Inky the Indigo Fairy, by Daisy Meadows.

 These books fly off the shelves at my library where they are waved about in joy by five and seven year old girls.  As a dutiful children's librarian I took it upon myself to figure out what kind of paper I'm peddling.

Ouch.  The content is even more vacuous than I feared.  I'm a couple decades too old, and have never been girly enough to handle this kind of sparkle.  I've listened to parents moan about how their intelligent little girls insist on being read these stories aloud.  Their greatest chagrin stems from same inane plot recurring in each and every book.

The positive spin on the series is that they motivate many new readers to persevere through 60+ pages of text on their own.  That's no small feat.

The Order of the Poison Oak, by Brent Hartinger

This sequel to Geography Club isn't quite as powerful as the original, but it's still a great read.  The characters are likable, fallible, and believable.  The Order of the Poison Oak follows Russel, Min, and Gunner to summer camp where they've all found jobs as camp counsellors in the hopes of avoiding all the hometown stares and gossip.  That's not terribly likely, now is it?

The Eternal Smile, by Gene Luen Yang & Derek Kirk Kim

This is a pleasant read.  Three well-structured short stories with great illustrations.  Each section features a character orienting him or herself within the real world and imagined worlds.  Sometimes reality is not straightforward or even preferable.  My favourite was the last story, where an under-appreciated office worker pursues a love affair with the sender of a "Nigerian prince" bank fraud spammer.

Waltz with Bashir, by Ari Folman and David Polonsky

This book is ideal for those of us who have watched the original film version of Waltz with Bashir and want to take more time to reflect on the powerful images and thoughts therein. Using still images of the animation, the book feels like the movie, but with timing dependent on the reader. 

I loved having the opportunity to reflect upon particular segments of the filmmaker/author's journey as he pieces together fractured memories of his role in the 1982 massacre at Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon.  This film mesmerized me.  The style is simply gorgeous.  Each scene is captivating, and I'm fascinated by how relative human memory is and how normal people deal with traumatic experiences.

The graphic version is complete enough that it should be satisfying for those who have not seen the film, but as the film is the original, I'd recommend people watch this one before reading it.

Wicked Lovely: Desert Tales - Sanctuary (by Melissa Marr)

Desert Tales is a companion story to Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely novels.  In this literary universe, faeries are real, but only appear to those whom they choose to.  They are mischievous and often spiteful, best not tangled with.  Marr's stories all involve troubled romances between mortal humans and immortal faeries.  I enjoyed reading the first in the series which is one of this year's YRCA nominees, but I was less intrigued by the follow-up efforts as their character arcs were too similar to the first.

Fairies (or faeries) are second only to vampires when it comes to popular tropes in the teen urban fantasy / surreal romance genre.  Generally, I prefer Holly Black (Tithe, Valiant) to Melissa Marr (Wicked Lovely, Ink Exchange), as I find Black's characters are richer, and Marr's stories are more formulaic.  This graphic/manga adaptation will probably be popular, but it's too slow and fluffy for me.  This volume introduces the primary romance and potential conflict, but so little happens that it may take several volumes to reach any satisfactory story development.  I'd been hoping for something different; perhaps a stronger lead character, but Rika seems just like all the others in Melissa Marr's stories.  I'll leave this for the real romance junkies.     

The Tale of Despereaux, by Kate DiCamillo

The Tale of Despereaux  is charming and well-written.  It belongs to the tradition of stories that teaches small people that they are valuable and powerful, provided they work hard and stay true to themselves.... At least, that seems to be the intention.

I am leery about expressing negativity about a gentle, soft-speaking, award-winning children's book, but some of the characterization rubbed me the wrong way.  The goodness of characters is related to who or what they are born.  The princess is pretty and kindhearted while the poor girl is overweight, incompetent, and stupid.  The mice are ethically neutral while the rats are innately evil.  As my two or so readers might suspect, the latter detail irritates me almost to the point of being unable to finish the book.  Stereotyping rats as evil may sound benign to most folks, but this perception contributes towards the casual mistreatment and cruelty that people unquestioningly direct towards this species. 

There are many unpleasantly misleading passages in this book, but one of the least warranted is this: "Rats are not beautiful creatures.  They are not even cute." 

We stridently disagree.

Ash (by Malinda Lo)

Ash is (very loosely) a retelling of the Cinderella story.   Most of the classic elements remain, such as the abusive stepfamily, magical outfits, and the prince looking for a bride.  However, Ash isn't particularly interested in said prince.  Her infatuations lie with a mysterious fairy gentleman and the intriguing royal huntress.

I wanted to like this book more than I did, and I think that's because of the pacing, and characterizations.  The first half of the book dragged out without much happening except for Ash moping about how much he missed her mother and vaguely trying to get abducted by mischievous fairies whom no one ever sees but her.  The huntress barely even appears until halfway through the book, and both her and the fairy's significance are unclear until well towards the ending. As soon as Ash discovers what's going on and how she and everyone else feels, she sidesteps the major conflict and ties it all up in half a dozen pages.  None of the peripheral characters are particularly well developed, and the reader is left to assume their motivations half the time.

A colleague of mine loved this book, but for me it's an almost-but-not-quite there.

Elsewhere (by Gabrielle Zevin)

Elsewhere is no Geography Club.  It's been reviewed positively, which is why I sought it out, but in the end I couldn't surrender myself to the premise.

