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50books_pocI read a lot of these over the summer and don't have details at my fingertips anymore, but if you want more info about any, ask and I'll try to oblige.
34. Walter Dean Myers, The Legend of Tarik.
Tarik is a Nigerian boy on a sword-and-sorcery quest for revenge against the Spanish warlord who killed his family. Delivers exactly as advertised, right up the middle of the genre. I have a huge affection for Stria, the Axe Crazy girl who trains and travels with Tarik. (In fact, I'm considering nominating and asking for Stria fic, in some future exchange.)
35. Nnedi Okorafor, Akata Witch.
It seriously bums me that this has not gotten more buzz. While reading it, I was trying to come up with a better capsule-summary than "Nigerian Harry Potter", but the farther I read, the stronger those parallels became. Lots of cool fantastical worldbuilding, another appearance of the Greeny Forbidden Jungle, and none of the stuff that made me grind my teeth about Harry Potter itself. It deserves a lot more love than it's gotten, imo.
36. Malinda Lo, Huntress.
From page one, it started hitting all my favorite tropes from my teenagerhood. (You know that cozy feeling when you realize what you're holding in your hands is one of these books? Like that.) Except unlike the books from my teenagerhood, this one has lesbians in. Happy Sanguinity.
37. Dhan Gopal Mukerji, Gay-Neck, The Story of a Pigeon.
When I was a kid, I adored old-fashioned boys' adventure books, a genre that I largely avoid nowadays because they are too often so badly riddled with the leavings of the various Kyriarchy Fairies.
But this? Runs straight up the middle of that genre. It's about a boy and his pigeon, circa 1910 or so (the second half of the book takes place during WWI), and the adventures they have together. (Cross-country treks! Derring-do!) I thoroughly enjoyed it, and am even happier to know that Mukerji wrote a fistful of these, and that at least some of them were popular enough that you can still lay hands on them.
Oh, and for those of you who worry about Death By Newbery Medal, (skip spoiler)
38. Candy Gourlay, Tall Story.
…agh, I'm hard-pressed to summarize. It deserves a full review, and I don't feel qualified to give it. This is a sweet story about teenage siblings who are reunited for the first time since toddlerhood (persistent immigration issues had kept one in the Philippines after the rest of the family had moved to London). The characters' hopes for and frustrations with each other are nicely drawn, and almost all of them are ultimately sympathetic, even when they are in conflict with each other. I like the characters themselves, too. (Andi and her basketball!) I like that the author gives respect to both scientific stories and folk stories. I like that one of the big themes is the effect of emigration on communities, and emigrants' ties to their communities of origin. I have question marks about some of the tropier bits (the rural Philippine village strikes me as quaintly backwards, and there's stuff I can't put my finger on about the novel's treatment of the brother's medical condition).
Heh. I don't so much want to write a review, as to have a convo with someone else about it. It's a sweet, fun story, with a lot to recommend it, but I have just enough questions about the tropier bits to want to rip it open and start pulling apart the gear train to see exactly what it's doing. Y'know?
34. Walter Dean Myers, The Legend of Tarik.
Tarik is a Nigerian boy on a sword-and-sorcery quest for revenge against the Spanish warlord who killed his family. Delivers exactly as advertised, right up the middle of the genre. I have a huge affection for Stria, the Axe Crazy girl who trains and travels with Tarik. (In fact, I'm considering nominating and asking for Stria fic, in some future exchange.)
35. Nnedi Okorafor, Akata Witch.
It seriously bums me that this has not gotten more buzz. While reading it, I was trying to come up with a better capsule-summary than "Nigerian Harry Potter", but the farther I read, the stronger those parallels became. Lots of cool fantastical worldbuilding, another appearance of the Greeny Forbidden Jungle, and none of the stuff that made me grind my teeth about Harry Potter itself. It deserves a lot more love than it's gotten, imo.
36. Malinda Lo, Huntress.
From page one, it started hitting all my favorite tropes from my teenagerhood. (You know that cozy feeling when you realize what you're holding in your hands is one of these books? Like that.) Except unlike the books from my teenagerhood, this one has lesbians in. Happy Sanguinity.
37. Dhan Gopal Mukerji, Gay-Neck, The Story of a Pigeon.
When I was a kid, I adored old-fashioned boys' adventure books, a genre that I largely avoid nowadays because they are too often so badly riddled with the leavings of the various Kyriarchy Fairies.
