Month: January 2014

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly is my latest read book and I quite liked it. It’s about an eleven year old girl (twelve by the end) in 1899 Texas who wants to become a naturalist, aided and encouraged by her cantankerous grandfather she barely knew before he comforts her one summer day after her failure to get Darwin’s controversial new book from the library. It starts with her trying to understand where these new types of grasshoppers had appeared, big fat yellow ones, different from the small green ones she was used to.

She’s the only girl in a family of even kids and right in the middle, and three of her brothers are sweet on her best friend. In-between trying to master science, she has to deal with her mother trying to make her into the girl her mother didn’t get a chance to be thanks to the Civil War.

Speaking of that, the book dances around the fact that her family fought on the south’s side. They have a black cook, Viola, who is treated with a lot of respect in the book but the specter was held over the book. The uneasiness that left in me was the only sour point of the novel, however. Otherwise it is a perfectly sweet book, with Calpurnia coming off as a very realistic young girl.

Also, apparently it’s got my taste nailed because:

Are all books I strongly recommend, especially Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin which is still one of the best books I have ever read.

Summer book count: Working on #49.

When You Reach Me and The Miraculous Journey Of Edward Tulane

Sometimes you never feel meaner than the moment you stop being mean. It’s like how turning on a light makes you realize how dark the room had gotten. And the way you usually act, the things you would have normally done, are like these ghosts that everyone can see but pretends not to. It was like that.

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

Decided to read something by a new author, and went with a kid’s sci-fi book. It’s not terribly sci-fi except for one big part, and takes place in 1978 New York. It follows a young girl named Miranda who has three problems: Her best friend Sal has decided to stop being friends, there’s strange laughing homeless man by her apartment, and she’s getting notes from the future.

It’s a clever book, but what I really liked about it was all the relationships that go on throughout it. Her world really opens up in the few months in the story.

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo was a book I had to take a near-month break from. It was the one that made me start crying on a plane, and I’ve been waiting for a nice private moment to see how Edward the porcelain toy rabbit’s journey ends. I cried more. I think Kate DiCamillo has it out for me.

It’s a beautiful book, with great imagery, sweet characters, and a fair bit of injustice but it’s about love. And a toy rabbit that didn’t love or care about anyone at the start. Then shit goes down.

This is the second book by DiCamillo I’ve read and they were both excellent. Looking forward to reading the other books by her I’ve bought.

The Carpet People and Pokemon: Diamond and Pearl vol 1


The Carpet People written by Terry Pratchett age 17 and Terry Pratchett age 43.

This book was originally published when Terry Pratchett was 17 and then once the Discworld series started picking up in popularity, they went to him and said ‘hey, we’re going to publish that book you wrote when you were a teenager’ and Pratchett wisely did what I’ve wanted to do with my old stuff: He rewrote the fuck out of it.

I’m pretty curious what the original one was like. In the author’s note he says that it was written back when he thought fantasy was all about kings and battles, and the book I read was a lot of musing on civilization and the difference in people. Also, everyone living in a carpet. The biggest city in it is the size of a period.

It’s a thinky book mixed around trying to survive an incoming group of people/animals called the Moul (which means ‘one true human’) who eat animals. Look at their name. In-between this, there’s a roving natural disaster called The Fray that is followed by Moul attacks. The Munrungs, a hunter tribe, must survive and generally find a nice place to live after Fray hits their home.

It’s a decent book, but I wish there’d been more women in general. There’s a good effort near the end, but more speaking parts/doing parts is always appreciated in a book.

In other news, on the recommendation of Ann Larimer and the fact that Pokemon Adventures won’t have another volume out until September, I ordered the 8-volume set of Pokemon Diamond Pearl Adventures, which is a different continuity (Pokemon Adventures follows the trainers of the game in order with their own adventures) and is a lot looser in writing and style than the main series.

But so far I’ve learned that Professor Rowan, who is not actually the main character Hareta’s grandfather and I have no idea how he has custody, is the worst person to have custody of a child ever. Please look at the pictures below to see what I mean.


Just gonna leave a toddler in the woods and walk away. It’s all good.

PS: Read Castle Waiting vol 2 by Linda Medley and it was glorious. Excellent comic.

