MMGM: Two Young Sherlocks

I have a confession to make: I have not actually read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. (Well, I read the first part of A Study in Scarlet, and then got completely bored when the scene suddenly shifted to America, so put it down and never went back.)

 But I love Sherlock Holmes! At least, I love all his various incarnations, interpreted by various writers, directors and actors. (Yes, I'm talking about Benedict Cumberbatch again, don't shoot me!)

 You would think my enthusiasm for all things Holmesian would send me back to the originals, and I'm sure I will eventually get over my mental block and pick up The Sign of Four. But I happened to be browsing the kids' section of the library for books with maple leaves on the spines (since I haven't yet done my Canadian book for August), and look what I found:


Not one, but two different series about Sherlock Holmes as a boy.








Who was the young man who turned into the brilliant, enigmatic detective? Was he always that clever and observant (and obnoxious)? How did he become an excellent boxer and violinist? Why is he so friendly with street urchins? Well, Andrew Lane and Shane Peacock set their imaginations to answering all these questions, and came up with two very different but equally plausible young versions of the sleuth.

Death Cloud, the first of Andrew Lane's Young Sherlock Holmes mysteries, has a Sherlock from an upper class, though not terribly wealthy family. His father is away in the military, and his mother is unwell, so older brother Mycroft, already working for the British Government, arranges for Sherlock to spend summer vacation with an aunt and uncle in the small town of Farnham. Mycroft also engages an American tutor with unconventional teaching methods. A couple of bizarre deaths in Farnham lead Sherlock to discover a criminal conspiracy endangering the entire country. He has some help from the tutor and his pretty daughter, and more help from Matt, an orphan living on his own. His investigations put him in danger of his life, repeatedly--curiosity and fearlessness are this Sherlock's primary traits, and he uses the logic and observational skills he has learned from Mycroft and his tutor to put the pieces of the conspiracy together and single-handedly defeat it.

Eye of the Crow is the 1st Case of Shane Peacock's The Boy Sherlock Holmes. This is the book with the maple leaf on the spine, since Peacock is a Canadian. His Sherlock is a more complex character from a much bleaker background. His mother is a gentlewoman who fell in love with a poor Jew and was disowned for marrying him. The family lives in extreme poverty in a terrible neighborhood in London, and Sherlock resents it greatly. He plays truant regularly, preferring to observe humanity in Trafalger Square and read the sensational happenings in the Illustrated Police News. Sherlock is regularly harassed by a young thief who calls himself Malefactor and his gang of street kids called the Irregulars. The case that gets Sherlock's sleuthing attention is a woman knifed to death in an alleyway, and he is driven to find out what happened when the police arrest a young Arab man who claims to be innocent. But Sherlock's investigations lead Lestrade (the elder: his son who wants to be a detective has a brief appearance) to arrest him on suspicion of working with the Arab. Sherlock escapes the Bow Street jail with the help of a beautiful girl named Irene Doyle, and has to find the real killer to prove his own innocence as well as the Arab's. He enters an uneasy partnership with Malefactor, and learns how to disguise himself and ask the right people the right questions. But the murderer will do anything to prevent Sherlock from collecting the evidence he needs.

Both novels are full of excitment: escapes, fights, spying, mysterious figures in the shadows. Both mysteries are interesting and require lots of observation and deduction to solve. Readers familiar with the Sherlock stories will recognize certain elements in each novel, which is fun. Eye of the Crow is the darker of the two books, and probably the one closer to the canon in terms of setting, psychology, and characters who will appear later. But both books are great reads and will satisfy the Holmes afficionado--or will ignite afficion in readers who haven't yet caught the Baker St. bug.

This post is a two-for-one in multiple dimensions: it's my Marvelous Middle Grade Monday offering, and my Canadian Book Challenge book for August. Find marvelous middle-grade books every Monday on Shannon Messenger's great site, and find great Canadian books to read on John Mutford's awesome blog.

The False Prince, by Jennifer A. Nielsen

I haven't ranted about Megan Whalen Turner on my blog yet, have I? She's pretty well-known, so maybe I don't have to. If you haven't read The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, The King of Attolia, and A Conspiracy of Kings, then drop everything else and go read them. Then you can continue with this blog entry.

So. Are you in love with Eugenides? If not, then I despair of you. I really do. But if the Attolia books are your kind of thing, then you should definitely read The False Prince. Sage is a worthy successor to Eugenides, and there isn't much else I need to say.

