A Certain Slant of Light

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Adele Brand’s The Hidden World of the Fox, which is a book that is partly about foxes but also partly about reactions to the rise of urban foxes in the UK… which I’m sure is a worthy and noble thing to write about, but I definitely wanted more fox anecdotes and inter-fox drama and just general focus on The Fox Life.

I also continued my Newbery Honor reading with Gary D. Schmidt’s The Wednesday Wars, which is set in the 1960s and features a seventh-grade boy reading Shakespeare with his teacher when they are left alone on Wednesday afternoons while the rest of the class goes off to receive religious instruction. (Holling is a Presbyterian, so he has neither a confirmation nor a bar mitzvah to prepare for.)

I’ve mentioned before, I think, that there’s basically a genre of children’s book whose purpose is to Introduce Children to High Culture. (Yes: I mention it in this review of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, clearly the noblest example of the genre.) I must say I sighed when I saw that The Wednesday Wars was doing Shakespeare, because everyone does Shakespeare, but actually I ended up enjoying it more than expected: it’s fun to see Holling and Mrs. Baker argue about the plays, like hitting a tennis ball back and forth.

What I’m Reading Now

Continuing on in Gary D. Schmidt’s Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy. I’m finding it tougher going than The Wednesday Wars, even though it’s by the same author; I think it’s because I’ve spent most of the book waiting for the interracial friendship between Lizzie Bright and Turner Buckminster to blow up in their faces, Fox and the Hound style, which is an expectation that creates a certain resistance to reading onward.

(Schmidt is continuing his quest to Introduce Children to High Culture, this time with the Aeneid, a choice which tickled me because I don’t think I’ve seen a children’s book tackle that one before. OTOH, given how The Aeneid ends for Dido, this is not actually making me feel better about the Fox and the Hound possibilities in Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy.)

I’ve also started Ingrid Law’s Savvy, which is not historical fiction THANK GOD. I like historical fiction as much as the next person (indeed, probably more), but the Newbery Honor books of the 2000s are VERY historical fiction heavy, so it was a relief to find that this one was a contemporary fantasy novel.

What I Plan to Read Next

DID YOU KNOW that Elizabeth Wein has a new book out, White Eagles? Like Firebird, it has not been (and looks like it will not be) published in the US, but fortunately littlerhymes has kindly agreed to send me a copy.

As I recall, I ended up sending Firebird onward to another interested American reader, and I’d be happy to do that again with White Eagles, although given the speed of international mail these days (sloooooooow) possibly we should wait to organize it till I’ve actually got the book.

E. L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler has but one flaw: she told the story of two runaway children living in a museum so well that no one since has dared to touch the topic. I want a whole genre of stories about children living in museums, damn it!

But this unfortunate side effect of its flawlessness is the only thing I can criticize about the book, because otherwise it is 100% pure distilled awesome. Claudia and her little brother Jamie run away from home to live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

(Have I mentioned before that I think there is a children’s book conspiracy designed to teach young readers that high culture is totally awesome? I’m pretty sure there is. Blue Balliett may be the newest member.)

On that note: how much do I love that Claudia runs away from home in search of educational opportunity? She’s like, “We’re living in a museum! We’re going to use this time wisely and learn things!” Jamie is at first appalled, but eventually he gets as much into the museum as Claudia does - especially after they team up to figure out whether the Met’s new sculpture really is a Michelangelo.

I love the friendship that grows between Claudia and Jamie. At the beginning of the book, they’ve always taken each other for granted - they’re siblings, the other is just always there, and they’ve never been close. But once they run away together, and especially once they’ve got a project, they become a team.

And how cool is Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, the crotchety yet awesome old lady who narrates the book? Her voice only intrudes occasionally, as we’re mostly focusing on the adventures of Claudia and Jamie, but she’s always incisive and hilarious. She’s the first amazing old lady that I remember reading about, and I’ve loved that sort of character ever since.