The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths

When Griffiths concluded her Ruth Galloway mystery series (of which I am a big fan), I expected she would concentrate on characters already introduced in her other books. Instead, she has launched an intriguing new series with another quirky, outspoken heroine, a police detective who finds herself in the midst of several mysteries.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books That Feature [Time] Travel

This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is “Books that feature travel”. I misread it as “time travel” and got interested, although I have not previously participated in this meme. When I realized my mistake, I had already come up with a list of ten time travel novels I read recently, so here you are:

A Spoonful of Time by Flora Ahn - a culinary time travel

Title: A Spoonful of Time
Author: Flora Ahn
Illustrator: Jenny Park
Publication: Quirk Books, hardcover, 2023
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
Setting: Present-day California

Description: Maya lives with her widowed mother, who works at a law firm, and her grandmother, Halmunee, who moved in with them recently and may be suffering from dementia. Although Halmunee’s memory is erratic, she remembers the traditional cooking she learned as a girl in Korea and is determined to share this with Maya.

Time at the Top by Edward Ormondroyd

Title: Time at the Top
Author: Edward Ormondroyd
Illustrator: Peggie Bach
Publication: Bantam Skylark paperback, originally published by Parnassus Press, 1963, now available from Purple House Press
Genre: Juvenile fantasy
Setting: 20th century, United States, probably New York

Description: One Wednesday in March, late in the afternoon, Susan Shaw vanished from the Ward Street apartment house in which she lived with her father.

The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier #DDMreadingweek

Title: The House on the Strand
Author: Daphne du Maurier
Publication: 1969     Genre: Fiction     Setting: Cornwall

Occasion: Heaven-Ali's Daphne du Maurier Reading Week 2021

Description: Publishing executive Dick Young is between jobs when his old friend Magnus Lane lends him a vacation home in Cornwall, somewhat in exchange for Dick’s assistance with a mysterious project.

Six Degrees of Separation - From The Proud Way to Little Women

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place as other readers, add six books, and see where one ends up.   This month’s starting point is Rodham: A Novel by Curtis Sittenfeld, in which the author reimagines Hillary’s life if she hadn’t married Bill.  My sisters liked her book Prep but I have no interest in reading this book which sounds so invasive. Leave Hillary alone!

However, it somehow reminded me of my first book, The Proud Way by Shirley Seifert (1948), a historical novel about Varina Davis, the First Lady of the Confederacy, married to Jefferson Davis.  Varina came from a slave-owning family in Mississippi but received a better education than most women of her class and, perhaps influenced by Northern relatives, did not approve of slavery.  Her birthplace, The Briers, is now a B&B, if I ever make it to Natchez.  This book belonged to my mother.

Bookshelf Traveling - August 29

Time for another round of Bookshelf Traveling in Insane Times which was created by Judith at Reader in the Wilderness and is currently hosted by Katrina at Pining for the West.   The idea is to share one of your neglected bookshelves or perhaps a new pile of books.  

My guest room has seven bookcases of children’s books, including this shelf which holds the Ellen Confords, three by L.M. Boston, Understood Betsy (which I couldn’t find when I needed it last month for the family read!), the Carol Ryrie Brinks, and my E. Nesbits.

What to Read During a Pandemic

While some people are compiling recommendations of dystopian angst or Stephen King-like disaster, my rules are different. The book can’t be depressing (of course, depressing is in the eye of the beholder), it has to be worth reading more than once, and it needs to be available as an eBook or from Project Gutenberg.  It would be diabolical to make you long for something you cannot get quickly and I am rarely so cruel!  Also, remember that your library owns many eBooks and may be willing to purchase more.  Download Libby, if you haven't already!

Fiction

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson: Major Ernest Pettigrew is perfectly content to lead a quiet life in the sleepy village of Edgecombe St Mary, away from the meddling of the locals and his overbearing son.  Then an unexpected friendship between the crusty, retired military officer and Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper from the village, scandalizes everyone.

The Inn at Lake Devine by Elinor Lipman: Natalie’s family is stunned when the Vermont resort they want to visit answers their inquiry, “Our guests who feel most comfortable here, and return year after year, are Gentiles."  She is determined to go anyway and it becomes a mission.

Waking in Time (Book Review)

Title: Waking in Time
Author: Angie Stanton
Publication: Switch Press/Capstone, hardcover, 2017
Genre: YA Timetravel

Plot: Abbi is excited to begin her freshman year at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, although it is bittersweet because she recently lost her grandmother, an ardent alumna who had encouraged her to apply. But one morning she wakes up in 1983 and realizes she has gone back in time, but is still a student at Wisconsin – in fact, in the same dorm and same bed.

The Spider's Web

When I was about eleven, my mother and I came across a radio broadcast of what seemed to be a children's book, appealing but completely unknown to us.   We were fascinated.  For some reason, the show's signal was very weak, and it would disappear periodically - particularly at the point where the narrator might have told us the title or author!  There was a boy and a garden and time travel, all of which we invariably enjoyed.  In those pre-Internet days, there was no way of finding out what the book actually was.   I think we might even have called the local PBS station without success but what I especially remember is being in our kitchen in Newton at dinner time and straining to hear what was coming from the radio.   The show was The Spider's Web and the book was eventually revealed to be Tom's Midnight Garden (1958), a delightful fantasy about a lonely boy, recuperating with relatives, who finds a mysterious playmate in their garden at night.  Author Philippa Pearce wrote several other books, which I own, but this was her masterpiece.   It won the Carnegie Medal which is the award for Britain's best children's book.

