City of Orphans by Avi, 350 pp, RL 5

City of Orphans is now in paperback!

While I have read a handful of books by the prolific, Newbery Award winning author Avi, his most recent book, City of Orphans, is the first I have reviewed here! In 1991 Avi won the Newbery Honor for his book The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, a unique work of historical fiction in which the twelve year old Charlotte goes from a proper young girl to a mutinous pirate accused of murder as she sails from England to Rhode Island in 1802. In 1992 he won the Honor again for the the continually timely Nothing But the Truth, the story of a ninth grade student who is suspended for refusing to sing the National Anthem. In 2003 Avi, who has written over seventy books, won the Newbery Award for his work of historical fiction Crispin: The Cross of Lead, his fiftieth book, which is breathtaking. Set in the fourteenth century Crispin, a peasnt who did not know his own name until he was thirteen, is accused of a crime he did not commit, he is declared a "wolf's head" which means he can be killed on sight by anyone. Taking his family's only possession, a cross of lead, he flees his village and the adventure escalates. Avi continues Crispin's story with Crispin at the Edge of the World and Crispin: The End of Time. Avi is also the author of the Dimwood Forest series of six books featuring Poppy (also the title of the second book in the series) a determined deer mouse who befriends Ereth, a grizzled old porcupine. These books are perfect for readers who enjoyed Robert C O'Brien's Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH or readers who are not quite ready for Brian Jacques' Redwall series. And, I would be remiss if I did not mention these other bestselling titles by Avi: The Good Dog, the story of malamute McKinley, leader of the pack of dogs 300 strong in Steamboat Springs, CO, who's loyalty to his owner is threatened when a she-wolf tries to entice the dogs to abandon mankind and join the wolves and help replenish their diminishing pack. Murder at Midnight and companion book Midnight Magic are set in the imaginary kingdom of Pergamontio and throw together the unlikely duo of Magnus the Magician who does not believe in magic and his servant boy, Fabrizio, who does. In the first book the pair have to uncover clues to a murder of be found guilty of the crime themselves. In the second book (which was actually published first but chronologically comes second) the two have to rid the princess of a ghost, whether it is real or not. Finally, The Secret School is a fantastic book about Ida Bidson who, in 1925, wants nothing more than to finish school and become a teacher. Her dreams are jeopardized when her one room school in remote Colorado is shut down. With the help of her classmates she secretly takes over the teaching job and prepares herself, her best friend Tom Khol, and the rest of the students for the exit exams that will allow Ida and Tom to continue on with high school.

City of Orphans caught my eye because of the time period and setting - New York City, 1893. I read and loved Julie Chibbaro's marvelous book deadly that followed the life of Prudence Galewski, a sixteen year old girl with an interest in science who lands the job of secretary to the man assigned with tracking down Typhoid Mary. While the book reads like a medical thriller, the slice of life during this tumultuous period in the history of New York City is equally compelling. In City of Orphans, which is one of the rare works of historical fiction that features a boy main character - for some reason most seem to be girls - we meet thirteen year old Maks Geless, a newsie who hawks The World, one of many papers for sale at the time, for a profit of eight cents a day. A third person narrator tells the story, using the dialect of the day like a dusting of powdered sugar on a piece of gingerbread cake. The "'bouts," "gonnas," "'ems" and admonitions to "listen hard, 'cause this is important" draw you into the story. The third person narrator also serves as the perfect voice to describe the brutal realities of life in the tenements and make the reader aware of just how urgent life was then. Describing Maks's work day, the narrator tells us that he would buy a bundle of papers for seventy-two cents then spend the next five hours selling them for two cents each, making a profit only if he sold all forty papers in one shift. "You're probably thinking, eight pennies - that ain't hardly worth working all them hours. But this is 1893. these are hard times. Factories closing. Workers laid off. Not many jobs. Housing not easy to find. Fact, people are calling these days the 'Great Panic of 1893.' And the thing is, Maks's family's rent is due this week. Fifteen bucks! For them, that's huge." Maks's family, his two older sisters Emma and Agnes, aged sixteen and fourteen, and his three younger brothers, Jacob, Eric and Ryker, their parents and a border, Monsieur Zulot, all live on the fifth floor of a tenement building in a one room apartment. For a time, they even had an uncle, aunt and their children sharing the space. Papa, who was a boat builder back in the Netherlands, and Agnes have jobs at a shoe factory nearby. Mama takes in washing and Emma has just gotten a job as a maid at the newly opened Waldorf Astoria Hotel. The family barely gets by on the five incomes, six if you count the border, and struggles to save money to send Agnes, who is exhibiting the first signs of tuberculosis, to a doctor.

Les Wickes Hine/Library of Congress, Prints & Photograph Division

When we first see Maks, he has just sold all his papers for the day and is trying to make it home with his profit and money to buy another bundle of papers the next day. This, however, has become increasingly difficult since Bruno and his gang, the Plug Uglies, have been jumping the newsies selling for The World, taking their haul and breaking their limbs. The newsies think that Joe Gorker, a corrupt political boss who is frequently featured on the front page of The World (which also means that the newsies should headlines featuring his misdeeds all over the city) is behind these attacks. When Bruno and his gang give chase, Maks finds himself trapped in an alley doing the only thing he can think of, something he knows is useless since most of the police are corrupt and no one cares about kids immigrant kids in this city - he yells for help. Something stirs at his feet and next thing he knows a raggedy girl with a big stick comes out swinging, making contact and chasing the gang away. The girl is Willa, a homeless orphan who lost her mother and presumably her father, to tuberculosis some six months earlier. As a way of thanking her and keeping himself protected through the dark streets on the way home, Maks invites Willa to dinner. However, when they reach home they find the family in distress. A police officer has just been to tell them that Emma has been arrested for stealing a very valuable Breguet watch from the room of a patron. 

The Tombs 1890s from New York Looking Back

From this point on, page 42 to be exact, City of Orphans is a non-stop roller coaster ride that is a rich mixture of fascinating characters, suspenseful action, amazing settings and a mystery to unravel. Warily at first, Maks and Willa bond as they realize that they both need each other. Mr and Mrs Geless welcome Willa into their home and eventually their family as they come to rely on her as well. Because his parents are equally distraught, unable to miss work and unsure how to navigate the American penal system, it is Maks and Willa who go to the Tombs to visit Emma and bring her food. Knowing that his parents are too frightened and unaware of how to hire a lawyer to free Emma, Maks takes her fate into his own hands and tracks down a detective living in the tenements who might help him. Mr Bartleby Donck is almost completely deaf, clearly almost dead from tuberculosis and constantly scribbling on the papers that litter his desk and seemingly unwilling to help the children. However, he tells Maks that maybe he can hunt for clues himself and, through a connection with a former fellow Pinkerton agent, Donck gets Maks a job at the Waldorf so he can investigate the crime and find the missing watch. How these story threads - from Willa, to Bruno, to the Waldorf and Donck - all weave together by the end of the book is fantastic! As the narrator says at the start of the final chapter, "So there's the story. Too many coincidences? Or miracles? You decide. The thing is, it's all true." Once again, Avi has written a highly readable story filled with fascinating historical facts and unforgettable characters. Greg Ruth provides a handful of character sketches that only made me want to see more illustrations from the story. I think that City of Orphans, like all of Avi's books, would be a superb read-out loud in a fourth or fifth grade classroom or at bedtime for older listeners. I've included a few pictures that caught me eye here, but Avi, besides an author's note, has an excellent "For Further Reading and Viewing" section at the end of the book. You can also checkout the website for the Tenement Museum or visit it if you are in New York City.

Don't miss Dan Barry's great article for the New York Times, Read All About it! Kids Vex Titans! about the real newsies of New York City and when they went on strike in 1899, as well as the new Broadway musical adaptation of the the 1992 Disney movie musical Newsies.

A brief list of Avi books that are sure to appeal to everyone...

The Hero's Guide to Saving the Kingdom by Christopher Healy, 432 pp, RL 4

The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom is out in paperback and The Hero's Guide to Storming the Castle is out now!

The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom by Christopher Healy is a book that has caused me to do some serious thinking about what makes a book worth reading, the (sometimes unfortunate and unhelpful) perspective an adult reader can bring to children's literature and the value of doing something new that might feel old. I'll admit it - I was skeptical about this book at first. The title, the cover, the page count and the third person narrator who addresses the audience directly gave me pause. This felt familiar and, at first, a bit flimsy, but every time I put the book down I found myself picking it up again, wanting to know more about the characters and their plight. As I was reading the book, making notes and working on my review I read Adam Gopnik's review of The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom and Jennifer Neilsen's The False Prince, which is a Young Adult (teen) book, in the New York Times Sunday Book Reivew. To me, it seemed that Gopnik's review missed both the point and value of these two books. Above all else, The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom heralds (hopefully) the return of the prince in the medieval fantasy setting that, for many years, has been dominated by princesses - brave, battling, smart princesses, which we need, but almost exclusively princesses. The other fantastic thing that Healy brings to his debut novel is a big, welcome dose of humor that Diary of a Wimpy Kid-type books have cornered the market on for years. Best of all, this infusion of levity means that The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom is a great book for sensitive readers who love fantasy! While the witch of the story is a force to reckon with, The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom never even approaches the levels of grim darkness that has become a staple of middle-grade fantasy. Best of all, The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom is magnificently, perfectly, generously and amusingly illustrated by Todd Harris.

The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom tells the story of the four Prince Charmings, or Princes Charming (the four argue about the wording at one point in the story) that we think we know from classic fairy tales. How these four princes came to be known by only one moniker is a very clever plot point and the crux of the story. It seems that the storytelling bards from each kingdom have a skewed perspective when composing the songs that will tell the stories of the exciting events of the day and this is ruining the lives of the princes. The bards have also done a disservice to Zaubera, the witch. While she started off her life as a farmer, healer and dabbler in the magical arts, she was mocked, teased and shunned by her neighbors. When a fire-breathing beaver goes on a rampage through her town, she uses her magic to protect her farm, but drops the shield and usea it on three of the children (who had "insulted her daily") to save them from the flames. Her good deed goes unnoticed as Sir Lindgren galloped into town, kills the beaver and "rescues" the children from Zaubera. "The Ballad of the Knight and the Beaver" seals her fate and, rather than fight the spread of misinformation, Zaubera decides to  embrace the role of evil witch. She concocts a plan to kidnap all the bards and force them to write accurate songs about her wicked ways and maybe get rid of a few heroes doing so. The disenfranchised princes, unwittingly at first, get in Zaubera's way as they try to figure out their fates. The true stories of the Princes Frederic (Cinderella), Liam (Sleeping Beauty/Briar Rose), Gustav (Rapunzel) and Duncan (Snow White) are brilliantly conceived, richly detailed and their characters are well defined and well matched - to each other and their princesses. In a way, The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom is kind of a buddies-who've-been-dumped-by-their-princesses-road-trip book. When Ella finds Prince Frederic too sedate for her adventurous nature, she bows out of her engagement and begins to explore the kingdom she was always too busy working to experience. Prince Liam, a hero at heart, comes to the difficult decision that he cannot marry Briar Rose. This princess is a spoiled, selfish brat who wants to make up for time lot sleeping. Besides incurring her wrath, when Liam breaks off his engagement he also gravely upsets his greedy kingdom and even greedier parents. Worried about her big brother, the twelve-year-old Princess Lila takes a break from her true passions ("reading alchemy textbooks, dissecting grasshoppers, and designing elaborate imp traps) to help his cause. Prince Gustav, the youngest of seventeen brothers (and the only singleton born after two sets of octuplets...) desperately wants to prove his virility by rescuing a maiden but botches the whole Rapunzel thing and is mocked mercilessly by his brothers and the bard of the kingdom of Sturmhagen. After saving herself and restoring Gustav's sight, Rapunzel determines that she has a future as a healer and sets off to establish her own practice.

