Chasing Ray

On mountains and yachts and Italian princes. Really.

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 23:34:52 -0800

Mount Bona:

"Finally, to the northwest, some two hundred miles off, a conical peak soared up....apparently of even greater height than the other two [Lucania and Bear]. This was christened the Bona, after a racing yacht then belonging to H.R.H."

(Excerpt from the The Ascent of Mount St. Elias by H.R.H. Prince Luigi Amedeo Di Savoia, Duke of the Abruzzi, 1900, p.160. by Filippo de Filippi)

And that my friends is how a mountain in Alaska ends up with the name of an Italian prince's yacht. At least the Duke of Abruzzi was a real mountaineer and not just some prominent guy who never climbed a mountain in his life but got a permanent memorial (I'm looking at you William McKinley).

I learned about the history of Mt. Bona's name from The American Alpine Journal Vol. XI, Number 2, 1959 which contained the delightful article "Naming Alaska's Mountains" by Francis Farquhar. I have fallen madly in love with the AAJ which is primarily comprised of first hand accounts of climbing and other mountaineering topics that are delightfully not about posing but being prepared. There is also a lot of science which makes me especially happy.

I found this volume while sitting on the floor of a great used bookstore with a massive selection of mountaineering and Alaska books. It was less than $10 which from wandering around the web is apparently a killer deal on old volumes of the AAJ. (Score!!) I wandered through a couple of dozen old issues looking for Alaska articles but never thought I would find one this cool. It fit so perfectly into something I wanted to write about but didn't even think I could properly research. Call it kismet.

This is why I love bookstores - you never know what you might find.

[Post pic of a title held in The American Alpine Club Henry S. Hall library collection of the 469-year-old book called 'On the Appreciation of Mountains'. OH HOW I COVET THIS.)

Lightening the load

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 23:42:02 -0800

Last weekend we took part in a community garage sale that was massive - 200+ houses with maps handed out and hamburgers and hotdogs sold and people walking from house to house pulling along wagons to load up at each stop. In preparation I went through every last inch of the house. Every.Last.Inch. You would not believe the little weird crap we found around here. (Or maybe you would!)

The biggest pile - the most difficult to pull together - was the books. I was pretty ruthless, not because I had to be but because I wanted to be. My son had aged out of a lot of his books so we had a ton there to sell but I had plenty that I have moved from house to house to house and while they are good books and I did enjoy reading them, I just got tired of trying to make the space.

So I sold them. I sold a freaking ton of books.

What's left are books I use as research or have deep sentimental attachment to (belonged to my father, gifts from my Great Uncle Ben, childhood books like Little Women that I have had forever), and also some great big coffee table books that I never tire of. It was interesting to pick and choose the novels I couldn't part with, some obvious (Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials which my son will love soon enough), some as lessons in how to write well (Glaciers by Alexis Smith, nearly everything by Andrea Barrett) and some that just always make me happy (Tam Lin by Pamela Dean - never gets old).

Plus Ray Bradbury. Of course.

There are still hundreds of books in my office but it's a lot more open, a lot easier to navigate and a lot more.....significant. These are books that matter, not just books I have. They probably only matter to me, but that's okay. For the first time in ages I don't feel overwhelmed when I walk into that space which is a very good thing.

Plus, now I've got all that room on the shelves to fill........... *grin*.

Mark Slouka gives new definition to heartbreak & more

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 23:55:27 -0800

What I'm Reading:

Weeds: A Farm Daughter's Lament for Booklist. It's part of the American Lives Series, from the Univ of Nebraska Press. Interesting stuff.

The Magic Circle by my friend Jenny Davidson. I started it and then got buried under a ton of Booklist titles so had to set it aside. Now I'm back at the beginning as I had forgotten where I left off! More on this later, obviously.

Brewster* by Mark Slouka. I tweeted about this one a few days ago - unreal. It's going to be all over the place come award time, mark my words. It will be reviewed in my September column and it is the most heart-ripping, intense, honest coming-of-age story for young men that I have come across in ages. I have about 25 pages left and I know what's coming (or that something bad is coming) and I so wish it didn't have to be but there's no other way out for these characters. Keep your eyes peeled for Brewster (due in August); it's such an American story and although set during the Vietnam period will still 100% resonate with readers today. (Also - published for adults but an obvious older teen crossover as that is the age of the main characters.)

Give me a moment - still reeling from that one.

What I'm Reviewing:

Mister Orange by Truus Matti. This middle grade title from Enchanted Lion is set during WW2 in NYC and conflates a family drama with the young protagonist's discovery of art. Using the real story of Piet Mondrian as its inspiration, this is one reminded me of Sidney Taylor's All-Of-A-Kind Family books crossed with some Andy Warhol. It's sweet and kind and quietly surprising. Look for the review in my September column as well.

What I'm Writing:

A crazy amount of stuff I need to write starting with the introduction to a long out of print book that is returning, much to my joy. (More on this later.) Also articles about how the bush pilot myth is perpetuated by writers who visit AK, about Don Sheldon & Bradford Washburn flying on Denali, on a new photography book coming out with some pics of AK aircraft wrecks and an interview with AK author Jan Harper-Haines (whose uncle was the first man to summit Denali almost 100 years ago).

All of that, of course, is professional-type writing for other folks.

For me, there are two things - one about flying in mountains and pins on maps and getting lost and found (in more ways than on) and one on the naming of mountains and a man who claimed them. It's all good, promise.

*Be warned - the dog dies. (Yeah, I knew she would from the first time she showed up and I kept reading anyway. Dammit.)

Canadian fisherman

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 23:23:30 -0800

Tony Taylor's Fishing the River of Time came my way from the new Greystone Books, a year after I requested it. I am quite pleased to see that the press has endured - now separate from Douglas McIntyre - and I wish them all the best. They sent Taylor's book with a note apologizing its lateness; for me it's right on time.

On the surface, Fishing the River of Time is about Taylor returning to British Columbia after decades away to meet his eight year old grandson and teach him fishing. Taylor does some reminiscing about his previous work in the area (he's a geologist) and the people he met. He was there during the heavy logging years and has a lot to say on that but mostly it is the places he fished and characters he fished with that make up his memories. As he moves from past to present, noting what has changed and what hasn't, he comments not only on fishing in general but great fishermen and women of the past, books on fishing, and the importance of the act of fishing, as opposed to the fish itself. Here's a bit I really liked:

Lone fishermen, like the kind I used to be, are getting rare. Since the movie A River Runs Through It, the number of anglers has increased exponentially. Rivers like the Cowichan are riddled with anglers and there are hundreds of professional guides modeled on Brad Pitt. Nowadays many books and most magazines emphasize fish capture by showing, without remorse, pictures of giant fish held at arm's length by successful trophy-hunting anglers. A hundred years ago anglers were obsessed with numbers but today it is size. The truth is neither is important, but fishing is.

When his son and grandson arrive, Taylor includes some conversation with the little boy, who has never fished before. I was quite relieved to see that the book never devolved into something cute - Ned is a mature fellow who quickly grasps the significance of fishing as an act rather a contest and Taylor never seeks to make the book about bonding although some of that happens and life lessons are certainly imparted. More than anything - anything - this is a book about what it means to understand and respect the art of fishing and as someone who spent many hours sitting beside my father at the beach waiting for the tip of the rod to "bounce", Taylor's experiences resonated a great deal.

I'll have a formal review in my July column because I think Fishing the River of Time will appeal to older teens, especially if they have ever looked at James Prosek's work with admiration. But if you're looking for a Father's Day gift then you should give this one a serious look - it's lovely.

At last, traveling with Herodotus

Thu, 30 May 2013 01:10:12 -0800

The first time I heard of Herodotus was in the movie The English Patient. I loved - loved - how Almasy kept his personal journal by writing within his copy of The Histories. He layered his thoughts over those of Herodotus, putting in drawings, overfilling the pages. The Greek and the wars he wrote about were a part of the movie through Almasy's copy of the book and I was beyond curious about it back then and also couldn't figure out why I had never heard of him before then.

But then I remembered that the only world history class I had was in junior high - eight grade maybe? It was utterly and completely forgettable - I recall the teacher and that my friend Caryn was in the class with me. Other than that, it's a total loss.

So, for my birthday last year one of the books I asked for was Travels With Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski and I just finished it last week. Not only do I have a firm grip on who Herodotus was now, but this was also the first Kapuscinski book I've read and I enjoyed it thoroughly. The whole notion of being the only foreign correspondent for your newspaper - pretty much the only one from your county - blows me away. In every way that matters, Kapuscinski was just like Herodotus, going out to the edges of the map, finding a world that he barely knew existed. (His chapters on Africa, where the maps are barely drawn especially illustrates this point.)

What really impressed me though was the relationship Kapuscinski formed with The Histories. Every place he visits sparks a literary memory and he views the people and places through the history shared in the book. When he writes about his work, he writes about Herodotus and this is how I ended up, at least a little bit, learning the history I was never taught.

Now, if I can get brave enough, I should tackle The Histories itself.

[Post pic is from The English Patient - Almasy's journal/The Histories.]

One of my favorite reads of the year....

Tue, 28 May 2013 20:26:36 -0800

For as long as I can remember I have had a ridiculously romantic vision of lakeside resorts from the early to mid twentieth century. I love seeing pictures of people walking along lake shores and riding wooden speedboats and gathering on big wide verandas. It's the pictures I'm sure - they just look so wonderful and conjure up all those happy family ideals that I know are bunk but can never resist.

I just wanted to play cards on a veranda during a rainstorm I guess, with no distractions from television or telephone, just see the lake and drink lemonade and everyone loves everyone.*

Reading Molly Beth Griffin's lovely YA novel Silhouette of the Sparrow brought all of this back and more; I just inhaled this book and can't recommend it enough. It's set in 1926 on a lake in Minnesota with Garnet, who has been sent away from home as her parents struggle through a difficult time. The wealthy relative who's supposed to watch over her is her father's cousin and a major snob but Garnet is happy to be someplace faraway, someplace where she can think about all the changes about to come her way. (Should she marry the perfectly suitable boy back home who's threatening to propose, will her WWI vet father be okay, is she crazy to be dreaming of college?)

Garnet is a girl stuck in a strange period in American history, when women had the right to vote and hemlines were rising and anything seemed possible but marriage was the only truly acceptable path and motherhood was expected and college was still a distant dream for most. Garnet is like so many young women of her time - brave enough to imagine a different future but incapable of how to make it happen. Everything changes in Minnesota for her however, because in Minnesota Garnet meets Isabella and everything about the two of them together is just wonderful.

Plus Garnet is a silhouette artist who cuts amazing images of birds and wants to study the natural world in college, especially ornithology. How could you not adore her?

Here's just a snippet from the book that I loved:

"I looked over at Isabella - those perfect lips, that short hair starting to dry with little tufts sticking up at funny angles, those boyish clothes all rumpled and soaked. I wanted to tell her secrets I hadn't even told myself yet."

"...secrets I hadn't even told myself yet." Isn't that lovely and so perfectly what it is to be a teenage girl? Silhouette of the Sparrow will be formally reviewed in my July column; highly recommended for anyone who ever had a wistful heart...

*You would think reading Kate Atkinson's The Awakening would have cured me of the romantic view of such summertime resorts, but still I cling to it...just can't let go!

Andrea Barrett finds The Polar Bear Expedition & her story is amazing

Tue, 21 May 2013 01:05:26 -0800

As I've mentioned in a few posts here and there, I've been slowly reading an ARC of Andrea Barrett's upcoming story collection Archangel. Her fans are going to adore this; it's everything you expect from Barrett and more - a truly fabulous set of stories. I love it.

The final story is "Archangel" and includes the main character from the earlier story "The Experiment", now all grown up and fighting in WWI. It's 1919 in "Archangel" and although the war is over, for these men it continues in Russia, where they are assigned to The Polar Bear Expedition and bizarrely, stuck in the Russian Civil War. I have never heard about this force which is pretty stunning as I heavily studied US military history in college (it was the main focus of my history degree) and I've read a ton on WWI. (It seems like I'm always finding out more of history that I've missed. So frustrating!)

Barrett does amazing stuff with the setting and characters and brings alive all the confusion and fear of this war-after-a-war where nobody has any idea what is going on. Because this is Barrett there is also a second character, a woman, who is an x-ray technician. The science history of x-rays blends into military history as if they were always meant to be, and readers fall in love with these two people so far from home and so uncertain as to why they are there and what will become of them in that miserable place.

You will read "Archangel" and hate war all over again. It's sublime - brittle and sharp and slices your heart. I ripped me apart a bit, this story, and the final paragraphs were worthy of a Wilfred Owen poem.

I can't wait until you all read this book - I just can't wait.

[Post pic: En route to Archangel, a group of 339th Infantry Regiment doughboys pose with their newly issued M1891 Mosin-Nagant rifles. From the Army Sustainment Bulletin.]

Because most middle grade readers would love the idea of looking for the Lost Dutchman's Mine

Fri, 17 May 2013 22:10:33 -0800

I don't talk much about my son here but he's eleven years old and while he loves a good story (I read all of the Harry Potter books to him several years ago), he is not always patient enough to read them. He prefers graphic novels and shorter nonfiction and so when I caught him up in bed, reading ahead in Elise Broach's Superstition Mountain books, I knew they were something special. He loves these two books and is d-y-i-n-g for the third to come out. I felt it was my duty (*grin*) to make sure everyone knew about them.

In every possible way Treasure on Superstition Mountain and Missing on Superstition Mountain are cut from the cloth of classic middle grade adventure. You have four likeable kids - three brothers and their spunky girl neighbor - the pensive, more bookish child is the narrator, the parents are all decent admirable folks who support these curious active children (while also being busy enough to let them disappear for awhile) and there is a huge mystery - HUGE - that demands to be solved.
In this case the story is all about the Lost Dutchman's Mine, a very real Arizona legend that Broach discusses in her excellent afterwords. The kids go hiking on Superstition Mountain (a real place), and through an accident discover something sinister. In search of clues about what they've found, the kids hit the library, which adds an unexpectedly creepy character to the story, and the cemetery, which gives us a slightly unhinged character, and to the historical society - where we find a hero! Huzzah! It's all very Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys/Trixie Belden at their best and the scary is just the right amount of scary to keep readers turning the page while not terrifying. My son loves that each chapter ends with you wanting more and even though both books end without cliffhangers, the main story arc clearly continues. Broach is great at pacing and think that is a big part of why these books succeed so much.

We have both titles in hardcover for as my son says, he "NEEDS' them and can't stand the thought of them falling apart at some point. The covers catch the eye of their audience (kids in action!) and the drawings in the text are quite good - though, surprisingly, my son has not relied upon them. The story keeps him moving forward, not the pictures.

I can't wait to see how Broach ends this trilogy. There are some bad guys, and a lot of questions but mostly I'm enjoying how the characters have evolved and grown to ask more questions and think more deeply about what they are finding and learning. Plus she has managed to work a library and ghost town into the narrative - how cool is that?

Highly recommend, of course!

Angelina Jolie is amazing....

Tue, 14 May 2013 01:59:26 -0800

.........go read her piece in the New York Times about choosing a preventative mastectomy. It's stunning and sobering and braver than anything I've read in a long long time. I'm tired of pink ribbons making us all feel better - we need to cure cancer and we need to do it now.

Breast cancer alone kills some 458,000 people each year, according to the World Health Organization, mainly in low- and middle-income countries. It has got to be a priority to ensure that more women can access gene testing and lifesaving preventive treatment, whatever their means and background, wherever they live. The cost of testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2, at more than $3,000 in the United States, remains an obstacle for many women.

I choose not to keep my story private because there are many women who do not know that they might be living under the shadow of cancer. It is my hope that they, too, will be able to get gene tested, and that if they have a high risk they, too, will know that they have strong options.

On flying dreams and more...

Mon, 13 May 2013 01:22:19 -0800

A couple of weeks ago Alaska Dispatch ran a piece I wrote about these guys who are on this crazy madcap all-kinds-of-wonderful mission to save a B25 Mitchell bomber from a sandbar north of Fairbanks where is has been sitting for 50 years. They have founded a museum just so they can make this airplane the centerpiece of it and not only do they want to rebuild the plane, they want to fly it again.

This is the stuff that dreams are made of, folks. I find it inspiring that they can even dream this big.

Anyway, they've formed a Kickstarter to get $20,000 and if you can show them so financial or at least help spread the word, that would be excellent. It's worth clicking through to check out the video and see the plane; really wicked cool stuff.

In other Kickstarter news, these guys have developed a card game around Moby Dick that has to be seen to be believed. The Awl interviewed the creators and it's neat to see a literary obsession turned into tabletop play this way. I hope they get their funding because I'd really love to check out the game. (And take a look at those gorgeous cards!!!)

And I have a new column up at Bookslut, which includes books where someone really is out to get you. They are more adventure than horror though (well, except for the mutant bugs one - ha!). All fun, all recommended, of course.

And I have a new article up at Alaska Dispatch on the bush pilots of Wrangell St. Elias National Park that touches a bit on the bush pilot narrative and its long history (and continued impact on Alaska aviation).

What I'm working on now - reviews for July and August, and articles on the impact of sequestration on the Alaska aviation environment and a a flight school in Bethel aimed at Alaskan Native youth. And then there's some epic spring cleaning going on over here, but I image the same thing is going on in your house, too!

Salvaging a B25 from an Alaskan sandbar

Sat, 11 May 2013 14:27:40 -0800

For more than a decade, Michigan resident Patrick Mihalek has dreamed about recovering a B25 Mitchell bomber from a sandbar in the Tanana River. The so-called "Sandbar Mitchell" was forced down after an engine failure in 1969 when flying for the fire service. Mihalek, who has been obsessed with B25s "forever" and spent countless hours as a teenager on the Internet researching them, has put together a team of volunteers on a shoestring budget to recover this relic. They plan to be on the river from June 22 to July 2 to prepare the wreckage for transport to the Lower 48. Ultimately, it will be completely rebuilt and serve as the centerpiece in the new Warbirds of Glory Air Museum.

The Sandbar Mitchell was purchased as surplus at a rock-bottom price from the Air Force in the late 1950s. Its military service over, the new owner retrofit the aircraft for fire suppression. In 1969, while fighting a fire in Manley Hot Springs, it suffered a double-engine failure after takeoff from Fairbanks. The pilot successfully landed it on a sandbar in the Tanana north of town and the engines, propellers and instruments were quickly removed. The rest of the aircraft remained, however, as it was not worth the recovery cost. (B25s were so cheap then, it was uninsured.) Vandalized and damaged over the years, it served primarily as a highly recognized landmark, particularly for pilots. No one has made any notable attempt to recover the Sandbar Mitchell until now.

Mihalek has purchased the aircraft from the owner's family, obtaining its registration and also collecting the necessary permits for its salvage from the State of Alaska and Fort Wainwright. He already has the nose section of another B25, which he obtained years earlier, and plans to utilize as much of the Sandbar Mitchell as possible. "It is," he notes, "in much better condition than I imagined after being abandoned for so many years."

With partner Tim Trainor, who operates the Aeronca Aircraft History Museum out of his hangar in a residential airpark where the B25 will be restored, Mihalek is uniquely qualified to recover and rebuild the aircraft. He has a degree in aviation and is a licensed A&P mechanic. Both men see this effort as a valuable opportunity to reintroduce skilled trades to a younger generation. "People will be able to come by the hangar and see the work we are doing here," says Mihalek, "especially kids. It's important that they see why this work matters before the skills die off." The B25 has a natural appeal for any aircraft aficionado regardless of age, and Mihalek and Trainor seem determined to nurture that interest as they work to bring the Sandbar Mitchell back from the dead.

"There are only about 20 of these aircraft flying in the U.S. today," says Mihalek, which is a far cry from when they could be purchased for as little as $5,000 after the war. "It's just such a handsome aircraft; it's really something special." Close to taking a significant step toward achieving his lifelong dream, Mihalek can hardly contain his excitement. "We have a team of volunteers and we've gotten a lot of help from Alaskans. We're looking forward to heading out to the river and getting it ready to go."

The Sandbar Mitchell is not the first former military aircraft recovered from Alaska. In 2011 a team from the Champaign Aviation Museum in Ohio removed a B-17 that crashed north of Talkeenta in 1951 to use for parts and in 1996 professional aircraft salvor Gary Larkins and his group, called the "Air Pirates," removed a B-17 near Ruby that was later incorporated into the aircraft "My Gal Sal". It is now fully restored and on display at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.

Without the support of a large established museum, Mihalek and Trainor are very dependent on volunteers and donations. They are still hoping for the donation of an airlift service to assist them in transporting large pieces of the plane to private land nearby that has been made available to them as a staging area. Without it, they will have to wait for winter to haul the larger pieces out on the ice. Regardless of how much more assistance comes through, however, Mihalek is determined to get the Sandbar Mitchell ready to go in June.

"Our goal is to get this aircraft back in airworthy condition and fly it again and the nose art will reflect its Alaskan name. This B25 is going to always be known as the Sandbar Mitchell," he says. "We'll never forget how much Alaska was a part of its history."

If you're interested in donating or volunteering, you can contact Patrick Mihalek by visiting the website devoted to the Sandbar Mitchell project. You can also read more about the project and see some photos of the legendary B25.

When Passengers Pressure Alaskan Pilots to Fly

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 21:40:44 -0800

In 1997, a Cessna 208 operated by Hageland Aviation Services crashed in the frozen Arctic Ocean about three miles north of Wainwright. The pilot and all four passengers perished. In its final report, the National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) found the probable cause was the pilot's "intentional VFR (visual flight rules) flight into instrument meteorological conditions and his failure to maintain altitude/clearance from terrain." The weather was listed as a contributing factor, but the official narrative suggests another factor came into play.

The pilot, who was based in Barrow, contacted flight service 11 times the day of the crash, asking about weather conditions for his intended destination of Wainwright. Each time he was assured that the ceiling and visibility were low and VFR flight wasn't recommended. Each time he called back, he hoped for an improved report. Each time he was disappointed. On one phone call he complained, "Shoot... (as) soon as I call the passengers the darned stuff comes down."

Eventually, almost 12 hours after his first call at 8:19 that morning, the flight departed. Thirty-five minutes later, while trying to return to Barrow after an unsuccessful landing attempt, it crashed.

The question of just how badly his passengers wanted to get to the village and what influence they had on the pilot is a valid one. Passenger pressure has long been a source of concern for the NTSB when investigating Alaska aviation accidents. Studies in both 1980 and 1995 found that passenger attitude toward flying in Alaska was "problematic" and an effort was launched in 2002 to try and transform passenger ideas about flying.

For those who work in the industry, passenger attitudes about cancelled or delayed flights is a common complaint. While it might seem counterintuitive to ask a pilot to fly in the face of prohibitive mechanical or weather conditions, anyone who has ever stood in an airport when a major airline cancels is well aware of how quickly passengers will flock to the competition in hopes of finding a spot on one of their aircraft. Among major airlines, however, passengers only speak to customer service; pilots are protected from direct contact and strict company rules insulate them from influence. Likewise, air ambulance pilots are never supposed to be made aware of a patient's condition and even the Coast Guard has "bingo" - or point of no return -- fuel when they must turn back from a rescue, regardless of the operation's status. Policies that maintain separation between passengers and pilots keep flight decisions as impersonal as possible and based upon solely objective reasons. The bottom line is that passenger concerns should carry no weight in a pilot's decisions.

Unfortunately in Alaska, such a wall is impossible, especially in rural locations. Everybody stands on the ramp together. Everybody stands around the counter together. Everybody has phoned ahead to family and friends and checked on the weather. Everybody has an opinion and often they are impossible to ignore, even if they lead to danger.
Knife-wielding passenger wanted to fly

Several years ago, one of my co-workers at a Fairbanks-based commuter airline was chased around his single-engine plane in Galena by an enraged passenger wielding a knife. Even though the plane had a flat tire, the passenger still wanted to be taken home to Kaltag. Quick.

