Jack of Kinrowan

by Charles de Lint

This book was only vaguely familiar to me when I first added it to my pile at the library, but after reading a dozen pages and thumbing through more, I realized I've actually read it before. And didn't want to read it again, now. But I remember enough to tell you a little about it.

Jack of Kinrowan contains two novellas, Jack the Giant-Killer and Drink Down the Moon. These are urban fantasies, retelling Jack and the Beanstalk in a modern setting where the fae live alongside but hidden from the human world. One of the twists of de Lint's version is that a heroine takes the role of Jack- a frustrated woman named Jacqueline who discovers she has ties to the fae world and gets involved in altercations between the "good" and "bad" factions of magical beings. There's a fae princess who needs rescuing (she's been bewitched into the form of a pig!) motorcycle-riding fae thugs, and of course, giants and gnomes and other strange creatures. I liked seeing how some familiar mythology was reworked by de Lint, with his own take on things along the way- for example, when the fae were trapped between worlds by their enemies, they were stuck with swan's wings instead of arms. In the first story, Jacky and her friend Kate go on the rescue mission, that I recall pretty well. The second story didn't make much impression on me and I've forgotten most of it. It's about a fiddler who can draw on the powers of the moon, the bad fae want to steal this magic, and Jacky and her friend get called in to help. But they have a relatively minor role. All in all a fun enough read.

Rating: 3/5 ........ 412 pages, 1990

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The Boston Reader
anyone else?

Dingo

by Charles de Lint

In a small quiet seaside town, Miguel meets an exotic girl- Lainey with the red-gold hair and the accompanying red-gold dog. She's from Australia, but he soon finds out that there's something more strange about her than just a foreign accent. She is a shape-shifter, a "were-dingo" on the run with her twin sister from an ancient persona who simply calls himself Dingo. He wants her life, in order to free himself from a tree he's been trapped in for centuries. Miguel must convince another boy from highschool- his enemy no less- to join with him in the quest to save the dingo girls. They travel into the dreamland and back, involving some adult figures in preparations and plans but having to face the final test alone. I liked the beginning of the book, when Miguel was puzzling out the true identity of his new girlfriend, and I liked the end, when the final meeting with Dingo turned all expectations inside out, but the middle dragged on rather dully. Again, I don't know for sure if it's just that this writer's style doesn't fully engage me, or that I've outgrown YA fiction and should leave it well alone, but although the story was interesting and the inclusion of Australian mythology new to me, my mind kept sliding away from it all. I think I'm going to put the de Lint books aside for now, and look for something else to read. They just aren't grabbing me.

Rating: 2/5 ....... 213 pages, 2008\

More opinions at:
Literary Wombat
Melody's Reading Corner
Becky's Book Reviews
Rhinoa's Ramblings
Someone's Read it Already

Little (Grrl) Lost

by Charles de Lint

A few days ago I decided to ignore the heaps of books lying beside my bed and visit the library. I checked out half a dozen books by Charles de Lint. The first one I picked up was Little (Grrl) Lost. It's an urban fantasy about two teenage girls, one just moved from the countryside into the city, the other running away from home. Besides the fact that the country girl is a "goody two-shoes" and the runaway a punker with a prickly attitude, there's another huge difference between them: size. Runaway-girl is only six inches tall. She's one of the "Littles"- diminuitive people who reside in the walls of houses, out of sight of their hosts. Now, I read all the books in the Littles series by John Peterson when I was a kid, and some of the Borrowers by Mary Norton too, so I liked approaching a modern take on this idea. But sadly, Little (Grrl) Lost did not keep my attention. The characters felt kind of flat, the dialogue uninteresting, and not much seemed to happen. Even when it did, I found I didn't much care. This frustrated me, because I really wanted to like the book. But after getting halfway through and realizing I was only skimming, I put it down. Maybe it's just my mood. Try some of the other reviews, listed here. They liked it better!

Abandoned ........ 271 pages, 2007

More opinions at:
Ravenous Reader
Someone's Read it Already
Words by Annie
Bookshelves of Doom
Rhinoa's Ramblings
Stuff as Dreams Are Made On

Elsewhere in the Land of Parrots

by Jim Paul

Here's a book I gave a second chance. I found it at a library sale and immediately picked it up, because I've lived in San Francisco and seen those parrots (cherry-headed conures) in the park. A novel featuring them really intrigued me. Elsewhere in the Land of Parrots is about two individuals fascinated by the parrots: a graduate student struggling to locate wild parrots in the mangrove swamps of Ecuador for research, who unwittingly gets tangled up with some illegal wildlife trafficking, and a self-isolated eccentric poet in San Francisco who doesn't like the parrot his father gave him and ends up releasing it from his apartment window. Eventually feeling guilty at letting the parrot go, he explores the city to find dozens of parrots living on Telegraph Hill, reads up about them in the public library, and finally travels to South America in search of the wild flock they must have originated from. While this book got off to a slow start with me- I was at first put off by the frequent use of the past perfect tense, and felt distanced from the characters- I liked reading the details about the city-living parrots. I knew the two people would end up together- the researcher enthralled with parrots from the beginning and frustrated in her efforts to get close to them, and the reluctant poet gradually drawn out of his isolation by a desire to know more about them. Their two stories wove together in a surprising fashion to the final meeting point. The further I read the more I was drawn into this book, until by the end I had difficulty putting it down.

