Foodie Books for Kids Review: The Year the Swallows Came Early by Kathryn Fitzmaurice

Several months ago, I went to a class – “Sharpening Your Senses” – at the Institute of Culinary Education.  We discussed how comfort food has nothing to do with haute cuisine or, indeed, any sort of quality; comfort food evokes memories and emotions, in spite of the sometimes dubious origins of the food.  Take macaroni and cheese.  I’ve made Ina Garten’s ultra-luxurious homemade version with the crispy bread topping, and I swooned when I ate it.  But it will never work for me on a chilly winter’s day or cheer me up on a rotten day like a box of the original Kraft macaroni and cheese (or Kraft cheese and macaroni, for those of you old enough to remember that).  I remember how grown-up I felt the first time my mom let me mix in the cheese powder, milk, and butter by myself, and I remember the delight in taking a “test bite” off the end of the wooden spoon.  I also remember how my mom would change it up sometimes and add cooked hamburger, though I don’t know if she did this for added nutrition, or because she was bored with the plain version, or both.  I don’t make the hamburgerized version now, but I still make boxed macaroni and cheese for Kiddo (granted, it’s Annie’s Organic these days) and I let her stir the ingredients together.  She’s never been interested in taking a “test bite” but she giggles when she sees me doing it.  Old habits die hard.

I was reminded of all this while reading The Year the Swallows Came Early by Kathryn Fitzmaurice (Bowen, Feb. 2009).  Eleanor “Groovy” Robinson plans on going to culinary school and becoming a chef when she grows up.  That is until her loving but irresponsible father gambles the money away that was being saved for her education.  Convinced there must be some confusion and wanting earn extra money, Groovy begins selling chocolate-covered strawberries at the nearby store that her friends own.  However, when Groovy comes to terms with what her father has done, she sinks into a depression and gives up cooking and baking.  Her mother and her friends try to snap her out of it with no success.  When the swallows return to their California town and her friends rally together, Groovy is able to see people for who they are and come to terms with the changes around her.  Groovy’s life comes into full focus and she knows what she must do.

First and foremost this is a story about forgiveness and the idea that, if you never forgive anyone, the anger “will turn you to stone.”  It’s also a coming-of-age story and we experience Groovy’s changing relationships with her mother and father as she matures.  Lastly, this is a lovely friendship story – Groovy’s friends are the lifeline that gets her through difficult times, and one gets a sense of this beach community’s strong ties to each other.  In many ways, I was reminded of Polly Horvath’s writing while reading this, particularly My One Hundred Adventures (but without the pseudo-magic-realism): it’s quiet, sweet, introspective, quirky.  I don’t read a lot of reviews that mention a book’s mood but, like Horvath, Fitzmaurice does a fantastic job of setting up the ambience of the story.  In the case of this book, the mood was slightly melancholic with lots of hope woven throughout, which is exactly the type of book I like to read in the autumn and winter.

So what about the food writing?  Fitzmaurice does an excellent job of describing an 11-year-old who loves to cook.  Groovy doesn’t make unrealistically elaborate meals (which just wouldn’t jive), but she makes chocolate-covered strawberries and fish sticks.  What makes her original and endearing is that she keeps a notebook where she collects the appropriate dishes for particular occasions: “Say you are needing to tell your parents about a worse-than-normal grade you got on a test.  I have a recipe for that: macaroni and cheese.  Or say you are wanting to ask for something new, like a pair of tennis shoes.  I have a recipe for that: French toast with whipped cream.”  And rather than cookbooks, some of Groovy’s recipes are made up but she admits that most of them are from Vogue and Bazaar because they are “the only ones Mama got.”  Lastly, Groovy’s naïveté is both age-appropriate and charming: “…I’d planned on becoming a real chef.  I’d planned on it so much it felt like my true destiny.  And with my favorite color being white, the actual color real chefs wore: it was meant to be.”

I only had one minor quibble with the story.  Groovy’s mother is really into astrology (“I wonder what sign Betty Crocker is,” Mama said one day.  “I bet she’s a Pisces.”).  I found this interesting and enlightening, as Groovy’s mother is the grounded one in the family; the feeling is that she is the responsible one because she has to be and astrology is her foray into something more cosmic and creative.  Or her way of making sense of things.  Not to mention that the astrology comments peppered throughout the story provide some light humor, particularly if the reader knows basic astrological traits.  So I was confused and, I must confess, a bit disappointed when Groovy’s mother forsakes this at the end of the book.  Instead of reading her horoscope in the paper, she goes to church with Groovy.  Why couldn’t she consult her horoscope and go to church with Groovy?  Why must it be one or the other?  I didn’t understand the necessity of making this change in the mother’s character, and it just tweaked me a bit. 

Overall, the book is cozy and lovely…just as your favorite helping of comfort food should be.  From a librarian’s perspective, it’ll need to be booktalked: the title and cover are vague enough that a kid won’t know what the book is about just by looking at it.  Nevertheless, for those quiet, more serious readers that go for more character development rather than plot-driven storylines, this will be a perfect match.  They’ll be sure to connect with Groovy on multiple levels.