Another pilot once told me about his harrowing ordeal on a commuter flight out of Bethel. When he was unable to get into a nearby village and decided to turn back, one of the passengers in his Cessna 207 pulled a gun and held it to his head. Fortunately, the other passengers were saner and persuaded enraged passenger to let their pilot live and get them back down on to the ground. The pilot never pressed charges, or even told his boss about the incident.

These are extreme examples of course, but passengers pressing pilots about changes to flight status, especially in villages, are a routine concern.

Alaskans relish the state's history of pilots willing to go the extra mile under extreme conditions, and occasionally encourage such behavior. But the rules are not different in Alaska -- nor should they be. And while it is not common to see passenger pressure mentioned in an accident report, most pilots who directly interact with passengers experience it eventually. This is the sort of pressure that is difficult to prove, although its pervasiveness in the Alaskan aviation environment cannot be denied.

In 1997, when NTSB investigators interviewed the pilot's wife, who worked with him at Hageland's in Barrow, and his station manager, both said he might have felt pressured by his passengers to fly. It could not be proven, of course, and was irrelevant to the accident's final cause. As is all too common, regardless of outside influences, the ultimate explanation for the crash was, again, pilot error.

Bradford Washburn & The First Aerial Photography of Denali

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 21:36:43 -0800

In 1936, fresh off a sometimes-harrowing (by his own account) traverse of the St. Elias Mountains, mountaineer Bradford Washburn was funded by the National Geographic Society to lead a photographic expedition over Mount McKinley. The National Geographic Society-Pan American Airways Mt. McKinley Flight Expedition was planned in April after it became clear photos from the mountain itself were unsatisfactory for climbers and scientists who wished to explore the peak.

"Rising to such an altitude and in almost complete isolation," wrote Washburn in a 1938 article for National Geographic Magazine, "it is virtually impossible to find a spot from which a truly undistorted view of its whole mass may be obtained."

Washburn was determined to use, if at all possible, a multi-engine aircraft for the flights and a partnership with Pan American facilitated this selection. Based out of Fairbanks, the Lockheed Elektra flown by S.E. Robbins, who had previously landed on McKinley as part of the Allen Carpé Cosmic Ray Expedition in 1932, also included Robert Gleason as a radio operator. This brought a level of safety to the trips that Washburn felt was lacking in his St. Elias experience.

The primary piece of photography equipment was a large Fairchild K-6 aerial camera on loan from the leader of the National Geographic's Stratosphere Expeditions Division. There were also light filters, two DeVry movie cameras and film magazines for the aerial camera, which were loaned by the Institute of Geographic Exploration. The crew carried oxygen onboard, necessary for all work above 15,000 feet.

The three men and Washburn's assistant (a distant relative named Lincoln Washburn) departed Fairbanks on July 12. Initially flying in a Fairchild 71, they circled the mountain to make sure the summit was clear above the lower layers of fog. After gaining visibility at 10,000 feet, "the peak rose, clear and distinct, into the deep-blue sky..." They radioed to Fairbanks for the Electra to be prepared and returned to gather their gear.

The passenger door had been removed from the Electra and Washburn sat on an old gas can while a rope tied to the cabin floor allowed him to lean out the doorway to better frame his shots. This was Washburn's first experience seeing the mountain this closely from the air and he was awestruck, writing:

Every side except that which cascades down the Muldrow Glacier is guarded by an almost vertical cliff of rock or ice. The walls to the south, at the head of the Ruth Glacier, are the most stunning of all, dropping in a dizzying series of avalanche-swept crags and gullies for 10,000 feet to the almost-flat glacier surface.

Most impressive from the standpoint of sheer greatness, however, was the famous northwest wall. From the summit of the north peak, whose altitude is well over 19,000 feet, this side of McKinley drops in a terrific slope of glittering ice and rock -- one unbroken, stupendous cliff -- to the plains of the Kantishna, 17,000 feet below.

Robbins made a complete circle of both McKinley and Mount Foraker, maintaining a constant altitude of 15,000 feet. Washburn continuously snapped photos while Lincoln Washburn operated the movie cameras. As they rounded the western precipices a second time, Robbins climbed to 17,000 feet, steadily increasing in altitude until at 12:45 p.m. they reached 20,020 feet. This was the third circuit of the summit and by then they were less than a mile from the south peak and directly over the north. Washburn recalled there was virtually no wind, a particular "piece of good fortune." But the temperature inside the open aircraft was rather uncomfortable, at 14 degrees below zero.

They returned to Fairbanks that afternoon and were unable to depart again for several days due to overcast skis in Fairbanks and a storm in the Alaska Range. On July 16, however, they took off at 9 a.m. and in 3 1/2 hours of flying obtained images of the two unphotographed sides of the mountain. The next day they flew northeast and used infrared film and a red filter to capture McKinley from a distance. Smoke from forest fires hindered their plans somewhat, but Washburn was able to obtain some shots of the peak from Fort Yukon, 295 miles away and both McKinley and Foraker from over the Chatanika Valley.

In the end, the expedition was responsible for some of the most iconic and significant photos ever taken of Mount McKinley ever taken, including a spread of two photographs showing the route the Stuck-Karstens Expedition took to successfully summit in 1913. (It also included a note pointing out where in 1932 the Lindley-Liek Expedition recovered an expedition themometer left by Hudson Stuck. The thermometer had recorded a temperature colder than 100 degrees below zero.)

"The work," Washburn later wrote, "[was] successfully completed in less than a quarter of the time that we had expected it would take." Everything came together perfectly-- the weather was good, the equipment performed flawlessly and the choice of aircraft and pilot allowed Washburn to accomplish his goals fairly easily. There is, in fact, almost no record of Robbins from the entire expedition. He controlled the aircraft so professionally -- and maintenance was such a non-issue -- that Washburn was able to worry about everything else and aviation simply got him to where he needed to be to make historic photographs.

The National Geographic Society-Pan American Airways Mt. McKinley Flight Expedition effectively proved that aerial photography was crucial to understanding the world's peaks and, just as importantly, that airplanes were up to the challenge of showing climbers the highest points on the earth. Now they just had to prove themselves capable of physically getting back on the mountain, and making takeoffs and landings commonplace on Denali.

The Most Iconic Aircraft In Fairbanks Gets a Permanent Home

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 21:30:29 -0800

Fairbanks residents are anticipating the return of their most iconic aviation artifact to Fairbanks International Airport this fall. The 1923 Curtiss Jenny flown by aviation legends Ben Eielson and Joe Crosson was removed when the terminal was expanded and it settled into a lengthy refurbishment under the care of the Pioneer Air Museum and Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA), FAI chapter -- Chapter 1129. Coordinated by member Roger Weggel, an airframe and powerplant (A&P) instructor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the Jenny has been taken apart and reassembled with great care. But Weggel is quick to point out this isn't a new plane.

This Jenny will never be museum quality. Rather, the Eielson/Crosson aircraft sports evidence of work done by all the men who took care of the aircraft the past 90 years, including highly regarded Alaska mechanics Jim Hutchinson and Frank Reynolds.

The Jenny was purchased as a surplus vehicle from the U.S. military in 1923 by city leaders. According to Jean Potter's "The Flying North", published in 1945, pioneer banker Dick Wood put up most of the money. It arrived in crates on July 1 with its 90-horsepower OX-5 engine and had its first flight only three days later with Wood onboard and Eielson flying. "Someone HAD to go," News-Miner editor W.F. Thompson wrote later, "so Dick decided it might as well be him. It was disturbing however, he continued, "(to see) two of the best men in town, everybody's friends, settin' one behind the other in a rig not much wider than a canoe..." Thankfully, the flight was successful, and on the wings of the Jenny, commercial aviation came to Alaska.

In the years that followed, the Jenny was involved -- like every other early aircraft -- in numerous incidents and accidents.

Eielson, who may be best known for flying the first airplane across the Arctic Ocean, soon began flying a Liberty-powered De Havilland for the postal service, and by the time of his death in a Hamilton Metalplane in 1929, the Jenny had likely seen several other pilots. Crosson, the pilot who made the first landing on Mount McKinley in 1932, flew it soon after arriving in 1926 (he related a story to Jean Potter about flipping it on landing when flying a miner 70 miles to a claim on the Upper Chena). At some point in this period, Weggel is certain that Crosson became the aircraft's owner, and in 1931 was responsible for an engine change to the more powerful Hispano-Suiza, which is on it today. This was a common conversion at the time as the OX-5 was widely acknowledged not to be strong enough.

Over the next 10 years, the Jenny was flown by unknown pilots, although the technology was rapidly outpacing it. Jean Potter saw the Jenny in the company of Fairbanks mechanic/carpenter Frank Reynolds while researching The Flying North in early 1940s. She later wrote:

He took me once to the shed behind the college powerhouse where Eielson's old Jenny is stored.

"There it is," he told me, turning a flashlight into the gloom. "There's Ben's first ship. We wish we had room to show it better."

It hung from the rafters, the narrow, tapering fuselage, with the flimsy wings tied ignominiously along its sides. The engine was gone. The paint was scratched and peeling. Reynolds looked as proud as if he were displaying a Superfortress.

"I've helped him take her up many times," he said. "Two or three fellows would hold hands, you know, and the one on the end would reach out and spin the prop. Sometimes took a whole hour to get him going. 'Contact,' Ben'd say, 'switch off. Contact, switch off.' We'd have to pour ether in the gas. She was stubborn, that engine."

The Jenny's original wings were lost long ago, likely in a fire at Weeks Field when undergoing maintenance during the Crosson phase of its ownership. When the aircraft was cleaned up by some airmen and displayed for Eielson Air Force Base's 10th anniversary in 1953, a set of wings that were stored with it from a Swallow TP were attached in their place. The Swallow was a biplane manufactured in Wichita by a company that employed such future aviation stars as Walter Beech (Beechcraft) and Lloyd Stearman (Stearman Aircraft). After the military celebration the Jenny was placed back in storage at the university with the Swallow wings attached. There it remained for decades. (The engine was back with the aircraft at this time so must have been in use elsewhere during Potter's earlier visit.)

It is clear that as much as Weggel and his crew know about the Jenny, there is a lot they never knew:

• How it came to be at UAF, and why it was stored there for so long?

• Is its ownership by the Museum of the North due less to provenance than an assumed responsibility brought by years of having the aircraft under university control?
$22,000 project

When the decision to refurbish it was presented to the EAA, however, none of that mattered. "The decision was unanimous to fix it," says Weggel, and so the group of volunteers got to work raising money ($22,000 to date, with a portion still in the bank) and bringing back to life this vital piece of the city's past.

The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum provided original plans for the Curtiss Jenny, but it took nearly a year and a half before they could be located and forwarded to Fairbanks. The package included five 35-millimeter microfiche films that dated to the First World War when the Jennys were designed and built. The Eielson/Crosson Jenny likely was manufactured in California at the end of the war, although no one can be certain. The propeller (not the original) is marked "War Department" and was made for the OX-5. For Weggel that is good enough. The prop is period correct, along with the engine and fuselage. However, the wings would have to be made from scratch.

Every Wednesday for years a rotating group of EAA members and UAF students met and worked on the Jenny. They soon discovered evidence of work done in years past and made a decision to respect such alterations and let them stand whenever possible. "We left old repairs and modifications to areas of the fuselage, the landing gear and elsewhere" Weggel said. "We didn't want the aircraft to be factory new; we want it to carry the mark of what it was part of and how it was taken care of by so many different people over the years. We want it to look like the plane that it was in Alaska."

Remarkably, the Jenny has been restored to air-worthy condition, although due to its rarity and value (perhaps more than $400,000), it will never fly. But soon enough, it will be back on display for all to see with bright yellow and light blue paint. When that happens, Weggel and his crew will be able to turn their attention to a new project, a hoped-for restoration shop at the Air Museum in Pioneer Park and a build focusing on those Swallow wings. "They came off a plane Crosson flew," says Weggel, "and we believe it was also flown by Sam White, the first flying game warden in Alaska."

It's another big project but as the group has proven, it's up to the task. The legacies of Ben Eielson and Joe Crosson are safe with the Fairbanks aviation community.

"It's entire flying life, this aircraft never left Alaska," says Weggel. "It has always belonged here, to us." And so the Jenny remains, in the place that knows her best and with an aviation community delighted to celebrate all she represents.

Tragedy & triumph on the 1932 Allen Carpe Cosmic Ray Expedition

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 17:34:17 -0800

In 1932, Allen Carpé, a research engineer with Bell Laboratories in New York who was also an accomplished mountaineer, received a grant to collaborate with Nobel Prize-winning physicist Arthur Compton on investigating cosmic rays in Alaska. Compton was organizing expeditions to measure the rays in locations around the world, and Carpé was tasked with putting together a group that would test their measurements at 11,000 feet on Muldrow Glacier, which sits on the flanks of Alaska's Mount McKinley. To give his climb a greater chance of success, Carpé decided to do something unheard of at the time and contacted aviation companies in Alaska to discuss the viability of landing on the glacier.

In 1930, Matt Nieminen and mechanic Cecil Higgins flew over the summit of McKinley and in 1931 Robbie Robbins flew two climbers to the 15,000-foot level so they could photograph a potential climbing route. As all of them were with Fairbanks-based Alaskan Airways, it made sense that this would be the air carrier of choice for Carpé.

Joe Crosson, hired by the Fairbanks Airplane Company in 1926, is the pilot who flew the first commercial flight to Barrow in 1927 and two years later found the wreckage of Ben Eielson's Hamilton aircraft in Siberia. He said he could land on McKinley. As operations manager of Alaskan Airways, Crosson was in a perfect position to coordinate the aviation portion of the expedition. Carpé arranged with another group of climbers, the Lindley-Liek party who were making an attempt on the summit, to haul 800 pounds of scientific gear up by dogsled. In April he, Edward Beckwith and Theodore Koven met Crosson in Nenana to attempt their flight to the glacier.

Writing later in the "American Alpine Journal," Beckwith described the meeting:

The plane finally landed on the river and I secured good movies of Crosson greeting Carpé and Koven. He was a strong-looking Alaskan, weighing over 200 pounds, and seemed unconcerned at the prospect of attempting to land on the untried slopes of McKinley.

The plane was an enclosed, single-motore, Fairchild monoplane of 450 horsepower. With all baggage on board, we were in such close quarters that there was hardly room to use my movie camera.

Crosson had explained previously that landing at 11,000 feet was impossible due to the excessive ground speed needed at that altitude for takeoff (more than 100 mph, he believed). Instead, they aimed for a suitable landing site at 6,000 feet. As Beckwith recalled, Crosson made several passes over the glacier and then, after discussion with Carpé, dropped down with "no difficulty whatever on about the middle of the glacier." They determined the altitude was slightly above 6,000 feet (though it has also been reported as low as 5,600 feet). "Carpé was delighted and shook hands with Crosson, who took it much as a matter of course and lit a cigar before leaving the plane."

The plan was for Crosson to leave the party on the glacier where they would set up main camp and begin planning their hikes to various spots to conduct measurements. Crosson was to return to Nenana and await the arrival of the other two members of their party, who were traveling by ship to Seward and then taking the train north. Clouds quickly descended upon the group as they unloaded the aircraft, however, and the wind picked up. Crosson taxied for some time before he reached the necessary 70 mph to gain altitude and the scientists saw him lift off in the distance. When he did not circle back overhead they became concerned however and Carpé and Koven skied off to check that he had not crashed. The men found no sign of the aircraft but a few hours later, as they set up camp, Crosson appeared. He had hiked several miles in snowshoes after leaving the plane when he was unable to gain enough altitude to clear the ridge. He was, according to Beckwith, "the same as usual -- calm and matter-of-course." The aborted takeoff was a bit tricky however, as local newspapers later reported:

Crosson got the plane up to 300 feet once but a downdraft of wind forced him down to the glacier. The plane came down gently and as it did so another blast of wind started to lift it.

From then on, the flier's efforts were devoted to holding the ship down. He finally succeeded in doing so and by dint of hard work was able to fold back the wings, which removed the danger of the plane being blown about.

Crosson trudged back to the camp and spent the night there. By next morning the wind had blown down and he took off at 7:45.

Beckwith accompanied Crosson to Nenana so they could pick up the other two members and some more supplies in a second aircraft. The return trip to Denali required they all fly out on wheels however and then stop over on Birch Lake for skis. The thawing Tanana River could no longer be trusted, although Beckwith was able to record a novel Alaska event, witnessed the award of the Alaska Ice Pool, which paid out $60,000 that year when the ice went out 11 a.m. May 1.

On May 3, Crosson flew Nicholas Spadevecchia and Percy Olton, (who had never been in an aircraft before) in the Fairchild, while Beckwith traveled in a Stearman with pilot Jerry Jones. Upon reaching the main Muldrow Glacier camp they found a note from Carpé informing them the two scientists were up at the 11,000-foot level in a satellite camp. Beckwith and Crosson took off again and dropped supplies to the men, one of whom waved from the tents. It was the last time either was seen alive.

In the days that followed, Beckwith became ill and by May 10 his condition was serious. Spadevecchia set out that day for Stony Creek, 35 miles away, with enough food for six days. He believed a ranger's tent and telephone was there. Two days later the Liek-Lindley party arrived at the lower Muldrow camp with terrible news. On their return from the summit they had found the body of Theodore Koven about 100 yards from a crevasse. They chose not to investigate the crevasse itself due to the risk and also, sadly, because even if Allan Carpé was still alive they would not have been able to help him. Koven's body was wrapped and left in a marked spot for later recovery. As Beckwith awaited transport off the mountain, it was clear the Cosmic Ray Expedition was over.
Sea of mud takeoff

The Liek-Lindley climbers reached the ranger station and reported the deaths of Carpé and Koven and Beckwith's illness. Crosson was in Barrow with a film crew on a charter for MGM, so on May 16 Jerry Jones was tasked with flying the rescue mission. Birch Lake was no longer frozen but skis were necessary on the glacier. Somebody came up with the novel idea to have the Fairbanks Fire Department flood the dirt runway at Weeks Field and create a sea of mud for takeoff. As later reported in the News-Miner, Jones and his Stearman "slid over the mud until 10 feet from dry ground, when Jones lifted the plane sharply." Within a short time he was touching down on the Muldrow Glacier, where he packed up Beckwith and returned him to town. Olton stayed behind in case Spadevecchia, who had not been heard from for nearly a week, returned.

In the following days a hunt began for the missing scientist, organized by Beckwith in Fairbanks, who'd recovered from his illness. Thankfully, Spadevecchia returned to the camp on his own but after Robbie Robbins broke an axle on the Stearman on his May 19 landing, it was decided there would be no more flights in the immediate future to the mountain. Parts were dropped to Robbins who flew out alone, at the lightest weight possible. Olton and Spadevecchia safely hiked out in the company of two rangers who arrived on foot having been dispatched days earlier. In the coming months members of the Parker-Browne Expedition recovered Koven's body and also the two men's personal effects (including Allen Carpé's expedition diary), their cameras, and four film packs, which produced impressive photographs of Denali. Their cosmic ray measurements proved to be significant and as Beckwith noted, "the scientific objective of the expedition was therefore partly carried out."

Ultimately, the 1932 expedition resulted in six successful landings on Mount McKinley, (three by Crosson, two by Jones and one by Robbins), proving that the aircraft's time in mountaineering had arrived. But the loss of two men of science, the first fatalities on the mountain, make it an unforgettable episode in Alaska history. Allen Carpé and Theodore Koven were trying to understand more about our world, and sought knowledge, not glory, on Denali.

Alaskan Airways enabled them to achieve their goals much more quickly. The Cosmic Ray Expedition proved the days of the 19th century explorer were clearly over. The skies were now the answer to achieving the difficult, with opportunities that looked limitless.

For more information see Edward Beckwith's article: "The Mt. McKinley Cosmic Ray Expedition, 1932" in American Alpine Journal 2 (1933) and Dirk Tordoff's article "Airplanes on Denali" in the Fall 1994 issue of Alaska History.

How aviation changed mountain climbing on Denali

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 15:53:09 -0800

One hundred years ago this month, Hudson Stuck, Harry Karstens, Walter Harper, Robert G. Tatum, John Fredson, and Esaias George departed Nenana for what would become, after a herculean effort, the first successful full ascent of Mount McKinley -- just three years after the Sourdough Expedition reached the slightly lower north summit.

After more than a year of planning and logistical problems, Stuck and his party departed Nenana on March 17 with two sleds and 14 dogs. They reached Diamond City, a gold camp 90 miles away in the Kantishna area, six days later and took possession there of the ton and a half of supplies that had been delivered by boat the previous fall. From Diamond City, they began, as Stuck later wrote in "The Ascent of Denali," the real work of moving the supplies 50 miles to the base of the mountain.

"Here the relaying began, stuff being taken ahead and cached at some midway point, then another load taken right through a day's march, and then a return made to bring up the cache. In this way we moved steadily though slowly across rolling country and upon the surface of a large lake to the McKinley Fork of the Kantishna, which drains the Muldrow Glacier, down that stream to its junction with the Clearwater Fork of the same, and up that fork, through its canyons, to the last spruce timber on it banks, and there we made a camp in an exceedingly pretty spot."

They would not summit until June 7, more than two and half months after they began their journey. The Stuck-Karstens Expedition was in every way unprecedented and unparalleled. It proved that attaining the summit was possible, but also that it would require a level of commitment that was truly staggering.

In the years that followed, there was little activity on the mountain. International attention was on Everest and the race to "conquer" the highest peak on earth (which culminated in the tragedy of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine's deaths in 1924). Just getting to McKinley was difficult enough and the weather dissuaded many climbers. In 1930 Matt Nieminen and his mechanic Cecil Higgins generated interest when they flew over the summit at 20,320 feet in an Alaska Airways Fairchild Model 71 monoplane. This made the possibility of utilizing aircraft in expedition planning irresistible, and very soon a new wave of scientists and explorers began making plans.

In 1932 Joe Crosson, Alaska Airways' chief pilot, became the first to land on Denali when he touched down on Muldrow Glacier near 5,700-foot McGonagall Pass. A year earlier, Crosson had flown a cinematographer with Fox-Movietone News over the summit as he took the first-ever photos of McKinley from the air. The 1932 Allen Carpe "Cosmic Ray" Expedition saw Crosson make more than one landing on the mountain but the expedition is also notable for one of the first tragedies there, which the aircraft could not prevent.

The National Geographic Society organized a photographic expedition in 1936 that was designed around a series of flights over both McKinley and its sister, 17,402-foot Mount Foraker. This expedition is notable not only for the photos, which remain some of the most iconic ever taken, but also the introduction of the late Bradford Washburn to McKinley lore. The relationship of Washburn, pioneeer mountaineer, cartographer, photographer with the mountain would continue for the rest of his life and result in gathering a wealth of information on the mountain as well as long-term relationships with some of Alaska's most-famous pilots.

In the week-long 1936 Mount McKinley Flight Expedition, Pan American Airways was chartered and S.E. Robbins flew a Lockheed Electra out of Fairbanks on the trip. The aircraft's cabin door was removed so Washburn could point an oversized Fairchild K-6 aerial camera at his subject, and ultimately he collected a series of prints that are still used by climbers. (They look spectacular in the July 1938 issue of National Geographic.) Without the perspective allowed by the aircraft, exploration on the mountain would have been held back for years, if not decades.

Washburn returned to Alaska several times in the years that followed (most notably in 1947, when he saw the U.S. Air Force landed a C-45, the first and only landing of a twin-engine aircraft on the mountain). His most famous trip was in 1951 when he undertook topographic work on what was then the little-explored West Buttress, which previously had been declared unclimbable. That expedition was partly sponsored by the University of Alaska and included the cooperation of UAF president, Terry Moore, who provided air support with his new 135-horsepower Piper Super Cub. Moore's aircraft included a new innovation, retractable skis, which he had helped design. In June, Moore made multiple trips, dropping team members on Kahiltna Glacier at the 7,400-foot elevation. Washburn could not believe the ease with which their drop-off was accomplished, writing later in National Geographic, "An hour before I had been 40 miles away at Chelatna Lake; now here I was a third of the way up Mount McKinley!"