Finally, there is my favorite, Prince Duncan, who is prone to a "lifetime of astonishing coincidences." Duncan has come to believe that he has some sort of "mystical 'good luck' power" and takes some chances he really shouldn't. Also, Duncan is odd. Classifying his strangeness, the narrator says, "We all know somebody who's a bit eccentric - the girl who talks to herself, maybe, the boy who eats the erasers off pencils like they're gumdrops. They could be wonderful people, but thanks to their quirky behavior, they don't have the easiest time making friends. This was true of Duncan as well." A loner, Duncan stumbles across Snow White and is goaded into kissing her by the dwarves - a digression to mention another funny bit: The "persnickety" dwarves take issue with being called "dwarfs." After all, "if 'wolf' becomes 'wolves' and 'half' becomes 'halves,' they argue, why doesn't 'dwarf' become 'dwarves'? The Sylvarian dwarfs once started a war with the Avondellian elves simply because the elves were bragging about the fact that they got to pluralize with a V." Luckily for Duncan, Snow White was just as much a loner and outsider as the Prince of Sylvaria and the two wed and were mostly happy. Until Duncan got on Snow White's nerves. She was used to solitary pursuits and Duncan's odd habits, including shouting out the name of "every animal that ran through their yard (not the type of animal it was, but the actual name he thought it should have, like 'Chester,' 'Skippy,' or 'J.P. McWiggins)" among other quirks, began to grate on her nerves. When she suggests he take a walk by himself, he ends up hopelessly lost but, luckily enough, he stumbles across the path of the princes.

The setting for The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom is a familiar one and, as an adult who has read quite a lot of middle-grade fantasy and seen almost every fairy-tale themed movie that has come out in the last 20 years, Healy's setting feels very familiar. Todd Harris's animated and wonderfully copious illustrations add to this feeling. My critical mind viewed this negatively - at first. Then I realized that this seemingly routine setting is one that I love and am happy to visit again and again, and I know many others share this feeling. Even when I felt like I was treading familiar territory as the princes made their way across the kingdoms, I was always entertained and I have no doubt young readers will be as well. Like macaroni and cheese from a box, the fairy-tale-fantasy realm is one that kids seem to want to gobble up over and over and there's a good reason its been a staple of the fantasy genre for hundreds of years. Healy clearly loves this world that he created and the characters who inhabit it and that shows in his writing - and perhaps accounts for the length of this book. What Healy brings to this setting and genre is the skillful ability to take an in depth look at a convention and shake it up a little, but not entirely turn it on its head. Again, this is something that has been done before in books and film. Michael Buckley's phenomenal - and finished - Sisters Grimm series, Adam Gidwitz's A Tale Dark and Grimm, Gail Carson Levine's Ella Enchanted, E.D. Baker's Frog Princess series and Robin McKinley's Beauty all take a closer look at fairy tale characters and settings and add some twists. And, while I said that much of Healy's book felt familiar to me (not because he is mimicking the work of others, but because this is such a well tread territory) compared to these similar books in the middle-grade fantasy genre, it comes off as having quite a bit that is new and different to offer. The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom is closest in tone and content to Buckley's brilliant series, but different in noticeable ways. While Healy's book is as funny, if not funnier than Buckley's books (Deeb Rauber, the ten-year old Bandit King, and Puck are cut from the same prankster cloth for sure) Healy's book never approaches the darkly complex plot lines and antagonists that run throughout Buckley's series, despite the fact that Healy's characters are richly deteailed. There is only one wicked with in The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom and the henchmen she recruits (a very funny, mild mannered, well meaning giant named Reese and a dragon who is tamed by dwarves) never come close to the bad guys in The Sisters Grimm books, who are also much more plentiful in number. And, while both Buckley and Healy's books give us heretofore unknown glimpses into the lives of fairy tale characters, Buckley's is set in the world of today and features sisters Daphne and Sabrina as protagonists. Healy's book is set squarely in the medieval-fantasy-past and has one thing that I will champion about this book until the end of time: The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom has a male protagonist. Not just one, but four! And, as I said above, in this time of princesses and sisters doing it for themselves, these four guys and their trials and tribulations are a welcome addition to the shelves, giving boys a much needed fantasy book to read that is not as battle-oriented as John Flanagan's Ranger's Apprentice series or as dark as ND Wilson's 100 Cupboards trilogy. Healy ends his book with a very nice little twist that also just might point to another book featuring the League of Princes . . . Long live the Princes Charming!

