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: Villain Keeper, by Laurie McKay

Villain Keeper is the first book of The Last Dragon Charmer, a middle-grade series that would have fallen right under my radar if Charlotte and Ms. Yingling hadn't reviewed it and its sequels. It doesn't have a particularly  eye -catching cover, and the title doesn't really stand out, but it's got a great premise that isn't used nearly often enough, if you ask me: someone falls through a portal into another world, but the world they land in is ours, and the one they come from is the fantasy world with kings and magic and dragons.

So what would happen if a twelve-year-old prince on a quest to kill a dragon landed in Asheville, North Carolina? He (and the annoying sorceress acquaintance who got sucked through the portal with him) would get picked up by the police eventually. The police would confiscate the prince's sword and take his proud Galvanian snow stallion to a boarding stable, and the prince and the sorceress would end up in foster care and have to go to school.

Of course, the school is more nefarious than it first appears. There's a suspiciously nasty math teacher and a frighteningly mysterious vice-principal, not to mention the lunch-workers (aren't they always evil?). But of course the police aren't going to believe Caden when he warns them. They already want to give him a psych evaluation because he keeps insisting he's a prince and he's perfectly capable of taking care of himself, thank you very much.

I loved the tension between Caden and Brynne's beliefs about their capabilities and the well-meaning adults' desire to care for them and keep them safe. (I suspect this will resonate particularly with middle-grade readers.) I love that the villains at the school are the only ones who take Caden seriously.

I love that Caden is really annoying because he was brought up as a prince, and gracious and commanding behaviour doesn't go over well at a public school. I love the developing relationships between him and his foster brother Tito, who tries to teach him to fit in while gradually coming to believe his story, and Brynne, who seems annoyingly adept at coping with this strange world.

I really loved all the characters, including the adults. There's a nice underlayer of poignancy to Caden's adventures, because what Rosa and Officer Jenkins believe about him is actually true: despite his skills, training and magical gift, he is a lost child who needs someone to take care of him. (This probably resonated more with me, the adult reader.)

Villain Keeper ends with one plot thread neatly tied up, but a lot of questions still unanswered, and I look forward to the next book.

Belgian double-cooked fries: super crispy on the outside and super soft inside, with garlic aioli and chipotle mayo to dip in.