A month later, Moore would evacuate them from the 10,100 foot level after their research was completed and the group had successfully scaled the West Buttress. The route has since become the shortest, safest and most popular route to the summit. "We had proved," wrote Washburn, "that airplanes loaded or unloaded, could land and take off halfway up that side of the peak."

Also in the summer of 1951, Washburn had one of the most significant meetings in Alaska climbing history when he hired Don Sheldon to fly him to the base of Ruth Glacier. In the years that followed, Sheldon would become the most famous pilot to navigate the Denali region, at one point landing at the unheard of level of 14,600 feet while on a 1960 rescue mission. He would also become the pilot Washburn turned to again and again as he surveyed McKinley.

In the forward to the book "Wager With the Wind: The Don Sheldon Story," Washburn wrote: "To mountaineers he has been the catalyst, which made possible their great pioneer ascents on the forbidding virgin walls of McKinley, Huntington, Deborah, Hunter and Logan." The Sheldon-Washburn expeditions would write new chapters in the Denali story and be hallmarks of the mountain's climbing future, which continues to rely heavily upon aircraft and air-taxi services.

As we celebrate the achievements of the Stuck-Karstens Expedition it is important to note that it was never duplicated because the use of the aircraft so completely transformed the McKinley climbing experience. And while there have been many great achievements -- and tragedies -- on the mountain since 1913, none of them can compare to what those six men accomplished 100 years ago -- simply because, quite frankly, none of them have had to.

A Lost Plane Remembered by Charles Brower in "Fifty Years Below Zero"

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 03:12:40 -0800

In 1928, Noel Wien's company was contracted to fly a Fox film crew up to Barrow to film scenes of Eskimo life and nature in the high Arctic. Wien offered Russ Merrill half the work of ferrying the three-man crew plus their gear out of Fairbanks. The two pilots departed on May 13 with Wien operating a Stinson SB-1 and Merrill a Travel Air Model CW; between the men and film equipment, each aircraft carried about 800 pounds.

On the first night out, about four hours north of Wiseman, the party encountered deteriorating conditions and had to land. When they attempted to depart the next day Merrill's Travel Air, with its thinner tires, was unable to takeoff in the snow. The pilots decided Wien would continue on to Barrow with one of the passengers and return with help and shovels so they could dig a runway for Merrill. Unfortunately, none of the men were familiar with the region and while Wien and his passenger did reach Barrow safely, they was unable to find their way back that day to the downed aircraft.

They returned to Barrow, again, unsuccessful. Shortly thereafter, weather settled over Barrow that ultimately kept the pilots grounded for six days. The people of Barrow became quite involved in the drama, especially whaler Charles Brower; a white man from New York City (born in 1863) who lived and worked in the village and later recorded the events of his life in the aptly titled, Fifty Years Below Zero.

On the landmarks Wien and his passenger attempted to use to find the stranded men, Brower wrote:

I questioned them carefully. Were they sure it hadn't taken longer to reach the deer camp than they had thought when they first came out? And what about the wind? That would make a difference too.

From what they said now it seemed to me that the lost plane might be farther south than they had estimated; perhaps even south of the Tashicpuk River and near the Colville.

Fog prevented any more attempts for several days. But we put the delay to some use by replacing their landing wheels with Wilkins' broken skis which we managed to patch up. Then when this job was done and everything ready for another try, a howling gale set in from the northeast and held them on the ground until the twenty-second.

As it turned out, Wien was looking in the wrong place and it took getting lost again and stranded several days at the Cape Halkett whaling station for him to discover from a man there, who remembered seeing two aircraft weeks earlier when he was at reindeer camp, just how off course he was. After the weather cleared again and he returned to Barrow, Wien departed on June 1 on a new search alongside Matt Nieminen, a Fairbanks pilot who'd arrived when no word was heard from the expedition. In a matter of hours, Nieminen found the abandoned Travel Air in the area the hunter described.

A note was discovered dated more than a week earlier; the two members of the film crew had walked out first on May 22, and on May 24 Merrill followed. All were headed north in hopes of reaching Barrow. Nieminen soon found the two passengers, snow-blind but alive. Merrill seemed lost however and while the pilots continued to search for him, Brower had his own ideas about where Merrill might be:

...so before the planes took off I sent out a couple more sleds along the sandpits, telling the boys to investigate all the sheltered places with special reference to the ragged shores of Dease Island.

At three in the morning the planes got back. From the strained faces of their crews and Noel's cryptic 'Lucky this country of yours is level,' it was soon clear why they brought no word of Merrill. They'd run into thick fog and had had to fly so low that most of the way home they were barely clearing the ground.

On June 4, three dog teams approached from the east. Two we recognized in the distance as the ones I had sent out last. Suddenly we all started on the run to meet them. The third team, we now saw, was being driven by John Hegness from Halkett Station, and on the sled was a bundled up form resembling a dead man.

Thankfully Merrill was not dead, but his recovery was very slow and precipitated returning the long way back to Anchorage via Wainwright, Kotzebue, Nome, and Fairbanks. It was eventually determined that he likely had contracted Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and it was not until late September that he returned to flying again. In the meantime Wien and Nieminen saved his aircraft, the film crew did get some pictures of walruses and the area around Barrow was thoroughly navigated. In the years that followed the Lindberghs landed there, and sadly Wiley Post and Will Rogers were killed near Barrow in a terrible accident in 1935.

Brower was in the thick of all of this and wrote about experiences that few people are aware of. (For example, after removal of Post's engine, propeller and instruments, he supervised the complete destruction of the aircraft so no souvenirs could be taken; this was done at the request of Mrs. Post.)

His book is a record of fascinating Alaskan history and aspects of the state's bush pilot past that truly reads like a Hollywood movie.

Fifty Years Below Zero: A Lifetime of Adventure in the Far North can be purchased at bookstores throughout Alaska and through the University of Alaska press. Also available at the libraries, of course.

The Big Idea: Writing about real people & real events

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 01:30:33 -0800

Link: John Scalzi's Whatever Big Idea series

Telling stories about fictional characters is hard, but telling stories about real people can be even harder -- especially when those stories involve a dangerous job. Author Colleen Mondor confronted this fact head on with her memoir The Map of My Dead Pilots, about her time working for an airline in the wilds of Alaska. Mondor's here to talk about the balancing act telling true stories requires, and how she walked that line.

COLLEEN MONDOR:

If you ask for the short description of The Map of My Dead Pilots, I always say it is about Alaska and flying and how some of the job was crazy cold and all of it was just plain crazy. I can write for pages about what it was like to run operations for a bush commuter out of Fairbanks and how sled dogs truly are the worst cargo in the world and that being the low bidders on the Interior Alaska Dead Body Contract is just as disturbing as you can imagine.

At the "Company" we flew convicts and high school sports teams, live chicks and dead moose, thousands of pounds of dog food and on one particularly memorable day, a multi-tiered wedding cake. I can write about the history of the early pilots and how those larger than life men in open cockpit biplanes created an aviation environment spawning what the NTSB refers to as "bush pilot syndrome" which is still blamed for a large quantity of accidents in the state today.

I could talk and write about all of this but none of it includes the hard part of writing the book, or the issue I am still dealing with after its release.

Map deals with the incidents, accidents and day-to-day experiences of pilots I knew and worked with at a place I refer to as the "Company". It is specifically about several men who are still alive and well, some of them now flying corporately or in the major airlines in the Lower 48. When we worked together none of us thought I would one day end up writing about the job and there was no small amount of nervousness on their parts when I told them I was working on a book. Map has been a project over several years and I'm sure that along the way, as much as I said I was staying with it, they probably all thought it was something that would never leave my laptop let alone be read by other people.

When I announced I had signed a deal with Lyons Press, these pilots had to acknowledge that their lives were about to be shared in a way that gave them very little control. What I promised them was that their real names would not be attached to the book and the contemporary characters would all (with the exception of one brief mention that was approved) have aliases. This has proven to be a bit more complicated then I imagined, however, as family and mutual friends have asked for confirmation of their own suspicions (I've let the guys field those requests), but I've held to it. The real challenge though was never the pilots who came through just fine, but rather the ones who lost their careers and worse.

It is difficult enough to write about what your friends did when everything ended up all right, but to second guess wrong decisions knowing nothing was ever the same again, or to pore over NTSB accident reports that only reveal what happened and never consider why, brings a whole new level of seriousness to the narrative. The investigators are very good at determining where the flaps were set and the condition of the weather, but they never consider what a pilot was thinking in the air or what was happening on the ground before he ever took off. I chose to ask those questions, and thus had to acknowledge the answers I found.

In many respects Map is the final word on aircraft that crashed on the sea ice near Nome, off the end of the runway in Bethel, on an unknown mountainside near Kotzebue and worst of all, into the Yukon River. People will read Map and gain some understanding into what happened in these far flung locations, but they will never know how hard it was to tell those stories well, or not judge too harshly pilots whose final acts were unrecoverable mistakes.

This is when the telling the truth got very dicey but also most important.

In writing The Map of My Dead Pilots, I discovered the Big Idea was finding balance between wanting to protect those who could not, for whatever reason, speak up for themselves and also being as honest as possible about a job that often relied upon a certain level of dishonesty every day. (Flight loads are always exactly at legal weight, the weather is always flyable, the aircraft are always in perfect condition.) Part of why the belief persists that Alaska is a place where the rules do not apply is because so many stories about it have been mythologized for so long. (Look no further than any one of the reality tv programs set in the state for proof of that.)

In aviation the "glory stories" are particularly pervasive and I didn't want to contribute to that cycle - in fact I wanted to expose it. But I also didn't want to hurt the friends who were still impacted from accidents years before or the families of those who lost someone dear. It was a fine line to walk and one I continue to worry about. There are parents who will read my book and find out more than they perhaps want to know about their sons, both living and dead, and that is a responsibility I feel quite heavy on my heart. I didn't want to do anyone wrong, because even when the crashing was their own faults, no one deserved to be judged harshly by me or anyone else years later.

The final verdict is still out on just how well I accomplished this high wire act; I'm waiting to hear from some friends who are featured prominently throughout the book. I hope I did them proud, of course, but I also hope I have shown just how much the stories we tell each other still matter, and that they don't need false glory to make them any more powerful then they have always been.

Nonfiction for Curious Readers 2010

Sun, 19 Dec 2010 20:10:16 -0800

As always, I have spent the past few months combing the catalogs looking for nonfiction that will appeal to teens, even if they're not the intended audience. The end result is a collection of titles ranging from a picture book stunner on Jimi Hendrix (the images must be seen to be believed), to Edith Wharton as literary rock star, to the "notorious Benedict Arnold," whose story is a lot more complex then you might think. Most intriguing, though, is a relatively unknown British gentlemen who tested the rules of his local post office for decades. He is, simply, the coolest stamp collector ever -- even though he didn't really collect stamps at all, but rather used them for a lifetime of eccentric postal adventures. (He mailed himself!) John Tingey's The Englishman Who Posted Himself and Other Curious Objects is exactly what I think of when I picture nonfiction that can get teens excited. Beautifully designed, and heavily illustrated by Princeton Architectural Press, this is a book that certain readers will find good as gold.

Tingey starts off Englishman with a bit of a philatelic treasure hunt, recalling an auction discovery of "strangely addressed postcards that travelled through the British post between 1898 and 1899." The author bought the cards, and promptly filed them away in his office until three years later when he noted a similar card on eBay. Then two years later he found more, and, too curious to resist any longer, embarked on the trail of W. Reginald Bray, a man who had way more fun with the postal system than any of us can imagine.

In the chapters that follow, Tingey provides biographical data on Bray, including an explanation of how he actually mailed himself and his bicycle. There's photographic proof, plus the receipt his father signed when the special "package" arrived. It is clear that Bray initially was on a lark to test the postal regulations by mailing odd things (a turnip, rabbit skull, embroidered envelopes), and then began addressing postcards in odd ways such as "any person in London" (not delivered), or "the Proprietor of the most remarkable hotel in the world on the road between Santa Cruz and San Jose, California" (it got to the Hotel de Redwood, which was built in live trees and stumps in the Santa Cruz Mountains). In every case he asked the cards be signed and returned to him, and thus slowly obtained one of the largest autograph collections in the world. The combination of celebrity (he sent cards to military commanders, politicians, movie stars, etc.) and mail art makes Bray's hobby both singular and charming. There is nothing else like it, and because of the inclusion of so many gorgeously photographed examples, Tingey's salute to this endlessly curious man will likely inspire everyone from amateur historians to artists. Personally, I plan to mail out some postcards of my own in tribute to Bray's example -- we'll see what I accomplish in the 21st century to compare to his efforts from one hundred years ago.

I will confess: of all the authors I thought might be compelling subjects for teen biographies, Edith Wharton never came close. But Connie Wooldridge's The Brave Escape of Edith Wharton is not only gorgeous to hold and peruse (the design is outstanding, from the textured dust jacket to the abundance of photographs), but the story is a true shocker. Remember the old adage "keeping up with the Joneses"? Well, Edith's family was the Joneses, and in the post-Civil War New York she was born into, doing what was expected was no easy thing. To wit:

It was becoming uncomfortably clear to Lucretia Jones that her daughter, Edith, was, in fact, different. Edith did love clothes. That was a relief. But Edith's other world of books and ideas was pulling her in a direction Lucretia found mysterious and unsettling. One of the fictional characters Edith later created would describe the "universe of thought" as an "enchanted region which, to those who have lingered, comes to have so much more colour and substance." Lucretia never "lingered" in that particular "enchanted region" and she certainly didn't think it was a good place for her daughter to be lingering.

What Edith needed to do was marry the right man, hopefully the right man with money. But that wasn't so easy for a bookish girl who gamely attended all the proper social functions, but still could not land the catch her mother wanted. Her first engagement failed for reasons never fully explained, but the story that ran in The Newport Daily News (that's Newport as in Rhode Island, home of the highest society of the time) didn't help Edith's reputation:

The only reason assigned for the breaking of the engagement hitherto existing between Henry Stevens and Miss Edith Jones is an alleged preponderance of intellectuality on the part of the intended bride. Miss Jones is an ambitious authoress, and it is said that, in the eyes of Mr. Stevens, ambition is a grievous fault.

Zam and pow. That's the end of a glorious coming-out season, isn't it? Wooldridge goes on to describe Wharton's continued writing efforts and the moment when she met Walter Berry, the man who became, "in Edith's own words, â€˜the Love of my life'." She also met the man she would marry (sadly, not Walter Berry), and from there a whole lifetime of companionship, loyalty, literary acclaim and search for love (which always included Berry) followed. Reading about Wharton's life enriches the experience of reading her novels (especially The House of Mirth) tenfold. I can't imagine assigning her books without assigning Wooldridge's as well -- they should go hand in hand -- but even more so, Brave Escape should be mandatory reading for any bookish young woman who dreams of moving beyond her family's expectations in an unorthodox manner. As much as Janis Joplin's life (more on Port Arthur's favorite daughter below) is about getting out of Texas to sing her heart out, Edith Wharton's was about getting away from society's expectations to pour out her own on paper. She is far more fascinating than I ever gave her credit for (or, rather, than I was led to believe in classroom discussion). Wooldridge makes Wharton the kind of literary heroine that Louisa May Alcott or Emily Dickinson have exemplified for decades. What a truly revolutionary woman and fascinating book. Loved it, plain and simple.

Lincoln's Flying Spies falls into one of those "stuff you didn't know about the Civil War, and is wicked cool" categories that get so often overlooked in traditional retellings of the war. A zillion books have been written about Lincoln, and yet how many are there about Thaddeus Lowe and the Balloon Corps who constituted, quite frankly, the very first U.S. air force? (Historians can argue all they want. They were in the air. They gathered valuable intelligence. They got shot at. They were the first air force, period.) Gail Jarrow has created a real gem with this title -- she has an irresistibly interesting subject (hot air balloons in war!), lots of photographs and quotes from people who were there -- and all of it is a perfect example of not realizing the value of what you had when you had it. In other words, there's a reason why no one mentions the use of balloons at Gettysburg. In spite of providing a lot in information in prior battles, Union commanders decided not to fund their use anymore, and Thaddeus Lowe and his fellow aeronauts were pretty much done. And that's just so wrong, I don't even know where to begin.

As much as Lincoln's Flying Spies is about the use of hot air balloons by the North however (the Confederacy never was able to operate one successfully), it is also about Lowe, who was already a pioneering aeronaut when the war began. From the very beginning, he saw what balloons could do by viewing enemy encampments and troop movements from the air. Although tethered during their ascensions for safety, Lowe and his fellow aeronauts, along with the military officers who ascended with them, were able to determine if the Confederates were preparing attacks, retreating, changing positions or gathering forces. While communication with the ground during battles was difficult (Lowe tried to assemble telegraph lines so he could report on troop movements in real-time), there were still many officers, on both sides, who acknowledged the powerful impact the balloons had on the fighting. Jarrow explains all of this, and also places readers right in the heart of the battles -- a place that a lot of history buffs will especially enjoy. She provides enough about Lowe to make him fodder for many school biography assignments and another unsung American to emulate. Here's hoping this title finds its way into the hands of backyard inventors, would-be aviators and every kid plotting war games on the bedroom floor.

Steve Sheinkin has a killer tagline on the cover of his new book The Notorious Benedict Arnold. In this "true story of adventure, heroism and treachery," Arnold is described as "America's Original Action Hero." It might be difficult for the average elementary school graduate to believe that the man who tried to hand over West Point to the British could ever be anything other than the Revolutionary War's most infamous traitor -- and yet Sheinkin, who has authored several outstanding history books for younger teens, does an excellent job of humanizing Arnold and making him someone readers will understand. The author makes clear in fact that his heroics early in the war can not and should not be denied and there is a solid argument to be made from the evidence here that without Arnold, Washington would not have made it successfully through the first years of the war. This makes the fact that it is only in spite of Arnold that America eventually was victorious that much more difficult to accept. All of our history hinged on a few moments when Benedict Arnold led our troops into battle, and then later, when he did his best to destroy the American military.

Sheinkin keeps readers on the edge of their seats as he shows the many key moments Arnold was part of, and then the slow unraveling of his character, which led to his final fateful choice. He should have been a general lauded along with Washington, Ethan Allen, Nathaniel Greene and Lafayette, and by placing him with the great military leaders of the Revolution, Sheinkin more than proves his book's relevance. I found Arnold an incredibly compelling figure, and his tragic fall -- due largely to his own hubris, although certainly helped by the politics of a Congress terrified of strong military personalities, and a young wife enamored with financial success -- is truly sad to read about. In fact, there is much of The Notorious Benedict Arnold that is sad because you know it's going to end badly for the main character. The hook here is that Sheinkin manages to make you care about a story whose ending is common knowledge. It's his authorial gift to make history come alive and why I recommend all of his books to teens eager for what their teachers have no time to share. Especially consider Notorious for reluctant older teen readers, as this is not an author who talks down to his audience. All the smart kids should be reading Sheinkin before they pick up Stephen Ambrose or Doris Kearns Goodwin; he's a true talent at knowing his audience as well (if not better) than he knows his subject.

Tanya Lee Stone deservedly received many kudos for her last book about women in the early days of the U.S. space program, Almost Astronauts. She's followed it with a unusual pop culture biography, The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie: A Doll's History and Her Impact On Us. This heavily-illustrated title looks not only at the doll, but at the woman who invented her and the history of the Mattel toy company. In many ways, Stone has written one of the most accessible business books for MG and YA readers I've ever seen. Barbie is certainly the point, but she's not the only interesting thing here, and her story is about a lot more than blonde hair and high heels than most people realize.

You have to live under a rock not to be familiar with the Barbie name. It's odd how some things can so permeate our culture that even when people do not own an object, they still know what it is, and question what what it represents. Barbie has been dragged through the mud as "bad for young girls" due to her unattainable body dimensions; as racist, due to her Caucasian looks (it was 1980 before the first black Barbie appeared); and as sexist, due to more than a few dubious fashion statements (not to mention the infamous Teen Talk Barbie "Math class is tough" scandal of 1992). Stone includes all of that and more, while balancing the stories of those who found inspiration in Barbie, a long look at the many careers she was dressed for over the years (soldier, race car driver, veterinarian, astronaut!), and an irresistible section on Barbie fashion and Barbie as art. As she points out, Barbie was designed first and foremost as a fashion doll, a more durable alternative to popular paper dolls. She was never intended to be the face of American women in doll form or the unlikely inspiration to generations of American girls. After all, did anyone look to Chatty Cathy for career advice? Somehow, though, Barbie slipped into the public zeitgeist and now we're all stuck with her.

The Good, the Bad and the Barbie goes a long way towards deconstructing just how a toy is created, the atmosphere in which it can "take off," and the manner in which something becomes a phenomenon. You can hope for pop culture stardom, she points out, but you can't force it. What Stone does is show how it happened in this instance, and then everything else that has followed in fame's wake. (My personal favorite chapter was the one about all the ways Barbie has been stripped naked and parted out over the years. This makes me realize that my brother, who hung our cousin's headless Barbies from the curtain rods to torment her when she came home from school, really was perfectly normal. Big sigh of relief.) Adult aficionados are going to enjoy this book for all the nostalgia, and I certainly recommend it as an unorthodox gift for adults. But teens should look to it as an excellent example of studying our culture, consumer buying habits, and gender studies. There's a lot to learn from Stone's research, and a lot of enjoyment in store while turning these pages.

What are the odds that I would receive books on both Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix in the same month? Ann Angel's Janis Joplin: Rise Up Singing is written for young adults, and captures both the powerful spirit and wry tenderness of the great rock and blues icon. The temptation to make Joplin's life a cautionary tale for teens is enormous, but Angel, while clear that the singer fell victim to substance abuse she could not control, does not offer her life as something to fear. Joplin lived large, in a celebration of her powerful voice and a powerful love for family and friends. Her death is a tragedy, plain and simple, and the only lesson offered here is how sad it is that we didn't have her with us for many more decades of soul.

After a brief introduction from longtime bandmate Sam Andrews, Angel follows Joplin's life from her upbringing in the refinery town of Port Arthur, Texas, to the fame she found with Big Brother and the Holding Company, the adulation at the Monterey Pop Festival, and her long struggles with alcohol and drugs (especially heroin). While all of this is fascinating (and well worthy of discussion), teens will likely identify most with Joplin's high school struggle to fit in with her classmates in a time that demanded conformity above all else. In the 1950s, Angel writes, "Being smart wasn't as important as behaving like a good, churchgoing American." Joplin found herself gravitating to the words of the new, explosive writers of the Beat Generation, and in spite of her membership in the Future Teachers of America, glee club, and school newspaper, she couldn't hide who she was. Soon enough, she was traveling with a group of guy friends to blues clubs and roadhouses, and trading in her proper Peter Pan collars for art and pondering the wide world beyond her company town. Clearly, Joplin was always destined for something more; it was her voice that decided her path, and her insatiable need for friendship that drove her on a search for fame that demanded artificial means to support it.

Janis Joplin: Rise Up Singing is no celebrity biography, but rather a deep look into the life of a talented artist. Heavily illustrated with photographs, this is also the dream of what might have been. If only, if only, if only Janis had not needed her fans so much, then maybe she would have survived to continue singing for them. Here's hoping this title gets some teen readers to seek out her music -- an achievement that Angel would likely be thrilled to make happen.

Jimi Hendrix makes an excellent picture book subject in Jimi: Sounds Like a Rainbow by Gary Golio, with stunning illustrations by Javaka Steptoe. Wisely focusing on the rock legend's younger years, Jimi follows his childhood as he was raised by his single parent father, and hung out in Seattle with close friends who shared his love of music. The story of how he acquired his first guitar is here, as are the artists who inspired him early on. Mostly, though, Golio focuses on how Hendrix "saw" music, how sound dominated his life, and his lifelong embrace of music, which transformed him into a singular talent. The text is engaging and interesting, but the illustrations -- holy cow, the illustrations -- are incredible. Steptoe uses layers of colors to fill the pages, and then collages over them in a manner that makes not only images, but textures, leap off the page. Jimi is not only a story, but a work of art -- a perfect homage to its subject. All in all, this is a class act all the way, and would be appreciated by Jimi Hendrix fans of any age. (Teens and adults will surely appreciate it for the thing of beauty that it is.) And Golio includes not only a note on Hendrix's tragic early death (where he discusses that addiction can be prevented and treated), but also links to websites and other books on the musician. One of the more impressive gift books I've come across; Jimi: Sounds Like a Rainbow is truly great reading for fans of all ages.

Pieces of Katrina: The Rising Voices of UNO Press

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 21:25:42 -0800

Five years after Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the levees, there have been many books published about New Orleans by a variety of publishers. In the city itself, however, the University of New Orleans Press found itself reborn in the wake of the flood, and has embraced a new future that encompasses not only an ongoing dedication to stories of the city, but a multitude of other topics as well. As managing editor Bill Lavender explained to me in a recent e-mail exchange: "UNO Press didn't actually exist in August of 2005; or rather it was at that time dormant, with no staff. Shortly thereafter, I proposed that we reawaken it and was able to get it started again. We didn't start it up for the specific purpose of publishing Katrina-related books, but the Katrina Narrative Project was ongoing and we decided early on that one of our first books would be Voices Rising, excerpted from these oral histories. Then a friend suggested we take a look at Jerry Ward's memoir, The Katrina Papers, and we found it irresistible."

Ward, a professor at Dillard University in the city, maintained a diary of the weeks and months after the storm hit that became The Katrina Papers. It includes his wide-ranging thoughts upon leaving his home, and then striving for a return to normalcy in such an altered environment. His record of loss illustrates how the totality of the destruction defies our own ability to understand it -- how it transcends loss of life and home to include loss of the future, loss of hopes and dreams and what might have been. As recounted in Papers, while clearing out the molding books and documents of his home he came to a particularly sad conclusion:

"It is strange. Emptiness fills you. It is strange. As you dump one load of the poetry chapbooks and poetry volumes from the wheelbarrow, two chapbooks fly to the sidewalk. They are works by Dudley Randall and Audre Lorde. You lovingly gather them up for deposit in a safe, dry place. There is a message here. The English language needs a new word: MISSAGE. The second message is this: For several years you had considered starting the Project on the History of Black Writing database by using your collective hard-to-find or totally limited self-published poetry books. The dream deferred is now your dream destroyed. Live with the emptiness."

In publishing books like Ward's and the products of the Katrina Narrative Project: Voices Rising and Voices Rising II, UNO Press stepped outside of the standard reportage boundaries and acknowledged the voices of those on the ground as more than sound bites on the evening news. Initiated in the months following Katrina, the Narrative Project involved UNO students and faculty members interviewing dozens of people across Louisiana and Mississippi in an effort to gather their stories in an oral history project. The immediacy of the events gives a rawness to these interviews that makes readers long for similar studies in the aftermath of other catastrophic disasters, such as the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, or the 1900 Galveston Flood. The Voices Rising volumes are real time history and carry a level of significance that future studies, suffering from emotional distance, will never be able to claim. Consider this passage from the recently released second volume:

I'm afraid of how quickly memories dissolve without touchstones. This is why my legs are black and blue from diving over a wet sofa to pick up a decorated heart encrusted in mud in my grandmother's floor. It's why I won't open any of the swollen photo albums on the floor of my temporary concrete apartment. I know they can no longer remind me of what my grandmother's uncles looked like or how beautiful her Aunt Prue was. Everyday I remember a picture of my great-grandmother. We called her Mimi. She lived until I was a teenager. In the photo, she is eighteen, looking over her shoulder at the photographer. Her black hair is piled on top of her head except for a few loose strands. It's the eyes I don't want to forget. They are enormous and brown. I always thought them incredibly sad. I close my eyes at night and imagine that photo and her sadness. It's as though she's looking at me, saying, "I know."

I'm getting on my knees now to pick through an album. I believe it's the one that contained this photo. Annabelle and Ruby are sniffing around the box. I sneeze; pieces of Katrina on the floor in front of me.

Can I touch it?

The first Voices Rising volume is currently the second best-selling title for the press, but only seven of their fifty books either currently in print or set to be released within the next year are Katrina-related. They have, however, as Lavender explains, "devoted a lot of effort toward these titles." This is due in no small part to both the city's ongoing post-Katrina struggle, but also the interest developed by visitors to New Orleans, who continue to be transfixed by what became a national disaster. Lavender is quick to point out however, that Katrina (and the levee failure) is not the only subject UNO Press is interested in. "We'll continue to publish on the subject," he explains, "but we'll also continue to publish other things. It's not the only thing on our agenda, certainly. We want to serve the local community, both academic and popular, but we don't want to focus too particularly on any one thing."

Part of that community focus includes the documentary book series, The Neighborhood Story Project. NSP works with neighborhood writers to "create portraits of place." Originally established in 2004 with the first series of books, UNO Press is now their publishing partner, and more titles were released earlier this year. They include four books by students who enrolled in the project at John McDonogh Senior High School and were taught everything from photography to interviewing techniques in a process which culminated in publication, and a series of celebratory book-release block parties across the city. In a manner similar to the Voices Rising titles, the NSP books record the lives of people easily overlooked by those who prefer a fast and easy version of the city. The 2010 series was written by students in the Calliope and St. Bernard Projects and the Seventh Ward, and includes a Honduran immigrant trying to learn as much about where she came from as where she lives now and a young man trying desperately to "find my light at the end of the tunnel." The authors write candidly about family members who deal drugs, are incarcerated, or, in one heartbreaking passage in Beyond the Bricks, die in acts of senseless violence. The books are poignant, startling, and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. With dozens of black and white photographs and extras as varied as recipes and handwritten journal excerpts, From My Mother's House of Beauty; Aunt Alice vs. Bob Marley; Signed, the President; and Beyond the Bricks are brash statements from brave teenagers who have stepped up the plate and laid their hearts bare in an effort to find themselves. These are unique coming-of-age stories that, taken as a whole, show readers a side of New Orleans life that is a model for documentary study.

As much as the NSP titles are not about Katrina, however, the authors were all indelibly affected by the events of August 2005, and to one degree or another, write about in their books. What's interesting about the titles at UNO Press, though, is that there are those that are ostensibly not about Katrina, and yet the reader ends up drawn back to it anyway. Jonathan Traviesa's Portraits: Photographs in New Orleans 1998-2009 is a collection of black-and-white pictures of New Orleanians taken at their homes or studios. There is no hint of destruction to be found here, because the city is not the point -- Portraits is about the people. And yet seeing the faces of NOLA residents in such relaxed settings will likely lead readers to recall the many faces of frustration and despair from five years ago. Traviesa soundly refutes the statements made after the hurricane that New Orleans was not worth saving, or significant to the rest of the country. He shows us the part of the story we did not see back then, and in many ways brings Katrina full circle -- his photos were taken before and after the storm, and yet you cannot perceive a chronology while turning pages. Readers bring Katrina to this book, not the author or his subjects. Realizing this, we learn a little bit more about ourselves and the city and what we expect to find in its books. Essentially, the storm is ever with us. "I actually don't think it's going to fade away," says Bill Lavender, "even as the BP spill threatens to eclipse it in terms of scope. As many books as have already been published about the disaster, I think there are many more to come. There were lots of Zeitouns."

And there are a lot of portraits, which take us back simply because we are still halfway there already.

The press's current top seller, Dogs in My Life by John Tibule Mendes, is a hybrid of photo essay and memoir. Mendes's book includes a fascinating introduction about how his early twentieth-century photos were found, along with his own story about growing up in the city. Local readers are likely transfixed by the disarming photos which show photos of big and small moments in the city's history (from the 1927 flood and destruction of the Cotton Exchange to a variety of parades and candid city snapshots). It is another example of how the press is able to bridge the gap of past and present and create a collection of topical and compelling titles. As the spill drama continues, Lavender points out that the story of New Orleans and the people who write there will continue to evolve.

"I think Katrina galvanized the national imagination because of the extremes of suffering, generosity, and also venality and xenophobia that surfaced in it. The Nashville flood was a horrible thing, but it was over so quickly the vast diaspora that took place in NO did not really develop, and so there was no occasion for such literary photo ops as the Gretna police or Danziger bridge or Zeitoun. So I actually think it's a combination of the very real long-range effects of the event, plus the fact of New Orleans' literary nature.

"The larger story-- In my crystal ball I can see (darkly) Katrina and the BP spill together as the opening salvo of an age of increasingly serious and frequent environmental disasters. Maybe this age will finally shock us into being pragmatic stewards of the planet. Or so, given the alternative, one would hope."

YA Column: Nary a Vampire In Sight

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 00:27:34 -0800

Matt Kindt shows that the graphic novel is a primo format for unorthodox mysteries with his utterly beguiling Red Handed: The Fine Art of Strange Crimes. Framed around the career of a famous police detective named Gould, Red Handed gives readers several seemingly random mysteries about all sorts of crimes ranging from art theft to chair theft to pickpocketing to illegal fur trading to the taking of unseemly photos of unknowing women (legs and feet, occasional arms, but nothing R-rated). Gould unravels every crime, tracks the perpetrators and carts them off to jail except there seems to be a pattern forming in all these random acts of criminality and Gould smells a plot. Just who is behind it and why is a mystery he cannot ignore, and as the story continues, it becomes clear that solving that larger mystery is a case of life and death.

This is a carefully plotted novel, the sort of plotting that belongs in a class on how to do it. Kindt does not waste a word or picture. He knows what he is doing and why every step of the way, and the care he takes to pull every one of these threads together is masterful. But as elegant as the plot is, it's the larger mystery that keeps the pages turning. Readers will not be able to stop asking questions, stop trying to figure out why certain characters do certain things and how, even though they don't know each other, they're being manipulated by someone else. (The artist who writes her novel with stolen words is a personal favorite of mine.) Interspersed throughout the novel are black and white text-only scenes in which future Gould and the mastermind exchange barbs in an interrogation setting. Clearly he solves the mystery, but the why of it all is left to the final pages, and it packs a wallop.

First Second Books is consistently one of the finest imprints out there for teens, and I cannot recommend their graphic novels enough. Red Handed is another first-class example of a wonderfully written story with beautiful, unique illustrations that perfectly complement the unusual mood of the narrative. Published for teens, adults would be fools to pass this one up; it's about as good as it gets and a mystery not to be missed.

Soho Press inaugurated a new YA imprint this spring, and I am delighted to say that this venerable mystery press is giving us exactly what I have wanted for so very long: straight-up mysteries for teens! There are girl detectives, conspiracies, family secrets, school hallways fraught with serious drama, and some hard-core thrillers. Basically, every kind of mystery a teenager could want and nary a vampire in sight.

The first Soho title I cracked open was Helen FitzGerald's Deviant. The author quickly introduces Scottish street kid Abigail, whose long-lost mother has died and unexpectedly left a small package for her daughter. Notified by the counselors at the teen group home where she lives, Abigail discovers her inheritance includes a cryptic letter, a revelation about her previously unknown father, a plane ticket to California, and a pile of cash. Because she is no fool, she gets a passport pronto and blows out of Edinburgh without a backward glance. What she doesn't know is the trouble that awaits her in the Golden State.

In L.A. the changes come fast and furious: her father is wealthy, she has a perfect, if somewhat Stepfordish, stepmother, and her older sister (who never knew their mother) alternates between being an undercover rabble rouser and a stoner rich kid. Before she has a chance to get her bearings, Abigail is caught up in her sister's illegal escapades, and then there is a death -- a serious, very upsetting death. Abigail uncovers a most nefarious plot and ends up running for her life and then -- and then -- well, bad things happen, and you think it's all over (but it's not of course).

In many ways Deviant fits solidly in classic contemporary thriller territory, and with older characters, some sex, and more graphic violence, it would easily read as an adult title. The pacing is great, the plot flows right along and even though the author knows she is doing a bit of a homage to a classic, it is one we never get tired of, and there are plenty of original bits added in to make Deviant stand on its own. What truly makes the novel shine, though, is Abigail. She's tough and smart but more than once acknowledges her position in L.A. as a fish out of water and acts pretty much as any teen in her position would. She's no dumb bunny, but she's not a superpowered Buffy either. Abigail is canny and bold and determined, a lost girl who has to fight if she wants to get out of this mess alive. I loved this kid and hope -- as the final pages suggest -- that there will be more from her in the future.

Margaux Froley's contribution to the Soho Teen line, Escape Theory, is a complex murder mystery set at a boarding school. Filled with some of what you expect (prescription drug abuse, town versus school tension, class issues, teen pregnancy), this psychological thriller manages to keep increasing the tension. The short take: Jason "Hutch" Hutchins, one of the most charismatic students on campus, is dead of an apparently intentional overdose. Classmate Devon, a scholarship student, had a unique friendship with Hutch and is having a lot of trouble believing he would kill himself.

As part of a new peer-counseling program, Devon is supposed to talk to Hutch's closest friends and provide them with some student-student therapy. (I'm not sure how believable this scenario is, but as plot devices go it's okay.) Everyone has an idea about what really happened, and bit by bit Devon figures out that not only is there something suspect about Hutch's death, but a whole lot of other nefarious activity is happening on campus too. They might be rich and look pretty, but, of course, there's a seamy underbelly. Devon makes alliances, uncovers clues, gets a boyfriend (maybe), bonds with an unlikely gal pal, and solves the crime.

There are many things that work well with Escape Theory, starting with Devon and the Keaton School setting. Our protagonist is the typical bookish-introspective-outsider teen heroine, but she's also pretty mouthy and spunky in all the right ways. Very Veronica Mars. As her classmates shuffle through her "office," she asks the questions she wants answered, and she doesn't let go as they push back against the intrusion. She's not afraid to stand up for herself with the administration, but she's also a bit flawed and that's nice to see. The only truly false note is her over-the-top conversations with friend Presley, which read more as an adult's idea of how teen girls interact then how they actually, um, interact. Absent that easily ignored misstep, Escape Theory is a nice little page-turner that opens up all sorts of future possibilities set at Keaton School. There are a wealth of personalities and scenarios introduced here the beg for future exploration; here's hoping Ms. Froley will dive back into the ugly side of high school again and take us another adventure with Devon and her band of merry pranksters.

Sarah Rees Brennan introduces some paranormal elements (no vampires! no werewolves!) in her enormously fun spin on the girl detective, Unspoken, the first book of The Lynburn Legacy. (The second book, Untold, is due in September.) Teen Kami Glass has lived in a very sleepy British town, Sorry-in-the-Vale, her whole life. As editor of the school newspaper, she is eager to get into all of the town's secrets, most notably those surrounding one of the founding families, the Lynburns, who have recently returned. Her life is a bit complicated by the one thing she cannot control, the existence of Jared, an imaginary/invisible friend who has communicated telepathically with her since childhood. They don't know how they do it or why they do it, only that they are bound together and always, always, a part of each other's lives.

It is pretty much impossible to discuss the plot of Unspoken without dropping a dozen different spoilers, so I'm going to stay purposely general in this review. While lots of readers are going to enjoy the paranormal elements, it was actually the characters that made this one succeed hugely for me. Kami is Nancy Drew in all of her nosy best, and also channels some Rory Gilmore circa the "Life and Death Brigade" episodes as she stays hot on the trail of the Lynburns. Brennan wisely gives her several friends to solve crime with and all of the teens are well rounded, funny, and smart. (My only complaint would be that they are also gorgeous -- there is so much gorgeousness in Sorry-in-the-Vale that one wonders if average-looking teens are allowed to live there.)

Along with the Scooby gang bits, there is also Kami's family, a delightfully normal and nice supporting cast, which is actually a solid component to the narrative. As for the Lynburns, they are the great big soap opera mess that the plot deserves and oh, how I wish I could say more but I swear, I can't. I'll just add that cute emotionally-tortured boys are always a good thing, and although I'm not fond of love triangles, I'll take this one because it's all tied up in the fight at the end.

Brennan has done a great job here of writing a cracker-jack mystery that doesn't insult the intelligence of its readers. Kami and her friends are enormously likable and watching them navigate the secrets that permeate their town (and turn deadly) makes for a real page-turner. I found Unspoken to be the best sort of diversionary read, and while the tweets have flown fast and furious over the cliffhanger ending, I was quite pleased with Brennan's choice there. She is making her characters work for their story, and as she has crafted so many wonderful personalities here, their drama (and trauma) is not something to overly worry about. Kami is no dumb bunny; she's going to figure things out and with her pals will be saving the day, I just know it. Of course I have to get Untold to figure out how that will happen, but I'm confident Brennan won't let me down. This is an author at the top of her game, and Unspoken is the start of a series that I have fallen hard for.

Finally, Doyce Testerman has crafted a noir urban fantasy that while published for adults is an affecting crossovers for teen readers. It has monsters of an insidious Sam Spade-ish kind, sinister and creepy and deviously intelligent, and it has a sorely conflicted and appealing heroine who is a private detective/former singer and lover of rock and roll (which has plot relevance). But mostly, surprisingly, the root of Hidden Things is all about family and how you can never ever, no matter how hard you might want to, get away from that place you call home. You carry it with you, even in the midst of a trip through an alternate world on the trail of a murderer and in the hopes of finding one of your dearest friends.

Hidden Things opens with a bang as Calliope Jenkins receives a late-night phone call from friend and business partner Josh, who is away investigating a case. The call is strange, but it's nothing compared to the shock of discovering the next morning that Josh is dead and that he died before the phone call was placed. The police are investigating, Josh's wife is freaking out, and a very peculiar guy who appears to be homeless keeps trying to insert himself into Calliope's life. He seems to know a lot about her and Josh, and he won't go away. In rapid succession, Calliope realizes that all is not as it seems, that she needs to follow Josh's trail if she wants to get any answers and that guy just might have the answers she needs, if he doesn't drive her crazy first. Also, there appear to be people out to kill her, so none of this is going to be easy.

What we end with here is a great road novel, a solid mystery, a trip into a parallel world, a glutton, a reason never to trust men in suits, and a dragon -- a really really cool dragon. Here is Testerman's lovely statement on dragons, which pretty much are words to live by:

Dragons are true. It doesn't matter if they fly and breathe fire and can eat a town full of people, if they're messengers for god or a symbol of everything lost that you wish you still had. They might be any of those things or all of 'em, and it still doesn't matter how they are. They are.

It is on the road that the book's coming-of-age plot breaks through, as Calliope finds herself returning to Iowa, where Josh apparently died and, nearly as devastating, where Calliope grew up. The route to answers about her lost friend lie through her home, through her past, through the reckoning about who she was and who she is. It is where everything comes together and is the scene of a confrontation between Calliope and her sister about leaving home and staying and why some of us make one choice and some make the other. And that is where Testerman really sells Hidden Things as a book about growing up. Yes, this is a mystery, and it has a wonderful noir sensibility. But also, as Calliope accepts all that Iowa means for her and Josh and all that it can never be again for either of them, Hidden Things is about leaving home. That's what makes it a killer YA novel, even though it wasn't written for teens. Excellent.

COOL READ: DK's excellent new entry in the "Big Ideas Simply Explained" series is The Politics Book, and it is really something special. With the publisher's classic design style (liberal use of color and sidebars, multiple fonts, dynamic presentation), this is a book that is both highly informative and pleasing to page through. The multiple contributors provide chronological history that dates back to "Ancient Political Thought" beginning in 800 BCE and moves forward through medieval times, the Enlightenment, "Revolutionary Thoughts," and "The Rise of the Masses" and more contemporary discussions. A ton of famous names are packed in here and I loved how the title moves around the world and in and out of big and small ideas. It is as comprehensive as it gets, but more importantly very readable. There is not a dull page here and the examples make the most complex issues clear and easy to understand. (And some of the quotations are really amazing, like Mao Zedong's "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.")

I get great nonfiction to review all the time, and I work hard to bring the best, most unusual, most useful, and interesting of those titles to this column. The Politics Book stands out as one of the most important I've read in a long time. I wish I could put it in the hands of every teenager and adult I know. Pair this with the graphic novel Economix by Michael Goodwin and you could radically transform the population into a smarter, savvier group of individuals. Learning is good, folks -- don't be afraid to read these books and find out more on such worthy subjects.

YA Column: "A Horse Named Charming"

Sat, 11 May 2013 14:29:52 -0800

Every time I think I've read it all an author comes along and wham, I get reminded that yes, indeed, you can take an old story and make it new all over again. Dear readers, I give you Six-Gun Snow White, which is exactly what it sounds like -- a Western spin on the fairy tale classic. Catherynne Valente spins it in such a way that somehow you end up with visions in your head of Clint Eastwood, William Randolph Hearst, Coyote, the horrible mines where all those poor kids were enslaved in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Annie Oakley times seven. But the idea alone, even with all these elements, is not enough. What makes Six-Gun Snow White such an unforgettable read is the voice of the main character and the narrative that Valente drops her into.

First, be aware this is old-school Snow White, full of all kinds of pain and torment and born of a forced union between her Native American mother and wildly wealthy and powerful father, the arrogant "Mr. H." (This is where all of my Hearst suspicions kicked in.) After her mother's death in childbirth, our heroine leads a largely ignored childhood with a few highlights like shooting targets with the jewel-laden, silver-handled revolver her father gave her. Things take a sudden turn however with the dreaded arrival of the stepmother. This is when Snow White gets her name, for as the new Mrs. H. makes clear with her mixed-blood heritage, white is "the one thing I was not and could never be." Thus begins the torturing of Snow White and the nightmare that is life with an evil stepmother.

Eventually, Snow White runs away on the back of a horse named Charming, out for Indian Territory, for the story she has created of her mother's people, for a better life out there somewhere. A hired Pinkerton detective hunts her relentlessly, following the legend she leaves in her wake. Snow White gets harder on her own, she gets tough, she gets angry, she gets brutal. She survives. When she faces down the detective, she finds a place with seven friends and when her stepmother knocks on her door, well, Snow White follows the tale that has been written for her. I'll only say that the ending manages to be both unexpected and perfect, it's a gift of an ending, and for this reader, who grew up on Red River, The Searchers, and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, this was the Snow White I have waited my whole damn life to find. With a gorgeous cover by Charles Vess, Six-Gun Snow White is the kind of literary shock that requires an immense talent.

Paul Crilley's The Lazarus Machine takes place in an alternate steampunk 1895 where Tesla-powered computers are everywhere and Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace are heroes of the day. Sebastian Tweed and his father make a living as spiritualists -- or rather his father pretends to talk to the dead while Sebastian uses technology to answer. In the opening chapters, Barnaby Tweed is kidnapped by the malevolent Professor Moriarty and his gang, and Sebastian sets off on a race to find his father and discover why Moriarty, back from apparent death on Reichenbach Falls, would want him in the first place. To get these answers he must work with budding journalist Octavia Nightingale, who is on her own search for a missing parent and shares Sebastian's interest in foiling Moriarty's (certainly nefarious) plans.