Fifteen year old Liz wakes up one day on a boat, and is convinced that she's dreaming.  Eventually she realizes that she's dead, and the afterlife is far different than anyone knew.  The boat takes her to Elsewhere, where the dead age in reverse until they're ready to be reborn as infants on earth.

There are unaddressed problems with the premise (for example: the human population grows exponentially so this system of recycling a constant number of souls could not satisfy the number of new births).  I understand that the premise is just a platform for the story; nevertheless, wobbly platforms are a pet peeve of mine. Other elements of the story rubbed me as a little too trite or simplistic.  Conflicts are overcome too easily, characters are too forgiving, and everyone is just a little too flat for my liking.

Overall, the book is about learning to choose happiness, accept what cannot be changed, and recognize/act upon what can.  I recognize and accept that this is not the style of story that can make me happy, so off I go to read other books...

Geography Club (by Brent Hartinger)

Geography Club rocks. 

The book is about a group of high school kids in small-town America who form a secret gay support-group that they call the Geography Club.  They figure that no one else will try to join such a boring-sounding club, so they'll be able to meet up and talk about their lives without raising any suspicions.  Like many queer folks in high school, they feel like they're  undercover in enemy territory, where survival depends on remaining safely closeted. They acknowledge that in bigger cities, schools have gay-straight alliances, but they don't believe that would be possible in their small-minded town.  This book was published seven years ago now, but I suspect that's still the overall feeling in much of the American "heartland."

Geography Club is a very inclusive outsider story.  The characters are all realistic, full of human imperfections and familiarly intense high school fears.  Gay or straight, most teens can identify with Russell's yearning to fit in and his fears of social alienation.  I like that he and his friends  fumble around and make selfish or short-sighted choices just like everyone I knew back in high school.    I also like that everything doesn't end perfectly.  It's well-written, charming, and doesn't slip into simplistic plot devices.   I'm looking forward to reading the sequel.

The Pit Dragon Trilogy (by Jane Yolen)

This week I reread some of my childhood favourite books: Dragon's Blood, Heart's Blood, and A Sending of Dragons, which together make up the Pit Dragon trilogy.  25 years after they were first published Jane Yolen has written a 4th book to round out the story, and this has spurred me to seek them out again.  I remember these books being meaningful to me in my pre-teen years, but could recall surprising little about their content.

Jakkin and Akki live on Austar IV, a formal penal colony planet where the economy  revolves around breeding and training the dragon-like native lizards for fighting exhibitions.  Jakkin dreams of training a successful fighter of his own, and in so doing, proving his manhood and earning his way out of the lower class of indentured servants ("bonders").

Each book is thematically distinct, and could almost work as a stand-alone novel.  Dragon's Blood, where Jakkin and Akki first cross paths, is a story of personal history, identity, and aspirations of adulthood and independence.   Heart's Blood introduces the confusion of a wider world rife with social rebellion and political manipulations.  Jakkin struggles to remain true to himself, his loved ones, and his way of life as he comes to terms with his new place in society.

A Sending of Dragons is chronologically continuous with the others, but feels very different.  Both as a child and an adult, I found this book less compelling.  My favourite character is absent, and Jakkin and Akki are no longer immersed in the complex and interesting society that was so integral to the first two books.  While several themes from the first books weave through this volume, on the whole it feels more like a digression than a conclusion.  I can understand why fans have been demanding for years that Yolen write a fourth book to let us all know what happens to Jakkin and Akki, and what form society on Austar IV takes once the competing political factions reach a settlement. 

The reviews I've glanced at suggest that the new book, Dragon's Heart, should satisfy readers like me.  Apparently, the style of the book fits with the original trilogy, which can be difficult to accomplish when a writer has done so much else during the intervening decades. I expect I'll get my hands on book four sometime in the next month or two, and I'll just have to stifle my curiosity until then.

You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When It Monsoons (by Mo Willems)

I love Mo Willems.  I love his neurotic Pigeon.  I love his cuddly Knufflebunny.  I love that he spent ten years writing for Sesame Street.  Mostly, I love the humour, joy, and relatability of his stories.

The latest Mo book to cross my path is a not a childrens' book at all, but a travelogue he wrote when he was in his early twenties.  Shortly after graduating from university, he took a year off to stomp across the world, creating one cartoon each day of whatever stuck with him most.  The drawings and captions convey the uprooted feeling of living out of a backpack and the fascination with all things human, both familiar and alien.  I was left with some serious nostalgia for own much less ambitious journeying.

Willems' youthful enthusiasm for adventure and unwashed clothing is wonderful, but I'd credit the strength of the book to his maturity 15 years post-journey.  He's included a great commentary alongside the original cartoons and captions that add depth to his vignettes, and show how his understanding of the world has grown in the intervening years.  I'd recommend this book to anyone with wistful memories of wanderlust, or with an interest in the way people navigate uncertain expectations, languages, toilets, and transport.

RASL (by Jeff Smith)

RASL is the latest series by Jeff Smith.  While he is best known for Bone, his lauded and loved childrens' comic, RASL is not a story for young folks.  My library initially catalogued it in the teen section accidentally.  That could have been awkward if we hadn't caught it, as we shelve Bone there as well.*

The characters of this sci-fi noir are darker than those in Bone, but still seem to possess a certain gentleness of spirit.  The premise is promising, and I have high hopes for the rest of the series.  As he's proven before, Smith knows how to craft a good story.

*Due, I believe, to historical reasons.  Bone was first published in trade paperbacks in the mid 90s, when many libraries didn't have a childrens' graphic novel section.