Earwig and the Witch and The Vile Visitors


Earwig and the Witch by Diana Wynne Jones and illustrated by Marion Lindsay

On a rainy day (streets flooding and trapping me at someone’s house rainy) I read three Diana Wynne Jones stories, Earwig and the Witch and The Vile Visitors all illustrated by Marion Lindsay.

First off, Marion Lindsay’s art is adorable and charming, so that’s what I chose to post instead of quotes.

Earwig and the Witch was a major disappointment, and I don’t know how much of that is because it’s a posthumous book. It feels like two thirds of the book is missing, and that it was setting up for a series. Little is explained, characters are introduced significantly, only to never appear again, and the conflict vanishes suddenly. I was disappointed, because the start was very clever.

Almost forgot: The plot is Earwig lives in an orphanage and enjoys it very much. One day a witch takes her out to make her the witch’s slave. Hijinks start to ensue, then don’t.

The second book, Vile Visitors is a combination of two stories (see? I didn’t forget one when I said I read three above) which are Who Got Rid of Angus Flint? and Chair Person which have an unexpectedly large furniture presence. As the title suggests, it’s about vile visitors. The first is Angus Flint, a friend of the children’s father who shows up and decides to stay, making life hell. The second is about a horrible old sitting chair that a family decides to take out to put on a bonfire that… turns into a human and things go very wrong from there.

Vile Visitors was lots of fun, plus Marion Lindsay’s artwork really brought the characters and situations to life. Skip Earwig and the Witch.


Chair Person from the short story Chair Person by Diana Wynne Jones and illustrated by Marion Lindsay

Johnny and the Bomb


Johnny and the Bomb by Terry Pratchett

The last of the Johnny Maxwell trilogy! Johnny and the Bomb takes Johnny from helping videogame aliens (Only You Can Save Mankind), helping out ghosts (Johnny and the Dead) to straight up time travel. It all starts because Johnny was determined to help the local homeless woman after finding her in a bad case in an alley (first chapter spoiler: She had set off an unexploded bomb back in the ’40s).

It was definitely the best one of the series, which makes the fact it ends there kind of worse. The characters were getting all nice and developed and Johnny was finally developing a personality (but one scene especially proves it would have been better with him being a girl instead of a white guy looking on.)

There’s an emotionally painful scene in the book, involving Yo-less (who is black) and the racism back then, except it’s not the people who did it that hurt him so much as one of his friend’s reaction to it and it was rather on the nose.

Anyway, it was fun YA, but I still haven’t recovered enough to read The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane yet.

I read three Diana Wynne Jones stories last night when the streets flooded and I was trapped at my dad’s, but I’ll talk about that later when I’ve composed my thoughts vis a vis ‘how much is Earwig and the Witch to be blamed on the fact it’s a posthumous book?’

The Snake Who Became The King’s Son-in-Law

My favourite fairytale, mostly for its oddness, is The Snake Who Became The King’s Son-In-Law or as I call it, ‘Herp: The Snake Who Was His Own Boostrap’.

Here it is in its entirety, taken from sacred-texts.com:

No. 7.–The Snake who became the King’s Son-in-law

There were an old man and an old woman. From their youth up to their old age they had never had any children (lit. ‘made any children of their bones’). So the old woman was always scolding with the old man–what can they do, for there they are old, old people? The old woman said, ‘Who will look after us when we grow older still?’

‘Well, what am I to do, old woman?’

‘Go you, old man, and find a son for us.’

So the old man arose in the morning, and took his axe in his hand, and departed and journeyed till mid-day, and came into a forest, and sought three days and found nothing. Then the old man could do no more for hunger. He set out to return home. So as he was coming back, he found a little snake and put it in a handkerchief, and carried it home. And he brought up the snake on sweet milk. The snake grew a week and two days, and he put it in a jar. The time came when the snake grew as big as the jar. The snake talked with his father, ‘My time has come to marry me. Go, father, to the king, and ask his daughter for me.’

Continue reading The Snake Who Became The King’s Son-in-Law

Johnny and the Dead


Johnny and the Dead by Terry Pratchett

Second book in the Johnny Maxwell trilogy changes nothing about my requests for some changes to the protagonist, but it’s significantly smoother than the first, Only You Can Save Mankind. In this one Johnny goes from leading an alien race to safety to helping out the local dead in the town graveyard.