 

Best first line(s): “We lived in a perfect stucco house, just off the sparkly Pacific, with a lime tree in the backyard and pink and yellow roses gone wild around a picket fence.  But that wasn’t enough to keep my daddy from going to jail the year I turned eleven.”

REVIEW: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

Well, let’s just get this out of the way: I loved this book. It was funny, sarcastic, foreboding, serious, political, smart. I haven’t read What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell yet…but all I can say is that it must be the best book written ever to have beaten Lockhart out for the National Book Award.

Frankie has always been “Bunny Rabbit” to her family: sheltered, protected, underestimated. Previously a bit homely, Frankie returns for her sophomore year to the exclusive private school she attends, except since May she has “gained four inches and twenty pounds, all in the right places.” This gives her an “in” to the world of the rich and beautiful and she begins to date the most popular guy in the school. Frankie observes her privileged classmates, realizing that she’ll never have the carefree confidence they have. She then finds out about her boyfriend’s secret society, closed off to all but the guys from the oldest, most privileged, most moneyed families (nothing sinister – just a bunch of guys drinking beer and playing pranks). It is at this point where a change happens in Frankie. She’s tired of being underestimated and it occurs to her that, no matter what she does, she’ll never be part of the club, never be one of the guys. There will always be doors closed to her. Frankie decides to do something about it.

There is a perfect storm here. Frankie is wicked smaht: debate team, good grades, sarcastic. She comes into her own and gains confidence based on her looks, her acceptance into an exclusive peer group, and her inherent ambitious nature. On the other hand, what gives her such an authentic teen voice is that one minute she has all this confidence…and the next the reader realizes that all Frankie wants is acceptance and love. Realizing she won’t get it from the people and situations around her, she reacts. And the reaction is her growing desire to infiltrate and embarrass them, to dominate them. This story is a fascinating psychological study.

What struck me is how many themes Lockhart manages to weave into the narrative, yet I never felt the story was heavy-handed, clunky, or cluttered. Certainly, Lockhart explores feminism, and how there are certainly paths and doors that are still shut to women, and especially to teen girls entrenched in the politics and social hierarchy of high school. I would argue that this isn’t the central theme, though: rather, the main subject matter is power. Who has it? How does one get it? What do you do with it once it has been acquired? Power changing hands, losing power, domination, conformity, leadership, authority, patriarchal structures. Feminism fits into this idea because Frankie doesn’t have any power at the beginning because she is female; in order to gain power, she fakes an identity and becomes male. Only then does she rise to leadership.

Frankie has become one of my favorite female characters ever written (but no one compares to Anne Shirley): smart, complex, sensitive, independent, observant, sarcastic, confident. Lockhart writes her beautifully. Interestingly, all the other characters in the book are stereotypes…but in a hazy, impressionistic way. It’s as if every other character in the novel is sleepy, loopy, trippy. Then you have Frankie in sharp relief, and we see her so clearly. Everyone else is asleep and Frankie is wide awake at 2 a.m., seeing things for how they really are.

Lockhart uses a narrator’s voice that occasionally butts in on the story to make some observations about Frankie, or predict where the story could be going, or even tell the reader exactly how things are going to go down. I read a review that criticized this technique; the reviewer said that it kept her from really feeling connected to Frankie. I didn’t feel that way at all. Frankie spends the whole book making razor-sharp observations about the people and world around her. It only makes sense that someone would also turn that on her and put her under the same scrutiny. I felt that, while she was watching everyone and I was hearing her observations, I was also observing her and making my own judgments and drawing my own conclusions. It was an effective writing technique.

I don’t know if I could say this is my favorite children’s/YA title for 2008…mostly because, if you had asked me a couple months, I would have sworn it was One Hundred Adventures by Polly Horvath. I’m wishy-washy that way: I’m horrible at committing to a single title as my favorite or as the best. Nevertheless, I can enthusiastically recommend it to you. This book makes me wish I worked directly with teens again – I would so love to put this in the hands of those disaffected, smart, beautiful young women that I’ve worked with in the past!

Other reviews:

BlogCritics Magazine

New York Times

Teen Reads

Bookshelves of Doom

Reading Rants!

What alcoholic beverage pairs best with your favorite children's book?

Examiner.com came out with a few fantastically awesome (and spot-on) lists of books to read with alcohol: beer, wine, and hard liquor.  I went through an embarrassing Victoria Holt stage in high school so I got a particular laugh out of the recommendation to read her with a glass of white wine.  I also snickered over the recommended pairing of Budweiser/Miller with America (The Book) by Jon Stewart - it's the perfect antidote to my overdose on election coverage.