I love Todd Harris's illustrations so much, I couldn't resist sharing everything I could find! However, you'll just have to read the book to find out who and what and where these come from in the book!

The Year of the Gadfly by Jennifer Miller, 327 pp, RL TEEN

I discovered The Year of the Gadfly by Jennifer Miller on a list titled 10 Ways to Relive Adolescence without Angst or Acne compiled by Kirkus Reviews. I am always on the lookout for "adult" books with teen protagonists and was excited to see this list. Of the ten books, two of which I have read The Year of the Gadfly sounded like the least potentially depressing book on the list. Books on the list I have read include Prep, by Curtis Sittenfeld, which was kind of depressing and The Magicians by Lev Grossman which, while a completely remarkable novel worth reading, is also ultimately on the depressing side. If you want to read another fantastic book about a teenager at boarding school after you finish The Year of the Gadfly, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks by E. Lockhart is much more uplifting despite Frankie's struggles. As I noted in my review of The Magicians, I was especially interested to read this particular book because, besides stellar reviews, it shared so many common elements with the children's and YA fantasy and I was curious to learn what makes a book with teenage characters an "adult" book. I came to the decision that ennui, apathy and depression seem to be overriding themes in these books, especially as the teenage protagonists grow into adults. And, the writing tends to be more complex, detailed and evocative, reflecting more of the inner thoughts of the characters which makes for a more challenging but also rewarding read. Happily, The Year of the Gadfly does not embody, or at least end, on those depressing notes for the protagonist and it does reflect a more complex style of writing, rich with vocabulary and ideas that are not usually found in YA books. I purposely do not reveal major aspects of the plot in this review because this book really is a mystery. This starred review from Kirkus sheds a little bit more light on plot details I have omitted, if you feel like you want to know more.

The Year of the Gadfly (the title has a dual meaning and is very cool) begins in August of 2012 with the first of three narrators, Iris Dupont, being driven to Mariana Academy, a prestigious boarding school hours outside of Boston. The Duponts have"officially' moved from their Beacon Hill home in Boston to move to the small town of Nye because Iris's father is opening a second Berkshires "resort for tourists who liked to experience nature while they had their leg hair singed off with lasers and their eyelashes dyed." However Iris knows that her parents and psychiatrist are worried about her seeming inability to cope with the suicide of her best friend, Dalia, six months earlier. Iris's grief seems to be manifesting itself in the frequent, vociferous conversations she has with Edward R. Murrow, her "spiritual mentor." Iris may be grieving and "arguing emphatically with the wall," but she comes across as anything but mentally unstable, depressed or anxious over the course of the novel. She is no Holden Caufield. And, her talks with Murrow seem to result in good advice most of the time. Iris's dedication to journalism and the fortuitous coincidence that the Duponts will be living in the home of Elliott Morgan, former head of Mariana Academy and father of Lily, former Mariana student who suffered some "awful tragedy as a teenager" that Iris's parents will not discuss with her because of her fragile emotional state are what bring this mystery into the light. Ensconced in Lily's room, which has not changed at all in the ten years since she graduated from high school, Iris is immediately drawn to the one empty shelf in the room, featuring (like a "bookstore staff pick") a book titled, Marvelous Species: Investigating Earth's Mysterious Biology, which is inscribed: To Lily, marvel of my life. Justin.

