The Incredible Magic of Being by Kathryn Erskine

Precocious nine year olds can be exasperating and when you’ve got a heart disease and a helicopter mother, you are a uni-sensor (someone who knows things before or as they happen), and a science nerd, it can be a bit much. Julian is just such a person. He, his moms and his sister, Pookie,  move from Washington, D.C. to the boondocks of Maine to open a bed and breakfast. Upon arriving they receive a notice that their elderly neighbor, Mr. X, is suing them to demolish the addition they put on the house for the B&B because it hinders his view of the ocean.

Pookie suggests Julian go over and befriend Mr. X in hopes that he change his mind, thus beginning a relationship between Julian and Mr. X, who recently lost his wife to cancer, and has been described as a lonely man with nothing to live for.

The Incredible Magic of Being by Kathryn Erskine (author of Mockingbird among other tween books) describes exactly that…the magic of being alive, the magic of the world around us, the magic that is family. Everyone in the book, Julian’s moms and sister, Julian,  and Mr. X all have issues that they must deal with. But it’s Julian’s positivity (is that a word?) that shines through and, in many instances, gets people through their issues.

Julian is a science nerd and through Julian, The Incredible Magic of Being cites many scientific facts and theories. It also has “farts”, Facts and Random Thoughts, at the end of each chapter, some of which we learn from (facts) and some of which are merely random thoughts. (Julian is a font of information and I got the feeling that he is on the autism spectrum somewhere, although that might not have been the author’s intention. Caitlin, in Mockingbird, has Asperger’s Syndrome, by the way.)

The one thing about science, according to Julian, is that whether or not you believe it in, it is there. And the fact that we don’t believe or understand it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. So, when Julian talks to his best friends in parallel universes, you’ve just got to believe. When he can sense occurrences in other locations, you just have to believe. When he describes his sister as a black hole, you’ve got to believe.

I love upbeat characters. In some ways, The Incredible Magic of Being reminds me of Soar by Joan Bauer whose main character also has a heart problem but won’t let it keep him down. I think kids will relate to Julian and his teenage sister and enjoy his thoughts and escapades. The Incredible Magic of Being is a fun, light read even though the subject sounds kind of heavy. Have fun with it and even learn something, such as what the Messier Objects are.

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Top Ten 2011

For a while, I thought I’d be hard pressed to come up with a 2011 Top 10 list for YA books. It was only in the past two weeks that I heaved a sigh of relief. Late reads solidified my list. So, here goes:

Topping my list at Number 1 is You Are My Only by Beth Kephart. I commented that, “As always, Kephart chooses her words with care, and while the language is not as ‘ethereal’ as in some of her recent books, her images and descriptions and wording remain essential in understanding the characters and surroundings.  There are secrets that need to be unearthed and things to ponder.  There are relationships that you are jealous you are not a part of and those you are glad you have not experienced.  You can read You Are My Only quickly and enjoy the story or you can read it slowly and savor every word and nuance and description.  Either way, you must read Beth Kephart’s latest addition to Young Adult literature.”

Night Circus by Erin Morganstern may or may not be considered a YA book, but I’m sure it will appeal to teens, so it comes in at number 2. It takes place in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The Night Circus is dream-like.  Celia and Marco are unwilling pawns in a competition between two magicians, one that will last years, if not decades.  The competition’s only rule: there are no rules and neither player knows what to do and how a winner is determined. Erin Morgenstern has written a dream-like book similar to the dream state of the book’s Circus of Dreams.  It’s indescribable.  A must read.

Life: An Exploded Diagram by Mal Peet, a late comer to my 2011 reading, lands the number 3 slot.  Peet masterfully merges two stories, the first about England during WW II and and the second about the Cuban Missile Crisis into a book you can’t put down. His language, his sarcasm, his observations, his stories keep you reading way past bedtime.

Any Top 10 without a Brian Selznick book is lacking, so I must include Wonderstruck. Ben lives in Gunflint, Minnesota in 1977.  Rose is a lonely deaf child, living in Hoboken, NJ, overlooking the Hudson River, in 1927. Similar to Mal Peet, how these two stories, taking place 50 years apart, converge is one of the wonders of Wonderstruck.    There are more, such as the fact that Ben’s story is primarily written while Rose’s story is presented entirely in illustrations.  Selznick’s illustrations entice the viewer to scrutinize every line, every object, every picture, they are just so amazing. While you’re at it, reread The Invention of Hugo Cabret. I’m sure you’ll find something new in each drawing.

You know how much I love Joan Bauer and Close to Famous was as good the second tiem around as it was the first time. Number 5 on the list, it’s got great characters, a good story, and luscious sounding baked goods. It teaches you how to overcome adversity.

Coming in at nubmer 6 and 7 are Liesl and Po by Lauren Oliver and Widsom’s Kiss by Catherine Gilbert Murdock, two wonderful fairy tales with amazing characters, wonderful writing and absorbing stories. Liesl and Po is geared more for upper elementary or lower middle school while Wisdom’s Kiss is for slightly older audiences.

Eona: The Last Dragoneye by Alison Goodman is an action adventure with roots in Chinese astrology. The sequel to Eon: Dragoneye Reborn, it is action packed. This will attract boys and girls since there are  protagonists of both sexes. It is a marvelous way to introduce teens to the 12 astrological signs.

Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine got great reviews and rightly so. Twleve year old Caitlin has to deal with the death of her mother from cancer two years earlier and the recent middle school shooting death of her older brother Devon.  It’s a lot to contend with even if you don’t have Asperger’s.  While her father understands her, he must deal with his grief, and is unable to translate that to Caitlin.  It was Devon who really understood her and explained the world to her.  Caitlin’s special nature comes through loud and clear; her drawing ability, her affinity for dictionaries and the meanings of words, the comfort she feels when she puts her head under the couch cushions to feel closer to those people who sat on it.  Erskine doesn’t downplay the socialization difficulties Asperger children have because of their unique nature.  What you come away with after reading Mockingbird is a real sense of who Caitlin is–she is a real person and you want to get to know her, to be her friend.  There is a love and warmth that emanates from Erskine’s writing…you get the feeling she really loves Caitlin, not an emotion you often get when reading a book.   I had picked up Mockingbird back in mid-September and put it down within a chapter.  I guess I wasn’t ready for the book.  This time, I read the book in one day; that’s how much I liked it.  Mockingbird is a book for all age groups.  It is beautifully written, tender and informative as well.  It is worthy of its award (not something I can say about every award winner).

Forgotten by Cat Patrick was an unexpected find. Each night at precisely 4:33 am, while sixteen-year-old London Lane is asleep, her memory of that day is erased. In the morning, all she can “remember” are events from her future. London is used to relying on reminder notes and a trusted friend to get through the day, but things get complicated when a new boy at school enters the picture. Luke Henry is not someone you’d easily forget, yet try as she might, London can’t find him in her memories of things to come. When London starts experiencing disturbing flashbacks, or flash-forwards, as the case may be, she realizes it’s time to learn about the past she keeps forgetting-before it destroys her future.

I hope you pick up a few of these books and enjoy them as much as I did.

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Asperger’s Take 2

In Jennifer Roy’s Mindblind, 15 year old Nicholas has Aspberger’s Syndrome.  Whereas in Kathryn Erskine’s Mockingbird, Caitlin is 11 years old and her special interest is dictionaries, in Mindblind 15 year old Nicholas has an aptitude for mathematics.  (Although he doesn’t fit the formal definition of genius, of which he is obsessed, Nicholas comes darn close.) There is a huge maturation that occurs between 11/12 year olds and 15/16 year olds, so while in Mockingbird, Caitlin is trying to figure out what is socially acceptable and what isn’t, Nicholas has it pretty well sorted out.  Whether he acts on it or not seems to be a conscious decision on his part.

While in both books, the community at large is accepting of its ‘Aspies’, the big difference between the books is that Nicholas’ father can’t accept what Nicholas is.  Despite his aversion to crowds and loud noises, his father wants Nicholas to be a normal teenager and forces him to go to a party.  The fact that Nicholas has friends (whereas Caitlin was still working on that) and is relatively normal doesn’t satisfy his father.  You can imagine the results. 

As with Kathryn Erskine’s story, Roy reiterates that with early detection and intervention (in this case, from Nicholas’ mother), Nicholas is a ‘normal’ or in his words ‘neurotypical’ teen.  Roy, too, has created characters that readers can relate to, want to relate to, want to meet and get to know.  I’m glad I read Mockingbird first and Mindblind second because I can now imagine how Caitlin turns out and that adds a special element to the story.