Once we finally caught the title, we raced for the library and the copy we found had this very cover. We didn't always remember but it became a game with us to turn on the radio and see how long it would take for us to identify the book.  Usually, we did know them: I seem to recall Joan Aiken and Lloyd Alexander (and turning it off when it was The Wind in the Willows, one of the few English classics we disliked), among others.   Frances Shrand was the narrator and there was a catchy tune at the end, which some helpful person has posted:

There's a web like a spider's web 
Made of silver light and shadows 
Spun by the moon in my room at night 
It's a web made to catch a dream 
Hold it tight 'til I awaken 
As if to tell me my dream is all right 

Does anyone else remember this show from the 70s?

Into the Dim (book review)

Title: Into the Dim
Author: Janet B. Taylor
Publication: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Hardcover, 2016
Genre: YA Time travel

Plot: Hope Walton is still devastated from losing her mother when her stepfather ships her to Scotland to visit an unknown aunt while he vacations with his new girlfriend. Christopher Manor is an imposing 5-6 story mansion, full of secrets, and before Hope even meets her Aunt Lucinda, she has is befriended by the housekeeper’s granddaughter Phoebe (good), meets a handsome young stranger in the Scottish countryside (good) who is taking pictures of her (bad), and found a portal in her aunt’s basement that takes her back in time to Eleanor of Aquitaine’s London (dangerous). Soon Hope begins to learn the truth about her mother’s family and finds out her mother isn’t dead but is trapped in the 12th century. Hope, her new friend Phoebe, and Phoebe’s critical brother Collum need to rescue Sarah Walton but they only have 72 hours before their time travel window will expire...

Audience: Fans of time travel and YA fiction

What I liked: Feisty orphans or quasi-orphans, mysterious mansions, quests back in time, a handsome hero who might be the villain – yes, this is a fun, fast-paced, and entertaining book just waiting for a sequel.

Outlander – Season 1, Episode 1, Sassenach – Recap

As requested, I’ve gone back to the beginning of Outlander to recap the first episode.   For those who missed the 8-part series on Starz, it will probably be repeated in a marathon showing just before the second half of season 1 begins in April and is also going to be rerun on Christmas.  Outlander is based on Diana Gabaldon’s bestselling historical fiction series.  As I have told many people, as I left Bantam Doubleday Dell in May of 1991, I helped myself to two advance reading copies (arcs) from a pile on the 22nd floor that looked appealing.  One was The Firm by John Grisham and the other was Outlander.  I often think about how BDD (now Random House) launched two incredible franchise authors that year.

 

Episode 1 begins with a voiceover from Claire, the heroine of the series, describing how people disappear every day.  Most such disappearance can be explained, but not all.  (If you need an explanation for time travel, this is the wrong show/series for you.)

Betsy Was a Junior, Group Read, Part 1 - by Maud Hart Lovelace

Chapter 1 - As I take the baton for the Betsy-Tacy listserv's discussion of Betsy Was a Junior, I ask you to imagine it is the end of August rather than early June and that we are all about to return to high school. Part of me is horrified at the very idea, but part of me is convinced I could do it so much better now! What do you think? For those like me who wished high school were more like Deep Valley or Harkness High, would you make a few lists a la Betsy Ray and do a Groundhog Day-like second attempt if that were possible? Or did it live up to your expectations in the first place and you don’t need a do-over?

I think it is fair to say that of all Maud’s books this inspires the strongest emotions due to Betsy’s involvement with sororities and how it affects those around her. One of the reasons we have high standards for Betsy is that we have seen her take stock of herself at the beginning of every school year, make goals, try to live up to them, make mistakes, learn and move forward. As with Beany Malone, sometimes it just seems as if she isn’t getting the message and keeps making the same mistakes. Well, I know I make mistakes so why should I hold Betsy to a higher standard? Plus, I understand one needs human angst to make a good story.

As BWAJ begins, Betsy is spending the summer at Murmuring Lake. She has enjoyed the first two years of high school but longs to be a siren like her older sister Julia. She also has regrets about not having done her best work on the school essay contest. Her freshman year she was too busy socializing to prepare for it, and her sophomore year the contest coincided with her breakup with Phil Brandish. But this year will be different. “I’m going to make my junior year just perfect,” Betsy writes in her journal. “As for boys,” she concludes, “I think I’ll go with Joe Willard!” Oh, Betsy, don’t you know you shouldn’t jinx yourself this way? Only big sister Julia can make these definitive statements and follow through on them - although she is heading off to the U for her freshman year and outside the friendly confines of Deep Valley perhaps even Julia will lose some of her charisma and potency.