I love the premise of The False Prince: nobleman with questionable motives, plot to impersonate a prince, competition between orphans with life and death stakes. It reads like an epic fantasy, even though there are no fantastical elements. If conflict is the heart of story, this one's got oodles! But it's Sage's voice that raises this book into must-read status.

"I'd never attempted roast thievery before, and I was already regretting it."

Sage is funny and clever and mouthy, and excellent at getting himself into trouble. He also has hidden depths: he's not as callous as he makes himself out to be. You're constantly rooting for him and exasperated with him at the same time. The rest of the characters are all equally rounded: no cardboard villains; everyone has believable motivations, and right and wrong aren't exactly clear-cut.

This would be a great read for guys: there's fighting and plotting and sneaking around and more plotting, and hardly any romance. Girls will love Sage, and will be happy that the few female characters have "voices of their own, goals of their own, and brains. Yay!" as Sherwood Smith says in her review.

I'm excited to know this is the first book in a trilogy: more Sage to come!

The False Prince is pain au chocolat: buttery, flaky croissant wrapped around rich dark chocolate. Mmmm!

On another topic entirely, can anyone recommend a good medieval-setting YA fantasy about a witch? I'm drawing a complete blank, even though I'm sure I've read a bunch. (I can almost see their titles in the corner of my brain, but when I turn to look they're gone!)

MMGM: Natalie Babbitt and Sharon Creech

My reading diet has been sadly lacking in Middle-grade books lately, so I went on a browse in the children's section of the library and came home with a whole pile. So I'm making up for my absence from Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday with a three-for-one post! (Sorry I can't fit all the titles in Blogger's title space.)

Sharon Creech intimidates me a little because she's won the Newberry, and she's, you know, a Really Good Writer, so I tend to pass her on the library shelves saying, yes, yes, I'll definitely read more of her one of these days. I have to keep reminding myself that I love her books. 

Love That Dog makes me cry every time I read it; I think it's pretty much perfect in every way. So when I saw Hate That Cat, I almost didn't want to pick it up: how could she do again what she did in the first book? Would this book somehow diminish Love That Dog? No, it doesn't. It adds. We get more of Jack, more of Miss Stretchberry, more poetry, and it's just as real and touching and funny. If you're like me and hesitate to read a novel in poetry, don't. Sharon Creech is a wonderful poet, but she's also a wonderful storyteller, and these poems tell a story that compels you from page to page, even as you want to savour every poem for itself. Love That Dog and Hate That Cat make me want to be an elementary teacher just so I can use these two books to teach a unit on poetry. And if all my talk of poetry is turning you away from these books, please, please read them just to meet Jack. He's such a fun character, you just want to hug him. Trust me, you want Jack in your life.

The Unfinished Angel isn't written in poetry, but it might as well have been. Each little chapter is like a poem; every sentence is an image and a sound. The voice of the angel is astonishing, vivid and funny and brilliantly expressive. Just listen to a sample:

You won't believe this, but there are peoples who pay money to other peoples to wash their hairs and even to paint colours on their toes. Is really! And in the same world of peoples there are other peoples who have to crawl in the dirt scrounging for a measly piece of garbage to eat. I am not fabbagrating! Don't get me started.

At night I swish in the heads of the peoples with the clean hairs and feets, showing them the peoples crawling in the dirt, but in the morning when the clean peoples wake up they have already forgotten. I think maybe it is my fault that they forget so quick and so it is my fault that there are peoples who have to crawl in the dirt. I am not knowing enough. What are the other angels doing?

The unfinished angel tries to do the right thing but doesn't always know what that is. And then along comes colourful Zola who thinks she knows what the right thing is, and between them they turn the little Swiss village upside-down. It's a bit of a fable, there's definitely a moral, but it's so well-told and so true that you can't mind. It's about peoples and their flaws but it''s hopeful and sweet and funny. You see, don't get misled by Sharon Creech's Really Good Writer status: she's also a really funny writer. I like funny writers and I like poetry and I need to read more of Sharon Creech.

Natalie Babbitt is another Really Good Writer who writes spare, poetic truths about people. I read Tuck Everlasting more than twenty years ago and I still think it's one of the best books out there. I was so happy to see she has a new one out. The Moon over High Street is a bit fable-like, too, but Joe and Gran and Aunt Myra are real, round characters you care about right away. This is the story of Joe deciding what he wants to do with his life, and it will resonate with every kid who knows he has to make the same decision at some point. There's some gentle satire of Mr. Boulderwall, the millionaire who invented "swervits," and some contemplation of the American dream and what it might actually mean. It's a quietly humorous book that's deeper than it seems.