The merits of both Roy’s and Erskine’s books are too numerous to mention.  The writing, the story, the characters all shine.  Bringing Asperger’s Syndrome to the forefront, as does Francisco X. Stork in Marcelo in the Real World (I just had to mention him again) does a tremendous service.  These three books form an Asperger’s Syndrome Triumvirate and should be on everyone’s reading list.  Educate yourself while giving yourself a treat and read Mockingbird, Mindblind and Marcelo in the Real World.  (I wonder if there’s any significance to the fact that the titles of these books begins with the letter “M”?

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Asperger’s Take 1

Unbeknownst to me, I picked up two Young Adult books recently in which the main character has Asperger’s Syndrome: the National Book Award Winner Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine and Mindblind by Jennifer Roy, the award winning author of Yellow Star.  Since I’m in the middle of the latter book, I’ll talk about Mockingbird.  (By the way, I must mention Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork, another marvelous book on the subject.)

Twleve year old Caitlin has to deal with the death of her mother from cancer two years earlier and the recent middle school shooting death of her older brother Devon.  It’s a lot to contend with even if you don’t have Asperger’s.  While her father understands her, he must deal with his grief, and is unable to translate that to Caitlin.  It was Devon who really understood her and explained the world to her.  While an element of Mindblind and Marcelo deals with a parent who doesn’t understand the idiosyncracies of his (it seems to be the plight of the father) older Asperger’s child, Erskine in her Author’s Note, explains the need to understand each human’s potential and limitations, and rather than dwelling on the conflict of misunderstanding, would rather dwell on the concept of understanding and early intervention.  And she does an excellent job of it.

Caitlin’s special nature comes through loud and clear; her drawing ability, her affinity for dictionaries and the meanings of words, the comfort she feels when she puts her head under the couch cushions to feel closer to those people who sat on it.  Erskine doesn’t downplay the socialization difficulties Asperger children have because of their unique nature.  What you come away with after reading Mockingbird is a real sense of who Caitlin is–she is a real person and you want to get to know her, to be her friend.  There is a love and warmth that emanates from Erskine’s writing…you get the feeling she really loves Caitlin, not an emotion you often get when reading a book.

I had picked up Mockingbird back in mid-September and put it down within a chapter.  I guess I wasn’t ready for the book.  This time, I read the book in one day; that’s how much I liked it.  Mockingbird is a book for all age groups.  It is beautifully written, tender and informative as well.  It is worthy of its award (not something I can say about every award winner).

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National Book Award Nominees

There are two universal truths when it comes to me and book awards:

1.  I have read very few books on the list and

2.  I disagree about the ones I have read.

And so it goes with the National Book Award nominees this year.  I have only read one book on the list and it is the YA book My Name is Not Easy.  And, of course, I don’t think it’s deserving of a nomination.

My inital thoughts, as jotted in my Librarything review were: 

“In her Author’s Note, Debby Edwardson describes the lack of schools near Alaska’s remote villages in the 1960s and the need to send even young children hundreds of miles away to school.  She also describes Project Chariot, a plan to create an Alaskan Harbor by detonating nuclear blasts, and the military’s Cold Weather Research using iodine-131 on Alaskan children and adults.  While My Name is Not Easy describes these deplorable incidents through the reminiscences of several children at Sacred Heart School, it does not do them justice.  Rather than concentrating on the high emotions these acts might have generated, the book is more a light hearted three year diary of Luke, Chickie, Donna, Amiq and several other students.  It merely touches on these issues and the antagonism between Alaskan Eskimos and Indians.”

I thought the characters were one-dimensional and the writing adequate.  I concluded by saying ” There is a more informative, absorbing story waiting to emerge regarding these historic events.”  I still believe that.

I will not deny that Edwardson has opened up a whole new world to me that I didn’t know existed, and if that’s the criteria for nominating a book, then so be it and I stand corrected.  However, when compared to last year’s winner, Mockingbird, by Kathryn Erskine (which I just finished–more on that in my next post), there is no comparison.  Erskine reinforced the world of Asperberger’s Syndrome to me, as I learned it from Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork, and did it with wonderful writing, marvelous characters and a great story.

So, my record of having read few of the National Book Award nominations and my disagreeing with the decisions goes unscathed.

By the way, this obviously is my humble opinion and you are free to disagree–I actually encourage it.

Thanks for reading this.

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