So what about children's literature?  And young adult?  Am I the only one that does imbibe (sometimes) while reading?  What are some pairings you would choose?  I mean, obviously, you have to pair a raspberry cordial with Anne of Green Gables - that's a no-brainer.  Any others?  Here's a short list off the top of my head:

Beer:

- Sammy Keyes series by Wendelin Van Draanen (is it just me or is she Stephanie Plum in training?)

- Knucklehead: Tall Tales and Almost True Stories of Growing Up Scieszka by Jon Scieszka (totally!)

- Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan (probably something cheap and domestic...they are in high school, after all)

Wine:

- Sweet Valley High and Sarah Dessen's books are white wine books (I mean NO disrespect to Sarah Dessen by pairing these together!!!!  If it helps at all, SVH is a white zin and The Truth About Forever is a complicated, rich Viognier)

- Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series by Ann Brashares (totally white wine fare)

- My One Hundred Adventures by Polly Horvath and Miss Spitfire by Sarah Miller (these are Pinot Noir books - warm, cozy, lovely, complex but not weighed down)

- The Giver by Lois Lowry is a Zinfandel - Before I Die by Jenny Downham is a Zin too.

- The Luxe series by Anna Godbersen is soooooo champagne perfect!

Hard Liquor/Cocktails:

- Louise Rennison's Georgia Nicholson series is the perfect thing to read with a Cosmopolitan, anything pastel-colored, anything with -tini at the end of it.

- Whiskey neat: I think if Kiki Strike were to be an adult and a drinker, she'd go for a no-nonsense, tough-as-nails whiskey neat.  10 Cents a Dance by Christine Fletcher is a whiskey neat too, given the speak-easy nature of the setting.

- Harry Potter is challenging, but I would have to choose the pumpkintini I've been dreaming about for two years...you know, they drink all that pumpkin juice...get it???

- Lastly, I don't know if I'm getting the time period right here but doesn't it seem like you should drink mead with Good Masters!  Sweet Ladies! by Laura Amy Schlitz?

Eat, drink, and read children's books while doing so.

REVIEW: My One Hundred Adventures by Polly Horvath

You know how sometimes you read a book at a certain time in your life and it just…clicks? It’s the exact book you needed to read (you were meant to read) at that exact moment? That was My One Hundred Adventures by Polly Horvath for me.

This is the story of Jane Fielding, a 12-year-old girl who lives with her single mother and her siblings in a house on the beach. Through the course of a summer, she goes through that change. You know the one. Where she slowly begins to create a life outside of her family. Where she realizes that the adults in her life are fallible. Where at the same time she is realizing her parent has secrets, she is gathering secrets of her own. It’s the classic coming-of-age story.

I appreciated the way in which Horvath shapes this story. She portrays that age as confusing, saddening, and heartbreaking…yet there’s magic, light, and beauty found in the midst of the sadness. As the reader, you’re both intimately involved with Jane’s adventures…yet it also seems as if you’re floating above her watching it all happen, slightly detached. How can you be both? I don’t know, but somehow Horvath does it.

This book reminded me of Richard Peck’s A Long Way from Chicago and A Year Down Yonder: Adventures is written in vignettes with kooky unforgettable characters. This differs, though, in that there is a pensiveness to it, a certain naïveté and depth to the characters that I just didn’t get from Peck’s books. It’s all so bittersweet – you know the growing up must happen. Even Jane knows that the process of growing up has brought her so many adventures, and that is a wondrous thing. But there’s still sorrow about that with a side dish of worrying. There’s a bit of the adult perspective here, perhaps: as an adult reading this, I know where Jane is going in the growing-up process, and I’m reading this feeling nostalgic and sad for my own lost youth, feeling heartache for Jane because she is forever changed. A child reading this book will, no doubt, have an entirely different perspective. This is one of the most personal books I’ve read in a long time.

There are such beautifully crafted passages in this book; it’s difficult to choose just one to share with you or to extract it from the rest of the text. Nevertheless, I give you this gem:

So for now the house is still ours. But there is no joy. The house
is no longer a sanctuary. It may not always be a member of our
family. It may be taken from us as no family member can be, so what is it,
then? Only a house. I cannot afford to love it anymore.

That is one of the more melancholy passages but illustrates beautifully Jane’s lesson that part of growing up is making choices about what you will love and what you cannot. That sometimes you must close your heart to one thing so that you can give more to others. It’s incredibly poignant and totally believable that a 12-year-old has learned this lesson.

I felt a tight grip on my heart as I read that last page, and I was incredibly sad to have it end. Which is always the sign of a Good Read. And if I didn’t have a gargantuan stack of books waiting for me, I would immediately turn right back to the start of this one and read it all over again.

A must-read.


Other reviews:
Educating Alice
Welcome to my Tweendom
Bookami
And read School Library Journal's review via Amazon. It's spot-on.

DISCLAIMER: I am compelled to add that I'm disappointed with my own review. I use variations of "sad" way too much, giving you the wrong impression about this book. It's uplifting and hopeful, I swear! Connie Tyrrell Burns put it perfectly in her SLJ review: Horvath is a "word alchemist."