The second narrator in The Year of the Gadfly is Jonah Kaplan, PhD in microbiology from UCLA. Jonah, who considers the title "Dr." egocentric unless you "can save somebody's life," has been offered a very nice compensation package to leave his research at the University of Massachusetts where he has been examining "insect colonies that have been bamboozled by patterns of climate change," to give the students of Mariana a real education in science. But, it soon becomes clear that Jonah has other reasons for taking the job at Mariana. He is also a graduate of Mariana, a townie and scholarship student. The story unfolds with Iris and Jonah taking turns narrating, alternating with flashbacks to the a time more than ten years ago when Jonah, his twin brother Justin and their best friend Hazel were sophomores at Mariana. Jonah makes a tremendous impression on his already overstressed, overextended, overreaching students focused on ensuring their place at an Ivy League school with his bombastic lecture on the first day of class. He tells the class that "Difference is the essence of extremity!" and that this will be their class slogan, which allows him to immediately start badgering them for being followers. Iris listens to Mr. Kaplan intently, wondering, "What would Ed Murrow do?" She decides, declares to the class, that she wants to be an extremophile. Kaplan asks her, then the whole class, how they are going to achieve this extreme status? He tells them that rousing them from their "collective stupor is going to require an anathematic approach. A test of your courage. A display of your difference." For Iris, Murrow is the only other person she has ever heard speak about individuality and courage in this way.

Lily Morgan, circa 1999, is the third narrator in The Year of the Gadfly and she is the link that ultimately connects and separates Jonah and Iris. Iris and Jonah's paths are destined to cross, for so many reasons that I can't even begin to list them here. To do so would remove the mysteries woven into The Year of the Gadfly. Soon after school starts, Iris finds a copy of THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE ("Carrying the Torch of Prisom's Party Since 1923" New Student Edition) in her locker. The editors of this underground newspaper inform Iris that she is breathing in the "rarefied scent of privilege being taken for granted. Your copy of The Devil's Advocate is blank as a symbol of your own clean slate at Mariana. For the sake of this community (and your personal safety), we implore you: don't give us any muck to rake." A bit of investigating reveals that Prisom's Party, a highly secretive secret student group linked to the founder of Mariana Academy who was deeply interested in creating an educational environment where the ridicule, humiliation, belittling and hierarchy typical in an educational environment would be absent. Supposedly, Prisom's Party is charged with policing the student body (and teachers) and exposing hypocrisy and worse. Iris learns of  that Prisom's Party is responsible for having students expelled, teachers fired and worse, all in the name of justice. As Iris digs deeper into the actions and students behind Prisom's Party, she attracts their attention and is invited to join them (or become their target) if she can uncover vital information regarding Jonah Kaplan and his return to Mariana Academy.

Collective bullying, blindfolds, pig masks, fake names, secret entrances to underground tunnels, sleeping pills, artist colonies, demon symbols, hidden cameras, a clique of mean girls and an overprotected albino are just a few of the elements that make up the stories, past and present, that are revealed as the plot of The Year of the Gadfly unfolds. The adults in the story, namely Jonah Kaplan and his childhood friend and fellow Mariana alum Hazel Greenburg, do, to varying degrees, embody the sadness and dysfunction present in adult novels, but, from start to finish, this story belongs to Iris Dupont. She is a brilliant character I would definitely like to spend more time with. Being an investigative journalist, her story is more about uncovering other people's stories and she almost doesn't even need to have a best friend who committed suicide and an imaginary friend who was a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, but it does make her more admirable and endearing. While there was some deep sorrow and borderline mentally ill behavior in The Year of the Gadfly, none of it comes from Iris and she never feels in danger of being pulled under by it. Iris Dupont is indomitable and forward thinking and she even finds a way to turn the tragedy that she discovers and the unbalanced adult(s) behind it into an internship at the Boston Globe (and not the kind where she is "fetching coffee for some prima donna columnist") and the chance to return Marvelous Species: Investigating Earth's Mysterious Biology to its owner, now living in Boston.

I'd like to leave you with a memorable quote from The Year of the Gadfly,  spoken by Jonah:

So I knew Prisom's Party and I understood their tactics. They built an identity based on comparison: stronger than and smarter than. And they weren't alone. Every teenager in every corner of the planet, aside from aybe Iris Dupont, used this approach to combat loneliness and isolation. 