All three of these books are short and sweet. There's a tendency these days to write long books that might be good but they go on and on and they really don't need to. Good writers use as few words as possible and make every word count. (Have I mentioned that Natalie Babbitt and Sharon Creech are really good writers? But don't let that turn you off: it means they write short books!) These three little treasures are like a selection of chocolates from a fine chocolatier.

Shannon Messenger organizes MMGM and keeps the list of Marvelous Middle-Grade contributors, so be sure to visit her blog and check out all the other Marvelous books being featured this week!

A Spy In the House, The Body at the Tower, The Traitor in the Tunnel: The Agency series by Y. S. Lee

Canadian Books #1, 2, and 3.

This series was another random pick from the library. The Traitor in the Tunnel was on display on top the shelves in the New Arrivals section, and I liked the cover, so I looked in the shelves for the first book. What a pleasant surprise to find the author is from Toronto!

The Agency is such a great concept. In Victorian London, where women are condescended to and dismissed as silly, emotional creatures who can't be taken seriously, what if there were a secret organization of women spies? They could take advantage of their functional invisibility to see and hear things a male spy would never have access to. (It's the perfect wish-fullfilment fantasy for anyone who has read Victorian novels and been frustrated with the constrained lives of the women.)

A Spy in the House begins with 12 year old Mary in prison about to be hung for burglary. She is rescued by the Agency, and, long story short, decides to join and be trained as a spy. So you've got your orphan story, your historical story, your spy training story (not a lot, but some), and then the sneaking around undercover story. These books have it all!

The adventure of the first book is Mary's final training exercise before she is admitted as a full member of the Agency: she must pose as a lady's companion in a house where suspicious things are going on. In The Body at the Tower there is an apparently accidental death that might not be so accidental during the construction of Big Ben and the Parliament Buildings, and Mary disguises herself as a boy to get access to the worksite. In Traitor in the Tunnel, Mary is a maid in Buckingham Palace and gets to meet Queen Victoria (wonderful characterization of that famous figure).

Our protagonist chooses the name Mary Quinn, because she can't let anyone find out her real identity. The reader eventually finds out who she is as Mary explores some mysteries in her family's past, and it's an exciting and unusual twist that adds depth to her character and emotional tension to the plot. (My advice? Don't read reviews on Goodreads, and don't read the blurbs on books 2 and 3, because they give away at least part of her secret, and what's the fun of that?)

I really liked Mary. She is resourceful and independent but has realistic fears and makes mistakes. I was also fascinated by the Agency and its two founders, and I wish Lee had explored their stories more. And then there's James. James is an engineer, and he's cocky and flippant and entirely aggravating. Mary keeps running into him in highly compromising circumstances, and their relationship is a delight of Beatrice and Benedict* proportions. Not only do we get all the orphan/historical/spy bits, but there's a smoking romance to boot!

Lee is a Victorian scholar, so her London in the 1850s is full of authentic, stinky detail. If you, like me, are fascinated by the Victorian Age, and if you like a good complex mystery (murder or otherwise), and if you'd really rather your romantic leads snap witticisms than swoon, you'll probably enjoy these books as much as I did.

*Much Ado About Nothing: the characters spend half the play wittily insulting each other, then discover they're madly in love. Great fun. The Emma Thompson/Kenneth Branaugh version is pretty good.

Marcelo in the Real World, by Francisco X. Stork

This book was on my TBR because it was mentioned in several blogs. I picked it up at the library, and then it sat on my night table for a month while I read Dorothy L. Sayers. I renewed it, because I knew I wanted to read it, but I only started reading it up a few days ago because Busman's Honeymoon wasn't at the library.

I can't believe I waited a whole month to read this amazing book.

Marcelo has a version of Asperger's syndrome. As he puts it, "From a medical perspective, the closest description of my condition is Asperger's syndrome. But I don't have many of the characteristics that other people with Asperger's syndrome have, so that term is not exactly accurate." This is the story of his summer working at his father's law firm. His father Arturo wants him out of the protected environment of his special school (do schools like that exist, by the way? Patersons sounds amazing!)  so he can engage with so-called normal people and experience the so-called real world. Arturo believes this challenge will help Marcelo grow. Grow he does, but it's the world that gets changed by Marcelo, not the other way around.