There is plenty of running around London for both Sebastian and Olivia as they call on friends to help pursue the Moriarty mystery to the highest levels of British government. Crilley does a grand job of ratcheting up the tension, especially when Sebastian has to break into a prison. What's especially appealing is the many strong supporting characters (particularly female) he has created, including not only Olivia but also young computer mastermind "Stepp Reckoner" and family friends Jenny and Carter (who present an excellent picture of marital bliss, albeit mixed with occasional larceny). The biggest win here, however, is found in the plot twists and turns, all of which are played out with witty elegance. Crilley really thought this one out, and his care with the plot should be deeply appreciated by the readers. There's comedy, a tiny hint of romance and smart banter. I think Crilley just might have done the near impossible here and accomplished a steampunk adventure that has equal appeal to teens of both genders. Now if Sebastian and Olivia can just stay alive as they continue their adventures into the dark underbelly of British politics, this could be a series with serious staying power.

Cherie Priest happily returns to her damaged "rotter" and gas-filled Seattle with her latest Clockwork Century title, The Inexplicables. I know it's hard to cheer the return of zombie-like cannibals, but I love this version of Seattle and the tough non-cannibal occupants who live there. Her protagonist, teen Rector Sherman, is an orphan who has aged out of charity care and is being shown the door as the story opens. Addicted to the area's drug of choice, sap, and haunted by his complicity in sending a friend into the dangerous walled city, he goes into Seattle seeking evidence of what happened to Zeke. He is fairly quickly nearly killed in an altercation with a hella-big monster and starts going through some serious detox.

Rescued by Zeke's friends and family, Rector finds himself, shockingly, making friends. They discover a plot to takeover Seattle, find the monster and his girlfriend, and also bump into a rotter or two. Through it all Rector struggles to stay clean and more importantly not just die from the effects of his years of drug abuse. While the action comes hard and fast, Priest still lays out a lot potential for future stories, not only with Rector and Zeke (not dead, as it turns out), but the former Confederate nurse Mercy Lynch who is missing a few friends of her own. In the Clockwork Century anything is possible and all of it, in one way or another, ties into the rest.

Like the previous entries in this series, The Inexplicables is fast-paced and populated with smart, capable characters who don't spend much time dithering when there is a job to do. Although monsters appear, these are not horror stories, and the blood and gore is kept to a minimum that complements rather than overwhelms the story. Teenage boys in particular should enjoy The Inexplicables, as Rector, Zeke, and their friend Houjin have the sort of high action adventures with some very real threats that will keep them on the edge of their seats. Rector is no prince, but he's very compelling, and following him as he struggles each and every moment to stay straight is the most powerful part of this exciting story.

My first thought after finishing Timothy Bradley's Infestation was that I had just experienced a Holes mash-up with every single B monster movie that came out of the 1950s. I grew up watching those movies on Sunday mornings, so that is high praise, and for Bradley's target audience of young teen (or tween) boys, it should be all the persuasion they need to hear. Toss in a sympathetic protagonist in a miserable situation who bonds with a bunch of likable if slightly dangerous freaks and then must face down mutant killer bugs. This is everything your typical reluctant reader could want and it comes wrapped up in a plot that zips along convincingly and never forgets that character is what matters most.

Our hero Andy ends up at the Reclamation School for Boys in the New Mexico desert after a miserable foster care experience. The school is a for-profit institution and it makes money by keeping the boys there as long as possible, which isn't too tough as they are out in the middle of nowhere. With harsh rules and continuous punishment plus the prerequisite bullies, Andy is pretty sure he is in hell. Things only get weirder when his roommate takes him up through the ceiling tiles in their room to an abandoned portion of the compound, which dates back to its previous military ownership days. Barrels of chemicals fill the room, hinting at all sorts of nefarious purposes. Very quickly the plot blows up when Andy and seven other students are locked up alone in the isolated Block 6 as punishment. An earthquake-type event occurs and when the boys bust out they find a bloody mess. Plus mutant bugs.

The boys get their act together and don't waste a lot of time wondering about the necessary action of survival. Through the assistance of an adult they learn some of the science behind what the mutants, and Bradley smoothly fits in a little background about the environment and chemicals. Mostly though, this is just a big action-packed novel about killing the big uglies before they kill (and eat) you first. Very, very fun.

COOL READ: Chronicle Books is known for the excellent design that goes into their titles but they've really outdone themselves with The Where, the Why, and the How: 75 Artists Illustrate Wondrous Mysteries of Science. Set up as a encyclopedia for the scientifically curious (teenage Einstein wannabes who live in bedrooms that look like Henry Jones, Jr.'s office will need it badly), each "question" is addressed in a double-page spread that includes a brief essay written a professor, librarian, engineer, or doctor alongside a full-page highly original illustration. The questions are eclectic, including "Can Evolution Outpace Climate Change?" "Why Do Placebos Work?" "Do Rogue Waves Exist?" and "Why Do Whales Sing?" and the color illustrations range from realistic to comedic to sometimes really, really strange. You will learn a lot, but mostly, this one is just damn cool to look at. I still want my bedroom to look like Henry Jones, Jr.'s office; the book fits right in with my plan.

YA Column: A Look at Some Interesting Real Lives

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 20:54:16 -0800

I was lucky enough to have a copy of The Mad Game: Growing Up in a Warzone pressed into my hands a few months ago at ALA Midwinter. This collection of global voices is truly a unique title, a book on war that manages to include multiple ages, perspectives, and conflicts. Editor J.L. Powers has done an amazing job of collecting an array of individual narratives to dive into. Some will resonate more than others, but collectively they provide a powerful example of the lingering impact of war on the lives of children and teenagers. What so impressed me is that the children come from such diverse backgrounds; they are soldiers and civilians, from families who fled war or the children of those who fought in it. In ways big and small, subtle and obvious, their lives have been touched by combat and the message they share is serious stuff: you don't get over this, not completely, not ever. You just learn to live with what you know and somehow not let it destroy you.

In That Mad Game, we meet Phillip Cole Manor, who writes of fighting in Vietnam at the age of eighteen; Qais Akbar Omar, who grew up under the Taliban in Aghanistan; and Alia Yunis, who spent many of her childhood years in Beirut during the civil war. There is also Xiaomei Lucas, who grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution; Innocent Bisanabo, who fled wars across sub-Saharan Africa; and Rebecca Henderson, who recounts the lives of four teenagers forced to flee Burma. There are essays on Iraq, Iran, South Africa, Cambodia, El Salvador, and Bosnia. Every page is another history lesson, every paragraph another stark reminder of the price we pay for losing peace. "In the Middle East, the advent of war is as unpredictable as the rain," writes Yunis. "Each year the rain is needed desperately, but often it doesn't come. However there is never a drought when it comes to war. Every generation has its war or -- quite often -- wars."

It's easy to recommend That Mad Game to classrooms, but I read this book more to understand and empathize than to learn facts. Jerry Mathes writes of growing up with his father, who was away at Vietnam when he was just a baby, and shows how war can permeate a household and taint those who never know its pain firsthand. "...I realized that I lived among war's flotsam: fatigues, dress blues, rank and unit patches, ribbons, brass insignia, medals that hung on a plaque... Some sacred relics I showed my friends and pretended to know the meaning of what stories these things told." For all that he is mired in his father's war, however, Mathes cannot understand it and he cannot understand what became of his father there. "I have often wondered who the young man was in the photo on the beach or the groom in his uniform before he learned the language of war," he writes. And the reader is drawn into that wondering, into questioning who this man might have been if he had not become "intimate with suffering."

There are more than a dozen biographies in That Mad Game, memories shared, emotional scrapbooks revealed and, as in David Griffith's closing essay "Symphony No. 1 (In Memoriam, Dresden, 1945"), questions are asked that can never be answered. If we are lucky, we will never know what the contributors to Powers's collection have revealed. We will only have their record to better know what it was like; we will only have their sorrow to help us understand. Highly recommended.

One of the more surprising biographies to come my way recently is Frank Young and David Lasky's graphic novel The Carter Family: Don't Forget This Song. Weighing in at just under 200 pages and including a CD of Carter Family recordings from a radio show in 1939, this full color history takes readers from A.P. Carter's childhood to his marriage to Sarah, the development of a trio with her cousin Maybelle (who later married A.P.'s brother) and the group's hard rise to country music fame in the late 1930s. We're talking hardcore, powerful, overlooked American history here, and it is in such a lovely package and so compelling to read, that I think it has the potential to be a real treasure to those lucky enough to find it. (In other words, this is the perfect gift for any music lover or American history geek.)

The Carters collected their songs largely from their Appalachian neighbors, as A.P. traveled the highways and byways looking for anyone who had a tune to share. Later accompanied by friend Lesley Riddle, A.P. would transcribe lyrics while Riddle, who could learn melodies by ear after only one listen, would memorize the tunes. With work by Sarah and Maybelle, whose unique guitar style had a lasting effect on American music, the old songs received new life with many later becoming famous. ("Will the Circle Be Unbroken" is likely the most recognized today.) Young and Lasky detail this process, especially the conflict A.P. felt over receiving full credit as writer of so many songs acquired from others, and the many times in which others, especially Riddle were ignored.

The full color illustrations are realistic and touching, with a great deal of attention paid to facial expressions that often tell the story without a single word. The authors handle all of the personal elements of the Carter story -- especially the breakup of A.P. and Sarah's marriage while the group continued to perform and record -- with a deft touch and the final pages are bittersweet in their intensity. The Carter Family is part of our national story, but it is rare that their significance is fully appreciated outside the most ardent of country music circles. Young and Lasky have done a wonderful job of making the family's contribution appealing to a wider audience and The Carter Family is a unique tribute that just might make this American treasure relevant in a new way to the twenty-first century.

Count me as one of those people who thought she knew plenty about Yoko Ono. While I'm beyond blaming her for The Beatles' breakup, I saw Yoko as offbeat artist, John Lennon's muse-lover-wife-loyal widow and... well, that was pretty much it. My total lack of knowledge about her life has made the revelations in Nell Beram and Carolyn Boriss-Krimsky's biography Yoko Ono: Collector of Skies all that much more engrossing, and I invite people who think they know her story to dive into this one ASAP.

Ono grew up during World War II in Japan. She had parents who were alternately authoritarian and disconnected (sometimes both at the same time), and she insisted on making an artistic life for herself with absolutely no idea how to do it. She just jumped into the world she wanted to live in. Along the way, she married three times, had a child who was later abducted and hidden by her ex-husband, thus removed from her life for decades, and she fell madly in love with one of the most dynamic men of the twentieth century. Simply put, Yoko Ono was one of the most unorthodox anti-Disney princesses ever who made her own happily-ever-after happen. The tragic ending to her great love affair is the stuff of pop culture legend, and an international sorrow. But she is far more than just the wife of a Beatle, as Beram and Boriss-Krimsky prove; Yoko Ono is really something special.

The authors take readers through Ono's life in chronological order, giving teens a firm view of how her worldview was shaped by the events of her chaotic (and almost unbelievable) childhood. They provide dozens of outstanding photographs, including many of her artwork and performance art pieces. There are also excerpts of her written work, discussions of her influences, and, of course, an in depth look at her relationship with Lennon. Budding artists are going to find much to admire about her commitment to creating art -- the art that mattered to her and defied all expectation and convention -- but readers who dream about something more for themselves than they have been raised to expect will identify with Ono's journey. The authors have done an outstanding job of making their subject highly relatable; Yoko Ono: Collector of Skies is really a title to check out for assignment or pleasure.

Catherine Reef follows her impressive biography of Jane Austen (Jane Austen: A Life Revealed) with what has to be one of the saddest family stories ever recorded, The Bronte Sisters: The Brief Lives of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne. I'll start by saying there were actually two other Bronte older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth. The fact that no one has ever heard of them or their books, is because they died in short succession from tuberculosis when they were only ten and eleven years old. The girls became ill while attending the sort of boarding school that is right out of Dickens (or Jane Eyre). Both Emily and Charlotte, who also attended the school became ill as well, although once their sisters died, their widowed father decided that getting them home sooner rather than later was a good idea. Too bad it only took two dead daughters to realize how horrible the place was.

In the years after their return home, the Bronte sisters, with younger sister Anne and brother Branwell, who succumbed to alcoholism, drug addiction, and tuberculosis when he was thirty-one, spent an enormous amount of time creating poems, stories, and, in Branwell's case, paintings. At one time or another, they all continued to receive formal education and worked, primarily as tutors or governesses. Reef shows how they left home to make money, and yet always returned, usually because they could not stand their employers (who all sound abominable). The Brontes loved the moorland where they grew up and pined for it in letters; home for these siblings was certainly where their hearts were.

As she writes about the writing lives of the three surviving sisters, Reef shows the sources of their novels, all of which were based firmly in their living and teaching experiences. The heavily romantic aspects seem to have hinted at their secret dreams, longings they harbored that were never fulfilled. Reef also does an excellent job of showing how difficult it was for the Bronte sisters to be taken seriously once their feminine identities were revealed; clearly they were right to use male pseudonyms to publish their books.

They had very difficult lives. Anne and Emily died young as well, and poor Charlotte, who finally married a kind and decent, albeit unexciting, man, died before the death of her first child. So while they live forever in their books, it's pretty hard for me to not to see their biography as anything other than a first class tragedy. I remember struggling through Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre as a teenager (I never finished the latter, I'm afraid), but never once giving the authors a second thought. Reef yet again shows that a deeper appreciation for the authors will only deepen appreciation for the works themselves. I know it will be hard for me to think of either book without remember how much the authors suffered to make their art.

Kay Frydenborg brings a timely contribution to the always wonderful Scientists in the Field series with Wild Horse Scientists. Focused on the Assateague Island National Seashore and the horses made famous in the Marguerite Henry's classic Misty of Chincoteague, the text takes a long look at the efforts to save the horses there (and also in Montana) from the burden of overpopulation. In careful, precise language and the series' trademark stellar photographs, Wild Horse Scientists follows the work of Ron Keiper and Jay Kirkpatrick, whose entire careers have been devoted to working with wild horses. This is nothing less than an effort to keep wild animals wild and safe; something that humans we struggle with more and more as the twenty-first century redraws the map of human and animal interaction.

The Assateague Island National Seashore is split between Maryland and Virginia and suffers from aggressive weather that includes everything from bitter winters to summer bugs right out of a horror movie. The horses on the Virginia side are famous for their annual fundraiser swim across the channel to the mainland known as the "pony penning." The horses receive biannual veterinary care, and then older foals are auctioned off. Frydenborg focuses on the Maryland horses and the innovative contraception program in practice there that has been ninety-five-percent effective at keeping birth rates down and allowing the horses to remain wild. Keiper and Kirkpatrick have spent decades monitoring the Assateague horses and developing the perfect chemical cocktail that could be "shot" into the females via dart gun. As of 2011, the same method is being used with the Pryor Mountain wild horses in Montana. In fact, it was a promise to help those horses that drew Kirkpatrick to the isolated population in Assateague, which allowed him to work out a successful method of contraception with little interference from outside influences.

What I love about the Scientists in the Field series is that each of these books teaches me about people doing things I never imagined, pursuing careers in the field that are exciting, important, and immensely satisfying. Kirkpatrick and Keiper have done valuable critical work that will likely be responsible for changing the manner in which we deal with the wild horse population in America. This is something that needs to be handled sooner rather than later, and Frydenborg shows how the dedication of a group of tenacious scientists really can make a huge difference. Be sure to keep your eyes out for reports on the wild horse population and the effectiveness of contraception on the long-term health of the herds.

COOL READ: While I have come across several good cookbooks for teens, the new sports nutrition title Feeding the Young Athlete by Cynthia Lair and Scott Murdoch is an unexpected twist on the "what to eat" genre. In a muted palette with a faded design that evokes lockers and denim, Feeding the Young Athlete is inviting without being overbearing -- no glossy magazine pages or vapid advice columns here. Don't confuse the serious approach with dull, however; the authors know their audience is busy and don't bother piling on the text. There are recipes, meal plans, discussions about hydration, snacking, and sugar ("The calories in highly sugared products are empty, or naked"), and a ton of solid advice on what to eat, when to eat it, and why.

At only 140 pages, it's pretty impressive how much information is packed in here and all of it is relevant. Lair and Murdoch have managed to put together a guide that treats athletes like the serious teens they are and is intent upon making them stronger, smarter, and better at what they want to do. Coaches should use it, parents should read it, and teenage athletes should keep it in their backpacks, on their passenger seats, and beside their beds. There are a ton of magazines out there that will tell you how to get in shape but Feeding The Young Athlete is the only guide I've seen that understand the uniqueness of the teenaged body. This is important, and it's well done. Kudos all around.

YA Column: A Version of the Truth

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 03:10:29 -0800

In Elizabeth Laban's The Tragedy Paper, readers will discover a coming-of-age story set in a traditional location (boarding school) with a familiar setup (love triangle) that turns everything you think you know about this sort of book on its ear. Laban might be giving readers a familiar setting and situations but her characters are so thoughtful and the plot just twisty enough that she manages a page-turner out of the quietest of stories. The conceit is straightforward: Tim met Vanessa while stuck at the airport on his way to his new school. After sharing the sort of fun (and mostly chaste) boy-meets-girl story everyone dreams of, they continue on their separate ways, and he discovers she is not only a fellow student but dating the school's most popular boy. They become good friends as Tim also slowly becomes enmeshed in the school's senior class tradition. It is on one fateful night involving the seniors that he connects with Duncan, the underclassman whose story is really at the heart of the novel.

Laban introduces Duncan in the very beginning as the one who figures it all out. He knows how Tim's school story ended the previous year, but not how it began, and along with the reader, he learns all the sordid history via a series of CDs that Tim has left behind for him in his dorm room as part of a departing senior gift, another school tradition. Duncan has a small but powerful connection to Tim that has left him unsure about his own future, and so hearing Tim's voice, finding out why everything happened the previous year, is critical to his own wellbeing. In the middle of all of this looms the big senior assignment: the "tragedy" paper. Talk of tragedy permeates the senior English class, literary examples are tossed about throughout the text, and Duncan, in particular, is overwhelmed with a desire to get the paper right. Laban makes clear though that tragedy is in the eye of the beholder, and also that while it might reach epic literary proportions for some students, for others the tragic is all too real and in danger of eclipsing every other facet of their lives.

It's important to note that nothing huge takes place in The Tragedy Paper. There is a serious accident, and in both Tim and Duncan's narratives, there are students in trouble, but in comparison to a lot of contemporary YA fiction, the events here are subtle and familiar. Much of the book is about aspiring and struggling to find your way to the best sort of self, and the obstacles, both internal and external, that block your way. This novel is the very definition of powerful, and while it does not possess characters spouting the sort of fake witticisms that seem to crop up all over in teen books lately, they are nothing if not real. There are no villains in The Tragedy Paper, just a lot of wishing you can get things right; a lot of trying to do the best you can.

While coming-of-age themes play into a lot of YA novels, it was through reading a series of nonfiction titles that this column really came together. The first was the exquisitely designed An Extraordinary Theory of Objects: A Memoir of an Outsider in Paris by Stephanie LaCava. This undersized hardcover sports a paper-over-board cover, dozens of careful pen and ink illustrations by Matthew Nelson, and diversionary footnotes throughout the text. (The bibliography is also well worth lingering over.) The first sentence is "I was born strange," and an introductory quotation by Mark Rutherford sets the tone for what is a writer seeking nothing less than to find herself on the page. As you look back upon the detritus of your own past and the items that served as your talismans, consider LaCava's choice of Rutherford's words: "But men should not be too curious in analyzing and condemning any means which nature devises to save them from themselves, whether it be coins, old books, curiosities, butterflies or fossils."

When she was twelve years old, LaCava's family left America for Paris. From that point forward she felt lost between two cultures -- neither wholly one nor the other. At thirteen, however, is when she "fell apart." An avid collector before she left for France (as so many young people are), her items became significant beyond measure as she struggled to hold herself together against an "active, throbbing depression." What apparently sent her cascading over the edge into despair was her frustration over a lack of control in her life. It is this aspect of her book -- revealed in the earliest pages -- that affected me the most, and I think makes it a key title for teenagers.

In the chapters that follow, LaCava writes about her adventures in Paris, the friends she makes, the places she visits, the ghosts who haunt her (it's an exceedingly haunted city), and the objects she discovers and hoards as treasure. Along the way, although she changes their names, she writes of her parents, neither of whom is quite sure what to do with her, and her younger brother. All of these figures weave into her decidedly intellectual exposition, into a title that namedrops Oscar Wilde, Salvador Dali, ivory carvers, Deyrolle's taxidermy, and butterflies (among many other people, places, and things) but remains true to its nature as a coming-of-age experience. LaCava knows where she is now, she knows where her journey began, but how she got here, how she became someone fascinated by so many things, troubled and aware of her trouble but unable to change it, is something she still feels compelled to consider. So the book is her way to work through her childhood, to fully know the girl she once was. The journey she shares has an epic quality to it, and for all that the narrator was unhappy at times, readers will find still a gorgeous reading experience. Consider it a literary "cabinet of curiosities" and revel in LaCava's success now and her willingness to share so intimately the person whom she was then.

Fans of Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals (a must read!) will be delighted to know that David Godine has rereleased the second book in the Corfu Trilogy: Fauna and Family. Set again in the World War II period on the same Greek island, Fauna and Family is another of Durrell's droll memoirs about growing up with his crazy family. Written entirely from the author's perspective as the youngest Durrell, these books are perfect light reading for those who enjoy the certain type of quirky British humor that the author excelled at. His widowed mother is loving, acerbic, slightly dizzy and endlessly patient; eldest brother Lawrence, a future novelist, is pompous and self serving; sister Margo is obsessed with her appearance (and cute young men); and Leslie likes to blow things up. A lot. All of these caricatures are made from the distorted perspective of a much younger brother, but readers will likely be laughing too hard to care just accurate they are.

I read my first book by Durrell more than ten years ago, as an adult, but think his perfect audience might actually be teenagers. Much of the Corfu Trilogy is dedicated to his education, which relied heavily upon tutors and an immersion into the island's natural history that is full of a dedication to observation that the most ardent naturalist would envy. Gerald collected everything; a running joke in the family is his ever-changing bevy of pets, but they are not there simply to entertain. Gerald studied the creatures he found, from dogs to birds to fish and lizards, assigning them names, noting their actions, considering their personalities, and reveling in their every odd movement. His future as a zookeeper was written in his childhood love of animals and seeing how he became the man he did is a large part of what makes his books so entertaining. (I also could not help noting a kinship between the young Gerald and young Stephanie LaCava, pining away in Paris and making her own keen observations.) Fauna and Family is enjoyable on multiple levels, but for me it is mostly a celebration of the merits of an unorthodox education, something any classroom-loathing teen will appreciate.

Finally, Lucy Knisley takes readers through her entire life via the restaurants she visited, the meals she helped prepare, and the tons and tons of delicious food she has eaten in her graphic novel Relish. Complete with recipes, this full color memoir is about growing up as a foodie with parents who loved cooking, a mother who became a serious gardener, and a lifetime of thinking about meals as something to enjoy, not just get through. Along the way, there is a tween-aged trip to Mexico with family where she should have gotten into trouble but didn't, some culinary culture shock in Tokyo, many jobs in food-related service industries (ask her about cheese), and ultimately a grand appreciation for the sheer joy of sharing a meal (and recipe) with people she cares about. Relish is not a chef's memoir, and miles from the chaotic competition shows on Food Network. But food is central to this story and shared in a manner that is both fun and informative. Knisley fits perfectly for young readers who have outgrown Raina Telgemeier but aren't ready for Alison Bechdel yet, and is also perfect for foodies of any age.

COOL READ: Every now and again, a book comes my way on a topic that is utterly and completely unexpected. Faythe Levine and Sam Macon's Sign Painters is the sort of artistic celebration that should be commonplace on the shelves and if Levine (author of Handmade Nation and creator of the documentary of the same name) has her way, it will be just one more entry into a curated collection of artisanal American. In this heavily illustrated (with photographs) title, the two authors introduce a dizzying array of painters from a wide range of states who are in love with typography, graphic design, and illustration. These men and women, covering a wide range of ages and backgrounds, revel in developing their own style and embracing life as utter individuals. Although it might be romantic to consider them a dying breed, the broad array of examples shown here makes it clear that sign painting is still a relevant and striking part of American culture. This is graphic design at its best; these signs command attention, enliven the landscape, and bring customers in. Levine and Macon aren't celebrating nostalgia with Sign Painters; they are shining a spotlight on a career that most artistic teens have likely not considered. For those seeking a profession where suits need not apply, Sign Painters offers an appealing glimpse of people at work doing something they love. It's about taking the way you see the world and sharing that view with others. Good stuff, and damned inspiring.

YAColumn: We're All Mad Here

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 02:08:50 -0800

There is something inherently terrifying about Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, from the casual disregard of lost Alice's fears to the homicidal tendencies of the crazed Red Queen. Many authors have investigated these aspects of the story and yet exploring Lewis Carroll's creation in new ways is something I never tire of doing. The trick is to bring something to the classic that fits and does not upend the narrative simply for shock value. A.G. Howard clearly delights in the creepier aspects of Wonderland, and they infuse her debut novel about Alice Liddell's fictional great-great-great-granddaughter, Splintered.

Alyssa Gardner is convinced she will go insane, just like her mother (an inpatient at the nearby asylum) and the other members of her matriarchal line. She knows she's already halfway there because insects have been talking to her for years, no matter how relentlessly she kills them and pins them into her outrageous three-dimensional art. Whiling away the non-school hours at the skateboard park and working at a vintage clothing store (no Alice would work traditional retail!), Alyssa tries to convince herself that "it's all in her head." Events quickly overwhelm her, however, and a moth appears to haunt her, a poster from an '80s classic comes to life, and a website suggests that the white rabbit was nowhere near as cute and cuddly as Disney led us to believe. Alyssa finds herself with a family mystery that must be solved and a trip to Wonderland that cannot be avoided. The fact that her longtime friend and crush ends up along for the adventure is just an added bonus, because, hey, nothing makes a run for your life through Crazytown better than doing it with the one you secretly love.

All the regulars you expect are here from the queens to the tea party to the garden to the Cheshire Cat, and, most spectacularly, the Caterpillar. It's all twisted, grotesque, and will make you recoil more than once. Howard has done an excellent job of playing with the classic but weaving a contemporary story within it, making sure each step of her narrative is part and parcel of Carroll's narrative. The romance is complicated, the protagonist conflicted, and the heroes are hard to come by. And while Alyssa wavers from bold (jumping down that rabbit hole with aplomb) to confused victim (shades of Bella rearing their ugly head), the only real disappointment for me came near the end when things go predictably in the direction of amnesia and noble sacrifices for love and impossible-but-presented-as-factual declarations from members of the medical field that you can be crazy one moment and perfectly fine the next. This is all a wee bit too pat for the novel's earlier promise, and especially frustrating when it comes to the amnesia parts. It does nothing to diminish all the fangs, fur, and sharp bloody promise (loved the flower garden especially) that came previously, but I'm hoping in Howard's next novel she lets her boldness carry her along to the last delicious page and leaves those convenient plot devices in the dust.

Christopher Barzak has a riveting take on Alice as well in his new short story collection Before and Afterlives. "The Mad Tea Party" is brief and lacerating, a tale that delivers a clear message on the perils of madness. Grown-up Alice returns to her childhood home after the death of her mother. Upon arriving, she takes on a porcelain Cheshire Cat, recalls a flight attendant dressed in white and sporting a pocket watch who hastened her on her way, craves tea, and dreams of playing cards. This Alice is wounded and angry, destructive and broken. She is the girl who will prompt readers to ask why Carroll's Alice felt compelled to follow the white rabbit in the first place, and what she might have been running from. If Howard writes a fantastical version of Alice's mental health legacy, Barzak plumbs even deeper depths and goes full-on reality. I'm still thinking about the eight pages of "The Mad Tea Party."

Elsewhere in Before and Afterlives, Barzak shares the history of the scariest haunted house ever in "What We Know About the Lost Families of -- House," reveals a bitter emotional legacy for the parents of a runaway teenager in "The Drowned Mermaid," and reaches deep into the heart of a living boy who finds solace in the resting place of a dead one in "Dead Boy Found."

Throughout this collection, Barzak effectively writes people contending with their fears and doubts but most especially he writes about loneliness, and it is this writerly radar for alienation that perhaps makes him so perceptive when it comes to his teen characters. The boy in "Dead Boy Found" is like any other, but Barzak teases out his sorrow page by page, paragraph by paragraph, giving readers a peek at teen humanity that will ring all too true for many high schoolers. He achieves similar results with a sister coming to turns with her older brother's sexuality and unorthodox romance in "Map of Seventeen" (this has to include one of the best portrayals of truly great parents I have read in ages), and further with a daughter forced to confront her father over the effect of his paranormal profession in "The Ghost Hunter's Beautiful Daughter." The tour-de-force, however, is "The Language of Moths," in which a brother learns to appreciate his autistic sister and together they weather a challenging summer and come to an unexpected understanding that, really, makes everything all better. Barzak makes it all seem so easy, these gentle glimpses into his characters' lives, and even though these lives might include mermaids or ghostly parents or talking fireflies, the extraordinary aspects are not what make his tales so magical. It's the way he sees plain ordinary people that gives his stories such power; the way he sees us and yet loves us anyway. Bravo.

Margo Lanagan wanders yet again into the territory of dark myth she travels so well with her multi-generational look at seal wives (selkies) and the land men who claim them in The Brides of Rollrock Island. From the young girl with a stark and frightening seal kinship whose unforgiving childhood leads her down a path to cold and cruel witchery to the boy who challenges a lifetime's worth of social mores to save his mother, Rollrock takes readers into the hearts of its island residents and the subtle way in which rape can affect a society.

Generations of disappointment weigh down Rollrock Island, and even those who are bewitched cannot deny their own responsibility in the sorrow of others (or that they sought out the bewitching in the first place). As one seal wife is driven by abject despair to suicide, the families gather to witness her sad end and know that the same possibility haunts each of their homes as well. Real love -- honest love -- is not easy, but at least it is true and fair, something the men of Rollrock have willfully forgotten and the women are lost without. Lanagan is a master at sparing her characters no quarter, at forcing readers to recognize every moment of weakness that propels her narratives. But with Rollrock, she shows how complicated love and longing can be, how emotions can be manipulated and harsh family dynamics can destroy far easier than love can mend. By every measure, this novel is the very definition of tortured romance and the author never lets you forget that.

Margo Lanagan has rightfully received praise for her previous titles and The Brides of Rollrock Island is worthy of equal measure. I was struck while reading it, however, by how adult it is. This is a novel for teens, and many of the characters in the shifting points of view are quite young, but it has an adult sensibility and awareness of the serious choices we make in the world. Margo Lanagan understands teens like few other authors today; she grants her audience a literary respect more often seen in the pages of The New Yorker than the exhaustive paranormal section of the local bookstore. Kidlit, my ass. Read her pages and see yourself as the serious reader Lanagan knows you to be while gaining a newfound respect for the always complicated world of teenagers.

In the grand tradition of fairy tales everywhere, Lily the Silent is the story of a reluctant heroine, feckless prince, and the wickedest of queens. Author Tod Davies turns expectations gently on their ears while writing her imaginary "History of Arcadia." Once within the story, however, readers will quickly recognize the invading city of Megalopolis as a thoroughly modern society that never appeared in the realms of Cinderella and Snow White. Consider the following assertion from the evil queen:

"Our technology is great. Well, it should be, considering all we've had to pay for it." She looked around her tower at the gray, wire-riddled, garbage-strewn city below. "It was easy enough for us to build another moon. Haven't you heard in your little Arcadia?" she said in a haughty voice. "We have become like gods, here in Megalopolis. We do what we will. And we do it because we can."

The industrialized city comes with a rabid celebrity culture, a passion for appearance before substance and a devotion to echo chambers that leaves Lily, the future leader of embattled Arcadia to observe: "I found out later... that they never heard anything they didn't expect to. Never. And this was true all over Megalopolis." Sound familiar, cable news fans?

Don't worry that Davies is writing a heavy-handed-message book, though; for all that Arcadia suffers at the whims of the technologically advanced and monumentally arrogant Megalopolis, this is also a story of a girl who falls in love with a boy too weak to save anyone, a False Moon designed to host parties, mermaids who guard the key to everything, and a monumentally pissed off version of Death. It is clear that events early on take her by surprise, but Lily is more Joan of Arc than Sleeping Beauty, although destined to sacrifice all, still wise enough to wrangle an escape clause. She can't help falling in love with the prince, but quickly figures out that you can't change your lover (especially when his mother has been controlling him since birth and the whole country prefers a star's gleaming good looks over a leader's hard truths). As their daughter later recounts, "...you can never tell anyone anything that they have not first discovered for themselves."

Davies has fun with Lily the Silent, opening with a bard's introductory summary of events and then relaxing into the main narrative as told by the daughter, whose asides about her parents and family friends are light with a wry and sophisticated wit. With Mike Madrid's illustrations throughout (appropriately compared to Arthur Rackham's), this title shows how comfortably fairy tales can encompass the fits and foibles of current times. It reads fast and furious and promotes love and friendship, all while making sure readers never forget to keep a solid head on their shoulders -- something the original princesses would certainly appreciate.

Exterminating Angel Press has another unique title for adventurous fairy tale readers: 3 Dead Princes: An Anarchist Fairy Tale by Danbert Nobacon ('90s trivia fanatics will recognize the author as a founding member of Chumbawumba). Set over 100,000 years in the future, this is the most anti-post-apocalyptic novel you can imagine (get those Blade Runner visions out of your head right now). Organized as a fairly traditional fairy tale, our heroine is Stormy, princess of the kingdom of Morainia, which is under threat from their neighbors in the kingdom of Oosaria. In the course of one fateful dinner, Stormy meets the visiting queen of the Oosarians and one of her sons, whom she is apparently supposed to marry. Things do not go well and, as the title suggests, the dastardly prince is soon not so much alive and Stormy is running for her life with the court fool.

What follows are encounters with a wise witch and her hip daughter, legends of a large black cat that plague Stormy's dreams, the drums of war that reverberate everywhere, a near capture in a tavern, and a great raven with a mysterious egg. 3 Dead Princes follows the fairy tale narrative with personal challenges, serious battle preparation, and more brave moments than the movie Brave. But every time you think you have it all figured out, Nobacon throws a curve ball, forcing the reader to rethink what a fairy tale can be (hello, Neanderthals!). From considerations of how a king spends his time (archaeologist and inventor?) to how his queen should act (teaching yoga at one point then donning battle gear in another), the author never wastes an opportunity to let his readers stretch their ideas of the princess-saturated world we all keep living in. By the final pages, with prince number three dead and gone, Nobacon has successfully given us all the adventure and happy ending we could want, while also posing a lot of subtle questions about society, culture, and evolution. Is it an "anarchist's fairy tale"? I'm not sure about that. Mostly it's about Stormy and how she wins and since I loved Stormy, I have to say 3 Dead Princes succeeds just fine, and with Alex Cox's illustrations along to spice things up even more, it's a very enjoyable, and unorthodox, read.

Finally, echoing the presence of mermaids and water creatures found to some degree in all of these other titles, is Mark Siegel's epic graphic novel Sailor Twain: Or: The Mermaid in the Hudson. I'll be honest, I struggled a bit with this historical novel set in the late nineteenth century onboard a Hudson River steamboat. Captain Twain is just trying to do his job, but life is complicated by the ship's ever-present owner who seems intent on seducing as many female passengers as he can while searching for his missing brother. There is also a mysterious author who is hiding more than one secret and, of course, a mermaid that Twain saves and nurses back to health in his cabin and finds himself unable to resist. The sudden arrival of the author proves to be the catalyst for the other players in this drama who are all so busy covering up their own motivations that as events overcome them (which include some standard socio-economic issues below decks), they have no time to explain to each other just what the hell is going on. The story ends, appropriately, with a bang, but only after Twain has found the madness that lies in loving a mermaid and Lafayette learns that he should have been honest with his captain all along.

Siegel's black-and-white illustrations are perfect for the haunted nature of the book, and although some might take issue with the bare-breasted presentation of the mermaid, she is depicted as readers would expect. Following some pretty specific plot points along the way, the ending is purposely obtuse, however, and therein lies much of my concern with the book. After laboring with Twain for four hundred pages, questions remained for me about an awful lot of the plot, from motivations to actions to conclusions. I tried to work this out with other readers of Sailor Twain, and can assert that it is a title that invites a lot of contemplation and discussion (always a good thing). I encourage readers intrigued by mermaid stories to check this one out, and see what they think Twain decided and if he was successful in his quest.

COOL READ: Fans of innovative storytelling will be very interested in Paul Fleischman's sumptuously illustrated The Matchbox Diary. I've long been a fan of illustrator Bagram Ibatoulline's realistic artwork, and with Fleischman's story he delivers big time. After a contemporary opening, the narrative unfolds over history, as an elderly man invites his great-granddaughter to explore his personal library and to "Pick whatever you like the most. Then I'll tell you its story." The room is a mash-up of a bibliophile and collector's dream, awash in the jewel-like tones of Ibatoulline's palette and infused with a golden glow. It gives the book a dreamy appearance and makes the story that follows even more endearing.

The girl chooses a cigar box full of matchbooks, each containing a small item that provides a touchstone to the grandfather's life journey. The objects, which include an olive pit, a photograph, a bottle cap, and a St. Christopher medal, all are part of his immigration and subsequent career as a small bookshop owner. He hands off his idea of keeping a diary (written or otherwise) to the little girl, who in the final page begins her own collection. This could be easily dismissed as a sweet story (and it certainly is heartwarming), but the celebration of tangible memory, of small innocuous objects that are capable of carrying so much history, makes it a scrapbook that transcends Fleischman's tale, and will inspire readers to create their own collecting diaries. Don't dismiss The Matchbook Diary as a picture book for small children, but view it instead as a transcendent story for all ages. This is illustrated work at its best and Fleischman and Ibatoulline have crafted a quiet sensitive masterpiece.

YA Column: Graphic By Nature

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 01:22:02 -0800

I never expected to be urging readers to seek out a book on economics, and yet when I was putting together this month's column on graphic novels I found myself consumed with Michael Goodwin's Economix: How and Why Our Economy Words (And Doesn't Work), in Words and Pages. Frankly, this nonfiction title is far more entertaining than it has a right to be, given its subject. As someone who barely survived micro and macro economics courses in college, I approached it with no small amount of trepidation, but Goodwin knows his audience is likely nervous about the topic, and he invites readers to get comfortable and give him a chance. I was hooked after five pages, which is pretty much one of the larger literary surprises of my life.

Dan Burr's illustrations are spare and realistic, and his faces in particular are quite impressive. He nails the famous folks who are easily recognizable, which is a relief. (Thank you for not making me guess which Roosevelt I'm looking at.) Goodwin has also written himself into the action; he appears throughout and talks directly to readers, while not shying away from calling out the idiots who have made hay of international business and politics over the years. It is highly unlikely that most readers will be aware of Adam Smith's philosophies or be able to quote him at will, but within a few pages, Goodwin makes clear that he is well worth investigating, and more pointedly, that his famous work, The Wealth of Nations, has been misquoted more than once. The message here is to beware those who quote Smith for their own purposes. And everyone quotes Smith. All the time.

From the development of socialism and capitalism to the impact of railroads on the early U.S. economy, the ways in which far too many economic theories are bundled together into the mishmash we call American capitalism to why 1920s Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon was too powerful for too long, Goodwin pings from one powerful historic moment to the next while cracking jokes, raising eyebrows, and illuminating all the dark corners of economic theory that come his way. He warns us about academics who enjoy lecturing on the way things work on paper while ignoring their real world ramifications and points out the careful balance that needs to exist between public and private power in order to keep everyone successful, happy, and wise. This balance is endlessly elusive (as proven by our own current economic problems), but the many different ways we try to find it or avoid it makes for a soap opera of sorts that fuels the momentum of this book. Honestly, I can't believe how captivating a book has been crafted about what most of us would agree is one of the dullest subjects on the planet, but that's what we have here. This is a title that belongs in high school classrooms, college course lists, and on nightstands around the world. And, if you were wondering what to get your Congressperson for Christmas...

Eugene Byrne and Simon Gurr have crafted another history title of note with Darwin: A Graphic Biography, which will be published in February. I've read many books on Darwin, and still think there are not enough in the world, yet find it easy to recommend this new one to teens. In detailed, shadowed black-and-white drawings, the authors provide a "really exciting and dramatic story of a man who mostly stayed home and wrote some books." The standard facts are included: Darwin's childhood and early attraction to natural science, his voyage on the Beagle, and his long contemplation of evolution that led to writing and publication of The Origin of the Species. But the facts are not what make this telling of his life so good.

Byrne and Gurr frame Darwin within the fanciful setting of a wildlife program filmed for "Ape TV," and the narrative is peppered with plenty of pithy footnotes, as well as some intense discussion of evolution. The apes interject infrequently, just enough to bring in the humor, but keeping the story from devolving into silliness, and the poignancy of Darwin's life and the challenges he faced on his path to the truth (in a shared role, thankfully noted here by Alfred Russell Wallace) are not overlooked. More importantly, the authors manage to introduce some timely intellectual discussions without intimidating readers who might be fairly new to Darwin's biography and make clear that the conclusions he reached were not casual or naïve. It's a careful tightrope Byrne and Gurr walk of making their subject accessible, while not reducing his ideas to talking points. I think they have done a great job with Darwin, while injecting some unexpected humor into a very serious subject. Taken alongside Economix, this slim volume proves further the harmonious relationship that can be found between nonfiction and the graphic novel format.

Looking to fiction, Zahra's Paradise by pseudonymous Amir and Khalil is powerful, devastating, and brutal. I say all that up front because the topic, Iran's Green Revolution, is one that might make some teens reluctant to give it a chance. But if I can make you understand how this book can change the way you view the world and give you a deeper appreciation for living in a democracy, then you will understand why it should be given a chance. Just don't expect a sweet and gentle story. It starts with dead puppies (damn), and from there, the narrative of a missing son and brother apparently lost in the labyrinthine world of the Iranian prison system becomes hard to put down. Amir and Khalil had something important to share about Iran with Zahra's Paradise, and they did it straightforward and effectively: they told the truth and then dared us all to believe it.

Nineteen-year-old Mehdi has vanished in the street revolutions that shook Tehran in June 2009. His mother and brother, a blogger who narrates the story, search endlessly for him in the hospital, the morgue, and online. They post fliers, they question fellow protesters, and with the help of a surprising source, his brother hacks into a prison computer system to discover some of the government's secrets. No one will confirm Mehdi's imprisonment until his family can confirm first that he was imprisoned. Which they cannot do without someone confirming he was arrested and imprisoned. Is he alive, is he dead? Is he really missing if the officials declare no one is? These are questions that plague the families of so many of the young men and women who marched in defiance of the regime three years ago. In its final pages, Zahra's Paradise moves beyond Mehdi's tale to include all of the names of the missing, along with information on the thousands who have vanished over the years since the overthrow of the Shah in 1979.

Ultimately, what happens to the characters in Zahra's Paradise is inevitable. But for all its sorrow, all its despair, this is also a story of triumph. The authors are saluting those who dared to change the world, and that is no small thing. Teens will not help finding the commitment of these young adults to be a remarkable achievement, and after reading Zahra's Paradise, they will be hard pressed not to pay more attention to the events in places like Iran. It's a small world we live in, as Amir and Khalil make clear, and full of stories we need to hear.

For much lighter fare, Oni Press is releasing in February the first collection of Bad Medicine, Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir's occult mystery series, which is really a blast to read. This first volume provides the necessary backstory with Doctor Randal Horne, a haunted (literally) surgeon with a conscience, who leads his crew of misfits as they seek to find out why a seemingly headless murder victim has an invisible head and is spreading the lycanthrope virus in a small northern town. Along the way, the many disparate personalities in the group get melded together, from the tough NYPD detective to the forensics specialist who seems more skater boy than scientist and, of course, the crusty doctor from the CDC who thinks he knows everything and can't stand Horne but fortunately might be a pain in the ass, but isn't a stupid pain in the ass and, thus, a nice addition. (I hate it when writers toss stupid into the mix just because they want a convenient dupe for the plot.)

The monsters are smart and scary, both on the street and in the office, and the team's evolution is nice to watch. Everyone has a reason for wanting to be part of this crew, especially Horne, who is perpetually seeking redemption and likely will never find it. Christopher Mitten's art is crisp and realistic, and while there isn't a teen character, there's plenty of teen appeal. Consider it a more realistic version of the BPRD, with the requisite silver bullets and occasional bloody death.

The protagonist of Fred Chao's Johnny Hiro can certainly appreciate the over-the-top drama of Bad Medicine, as his day begins with a T-rex breaking down the wall of his apartment building and scooping his girlfriend out of bed. Forced into heroics, he chases her via the NYC rooftops until Mayumi is able to phone Mayor Bloomberg and the troops -- meaning a ton of cops -- arrive. From there Hiro's life and Chao's story unfold in one hilarious moment after another. The apartment destruction results in a comic courtroom drama with his landlord, a run-in with an old classmate at the Met finds him fending off some white collar sword-wielding rōnin, and trying to keep his restaurant job means dodging angry dockworkers and some chefs very protective of their lobster. Your average everyday moments are full of outlandish excitement for our hero, no matter how hard he tries to live the sanest, most ordinary life possible. Of course all of this crazy prompts him to have an introspective moment or two (with the occasional help of Mayor Bloomberg and David Byrne), but readers should not come to this title expecting deep reflection. Chao's goal is a good time and he delivers. With a healthy dose of sardonic wit and winks to Godzilla and pretty much every chase film ever made, Johnny Hiro is full of awesome. If you liked Big Trouble in Little China, then you will know what you're getting into here, and relish every blessed page.

Antony Johnston's quieter story of intrigue and espionage set during the waning days of the Cold War shows Berlin to have been the quiet center of international conflict. The Coldest City has everything a spy novel needs: governments with dueling priorities, operatives left far too long out in the wild, and loyalties that shift with the needs of the moment. At the center is a murder mystery and an agent with no allies and a host of enemies. The story hinges on what she uncovers after arriving in Berlin and how fast she can stay one step ahead of whomever might be trying to kill her.

In the wake of a fellow agent's murder, British agent Lorraine Broughton has been sent to find the important list he might have had at the time of his death and uncover who knew about its existence. Everyone lies to her, which is to be expected, but the pace at which events on the ground move is nearly overwhelming. Johnston keeps his plot tight here, short clipped dialogue, quick meetings, sudden discoveries. Even the quieter moments, as Lorraine ponders what she does and does not know and opens up with other agents in the city (which was essentially spy central), are fraught with tension. Johnston makes sure readers are always holding their breath for what might come next, and while Sam Hart's stark black-and-white drawings can't compete with the big screen splash of 007's latest, they perfectly fit the sharp danger Lorraine finds in Berlin. There are twists and turns and while Johnston tosses a few timely meetings in along the way, they are nothing readers wouldn't expect for Bond, either. He makes sure all the questions are answered and all the clues uncovered, and yes, the ending comes with a kick worthy of old-school Kevin Costner. Though written for adults, this one deserves notice from older teens who will appreciate the atmosphere, the danger, and every dramatic moment.

