Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I finished Ursula Vernon’s Dragonbreath the other night, and it should be a nice addition to my 8-year-old son’s Christmas. He’s harder to choose books for than my older girls are–less of a bookworm, really–but Ursula Vernon is a nice middle ground between graphic novel and not, so to speak. (And she’s funny). I will say that I could tell Dragonbreath was written before the Hamster Princess books–Vernon has grown as a writer–but it’s still a perfectly enjoyable pilot, and I’m looking forward to the series. Danny and his friend complement each other nicely; their adventures are a fun mix of school story and madcap adventure. Vernon’s fabulous voice is definitely there, and mid-elementary schoolers should totally enjoy this one.

I’m sorry about Saturday, but it was a little nuts–I took my older two up to Davis County to see my niece’s high school production of “Footloose,” and there was cleaning before and after. Today, however, I need to review Maria Scrivan’s Nat Enough, which my friend ordered for me on her Scholastic Book Club Order back at the beginning of quarantine. I’ve had it stashed away, carefully hidden from my 11-year-old’s inquisitive eyes, until suddenly Thanksgiving was over and Christmas is barreling towards us and HOLY COW I NEED TO READ THE BOOK!

(A side note–that girlie of mine reads and re-reads AND re-re-reads–ad nauseam–any graphic novel she can get her hands on. Knowing this, I’m pretty careful about what I actually give her to keep. Anything she’s going to spend that much time with has to be a positive force in her life.)

Luckily for me, Nat Enough is both a quick read and an encouraging one. Nat’s best friend ditches her at the start of middle school, and while her initial desperate attempts to get her back are painful for a mother of 3 daughters to watch, her journey towards real friendship is a satisfying one. This is a faster read than a Telgemeier or a Jamieson, but it’s an important sort of story for tween girls to hear. Christmas morning, here it comes!

We’re having family pictures taken tomorrow, and after figuring out what to wear (something I LOATHE) and doing my best to juggle the things that sort of conflict, tonight I gave my hubby a haircut. One more thing off the list, right? There’s still plenty of laundry and Christmas prep there, of course, but I’m working on it!

My last task for tonight is to review Finding Langston, which has been sitting on my shelf for probably two years. (You know those books that are so short that you’re sure you’ll just zip right through it any day now?) I finally realized that it could work as a read-aloud with my 11-year-old, and we ended up both quite enjoying it. Lesa Cline-Ransome’s Langston is eleven and newly moved to Chicago with his father after his mother’s death. The city is noisy, crowded, and lonely for a country boy from Alabama, and the school bully only makes it worse. On the day he realizes that the George Cleveland Hall Library is open to all Chicago residents, however, his life slowly begins to change. Langston Hughes’ poetry “puts all the things he feels inside on the outside,” and ultimately helps him understand both of his parents better. Eleven-year-old Langston’s afternoons at the library also help change the dynamic at school, and slowly, his life begins to shift for the better.

This is a brief, poignant look at both personal and historical pain and what eases it. My girlie gravitates toward the emotionally rich–complex, even–and so I’m not saying that the average kid would necessarily fall in love with it; I’m also not saying that he or she wouldn’t. What I can say is that if you’re looking for an accessible novel about the Great Migration for middle graders, you can’t do much better than this one.

When I saw that Svetlana Chmakova’s newest graphic novel–The Weirn Books, Vol. 1: Be Wary of the Silent Woods–was a night creature sort of fantasy instead of a Berrybrook Middle School installment, I was surprised, disappointed (I do love the Berrybrook Middle School books!), and somewhat intrigued. Was it going to be like the Berrybrook books, except with magic? Was it going to be creepy (because it looked kind of creepy!)? Would I enjoy it as much as her realistic fiction? How about my girls?

The answers to those questions, respectively, are–sort of, sort of, yes, and it seems like it. (Conclusive, right?!) The world is certainly different, but so much about middle school age kids is universal; it felt really creepy at the beginning, ended up being less creepy than it seemed like it was going to be, but is still a certain level of creepy; it’s character-driven, adventurous, and universal enough to be just as enjoyable; and as for my girls? Well, one kept re-reading it until I told her I was TAKING IT BACK, and the other complained that “You could have told me it came out THIS YEAR and ended in a CLIFFHANGER!” (To which her sister replied that she didn’t think it was a cliffhanger. It was kind of a weird conversation.)

At the end of the day, this is a story about a mysterious house in the Silent Woods, a group of teenage friends (that could–minus the magic–be at my daughter’s school) who end up discovering why the woods are silent and find themselves in an epic battle with a disturbingly proper-looking villain, and–family. (In all its forms.) Given that my re-reading daughter doesn’t usually like fantasy (she bailed on Harry Potter partway into the second book), I’d say Be Wary of the Silent Woods should be a hit.