As I said above, The Year of the Gadfly shares similarities with books and movies that have come before, from Donna Tartt's The Secret History, which I read with glee, since it was set at a college very much like the one I had recently graduated from when it came out in 1992, and even the movies Heathers and Dead Poet's Society. I'm sure, to a certain degree, that any book set in an East Coast boarding school is going to have a large foundation of common details and I could go on and on with similar works, but The Year of the Gadfly feels like something more, a cut above. In part, it's due to the fascinating academics that Miller imbues the story with, from bugs to biology to ancient Greek but she also manages to dissect and take an intimate, almost scientific look at the social hierarchy of microscopic world that is high school. Teen readers will relate to this, adult readers will remember it. The academic, literary tone will appeal to adult readers and, hopefully, intrigue teen readers. An amazing, incredible book all around, I highly recommend The Year of the Gadfly.



Source: Review Copy

The Whizz Pop Chocolate Shop by Kate Saunders, 293, RL 4

I discovered the British author Kate Saunders because I was drawn to the cover of her 2009 book, The Little Secret. The fantastic cover and interior illustrations by Bill Carman proved every bit as wonderful a discovery as the writing of Saunders herself. In The Little Secret, Jane finds herself shrunken and held captive in a miniature kingdom of fairies and elves that exists inside an elaborately painted box. In The Whizz Pop Chocolate Shop, with great cover art by Tyson Mangelsdorf, the magic is all in our world, London to be exact. When we first meet eleven-year old twins Oz and Lily, it is the start of summer break and they are driving to 18 Skittle Street to check out the house that their father has inherited from his (long dead) great-uncle Pierre. The house was the workshop for the Spoffard Bros., Established 1927, with Uncle Pierre living upstairs. The family business was chocolate making, but not just any kind of chocolate, magical chocolate, run by triplet brothers, Pierre, Marcel and Isadore. The brothers learned the art of chocolate making from their father and from their mother, magic. It ended abruptly in 1938 when all three brothers died when the tram they were riding on crashed into the Thames. With a baby on the way, the Spoffard family moves into their roomy inheritance and the story takes off.

Their first night in the house Lily and Oz meet Demerara (a kind of golden, unrefined sugar and a brilliant name for a cat!) and Spike, the immortal cat and rat, who fill them in on the family history. It turns out that Marcel and Pierre were murdered by their greedy brother Isadore. The magical chocolate that the Spoffards sold did things like make you a better dancer, give you curly hair, give you a deeper voice or cure an illness. In their workshop, the brothers also experimented with chocolate creations that could allow pets to talk, which Pierre tested on Spike and Demerara. And, in secret, Isadore created an immortality chocolate that he also tested on himself and Demerara and Spike, who have been alive since the 1920s. Jealous and furious that the love of his life, Daisy, chose to marry his brother Marcel, Isadore's desire to be the sole proprietor of immortality chocolate brought about the downfall of the business and the end of his family. Suspicious of their brother's experiments, Pierre and Marcel hid their magical chocolate molds from Isadore before they died. Unable to make more of the immortality chocolate, even though he has already accepted a downpayment on the supply he sold to the Nazis, Isadore goes into hiding and spends decades trying to find those molds. Demerara and Spike remain in the empty workshop, guarding the recipe books left behind - and one of the molds. After catching Lily and Oz up on these dramatic events, they enlist the twins - along with the local witch, who turns out to be their new neighbor, eleven-year-old Caydon - to find the missing molds because it seems that Isadore is still trying to sell his immortality chocolate, this time to a group of terrorists known as the Schmertz Gang. 