It has some good philosophical bits, a lack of Kirsty (that’s not a good thing), and the usual cute interactions between Johnny and his friends, who are still twelve. It isn’t until the next book coming up, Johnny and the Bomb, where they finally get to upgrade to thirteen and get seriously involved in the adventures besides thinking Johnny’s a bit strange.

In Johnny and the Dead, Johnny starts seeing dead people, and then the dead people start realizing they can do a lot more than lay around waiting for judgement day. Wackiness ensues.

I’m actually halfway into the third and final book of the trilogy, which I thought I’d be done by now but grandparents came over and one must entertain ones grandparents or they start biting.

American Born Chinese

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang was picked up on a whim and it’s excellent. It has three main characters: Jin Wang, a Chinese boy who wants to be All-American (which means white, at least in his eyes and his classmates eyes), the goddamn Monkey King who has his own problems, and Danny, who is ‘All-American’ and suffers from visits from his cousin Chin-Kee that end so badly he has to constantly keep transferring schools.

They’re three separate stories that came together in a way I really was not expecting.

There’s parts of this where kids are cruel enough that it hurts to read, especially on the tail of something that I’d just read in Johnny and the Bomb by Terry Pratchett (gonna be done that today) and it’s a good example of how kids can be horrible for no good reason. And it’s placed so expertly you can see why Jin makes the decisions he does.

Plus any scenes with the Monkey King are great. Gene Yang draws him with the best face.

Art was excellent, and the story was great. I recommend this without reservation.

Cardcaptor Sakura

Comic talk! I just finished reading the first Cardcaptor Sakura omnibus #1 which both delighted and totally horrified me.

The good: Fancy, cute art with lots of costumes and general sweetness. Every character seems to be pretty darn gay. Sakura fighting with Li (her future love interest) over the affection of the same boy (who may actually be with Sakura’s older brother). Sakura’s bff Tomoyo’s crush on her.

The bad: I can live another thousand lives without seeing a teacher/student thing ever again. Fortunately one is in the past (her parents), and one is very much in the background (and actually the reason I’ve been reluctant to read this at all) and not involving Sakura in any way.

Plot of Cardcaptor is these sentient tarot-ish cards (Clow cards) have escaped their confinement and are causing magical havoc, and it’s up to Sakura with the help of her best friend Tomoyo (who makes costumes for Sakura and films her exploits, is her biggest fan) and the magical guardian of the cards Kero-chan (Cerberus) to catch them all. She gets to use them as attacks once they’re hers. So around that framework, the plot happens.

It’s not Castle Waiting level, but it’s good eyecandy and a fun read. Just warning for the squick. No nudity, gore, or major violence so far and I think it stays that way? Either way, I ordered the next ones.

ALSO. The omnibus has a bunch of colour prints throughout it! Super pretty.

Castle Waiting

In my last post I briefly mentioned Castle Waiting by Linda Medley and I think it deserves more than a quick shout.

A few weeks ago, I was visiting my friend Ann and what is now customary we went to the bookstore and I aske her for comic recommendations, and this is one of the things she handed to me.

The plot is, essentially, what happened to the castle after Sleeping Beauty left with her prince. In Castle Waiting, it’s become a sanctuary and in volume 1 (volume 2 is shipping its way to me right now. I’m sort of dreading it because 1 was a paperback, weighed two pounds, and made my hands shake when I read it. Volume 2 is a hardcover) we follow the adventures of a new resident, Jain who has come to have her baby, and in the latter part the adventures of Sister Peaceful, who is part of a sect of bearded nuns.

Lots of jokes and character humour, and except for the Sleeping Beauty opening, not especially fairytale oriented, besides everyone living in a world where those sorts of stories do take place, just not to these characters.

There’s some strong Christian elements (because nuns) which seem to be less about Christians and more about bearded women, which I did not object to. Skeeter, the little novice with the huge mustache is adorable.

There’s a rough, racist bit about Roma in the first third, which is mostly redeemed in the last third, but be on alert for that.

Castle Waiting is sweet, easy fantasy with a lot of charm and the art is fabulous. My biggest regret is that I could not get a good picture of Nessie (Sister Peace’s good friend) that was on one of the covers for this post.