For me, BWAJ is one of my favorites, partly because it was the last BT book I read. My childhood library, housed in a lovely yellow building in Newton, MA owned copies of every book except Winona’s Pony Cart and BWAJ, even Emily of Deep Valley and Carney's House Party (I knew more about Vassar than my high school friend who went there). I found Winona in a small library in Chappaqua, NY where my grandmother lived (I also found Cousins by Evan Commager in that library, which I loved and recommend to anyone who can find it). But in the days before online card catalogues, there wasn’t much way to investigate interlibrary loan. One day, several years after I had read the rest of the books, my mother and I went back to the branch of the Boston Public Library where I had got my first library card. Unerringly, I found my way to the L books and there was a beautiful hardcover with dust jacket copy of BWAJ just waiting for me. The children’s librarian, whose name was Judy Lieberman, was delighted for me to find a book that meant so much to me, and in later years teased me that I checked it out so much she should just give it to me. I started reading it in the car driving home, and my mother and sister read it the minute I was done (some things never change - when my sister finished the new Sarah Dessen this weekend, she handed it to me without a word).

So perhaps my long wait for this book is one of the reasons I am so fond of it. Moreover, while we will come to aspects of the book that may cause concern, it is also full of the things we love about Deep Valley: the parties, the dating, the characters we love, the clothes we admire, the teachers we dislike, the assignments we meant to get to, the fudge, but best of all the way the Rays rally around each other in times of crisis.

Leaving aside sororities for the moment, if you could wake up tomorrow as part of the Crowd in the fall of 1908, wouldn’t it be hard to turn your back on that opportunity?  

[From time to time avid Betsy-Tacy fans conduct a group read of the beloved books by Maud Hart Lovelace - let me know if you would like to join us online.]  

The BWAJ images are copyrighted to HarperCollins.

When Marnie Was There by Joan Robinson (Book Review)

Title: When Marnie Was There
Author: Joan G. Robinson     Illustrated: Peggy Fortnum
Publication Information: Armada paperback, original pub date 1967
Genre: Children’s Fiction / Time Slip

Plot: Lonely Anna, an inarticulate orphan who lives with a kindly older couple who do not understand her, goes to stay in Norfolk with their friends after being ill with asthma. Exploring the area, she is entranced by the Marsh House on a creek nearby and by Marnie, an outgoing girl her age who appears and disappears mysteriously from the house. When Marnie is there, she is the perfect friend – she is imaginative and comes up with great games – but the reader guesses she is not real and the locals think Anna is talking to herself. As in Tom’s Midnight Garden, the loneliness of two children in the same place but many years apart results in a friendship that transcends time. Although her friendship with Marnie is not without sadness (which she does not understand), it helps prickly Anna learn how to be a friend and how to accept affection. The outgoing Lindsay family that moves into the old house on the creek after Marnie disappears for good completes the process, showing Anna what it is like to be part of a large and lively family and helping her come to terms with her foster parents and the birth family she feels abandoned her.

The Freedom Maze (Review)

Title: The Freedom Maze

Author: Delia Sherman

Publication Information: Big Mouth House, hardcover, 2011

Genre: YA Historical Fiction/Time Slip

Plot: Sophie is a gawky 13-year-old in 1960 Louisiana whose parents recently divorced.  Even worse, her father appears to have left the state without saying goodbye. While her mother recovers from being ostracized by friends and tries to improve her job skills, she leaves Sophie to spend the summer at her childhood home on the bayou in all that remains of the Fairchild family’s once-grand sugar plantation.

Children's Favorites

The problem with completing Elizabeth Bird's Top Ten Middle Grade Chapter Book list is twofold: 1) that it took far too long, when I should have been doing at least a dozen other things; 2) my choices might be totally different if compiled at some other time (and that doesn't even take into account my question of whether a series counts). I was disappointed not to meet her at ALA but assume she is a kindred spirit. . .
1-A Little Princess/Burnett (all my favorite genres in one: orphans, historical fiction, school story)
2-Anne of Green Gables/Montgomery (the ultimate orphan)
3-A Traveler in Time/Uttley (time travel, and one of my other favorite things, Elizabethan England)
4-Betsy-Tacy series (if I had to pick just one, I guess Betsy and Joe)
5-Masha/Mara Kay (not very well known but adored by anyone who read it, orphans and school story)
6-Charlotte Sometimes/Farmer (school story and time travel and I think she’s an orphan too)
7-The Wolves of Willoughby Chase/Aiken (orphans almost always a theme with Aiken)
8-Ballet Shoes/Streatfeild (although Skating Shoes a close second) (more orphans)
9-Knight’s Castle/Eager (although it is hard to pick my favorite Eager between this and Seven Day Magic and The Time Garden)
10-Diamond in the Window/Langton (yet more orphans)

Runners-Up
Time at the Top/Ormondroyd
The Lark and the Laurel/Willard (first in one of my all time favorite series)
The Prydain series/Alexander
Emily series/Montgomery (Powell’s has these in YA but AOGG in middle grades-as a series I like these better but AOGG beats them out individually)
Emmy Keeps a Promise/Chastain
Autumn Term/Forest (I am tempted to count this but did not read it until grown up)