Northward to the Moon, by Polly Horvath

I've been a Polly Horvath fan since I picked up Everything on a Waffle purely for its title and fell in love with her quirky characters, deadpan humour and off-the-wall philosophy. Northward to the Moon is a sequel to My One Hundred Adventures (my review here).  Adventures is a complete story unto itself, but now we get to find out what happened next to Jane and her unusual family.

Jane's dreamy poet of a mother has never identified the fathers of her four children; she may not even know who they are; but Ned is a definite possibility for at least one of them, and at the end of My One Hundred Adventures he has decided to take responsibility for the family. They move to Saskatchewan where Ned takes up a position teaching French. At the beginning of Northward to the Moon we learn:

Our family lasted almost one year in Saskatchewan. It took the town that long to figure out that Ned didn't speak any French.

Jane is thrilled to be on the road again seeking adventures. Ned takes her and her mother and siblings along a trail of clues from Ned's past to northern BC, Las Vegas and a horse ranch in Nevada.

It occurs to me how Ned and I wanted to be outlaws and here we are, in the American West, in the high desert. We are escaping who knows what with a bunch of money from who knows where. Do things happen because you want them to? Can you create your life and adventures by imagining them?

Ned ends up with a bag of possibly ill-gotten cash from his brother that he doesn't know what to do with. He is reunited with his mother and sisters and gets stuck caring for his mother when she gets injured. Jane is tangled up in these adult affairs and yet powerless to affect them. She gets a crush on a ranch hand and tries to figure out why her sister is so depressed. She thinks adventure and excitement are everything she wants from life, but maybe it would be nice just to go home.

Jane as the innocent narrator has a hilariously accurate perception of the adults around her. I found myself laughing with Jane at the same time as I felt horrified by how irresponsible everyone was. Northward to the Moon is more bittersweet than One Hundred Adventures: it's an elegy about families and how they fail. It's also about how they succeed despite all the ways they fail. Jane has a resilient spirit, and people do come through for each other. I found this book less funny and more troubling than the first one, but I never wanted to put it down. And I really, really hope there is a sequel.

For fans of Sharon Creech, Katherine Paterson and Kit Pearson. Cornbread with maple syrup. Or with baked beans. Or both.

For more Middle-Grade reads, check out Shannon Messenger's great weekly meme, Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday. And for more Canadian books, head over to John Mutford's blog.

Canadian Book Week: My One Hundred Adventures, by Polly Horvath

I am remiss. I have discovered an omission. (You would think that I could say, "I am remiss, I have discovered a remission," but that doesn't work, does it. I also tried "I have committed an omission," and that doesn't work either, although I could commit the sin of omission, and then beg for a remission of my sin. (I could do a whole blog on English derivatives of the Latin mittere, to send, to put, to let go. All having to do with opening the hand. Omit, to let go downwards or drop. Remit, to send back. Remiss, to let go again, or slacken, thus both remiss: lax in duty and remission: forgiveness. Commit, to send with, to put with. Fascinating. (But probably only to me.)))

My omission? I find I have not reviewed a single Canadian book since I began this blog. How could I be so remiss? I think I shall have to commit to instituting Canadian Book Week on my blog: the third week of every month I will make a point of talking about the Canadian YA/Children's book scene. And to inaugurate Canadian Book Week, I will review the book I just finished reading: My One Hundred Adventures.

Polly Horvath is the author of Everything On A Waffle, a book in my list of top ten best titles ever. (There's another good blog idea: best book titles. Start collecting your favourites and I'll blog about that soon.) Horvath is off-beat, off-the-wall, out-there. If you look up "quirky" in the dictionary, she'll be the definition. But she also has the melancholy soul of a poet. She writes very funny stories of children growing out of their childhood illusions and coming to understand that the world is a more difficult place than they might have thought.

My One Hundred Adventures might be her most poetic book yet.

It is the beginning of July and we have two months to live out the long, nurturing days, watching the geese and the saltwater swans and the tides as they are today, slipping out, out, out as the moon pulls the other three seasons far away wherever it takes things. . . . Out past my childhood, out past the ghosts, out past the breakwater of the stars.

Jane is the daughter of a poet and an unknown father. Secretly she believes "that I was conceived in the depths of a moonlit sea by tides and eddies and swirls of sea life and the longing of a poet to be a mother." This is one of the myths that gets turned on its head over the summer.

Jane begins the summer wanting adventures.

As if itchy and out-grown, my soul is twisting about my body, wanting something more to do this summer than the usual wading in the shallows and reading and building castles on the shore. I want something I know not what, which is what adventures are about.

And adventures she gets, although none of them are quite what she expected, from Mrs. Park's thrombosis to the sticky Gourd children to the psychic who may be a thief but may still have predicted truly. As the summer is measured out in ripening berries, Jane encounters the inexplicable behaviour of adults and the surprising consequences of trying to do right. She is let down and disillusioned, but the new world she discovers has its own wonders. Ultimately she learns that "all our lives are mundane but all our lives are also poetry."

If it were all lyrical prose and dawning self-awareness I'm not sure I would recommend the book, as beautiful as some of the passages are. But it's also really, really funny. Some of the wit is almost slapstick, and some of it is sly and dry, and some is just funny because it's so weird. Dropping Bibles out of balloons. Looking for poodle portals. Fruitless hats. It's a book to make you laugh and wince, often at the same time.

This is a great summer beach read--it will take you to a summer beach even if you're landlocked in Saskatchewan in December, it's so evocative. My One Hundred Adventures is definitely fresh buttermilk biscuits, hot from the oven, with homemade jam, eaten on the porch looking out at the sea.