At this point, The Whizz Pop Chocolate Shop takes an unexpected, very cool turn that I never saw coming. This is not your traditional fantasy story with magic and spells and fairies and ancient things. Think James Bond meets Roald Dahl and you have a great idea of how the rest of the plot of The Whizz Pop Chocolate Shop unfolds! The children learn all this when they escort Demerara, in a cat carrier, and Spike, hidden in a backpack, to the M16 building where they are ushered into the offices of the SMU - the Secret Ministry of the Unexplained. Aside from all sorts of cool gear and magical accoutrements that allow the children and an SMU agent to go diving in the Thames in search of one of the golden molds, the SMU put a spell on parental types that keeps the kids' parents oblivious to the increasingly dangerous things they end up doing. The dive for the golden mold is successful, but, in an underwater attempt to steal the mold, Isadore ends up kidnapping Oz. From there it's a mad dash to find Oz, and an even madder dash for Isadore and Oz to run from the Schmertz Gang, who want their chocolate and are willing to blow things up to get it. Just when it seems like things will be put to right, Oz gets a vision of the future that changes everything.

While the plot details of The Whizz Pop Chocolate Shop are creative and fantastic, Saunders excels in her the characters she creates. Oz is a modest, violin playing genius. Lily is is dyslexic, tired of being tutored and overly anxious about change. Demerara is a vain, bossy cat who likes to  borrow Lily's nail polish and Disco Glitter Body Gel. Demerara, who is always hungry also accidentally swallows a magical cacao bean she  is keeping safe in her cheek in preparation for a spell that causes her to grow to the size of an elephant. With Lily and Caydon on her back, she heads off down the street and straight into the local McDonalds where she proceeds to eat all the burgers and fries and do tremendous damage that has to be wiped from the minds of everyone in the vicinity by the SMU. Then there is the immortal Isadore. Grubby, unkempt and unconcerned when he first kidnaps Oz, Isadore gradually changes the longer he is around the boy. While the Schmertz gang are clearly the bigger threat, Isadore initial lack of concern for anyone but himself makes his change over the course of the story deeply rewarding - moving, even. And, while Spike and Demerara are infinitely entertaining in The Whizz Pop Chocolate Shop, my favorite character has to be Edwin, the ghost elephant, who is kept in a cage in a hidden network of cellars filled with cages where the SMU keeps unexplained animals. Edwin, when he was alive back in the 1920s, was a very popular attraction and he even used to give children rides. When he died of extreme old age, he stayed in his cage. He never bothered anyone and no one very saw him, so he was allowed to stay until they needed the cage. At that point, he was moved to a cage in the SMU cellars, although he can go wherever he wants.

Other books by Kate Saunders available in the US

Source: Review Copy

20 Big Trucks in the Middle of the Street, by Mark Lee, illustrated by Kurt Cyrus

20 Big Trucks in the Middle of the Street, written by Mark Lee and illustrated by Kurt Cyrus, is the straightforward kind truck book that little kids (ok, who am I kidding? Boys...) love. And, as the parent of two boys who went through serious truck infatuation (remember those t-shirts that had the wrap-around illustrations of trucks with all the parts notated? I invested a lot of money in those!) I still find myself drawn to truck books - although I have stopped yelling out trucks as I spot them while driving around town. 20 Big Trucks in the Middle of the Street  is perfect for little truck lovers! Not too much text, naming of the trucks and 20 Big Trucks in the Middle of the Street even rhymes. Kurt Cyrus has illustrated (and written and illustrated) many picture books as well as the hilarious Pals in Peril series by M.T. Anderson, the fist book of which (Whales on Stilts) I have read and thoroughly enjoyed and promise to review here very soon. His illustrations for 20 Big Trucks in the Middle of the Street are perfect! They focus in on the trucks and show all the vital parts and are colorful and crisp.

The story in 20 Big Trucks in the Middle of the Street is very clever also. A boy is riding his bike when he sees the ice cream truck breakdown in the middle of the street. Because the street is so narrow, no one can get passed the truck and soon a traffic jam begins and a crowd gathers. At first, now one can hear the little bike riding boy's solution to the problem but once they do, trucks are in actions and trucks are on the move! And, the little boy even finds himself with an ice cream cone in hand after helping to get those twenty trucks out of the middle of the street!

Source: Review Copy