Yesterday, Elizabeth and I spent most of the day at Pritchard Beach lying in the sun, playing Scrabble, and then paddling around when we got too hot. It was wonderful.
So I went back today with some appropriately light summer reading. I didn’t stay very long. This was a terrible book.
Janna lives on a planet that was once colonized by Earth and then left on its own. But when the “offworlders” return, the developing civilization is thrown off kilter. Everyone in her settlement is killed when she is fourteen and she and her boyfriend (later husband) set across the icy plains to find other settlements. Janna loses her child, then her husband, and finally arrives at a refugee camp where she is mistaken for a boy because of her clothing. Because it seems safer to appear as a boy, she continues the charade until the distinction between male and female become blurred in her own mind. She travels through the countries on her planet, which mirror those of Earth, seeking a home and family. It is only when she starts helping medical offworlders that she realizes her whole planet has a name–and it is then that she finds her own identity.
This was an interesting novel and McHugh has such a vivid and original imagination that it almost makes up for the mediocre writing. McHugh’s short, choppy sentences reflect Janna’s character, but they don’t capture it. I felt very distanced from her motivations. For instance, I never really understood the male/female issue, her relationships with others, or why she always picks up and leaves. There are so many different themes that it’s impossible to explore each as it deserves.
Thirteen-year old Jenny is uprooted from her Manhattan home when her mother marries an Englishman. They move to an old estate in the English countryside, which is peopled by strange creatures, such as the boggart that haunts the kitchen. The whole house is strange and scary, and Jenny eventually meets Tamsin, a ghost who died over three hundred years before. Jenny starts investigating the reason Tamsin still floats among the living, and in the process, delves into English history.
Beagle does a fabulous job. Not only is his thirteen-year old character convincing, but he weaves in traditional English folklore to deliver a riveting tale. Highly recommend.
Now that I’ve read the last Harry Potter, I’ve been scouring the Internet for recommendations on other children’s books, or even well-written fantasy. (I have to confess that I have a prejudice against fantasy because there’s so much really BAD stuff out there, and besides, it conjures up images of strange dungeons and dragons types who carry around their weird dice and dress in robes.)
In any case. I read the first of William Corlett’s The Magician’s House Quartet a couple of years ago. The Seattle Public Library had the second, so I checked it out.
The plot line of the quartet goes something like this: Three siblings join their aunt and uncle in Wales for school holidays because their parents are off somewhere (I can’t remember where, that was in the first book.) There is a magician who lived in the very old house they are in, and who makes himself known to the children because he needs their help. There are animals they talk to; they can even go into their bodies. There’s something about alchemy.
I liked The Door in the Tree, just as I liked The Steps up the Chimney, but I’m having a really hard time summarizing it. Simply put, I read the first book so long ago that I’m having a hard time remembering what happened. The second does not stand well on its own.
In terms of mood, however, it is excellent, setting a similar tone to Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising. The library doesn’t have the second two books, and I don’t think I’m interested enough to seek them out actively. Still, if someone were to drop them in my lap, I would happily read them. And the boxed quartet would make some kid a fine gift.