But this? Runs straight up the middle of that genre. It's about a boy and his pigeon, circa 1910 or so (the second half of the book takes place during WWI), and the adventures they have together. (Cross-country treks! Derring-do!) I thoroughly enjoyed it, and am even happier to know that Mukerji wrote a fistful of these, and that at least some of them were popular enough that you can still lay hands on them.
Oh, and for those of you who worry about Death By Newbery Medal, (skip spoiler)
the pigeon lives.
38. Candy Gourlay, Tall Story.
…agh, I'm hard-pressed to summarize. It deserves a full review, and I don't feel qualified to give it. This is a sweet story about teenage siblings who are reunited for the first time since toddlerhood (persistent immigration issues had kept one in the Philippines after the rest of the family had moved to London). The characters' hopes for and frustrations with each other are nicely drawn, and almost all of them are ultimately sympathetic, even when they are in conflict with each other. I like the characters themselves, too. (Andi and her basketball!) I like that the author gives respect to both scientific stories and folk stories. I like that one of the big themes is the effect of emigration on communities, and emigrants' ties to their communities of origin. I have question marks about some of the tropier bits (the rural Philippine village strikes me as quaintly backwards, and there's stuff I can't put my finger on about the novel's treatment of the brother's medical condition).
Heh. I don't so much want to write a review, as to have a convo with someone else about it. It's a sweet, fun story, with a lot to recommend it, but I have just enough questions about the tropier bits to want to rip it open and start pulling apart the gear train to see exactly what it's doing. Y'know?
no subject
Date: 2012-01-16 08:16 pm (UTC)I've been meaning to read Tall Story since foreverrrrrr. I need to get my butt in gear.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-16 08:24 pm (UTC)If I remember correctly things you've said about the hallmarks of some of your favorite characters, I think the odds are good that you'll like Andi.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-16 09:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-17 12:16 am (UTC)Although I'd rather have Sunny et al, too.
Tall Story
Date: 2012-01-22 07:00 pm (UTC)Re: Tall Story
Date: 2012-01-23 06:58 pm (UTC)Thing is, my thoughts on it are far from coherent. There's some neat stuff going on with the giant story that works as a metaphor for the effects of emigration on communities: removing individuals from the social fabric jeopardizes the integrity of the fabric, because those individuals had roles in that fabric. Even if they're leaving because the roles were insufficient -- no jobs, no educational opportunities, wev -- and even if people are maintaining ties back home, there's still a weakening of the fabric. It matters when someone goes away. I feel like I haven't seen many stories which cover both ends of being a migrant: what it means to the people you leave and the people you join.
Also, I like the respect for folk stories in the way that the story pans out. I know it's pretty much the done thing in fiction to treat in-world stories as true, but still, there's a nice balance here between scientific stories and folk stories, to my eye.
But I squirm a bit about how the village is protrayed -- I have the sensation that I'm supposed to view it as quaintly backward. And yet that "quaintness", for lack of a better word, is intimately tied in with stuff that I really like.
And as I said above, I haven't really started unpicking the things I'm thinking about the brother's gigantism. The folk story (that just above I'm glad is upheld) is at root an ableist story, focusing on what 'gifts' one individual's serious medical condition bestows on the abled people around him. And on the "realist" flipside we have Andi's frustration that her brother is tall, but not the right kind of tall, the fragile kind of tall. Plus, on the "realist" side, his mother's fears for his health. Those conflicting perceptions meet in his hiding his height from his mother, at his aunt's behest. But do we ever get his POV of it, or is it always what his medical condition means to other characters in the book? Because I rather feel sometimes that the brother is being used more as a symbol that is being contested by the various characters, more than a character himself?
Like I said, it's been a while since I've read it, so I'm not sure if my impressions are entirely accurate. Feel free to correct me if my memory seems way off base.
Re: Tall Story
Date: 2012-02-01 04:00 pm (UTC)Re the portrayal of the village — I was a bit disappointed at how there wasn't much of a sense of place in the story. I've never been to the Philippines but I'm very familiar with the various areas of London. London in the book felt... I don't know, aside from the short passage about meeting at Heathrow and going on the Tube, it felt like it could have been any city in the UK really. The author lives in Tufnell Park, which I suppose actually is a bit like that (residential, a bit bland), and I wouldn't say any of it is inaccurate, but I dunno, I wanted more of a feeling of specific place, both in the Philippines and in London.