Less violent but no more realistic, Thien Pham's short and lightly worded Sumo is the story of former football player Scott who seeks athletic success and inner peace in Japan as a student of the ancient wrestling form. In glossy pages, washed in muted tones of green, orange, and blue, Scott's story unfolds from the breakup with his longtime girlfriend back home, to his failure to make it to the NFL, and finally his decision to travel to Japan and enter into a regimented training schedule that dominates nearly every aspect of his life. What he seeks is purpose or direction, something that will help him find himself again. Pham is not obvious about any of this, thankfully, but it all becomes clear as Scott learns, makes friends, and remembers his life before. As competitive as sumo is, Pham manages to write about it in a most noncompetitive way, and he makes clear that the fight is not the point, but the preparation for the fight, accepting the challenge of the fight, is everything. The message is subtle, the artwork simple but quiet. Scott is a noble hero on the quest of his life. Reluctant readers will especially be comfortable with Sumo, and while I don't often send titles in gender specific directions, Sumo is a book that should be put in the hands of teenage boys at every opportunity. It will help them think like a sumo wrestler, which clearly is a very good thing.

Finally, David H.T. Wong takes on a bunch of seriously skewed American history courses with his saga of the Chinese who came to North America in Escape to Gold Mountain. From the Opium Wars of the early nineteenth century that sent so many Chinese citizens looking westward, to the discovery of gold in California, construction of the transcontinental railroads, and the booming cannery industry, Escape to Gold Mountain is a piece of historical fiction based on the author's family's immigration experiences. He touches on major legislation that sought to limit Chinese immigrants from citizenship and separated their families, and shows more than one gut-wrenching episode that should resonate strongly with readers following the current immigration debate in the U.S. It's all very historic and yet achingly topical, and thus very hard to ignore.

Escape to Gold Mountain is forgotten history, and all the more important for teen readers in particular, because it has been so overlooked. Wong does a solid job of bringing his characters to life and making the narrative both informative and emotional. Readers will want a happily-ever-after for these people and feel real emotion for those who receive only despair upon arriving at Gold Mountain. As a fan of both American and Canadian history, I found this graphic novel quite compelling and perfectly suited for the illustrated form.

COOL READ: Oleg Lipchenko has illustrated a new edition of Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits that makes the ultimate of nonsense poems accessible for a new generation. Lipchenko's style is reminiscent of nineteenth century fairy tales, and the muted palate of blacks and browns used throughout lends itself well to the aura of old world fantasy that permeates Carroll's poem. Lipchenkno's interpretation of the characters brings humor and pathos to the words, creating sympathy and hilarity at every turn of the page and providing some direction for those who get lost while trying to follow Carroll's very twisted direction. Honestly, The Hunting of the Snark still doesn't make any sense, but the humor leaps off the pages here, and the classic feel and old world charm are hard to beat. Carroll aficionados will love this edition big time, but older readers, seeking the best way to appreciate his poem, should find Lipchenko a very worthy guide. It's a picture book, but The Hunting of the Snark is ageless, and it certainly looks and feels that way turning these pages.

Holiday Shopping List for Teens (& Younger)

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 01:32:49 -0800

As the "Best of" book lists start showing up at the end of the year, I am always struck by how repetitive they are. It's like a secret cabal gets together somewhere and decides what the big sellers will be and then insists that they will not stop until every single list everywhere hammers those same books down the throats of holiday shoppers. Finally, after entering yet another Barnes & Noble with a big table up front touting those same titles, the shoppers bow down in defeat and buy the damn books. Then everyone unwraps the same thing and says a collective "What the hell?" to the universe. This is not the sort of holiday scenario I'm especially fond of so I've kept my eye out for offbeat choices that teens (and a little younger) would like to find under their trees this year. There a little bit of something for everyone here, from fashion to dinosaurs to art to classic adventure. All are beautiful, interesting and guaranteed not to show up in the donate bag by New Year's. I start with one that adults will love too and, if the world was a perfect place, would be already be a bestseller.

If you spend any time at all in the science fiction and fantasy section of your local bookstore, you are quite aware of the effect steampunk is making on the genre. While there have been several excellent guides to steampunk released over the past few years (most notably Jeff Vandermeer's The Steampunk Bible), Brian Robb's spectacular oversized Steampunk: An Illustrated History of Fantastical Fiction, Fanciful Film and Other Victorian Visions is the title fans have been waiting for. With a foreword by James P. Blaylock, one of the three authors along with Tim Powers and K.W. Jeter credited with "laying the groundwork for a huge explosion of the genre" in the 1970s (Jeter actually coined the term "steampunk"), and chapters on everything from graphic novels to film to Japanese influences, Robb touches on various aspects of the steampunk world with both an academic's precision and fan's excitement. I cannot stress enough, that this title is the complete package and truly a book worth spending serious time with.

While the "Gilded Age" of Verne, Wells, and Burroughs receives a chapter of its own (rightly so), Robb also gives plenty of attention to the work of contemporary artists like authors Gail Carriger and Bryan Talbot and filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. He writes of "Victorian Fantasies" and "Clockwork Graphics" and nods to Philip K. Dick, Michael Moorcock, China Mieville, Stephen Hunt, and many more. In fact, other than sadly overlooking young adult titles, Robb manages to touch on pretty much every aspect of the steampunk world, including a welcome nod to the great Ada Lovelace (and author Masaki Yamada's graphic novel Ada). Readers and filmgoers will find a lot to enjoy, but the sections on music and machinery, artwork, and museums cannot be missed. More than anything though, the design is what puts Steampunk over the top, from the cover to the end papers to the stunning full color illustrations. Robb gives his readers history to ponder, pretty things to look at, and countless stories to follow up on later. It's simply wonderful and left me with a great list of books and more that I cannot wait to get my hands on.

Lucky cofounder and longtime fashionista Andrea Linett has crafted a very unique and visually appealing style memoir with I Want to Be Her!: How Friends & Strangers Helped Shape My Style. Linnet devotes a couple of pages to each source of her sartorial inspiration, from childhood through the present day. Accompanied by washed color illustrations from Anne Johnson Albert, this is a beautiful peek into one woman's lifetime closet and an excellent source of inspiration.

Linnet cut her fashion teeth at Sassy, where she ultimately became the fashion and beauty editor, and later joined Harper's Bazaar as a fashion writer. From the evidence presented in the book, though, it is clear she has been interested all her life in what people wear and how their clothing choices fit their personalities. This fascination has colored the memories and impressions of people she has met for only a moment -- passed in the street even -- and those she has loved her whole life. All of them receive equal billing in I Want to Be Her! making the book a collage of styles ranging from "leather biker jacket, skinny black (always ripped) jeans, combat boots and chains" to "giant beige corduroy overalls and a handmade turbanlike patchwork hat." The range is immense and Linnet's friendly writing style is equal parts nostalgic and sardonic observation. This is a book to read for sheer pleasure the first time and for ideas every single time after that. It's the best stocking stuffer for any girl who loves Rookie.

Cinephiles will find a lot to love about Caroline Young's Classic Hollywood Style. While focusing heavily on the careers of such Hollywood costume greats as Edith Head (readers interested in a YA novel about a Head devotee should certainly check out Sara Ryan's coming-of-age tour de force The Empress of the World), Young works her way through movies from the silent era up to the 1968 Steve McQueen classic The Thomas Crown Affair, all the while taking a long look at who wore what and how the clothes affected the films.

There are a ton of photographs in this title, as there should be, and they include both the shocking (the flesh in the early 1930s is really unexpected) to the sublime (Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca! Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not! Audrey Hepburn in everything!). But Young is not just interested in showing pretty pictures; each chapter includes observations on costume budgets, the interplay between stars and costumers, and the all too easily overlooked but important ways in which clothing is used as a tool to explain the characters. When we see the final product and the films succeed, we don't think twice about what is worn onscreen -- we just know the characters are believable to the story. But the work that goes on to make that all look easy is what Young finds fascinating, and she provides multiple examples of movies both famous and forgotten for readers to peruse. Classic Hollywood Style thus ends up being attractive, informative, and will provide readers with a long list of wonderful old films to track down and watch.

The idea behind Gerald Guerlais and Daisuke "Dice" Tsutsumi's Sketchtravel is alone the stuff of creative dreams. In 2006, the two friends decided to share a sketchbook, and then took the idea a gigantic step further and developed a list of other artists around the world to include in the project. After "hundreds of emails, telephone calls, meetings and miles," the sketchbook was sent on a journey around the world. The rules were simple for the seventy-one participants: turn the page, make your art and then physically hand off the sketchbook. It always traveled from person to person and most of the sketches include photos of these exchanges, which were initially included on the book's website.

Some of the more famous names in Sketchbook include Hayao Miyazaki, Glen Keane, Frédéric Back, and Taiyo Matsumoto. From collage to oils to gouache and more, multiple media and styles were explored. Some of the sketches are angry, some sweet, and many will make you laugh. The variety is staggering, and the fact that so many were accomplished in a matter of days (if not hours) makes them even more impressive. In their accompanying notes, the artists often noted their trepidation over the project, especially after seeing the work of those who held the sketchbook before them. As there is not a disappointment in the bunch, it seems hard to believe that any of them could have been nervous, but for young artists especially, it will be heartening to read of their concerns.

Sketchtravel is an obvious source of artistic inspiration for young artists, and with its full color, glossy pages and a heavy textured cover, it is an object to both admire and appreciate. It's a unique initial concept that has resulted in a one in a million collection.

One of the more unexpected titles to come my way in recent months is Dangerous Work: Diary of an Arctic Adventure by Arthur Conan Doyle. This reissue of Conan Doyle's original diary from his 1880 voyage on the whaling vessel Hope is fascinating both as a historical document and for its insight into the mind of a literary giant. Every time Conan Doyle made an allusion to a nautical past in Sherlock Holmes, its roots were in the Hope. But you don't need to be a Conan Doyle scholar to enjoy the hell out of Dangerous Work. This is a title to read as literary and whaling history and, at its most basic, one young man's journey into a dangerous place and having his adventure.

The University of Chicago Press rolls out the royal treatment for Conan Doyle with their design, providing an entire facsimile of the diary in the first half of the volume. The pages are sepia, Conan Doyle's drawings are crisp, his maps are clear, his renderings of the Hope, the animals they encountered and his crewmates are all gorgeously reproduced (this is the kind of diary we all dream of keeping), and he tells his story in perfect script, on straight lines, in a manner that begs to be read. But if the diary is hard on the eyes, the editors have kindly provided it in type with nearly two hundred explanatory footnotes in the book's second half. Also, Jim Lellenberg and Daniel Stashower, editors of a collection of Conan Doyle's letters and his first novel, provide both an introduction and a follow-up for what happened in the years after the Hope's voyage. There is also "The Glamour of the Arctic," an article by Conan Doyle first published in 1892, and the short story "The Captain of the 'Pole-Star'" from 1883. So readers get to fully immerse themselves in this long overlooked Conan Doyle experience and revel in an object of singular publishing achievement. I can't imagine being the student who brings up this book in the classroom during a discussion of English literature. Between Robert Downey, Jr. and the Arctic, Arthur Conan Doyle just gets cooler as the years go by.

With Unusual Creatures, Michael Hearst has put together a large format book that uses a twenty-first-century sense of humor to explore the lives and habits of selected animals in a very nineteenth-century way. Using hand drawn illustrations, softly tinted matte pages, and a rich field guide feel, Heart's muted style stands out from other animal books. He provides all the standard information, distribution, scientific name, and classification, and there is a brief encyclopedic description for each subject, but he also gives readers the oddest of facts (Salvador Dali had a pet giant anteater). Occasional silly pop quizzes and poems are certain to provide a quick laugh. Unusual Creatures is an unexpected but engaging way to learn about some overlooked creatures (the blobfish! the hammer-headed bat! the tardigrade!) that rarely receive the coffee table treatment. It works for the widest range of age groups and should be a winner with everyone who comes across it.

I would be remiss here if I did not mention one of the few Christmas books to come my way that has all the marks of a future holiday classic. The Lost Christmas Gift by Andrew Beckham has an old fashioned style that is both heartwarming and sentimental without being cloying. Framed as a discovered story based on a package lost for decades in the mail, The Last Christmas Gift is about a father and son who become lost in a sudden snowstorm while hiking in the mountains for their Christmas tree. A book within a book, the narrator rediscovers a warm childhood memory by the paging through the notebook his father created so many years ago and lost.

The main text, from the contemporary narrator, frames the notebook, which has sepia pages, handwritten (but easily read) text, and inked illustrations. The holiday story is in those pages, about the hike, the storm, and the sudden appearance of someone -- Santa? -- who provides much needed assistance. Beckham has included photographs in the notebook as well, and hand drawn overlays add an aura of mystery. The combination of textural styles, from the straightforward text to the antiqued notebook, makes this a rich reading experience. Readers will enjoy it, but designers in particular need to take note -- this is how you make a book that will last for generations as part of a family holiday reading tradition.

Rounding out the titles I think should be on everyone's shopping list are a few of the picture book variety that I think have been terribly overlooked. Hannah Bonner's Cartoon PreHistory series for National Geographic continues with the third volume, When Dinos Dawned, Mammals Got Munched, and Pterosaurs Took Flight. In her inimitable style, with full color illustrations, comes a ton of information on the time period (the Triassic this time) and a plethora of humorous comic strips that all make a hysterical but entirely factual point. Middle grade (or younger) dino lovers will eat up Bonner's work, but anyone who has ever sought a better understanding of prehistory needs to give these books a read; the format is highly entertaining and quite successful at imparting an enormous amount of information. These are books that will truly grow with young readers.

Art lovers should check out Coppernickel Goes Mondrian, Wouter van Reek's salute to Dutch painter Piet Mondrian. With the naïve Coppernickel as our guide, Mr. Quickstep (aka Mondrian) seeks the future and pushes the boundaries of his work. Coppernickel takes him and goes looking for the future in the city. In big, bold graphic illustrations, van Reek shows Mr. Quickstep finding his new innovative style and Coppernickel embracing all that it has to offer (which includes some great music -- also part of the Mondrian story). An afterword provides information on the artist that older readers will appreciate. The young ones will want to see the illustrations again and again. The kooky characters (and their two endearing dogs) with their madcap adventures prove too appealing to ignore.

Spirit Seeker: John Coltrane's Musical Journey by Gary Golio with paintings by Rudy Gutierrez offers a completely different artistic perspective. Golio's story explores the life of the jazz great who faced some tremendous challenges, but Gutierrez heightens the book with an explosion of color and expressive style. The artwork mirrors Coltrane's sound, and as Golio takes readers through his life, the paintings are alternately poignant, buoyant, and devastating. Music fans will like what author and illustrator have done here -- they are perfect match for their subject -- but artistic teens are going to want to lose themselves in what Gutierrez has accomplished. This is what a picture book should be, and why I think that the format works so well for readers far beyond the standard audience. Yes, a ten-year-old will find Spirit Seeker interesting but a fifteen-year-old or twenty-five-year-old is also going to be dazzled by it. Pair it with some Coltrane CDs and you have a real treasure to unwrap.

YA Column: Grand Glorious Adventures!

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 01:30:58 -0800

Libba Bray's The Diviners arrived with a huge splash this fall and happily, it is worth every single laudatory word. Weighing in at 578 pages, this doorstop-sized thriller is equal parts Stephen King and Zelda Fitzgerald, with bonus forays into Buffyesque research fun at the appropriately named Museum of American Folklore, Superstition and the Occult. It includes a multi-ethnic cast of characters, a peek into GLBT life during the Jazz Age, multiple POVs throughout, and a very good reason to burn abandoned houses to the ground. The mystery is gripping, the pages drip with atmosphere, the dialog is crisp and period authentic, the history is solid, and the big bad is so big and so bad that readers will get a scare long before the final, not the slightest bit disappointing, pages. Does The Diviners have it all? I think so, and the best part is that it's the first book in a projected four volume series.

In 1926, seventeen-year-old Evie finds herself on the train out of Ohio after a scandalous evening with friends. A few clairvoyant tricks to liven up a party have backfired, and while everything Evie "sees" is true, her small revelations about a fellow guest were not appreciated by his family. She is banished to her uncle's care in New York City where, we hope, she will stay out of trouble and, more importantly, allow her parents' social standing back home to recover. Uncle Will is not at all what Evie expects, however, and his museum and association with the police soon catapult her into a serial killer case that is terrifying and violent. Evie's story is just one thread to this intricate spellbinding plot, as her friend Mabel struggles to balance her parents political affiliations with the lure of Evie's adventures; a Harlem numbers runner named Memphis seeks to protect his little brother from visions of an apocalyptic future; a chorus girl named Theta plays out a masquerade that finds her at the center of murderous events; a small time criminal named Sam saves the day for his own mysterious purposes; and Jericho, Uncle Will's assistant, harbors a secret that is so outrageous it very nearly makes every other moment in the book pale by comparison.

Is your head spinning yet? If not, it should be, as The Diviners is a head-spinner in the best sense, and it puts together with such elegance and artistry a story that sings like few others. Each chapter, each character's stumbles and successes, builds on those that came before, and always the search by this group of disparate individuals to get to the Big Bad is the thread that readers will find most irresistible. Bray is clear to leave many clues for the story to come, especially in the budding relationships (romantic and otherwise) between the characters. But it is the many small touches of humanity (in spite of the paranormal elements) that lift The Diviners above so much YA fiction today. Through Theta and her roommate Henry's cementing their friendship in her moment of direst need, to Evie's misguided struggle to transform herself into a girl who will live up to her family's expectations, readers catch a glimpse of life in another time and the demands it placed on those who were trapped within in. Who you can love and how you may live, the pressure to succeed within the narrowest confines of convention, the weight of religion and ethnicity and sexuality, and the long unwritten list of shoulds and should nots that has always existed and likely always will are what The Diviners is about. The fact that Bray tells that story on top of a monster thriller that harkens back to the best moments of It (not including the ending) proves how talented this author is. Outstanding.

John Scalzi has a whale of a good time in his smart and cheeky SF novel Redshirts. Anyone who is familiar with the original Star Trek is going to know what Scalzi is doing here and will love it. Redshirts follows the growing unease of Ensign Andrew Dahl, recently posted to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid. The Intrepid has a glamorous captain, a brilliant chief science officer, and a lieutenant who gets the crap beaten out of him by some alien or another on a near weekly basis. Dahl and his fellow recruits are excited by their new posting, but over a period of a few days they begin to notice that something is not quite right on the Intrepid. With the exception of the highly regarded officers, everyone is terrified of taking part on away missions. When Dahl and his friends find themselves sent on missions they quickly realize the reason why -- the redshirted ensigns assigned to the Intrepid die with alarming frequency, while the rather boneheaded senior officers escape every single time. The worst part is that the ensigns seem powerless to prevent themselves from making suicidal decisions -- even when they know what they are doing is stupid. Something is wrong on the Intrepid, and Dahl and his pals resolve to figure it out, rather than hide from the officers like everyone else.

Here's what you have to know about Redshirts: it's metafiction to a pretty much unprecedented level. You have the initial innocuous seeming parody of Star Trek, then you have the revelations that take the narrative nearly inside Star Trek. Then you go deeper yet and realize this is a book with a thing or two to say about the all too common lazy writing in science fiction television and abysmal character development of those shows. It's about creativity and Hollywood, about the power of writing and the lure of easy money. It's also about changing your destiny (could there be a more powerful sci-fi trope?) and making your mark. There's some alternate world stuff, some jokes about actors, and so much good dialogue that you want to read it out loud. Redshirts wins the award for the most enjoyable and fun novel I've read in ages and will lighten up anyone suffering from the winter blues. It's perfect for teenagers -- it screams crossover with its young adult characters and mocking tone -- and I hope that it gets nominated for an Alex Award. This is the book I think John Scalzi was born to write. I certainly know it's the one a lot of Star Trek fans have been waiting to read.

Ned Vizzini brings on the funny as well with The Other Normals, which presents early on as the best sort of coming-of-age story. Fifteen-year-old Perry is stuck with a couple of the world's most ridiculous parents. Incapable of dealing with each other, they have become involved with their divorce lawyers who now interfere in all elements of their lives, from how they live to how they raise their sons. Perry's older brother is a burnout and his one joy, the role-playing game Creatures & Caverns, has rendered him a social pariah. A new friend, Sam, who is equal parts smartass and game-geek, is about the only decent thing going on in Perry's life. Then the lawyers decide Perry needs to attend the world's worst summer camp, where he joyfully discovers Sam is also exiled, but unfortunately, in this locale, he is too cool for Perry. It is going to be, for sure, the worst summer ever. Then denizens of the World of the Other Normals arrive. Perry discovers that Creatures & Caverns is real, and he has a major part to play in its future (à la The Last Starfighter) and everything he does in that world affects what goes on in his own. Even though he might die a bloody death at the hands of a fish-faced (literally) bad guy, at least he is being proactive. He is needed. He is significant. Pretty heady stuff for a kid whose first day at camp involved getting his butt kicked by the bully du jour.

In short order, Perry finds himself threatened, arrested, and on the run in the World of the Other Normals. He also finds out he is the key to saving that world and that it involves him going back to camp and doing something socially perilous. (This involves a pretty girl.) (If you were Perry you would be terrified.) Nothing, of course, goes as anticipated. More dangerous adventures in the World of the Other Normals occur, this time with deadly consequences, and Perry learns the connection between the two worlds works in ways that he can not begin to predict. Bottom line, he has to be a hero and he has to do it while suffering some serious social suicide. If Perry were just a little more savvy, then this might be hard to swallow, but he's so... well, he's so Perry that it's all quite believable and even, in spite of the bloody bits, absolutely hysterical. I don't like saying any book is gender specific, but this one has junior high school boy written over it in such big broad letters that it can't be ignored. My only question is what on earth happened to Ned Vizzini when he was fourteen to provoke this insane adventure? Thank goodness for whatever it was though because The Other Normals is too wonderful to miss.

Gwenda Bond delves deep into one of America's defining mysteries with her exploration of the Lost Colony of Roanoke in Blackwood. I still remember learning about Roanoke in elementary school, with the doomed infant Virginia Dare and the last lonely clue of the carved word "Croatoan." It was much more appealing than Jamestown and the Pilgrims, and certainly fodder for writers of all sorts of genres. Bond concocts her own gumbo of story here, with a blend of mystery, thriller, paranormal, and romance to create a densely packed adventure that sucks readers in with a blistering plot pace but then keeps them riveted with some truly dark and scary moments. Plus there's a great dog that does not die. (This is not a spoiler; it is my gift to dog lovers everywhere.)

Miranda has lived her whole life on Roanoke and labors under a reputation of family weirdness that makes any chance of social acceptance impossible. In Blackwood's opening pages, she is struck with a bizarre vision and makes a spectacle of herself in a very public setting, basically thus committing social suicide in front of the entire town. Then her father is killed and the people of Roanoke begin disappearing. By the time you hit page thirty-two, it is clear that Miranda is not the only one in trouble, and while the police scramble and the media swarms, the island descends into chaos. That's when Phillips, son of the police chief and holder of a powerful gift, is called back home from school. The first person he wants to see is Miranda (there's some history there), and together the two of them get to the bottom of what happened to the colonists more than four hundred years earlier.

There is an escape from jail and more than one episode of evading authorities, a basement library with wicked cool stuff, a dead man walking, a megalomaniacal killer from the past bent on destruction and world domination, apparitions that pack a wallop, compulsive donut eating, the aforementioned awesome dog, and the weight of history that threatens to break our teen heroes just when we need them the most. Bond is relentless in her story and while occasionally her adults are just a bit too convenient in their parental moments, I'm willing to forgive her those episodes for how brilliantly she sells this story. Miranda and Phillips are equal parts smart and terrified and handle the drama that surrounds them in about the most realistic way a reader could hope for. What really elevates Blackwood, though, is the very end. While Bond delivers on all the excitement she has built up, it is in the aftermath, the serious final pages, where she really makes her tale all that it could be. I expected predictable, but what I got was poetic and heartfelt and exactly right. Thoughtful teens will eat this novel up, and honestly, who could blame them?

