Next Books

As I referenced in my entry below, I just finished some books on children without mothers. I admit that I have a real weakness for juvenile fiction and young adult fiction. Whenever I visit a bookstore or the library, I always check out the latest in juvie lit and YA. So when I found myself dragging a bit in reading Last Child in the Woods, a nonfiction discussion of the need of children for nature, I hit the library for a few good, short reads to get me through.

The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron was a book I stumbled on at Borders or Barnes & Noble over the summer. Because I'm making a conscientious effort not to buy books but to check them out from the library, I noted the title and added it to my library to-read list. A Newberry Award winner, the book is a tender and sensitive look at the efforts of ten-year-old Lucky to cope with the loss of her mother, the absence of her father, and her fears about her French caregiver Brigitte leaving her, too.

The book is infused with humor, and Ms. Patron clearly has a finger on the pulse of what makes young children tick. I loved the childish intelligence and insight of Lucky and her friend Lincoln. Lincoln, worried that people will assume that the children in their town of 43 souls are stupid, amends the traffic sign to read "Slow: Children At Play." (It's something I wanted to do as a child!) Lucky, eavesdropping on local twelve-step meetings, has a beautiful, child-like understanding of the "higher power" credited by the recovering addicts as their salvation, and she seeks her own "higher power" in an effort to attain the stability she senses she's lost with the death of her mother.

It's a sweet and funny book, one I would like to read with my daughter one day.

Touching on similar themes of loss, A Thief in the House of Memory by Tim Wynne-Jones, has the feel of a thriller or ghost story as sixteen-year-old Declan Steeple comes to terms with the departure of his mother six years before. Through dreams and memory, Dec has, in a sense, a vision quest that leads him to accept truths about his mother as well as about his father and even himself ... truths that he has hidden from himself in an effort to cope with his mother's departure. While not as sweet or tender as Lucky, this book was also worth the read. I came away feeling that I knew Dec and his friends. Even though some characters appear briefly, they are so well "drawn" by Wynne-Jones, that you feel you know them, and they certainly reminded me of people I know.

So, here's the latest run-down, including Last Child in the Woods, which I'll finish today but blog about later. :)

100. Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
99. The Cat Who Covered the World by Christopher S. Wren
98. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
97. Emily the Strange by Anonymous
96. Anathem by Neal Stephenson
95. The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron, illustrated by Matt Phelan
94. A Thief in the House of Memory by Tim Wynne-Jones
93. Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv