped up so you can't see the under-cover, so do go to your closest (local independant) bookstore. And then, if you're like me, once you pick it up you'll notice the utterly gorgeous, perfectly moody illustrations by Jon Klassen, and you'll just want to own the book anyway. It's a work of art.

So, wasps. The cover makes that obvious so I'm not spoiling anything. There are wasps in this story. Wasps are inherently terrifying—bees are cute and benevolent; wasps are not; I'm sorry, I know that's speciesist, but I can't help it—especially if you're allergic to them, which our protagonist Steve is. That inherent dread runs through the whole story. But what Kenneth Oppel does with wasps is brilliant and mind-blowing and so much more terrifying because mmmbbblefarg! I can't say anything useful without completely spoiling it, so I won't. Let's just say that this is not a book about people being chased by wasps, oh, isn't that scary, the end.

Steve is a heartbreakingly courageous protagonist. He suffers a lot of anxiety just dealing with normal life, and there's a new stress in the family: "There was something wrong with the baby, but no one knew what." This book rises above other scary* books and approaches the catharsis of A Monster Calls because of the nuanced psychology of this family dealing with the unimaginable and yet so very real terror of a child with "a kind of sickness that never got better."

There's the fear of one's helplessness to fix it; then there's the child's fear that something they do or don't do might actually change things. Oppel deals with this brilliantly. What if Steve could fix the baby? Think about the terror of that possibility—that responsibility.

All the comparisons to Coraline are apt not just because of the beautiful writing and the quiet, gradual, creeping horror, but also because they both touch sensitively on a very real childhood fear: what if, out of fear or anger or desperation or love, I wished things were different, and what if that wish actually came true?

The ending is truly beautiful—there's family love, and acceptance, hope and transformation—and have I mentioned the illustrations? There's just so much in this book to like! Kenneth Oppel is at the top of his form; he's one of the best middle-grade writers out there right now.

For more marvellous middle-grade books, go see what the rest of the MMGM crew are raving about this week on Shannon Messenger's blog.

For more great Canadian authors, see what John Mutford's guests are all reading this month for the Canadian Book Challenge.

*I'm carefully not using the word "horror" because I don't think it's quite right. "Gothic," maybe.