Jasper Fforde, best-selling author of the bombastic Thursday Next series (great crossover for older teens), has his first foray into the YA world with The Last Dragonslayer, the first book in the Chronicles of Kazam series. In a world physically much like our own (and with an obvious British sensibility), Fforde introduces a backstory where magic was at one time indispensable and now is fading away, leaving those who make a living from such things as speedy magic carpet deliveries in some financial trouble. As acting director for Kazam, an employment agency for sorcerers and other magic practitioners, Jennifer Strange is particularly worried about the situation. Between the loss of income, keeping her many sensitive employees from killing each other and maintaining control as a sixteen-year-old foundling (akin to indentured servitude) whose boss has vanished, she has a lot to deal with. Then all the sorcerers start getting visions that the world's last dragon is about to die at the hands of the unknown Last Dragonslayer and everyone goes crazy over what this means. "Big Magic" is on the way, and soon enough, just surviving is going to be a test of epic proportions.

Fforde excels at sly humor, and he is in rare form here on that score. For all that it involves the potential violent death of a dragon and a major war, The Last Dragonslayer is not a dark novel. There are a few moments of reflection, but from the plotting of real estate land grabs (once the dragon is dead the Dragonlands will be open for development), to the product sponsorship of slaying and many, many political inanities, Fforde is clearly having a blast with this story. He's also doing something very unusual in YA -- writing a novel that is all about a cagey female protagonist having to make difficult but smart choices, none of which have to do with love or romance, and all of which involve kicking butt -- either with her brain or a little sword swinging. Jennifer is a young Thursday Next in many regards, but carrying her own baggage and wholly within her teenage self; this is not an adult novel masked as a teen one, but YA all the way. With fellow foundling Tiger, her ever-faithful Quarkbeast, and the best dragon since Sean Connery voiced Dragonheart (don't judge me), The Last Dragonslayer is the sort of YA adventure novel that emphasizes story and spares readers the kneejerk angsty passages that seemed to be so prevalent in YA fantasy today. Fforde has channeled Terry Brooks and Terry Pratchett, and I very much look forward to his next visit to Kazam.

In Tiffany Trent's The Unnaturalists, an alternate New London has its own magical groove going on, and Vespa Nyx finds herself surprisingly right at the center of it. Although this society has some hefty Victorian ideas about what girls can do or be, Vespa has dodged a lot of cultural bullets by working with her father at the Museum of Unnatural History. Magical beasts are contained there for study or survey, and Vespa is grateful for the opportunities to mount the corpses of these dangerous creatures. There are two problems, however; her father's creepy obsequious assistant and her own unsettling experiences that seem to be of a perilously magical kind. If Vespa has some magic of her own going on, then she is in big trouble, but if she doesn't, she just might be going crazy. Getting to the bottom of things is a goal that quickly gets out of her control when she is caught doing something she shouldn't be able to do by a local rich girl with an eye on catching a desirable husband. Vespa must cast a spell for the man of the other girl's dreams or risk being revealed and all the horrors that entails (picture Salem). So then The Unnaturalists becomes a bit of a social farce, albeit with steampunk, witchcraft, and some very unfortunate folks who are magically enslaved to power massive generators.

Trent has created a fascinating world with New London, but I couldn't help thinking as I was reading The Unnaturalists that it could easily have contained another hundred pages, or a second book. Vespa's revelations about her family and her budding romance are rolled up into a plot that includes shades of everything from The Scarlet Pimpernel to Robin Hood, and the characters are not given enough time to think through the events around them before they must move on to reacting to the next thrilling moment. It's an enjoyable read, but a bit rushed, and the ending involves a lot of killing off of everybody you don't like, which seems more than a tad convenient. Trent is on to something with New London, and the final pages do hint at more to come. I hope in Vespa's next adventure she has time to puzzle out what is going on around her, rather than just hold on tight as the world rushes by.

Finally, Kate Milford recently utilized Kickstarter to come out with a middle-grade gem, The Kairos Mechanism. A sequel to The Boneshaker, it picks up a year later with Natalie relishing life in quiet Arcane, after the world's creepiest carnival has left town for good. Things take a mysterious turn when two teenage brothers show up ushering home the remains of a local man who disappeared fifty years earlier. Somehow, even though he apparently died in the Civil War, his corpse is remarkably preserved. As the town leaders close ranks, Natalie becomes determined to both help the brothers and learn the truth. This is Arcane, home of a significant crossroads, so of course things are going to get complicated pretty fast, of course there is something scary brewing, and of course Natalie is going to be up to her neck in a dangerous adventure before she is done. But The Kairos Mechanism manages to be not only a tightly written mystery (only 164 pages) but also an excellent buddy novel and another fine foray into the (slightly creepy) escapades of my favorite girl detective this side of Kiki Strike. Milford is creating quite a world with her novels and they have middle-grade delight written in every word. (Also note that an illustrated ebook version of The Kairos Mechanism is due out for the holidays. Am I the only one who thinks that putting some books on an ereader is a killer stocking idea?)

COOL READ: Two unique picture books came my way lately and while they skew quite a bit younger than the usual fare for this column, I can't resist mentioning them (and plenty of teens have younger siblings to read to anyway). Pomelo Explores Color is the latest in Ramona Badescue's series of this charming little elephant's adventures. This should be a rather ordinary outing -- we've all seen a zillion books for little ones on colors -- but Badescue is not the type to do ordinary. Pomelo, as rendered by the whimsical illustrations of Benjamin Chaud, wrapped in the "comforting white of his favorite dandelion," peers out from within the "shiny brown of chestnuts" and enjoys the "bouncy green of the meadow." This is an exuberant joy-filled title that is equal parts cheeky and thoughtful. The design makes it perfect for little hands, but the text will be a delight for much older readers as well. I can't remember the last time I came across a colors book that was so offbeat. Pomelo Explores Color is one not to pass up. (And do check out Pomelo Begins to Grow as well.)

For slightly older children, I highly recommend Waterloo and Trafalgar by Olivier Tallec. This wordless title follows the war-time hijinks of two nearly identical little men, one dressed in blue and one in orange, who spend every day peering over the wall at each other. Dedicated to their conflict, they man their posts through all sorts of weather and circumstance and never let a moment in which they might mock or tease one another pass. It all is silly, and readers will share more than a moment of laughter in response to Tallec's facial expressions or goofy situations, but it's the astounding, astonishing, absolutely perfect last page that will really give readers pause. Then you go back to the beginning and go through it all over again with a new appreciation. Waterloo and Trafalgar is a true gem -- a much-to-be-admired example of storytelling power and a serious lesson about the absurdity of war that any reader (no matter how young) can appreciate.

Half In Shade & Trespasses

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 02:08:31 -0800

Almost two years ago, my grandmother's last surviving sibling passed away and bequeathed to my mother her own mother Julia's photo albums. A few months later, three oversized books, with black scrapbook pages and pasted photographs dating to the turn of the last century, arrived. Since Julia's death in 1972 the albums resided in a succession of closets and except for a brief perusal by my grandmother in the late 1980s, no one had really looked at them in decades. My mother and I painstakingly removed the pictures, mourned those that had completely faded away due to the acid-heavy paper, and searched for notes to assist us in identification. Right now I am in the midst of a massive project to digitally scan them all, create captions, and mail the originals out to cousins and second cousins who will see photos of their parents and grandparents for the first time. It is enormously time consuming, but also endlessly interesting. On Facebook my extended family has cheered every photo upload, delighted beyond measure by baby pictures from 1914, children lined up in a row in 1925, and a stack of days at the beach from 1934 and 1935. It's our collective history in black and white, and we feel like we are reclaiming it, one faded image at a time.

It was entirely serendipitous then that Judith Kitchen's Half in Shade: Family, Photography, and Fate should come to my attention in the midst of this project. Over a ten-year period, Kitchen worked on Half in Shade, trying to come to terms with an inherited collection of family memorabilia that enlightened as much as it confused. Tracking the clues through photographs, letters, partially-written parental histories, and those same frustrating hints found on the backs of pictures and envelopes that I am all too familiar with, Kitchen pieced together a memoir of what she knows, what she suspects, and what she can only imagine.

With the pictures included in the text as her evidence, she writes of a family member in Paris, her mother's whispered childhood, and of people she never met who might have been significant, or then again, might have been no one at all. Most compelling is her attempt to find out the things she does not know but suspects about her mother, including an unexpected romance. I felt the same curiosity when I came across a large formal photo of my great aunt and a gorgeous sailor, as well as when I found a picture of a great uncle with his arms around a laughing girl on his lap -- another face we had never seen. Your brain screams with the questions of who and where and why, with all the things you never even knew you should ask, in such moments. Kitchen now asks those questions of the universe, incapable of ignoring them, even though she knows the answers will never come. Some mysteries, with their tantalizing photos, are truly irresistible.

Author Lacy Johnson knows what it is to wander the convoluted paths of family history, and in Trespasses she recounts the interviews conducted with her family members back in rural Missouri. In short narratives, often of only a single page, Johnson ponders conversations with parents and grandparents and her own conflicted emotions about the people she loves, but in many ways does not understand. Her words are brief but effective. Here's a bit:

I also don't ask my parents to talk about racism. Or why they disowned my sister. I don't ask them to justify their actions to me. It's unjustifiable and we all know it. I don't ask about their marriage, or how and why it failed. I don't ask what anyone would have done differently. Instead, my grandparents look out the windows. My aunts and uncles buy us dinner. My father answers only the questions that I ask out loud. My mother breaks down in tears.

Johnson is a woman on a mission; Trespasses is largely about traveling the geography of home solely so she can understand what and whom she left and why she finds it so gut wrenching to return. She knows these people well, but, with her husband in tow, insists on knowing them better. Their extreme reticence, their nearly universal confusion over why she would even want to know about their pasts, is something she cannot tolerate. While she does pull her punches on a few subjects, she asks the questions in spite of knowing they likely will not satisfy her with their answers. Judith Kitchen, searching fruitlessly for clues to her mother's shipboard romance in a record and passenger list from 1930, is stuck asking those questions of documents. It's interesting that these two authors believe so strongly that the truth -- the revelations big and small -- will set them free, while their families have felt the opposite. It makes you wonder where Kitchen's and Johnson's drive came from and how all those secrets could produce two woman determined to unearth as many of them as possible.

For me, there is the end of the 1930s and the large pile of photos waiting for the next decade, and the next, and the next. In her lifetime, my great grandmother Julia gave few of her secrets away, and my grandmother respected her silence. Cut loose from generations of disapproval, I am much freer to go searching in the records for all the things Julia did not share. There are shocking things in my family's past, as there are in every family's, and the more I learn, the more I feel compelled to discover. Like Kitchen and Johnson, I want to know. Maybe once I know enough about them, I will better know myself. It's a journey worth taking for all of us, and a subject so poignantly explored in these two books. Even though their stories are not our own, we readers cannot look away. Kitchen and Johnson, so avid to learn more, would certainly understand.

Half in Shade: Family, Photography, and Fate by Judith Kitchen
Coffee House Press
ISBN: 978-1566892964
214 pages

Trespasses by Lacy Johnson
University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 978-1609380786
140 pages

YA Column: Harsh Dose of Reality

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 02:05:49 -0800

Since Judy Blume gave teens Forever... realistic young adult novels have been perennially popular. (Vampires don't stand a chance against Katherine and Michael's emotional roller coaster.) Blake Nelson tapped into Blume's legacy in a big way when he burst onto the literary scene (via Sassy magazine no less), with his novel Girl, in 1994. This tale of bored middle class Portland suburbanite teen Andrea, who thrift-shops and clubs her way through high school in a desperate attempt to find enlightenment in her otherwise average existence, blew wide open universal feelings of frustration. Andrea's search for meaning in Girl, her insistence that there must be something more to life then what she sees around her (while having no clue what that something more could be), leads her in the final pages to a college escape in Connecticut and a cliffhanger-ish ending. Readers hope Andrea finds herself in some hallowed halls of learning, but just don't know if she has it in her, or, more pointedly, if she is any more prepared to get herself together than most of the rest of us are at eighteen.

Fortunately for his fans, after an interminable wait, Nelson returns to Andrea's world in the recent Dream School. Written in a familiar fast-paced vein, it chronicles her arrival at Wellington College, which she expects will provide her with a classic "J. Crew/college catalog" experience. Everything Andrea experienced in high school, everything she was taught and told, has led her to believe that at Wellington her life will come together. This is where it should all start to make sense. But what she finds is just more confusion and the stark realization that for a lot of teens, college is another place to get lost. Andrea keeps hoping she will find people to connect with -- a sentiment remarkably evocative of her high school self, and while this time it's not the music scene that draws her in, she still is the same girl, seeking meaning in dorm friendships, hot guys, and of course, some readily available recreational drugs. This is Buffy, season four but a hell of a lot hipper in language and setting, and without the supportive Scoobies. That search for like-minds who "get it" is, in fact, what drives Andrea as she reaches out further and further from her comfort zone. That she ends up over her head should not surprise readers of Girl, but the journey has always been the destination with Andrea, and again Nelson slams one out of the coming-of-age ballpark. Andrea's life is messy, her vision of the future an angsty source of confusion, and Dream School is another critical step in the path to growing up that all of us, if we are honest, will recognize and embrace as the real deal.

The search for direction is a sentiment that twenty-year-old Nate in Maverick Jetpants in the City of Quality by Bill Peters also understands all too well. Depressed and quietly desperate in fading 1990s Rochester, New York (home of Eastman Kodak), Nate has no idea what he should do or, like college girl Andrea, what he wants to do. In narrative language peppered with slang that is metaphor-heavy with the regional meaning and memory he clings to, Nate drives aimlessly around Rochester, hangs out, and slowly gets sucked into a boredom-fused paranoid suspicion of his friend "Necro" that involves a conspiracy of white supremacy, arson, and a possible threat in the boonies from a sniper. Paranoia plays an epic role in this novel, because, well, it beats having nothing to do. That in the midst of all this, Nate also works on an "enjoyment list," tries to find a dead-end job that will make his mother-landlord happy, and starts dating a girl from high school, is multitasking any slacker would appreciate. (Andrea, who spent her time back home at the mall or the local yogurt hut is exactly the kind of girl who wouldn't give Nate the time of day and yet -- heavy irony here -- she has been leading basically the same life, just a few rungs up the social ladder. We are truly more alike then we imagine.)

Nate doesn't even have the promise of college to hold on to and, stuck without the illusion of a plan, just wants out of the pointless situation he is in. If that means believing his oldest friend is a local terrorist wannabe, well then a guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do, and he jumps onboard a truly madcap plan along with some equally disillusioned friends and heads off to the crazytown races. In this case, that includes when they turn over their evidence to the local cops and watch things get even more out of hand.

Maverick Jetpants is not a thriller, or a detective novel, or even a slight mystery, but a perfect example of how young men with nothing to do will always find something to fill their days with, regardless of how ill thought out that thing might be. Peters has done something just this side of insane with this book; he's created a character that speaks in a voice everyone will recognize, even while half the words he says allude to things none of us were part of. Just change the setting to a New England mill town, toss out the Buffalo Bills jerseys, put on some Montreal Canadiens gear, and ditch the slang for a lot of French words, and you have my father's teen years. He decided to join the air force at seventeen; after reading Maverick Jetpants, I can see why so many other young men do the same thing. The real tragedy here is those left behind who head for the same restaurant booths every night, look for girls who are equally disillusioned, and spend their nights wondering just what the hell they are supposed to be wanting. Thank God there's a hopeful ending to this book -- even though part of me thinks it's the only thing Peters writes that didn't ring true.

Though both Nelson and Peters allude to somewhat uninterested or preoccupied parents in their novels, Lidia Yuknavitch delivers a lightening bolt of vengeance at a mom and dad in her eviscerating novel of teen pain, Dora: A Headcase. Based on Sigmund Freud's famous case study, Yuknavitch creates an intense narrative around Seattle teen Ida who has been sent by her parents to a local psychiatrist she nicknames Siggy. Ida is out of control, and while she and Siggy verbally duel in the office, the reader quickly learns that her father's friend Mr. K. has been molesting her for years. Her father was too busy sleeping with Mrs. K. and her mother was too busy self-medicating to intervene. Ida is surviving through sheer force of will, the love of her madcap group of equally fucked-up friends, and a lot of pills. While some adults may find her drugs, damage, and outrageous attacks against everyone and everything too much to bear, the reality that bleeds off the page cannot be ignored. Ida is in trouble because her parents didn't notice and that is a hard truth that will resonate with many teen readers. Sometimes your parents really do suck, and every moment of Ida's life is proof of just how that reality can play out, even when you do have a world famous psychiatrist chiming in with his opinions.

I was thinking a lot about Ida when I read Gregory Spatz's Inukshuk, which is about another damaged teen who nearly loses himself before anyone notices. While Yuknavitch shoots with both barrels in Dora, Spatz has a subtler but no less upsetting tale to tell. Fifteen-year-old Thomas Franklin is stuck in a remote northern Canadian town with his newly separated father, John. Neither of them can understand why their family has broken up, and Thomas, in particular, misses his mother who is living some distance away. While John spends his off time writing poetry and thinking about unpacking, Thomas dives wholeheartedly into a graphic novel project about the real and famously doomed nineteenth century Arctic explorer John Franklin. To fully appreciate what happened to Franklin's men, Thomas decides he must suffer as they did, and so, after a brief vague discussion with his college-aged brother, creates a diet guaranteed to induce scurvy. Thomas begins to fade, while his father dismisses his new eating habits as just another annoyance no different from those of a fussy baby or difficult toddler. It is, apparently, always something with Thomas, and just like that, just that easily, John misses the fact that his son is slowly killing himself.

While Yuknavitch peppers her text with exchanges from Freud's interactions with the real "Dora" (who suffered similarly to Ida and was also dismissed as emotional and histrionic), Spatz sends Thomas deep into the world of the lost Franklin expedition. The boy draws the men who disappeared in the North and imagines their conversations as desperation overtook the ice-bound crew. (Driven nearly mad by isolation and hunger, the men resorted to cannibalism in a last ditch attempt to survive.) Thomas, bullied at school, confused by love (with a delightfully original girl), pining for his mother, and distrustful of his father, takes control of the only thing he can -- his physical survival. In this regard, he is much like Ida, running for her life, daring the world to take her down, and finally, terrifyingly, setting her nightmare on fire. One embraces a bang, the other a whimper, but both are dangerously close to seeing the end of the world. They survive -- that's the only spoiler I'll give you here -- but their paths to those final pages are both utterly unforgettable. Dora: A Headcase is a primal scream and Inukshuk a frozen lullaby, but both of them are written for teens left behind. Yuknavitch and Spatz are fearless; turn off the reality TV -- as advised by Chuck Palahniuk's introduction to Dora -- and read these books. I dare you.

Finally, quietly, both Beth Kephart and Tanita Davis mine serious territory in their titles Small Damages and Happy Families. Set in the mid-1990s, Small Damages is the story of recent high school graduate and Yale-bound Kenzie, who finds herself accidentally pregnant and shipped off to Spain. Her mother is set on a path to "take care of things" as quickly and secretively as possible. A family friend offers a quiet place for Kenzie to bide her time until delivery, and an eager local couple stands ready to adopt. It will all be so easy if Kenzie does what she is supposed to do -- be polite, helpful, grateful, and give the baby up before boarding a plane back for the perfect life she left behind. For her friends at home the trip is a mystery; a pile of acceptable lies that perfect boyfriend Kevin happily contributes to. It should all be over soon, just a memory and minor delay in their college-catalog-planned futures. But Kenzie has all the time in the world to think in Spain, and with a cast of characters with their own ideas on life and family, the certainty of going along with the plan becomes less and less sure.

Kephart excels at crafting introspective moments and Small Damages is full of them. She especially nails the deep void between boy and pregnant girl and manages to make Kevin simultaneously sympathetic and callous. Consider the absolute perfection of this passage:

"What are your choices?" he asked.

Your choices.

"When reading Hemingway watch the pronouns," Ms. Peri said. "The pronouns will tell the story. It's I or it's us. It's we or it's them. Stories belong to somebody."

I remembered Ms. Peri in the flash of that moment -- the night sky behind Kevin, the almost-full moon, his arms around me and around you.

"Watch the pronouns" indeed. Could it be any clearer that Kevin has moved past the crisis, if he ever was in it at all? Kephart places the teens miles apart emotionally, and does so beautifully, with this deft and careful use of language. It shows how Kenzie knew even then that this was really all about her; regardless of Kevin's continuing to make all the necessary boyfriend noises at that moment. It was really only ever going to be about her.

Gracefully Kephart steers her protagonist through every emotion, every question and answer, and the conversations she has with her growing group of Spanish friends (notable for their wide range of age and circumstance) only make her journey that much more interesting. The Spanish setting, beautifully described throughout, adds an air of gentleness to the book's passages and makes this elegant title a novel of singular power. There are many books that treat teen pregnancy as a plot point, but Small Damages gives it the attention it deserves, and a character whose happily-ever-after is wonderful to watch unfold.

For Davis the plot hinges on transgender issues and what happens when a so-called happy family is rocked by a parent's sudden revelation of a long-held secret. There are a thousand different ways in which this story could be told wrong, where overwrought emotion or misplaced sympathy could turn it into a potentially salacious afternoon special, but with a deft hand Davis tackles not just the confusion inherent in the topic but the bigger issue of teen frustration over parental decisions. While learning a parent is transgender is difficult enough, what truly rocks twins Ysabel and Justin is the way their parents handle this massive disruption to their lives. As the teens struggle to figure out all that's changed, they must deal with their parents' well-meaning but bullheaded refusal to discuss the issues. Ysabel and Justin each respond to this confusion in a variety of ways, none of which endears them to their mom and dad, but all of which make perfect sense to anyone who has ever had to deal with parents behaving stupidly. (Pause a moment here for all of us to collectively nod and share in their frustration.)

Over the course of one spring break as family counseling is endured, family outings are negotiated, and organized family fun takes place with a TransParent group, (which includes a lot of smart outspoken teenagers), Ysabel and Justin manage to get their parents to get real. It's this focus on the damage to the family that makes Happy Families really succeed -- Davis sees that with all the questions about what transgender means (and those questions are excellently explored), the real core to this novel is that the children were lied to. This is the essence to all of the novels in this column -- in one way or another, the parents have failed their children, and in every instance they have insisted that failure did not take place. While some of them feel very badly -- particularly in Happy Families -- and while some are just complete asses -- see Dora -- the drama of each novel all comes around to the teenagers demanding fair and worthy attention from the people who are supposed to love them most. It doesn't work out for all of these families; some are just too damaged to save, but in each case there are moments of amazing honesty in which the kids realize that they deserve to stand up and be heard; they deserve respect. For Ysabel and Justin, that moment is a good one, a not quite happily-ever-after-one, but at least a moment that shows them the way forward.

COOL READ: Arne Bellstorf reaches back into rock-and-roll history with a story of the early Beatles in the graphic novel Baby's in Black. Music fans are not going to be able to resist this intimate and ultimately heartbreaking look at the very beginning of one of rock's greatest legends. This is the Beatles in 1960s West Germany, when Stuart Sutcliffe played bass and before Ringo joined the band. Hamburg is where the Beatles met photographer Astrid Kirchherr, whose philosophy-loving friends inspired a radical change in their appearance and led to shakeups in the lineup as Sutcliffe fell in love. Giving up on rock-and-roll fame (potential fame, actually, as the group was barely scraping by at this point), Sutcliffe chose Kirchherr and art and left the band to pursue painting. On the cusp of making his mark, he died suddenly, a loss that shook them all, most notably John Lennon.

Baby's in Black was originally published in German with a great deal of input from Astrid Kirchherr. In bringing it to American teens, Bellstorf shows the group as they were then, impossibly young (George was only seventeen!), foolish, and more than a little bit hungry. There's a lot of brashness in this story, and obnoxiousness (especially from John), and no hint of what lies ahead. This makes Baby's in Black both compelling and believable. At its heart is the Beatles story, much more about friendship then anything else.