I think books narrated by people in the autism spectrum are popular because they allow the reader to experience an alien perspective; and they allow the writer to portray the world from a true outsider's point of view. As in science fiction, this provides the opportunity to comment on the world. We experience a typical lawyers' office, with all its petty rivalries and questionable ethics, with Marcelo's perception. Marcelo has a beautiful innocence--not simplistic or childish, but logical and genuinely questioning. Right and wrong through his eyes are inescapably clear, wriggle though you may try. His moral courage is heartrending and inspiring. I was literally on the edge of my seat while reading. What would you do if you were faced with his choice?

Stork explores morality, ethics, religion--all the big questions--but above all else, Marcelo in the Real World is a stunning meditation on love. I want all teenagers to read this--no: everyone should read this and measure their own relationships against Marcelo's growing understanding. He says at one point that he's not sure he's capable of love, but nothing could be further than the truth. We all should be so lucky as to be loved the way Marcelo loves.

Beautifully written, profoundly beautiful, one of those books that changes you. Marcelo in the Real World is a strawberry spinach salad made with spinach I grew myself and fresh local strawberries, served at a family barbeque amidst noisy conversation with an undercurrent of respect and caring.

6th Annual Canadian Book Challenge

John Mutford over at the Book Mine Set has been running an awesome challenge that I had to join: read 13 Canadian books in one year, from July 1 (Canada Day, for all my overseas readers) to July 1.

I've been trying to review a Canadian book every month, but I've been pretty spotty about it, so this external motivation will be good for me. Plus, his website is an inexhaustible source of Canadian book suggestions, so I no longer have any excuse not to find a Canadian book I want to read.

My first entry is going to be a three-for-one deal: it's a Victorian adventure series called The Agency, by Y. S. Lee. (I suppose technically I didn't read it within the July 1 to July 1 time frame, but I think what counts is when the review goes up. In any case I intend to read more than 13 books, so this shouldn't skew my results unfairly!) Stay tuned!

Genius is the new sexy: Lord Peter Wimsey, Doctor Who, and Benedict Cumberbatch

I haven't been blogging about YA or middle-grade books lately, because I've spent the past month working my way through Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries. I can't believe I hadn't encountered this character before. Lord Peter Wimsey is the Scarlet Pimpernel meets Sherlock Holmes, a foppish, fool-about-town who notices everything and sees the patterns everyone misses, and to whom everyone talks freely because he seems so harmless. And he has the brilliant Bunter as his manservent. Sayers writes long, complicated mystery plots--each of them very different--each plot uniquely suited to the specific setting, whether a Scottish fishing village or a London advertising agency or a woman's college at Oxford. She can be gently humorous or scathingly satirical about the society her mystery plot exposes; as with all good mysteries, her stories are really about the failings and foibles of humanity.

But Lord Peter, oh, Lord Peter! He drives too fast and talks too much and is scarred by his time in the War. With his compassion and arrogance, his precision and recklessness, his deep melancholy and his passion for life--I'm convinced that he is the inspiration for Doctor Who. Is there a Doctor Who fan out there who's read Sayers? What do you think?

What got me thinking in that direction is that the crush I have on Wimsey is the same kind of crush I have on Doctor Who. It's not so much that they're good looking (I mean, yes, David Tennant is good-looking, and Matt Smith is pretty cute, I'm not trying to say they're not), but what I love them for is what they say and do: their brilliant flashes of inspiration, their ruthless investigational styles, their determination--and ability--to save the world. (A couple of actors have played Wimsey--I haven't seen any of the adaptations yet, but here's a blog with photos. I have to agree with the blogger that Peter O'Toole would have made an excellent Wimsey.)

It's the same reason I'm in love with Benedict Cumberbatch--just looking at a picture of him I wouldn't say he's the sexiest man out there, but watching him play Sherlock--the expressiveness of his face as he ponders and discovers and is delighted at being proved right--not to mention his eyes, he has gorgeous eyes--I would not kick that man out of bed.

Wimsey also reminds me of another favourite fictional genius, Miles Vorkosigan (also a Lord--and hey, so is Doctor Who*! Something about having power and using it for good is also pretty darn attractive in a man, wouldn't you say?)

And, by the way, Cumberbatch is a simply brilliant actor. I saw him play Frankenstein, and he was frighteningly convincing. Not that it was a scary play--it was a wonderful adaptation that explored all the themes of power and knowledge and what makes us human. Johnny Lee Miller was superb as the monster (I'm running out of superlatives!). I'm sad that I missed the showing of the alternate production (Cumberbatch as monster, Miller as Frankenstein).

*I was trying to find this clip from The Girl in the Fireplace: "This is my lover, the King of France." "Yeah? Well I'm the Lord of Time."