Rating: 3/5 ........ 305 pages, 2003

winner

Jenny has won the horse bookmarks. Congrats, Jenny!

The Boy of the Painted Cave

by Justin Denzel

Set in the stone age, The Boy of the Painted Cave is about a young orphan boy named Tao who was born with a club foot. His greatest desire is to become an artist, and paint in the Sacred Cave. But the tribe will never choose him for this honor because of his unknown parentage and crippled foot. Finding himself more or less an outcast, Tao starts roaming the wilds around his home and through observation discovers that some things his tribe has taught the people to fear are falsehoods. He also befriends a wild dog, a creature the tribe fears and loathes. Eventually Tao convinces a shaman to teach him the painter's skill in secret, and then tries to find a way back into his tribe; not just as an accepted member, but as one who can bring them advantages (the dog) and honor (his art). Not too in-depth (written for ages 8-12) but a well-written imaginative story that kept me curious to see what would happen next.

Rating: 3/5 ........ 160 pages, 1988

Pigeons

The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird
by Andrew D. Blechman

A book about people who are passionate about pigeons. Love them, hate them. Breeders, sportsmen, activists, rescuers, chefs. Pigeons have a long history with man including doves that were sent from ships to find land, birds raised or hunted to be eaten in pies, and pigeons that delivered crucial messages during war. Then there are hobbyists: men who breed fancy pigeons for their colors, shapes and fantastic feathers, others involved in the dying sport of pigeon racing, or the clandestine pigeon shoots. Pushing a bit further beyond these obvious interests, the author also sought out famous people who loved pigeons (Queen Elizabeth, Mike Tyson), men whose livelihoods are built on deterring pigeons from hanging around buildings, and others who work in processing plants that sell pigeon meat to fine restaurants. Then there's the city ladies obsessed with feeding pigeons, those that furtively net pigeons to sell to the shoots, and animal-rights people who try to thwart them. Blechman finds out about them all, in the meantime sharing a wealth of pigeon lore. He claims that pigeons really don't spread disease, in spite of the mess they leave around, and that their current status as reviled "rats with wings" is relatively new; for a much longer time period pigeons have been appreciated as one of man's first domesticated animals. They can be birds of great stamina, natural athletes, and complete homebodies- racing pigeons, after all, are just speeding their way back home to their comforts and city pigeons like to hang around people because the pickings are easy. I learned a lot of interesting stuff from Pigeons, but sometimes wished it stuck a little closer to topic (more on the pigeons and less about the people) particularly the chapter about the famous boxer. It was all about how the author kept getting the runaround when trying for an interview, with a smattering of info he picked up on Tyson's pigeons. That part could have used some editing.

Rating: 3/5 ........ 239 pages, 2006

More opinions at:
Diary of a Suburban Gardener
PhiloBiblos
Gather

The Dolphin Doctor

by Sam Ridgway

Another older book I found at a library sale one time. The author of this one was a veterinarian for the Navy, and became involved in early studies of dolphin sonar and diving abilities, and training programs that used dolphins to assist scientists at sea (retrieving objects, delivering messages between divers, etc). The Dolphin Doctor is mostly about one particular dolphin named Tuffy, but also about the extent of dolphin work in the sixties and seventies, when the field was very new. Not much was known about dolphins; much of the work Ridgway did was just as much to learn about their physiology as it was to keep them in good health. He was the first vet to come up with a way to safely anesthetize a dolphin. It was really interesting to read about his work with the dolphins- and to see Tuffy's transformation. He was a wild-caught dolphin, at first truculent, resistant and fought off any human contact. Won over by patience on the part of biology assistant Debbie (and many fish), Tuffy became cooperative and proved to be intelligent and highly trainable. Remarkably, he was even trained to work at sea- swimming freely, following the boat, diving to great depths for tests. Eventually Debbie had to leave for graduate school, and when she came back to visit after three months their reunion was very touching. Dolphins are really incredible animals, and when this book was written scientists were just beginning to learn more about their abilities. It's a bit awkward in the beginning- jumping from one time period to another, and including a section about Ridgway's youth on a farm that felt a bit out of place- but overall an interesting book.

Rating: 3/5 ........ 159 pages, 1987

blog award

I have hedged and hesitated over acknowledging this award received from Sherrie at A View of My Life, simply because it's getting hard for me to choose blogs to pass awards on to. I like them all so much! Maybe someday I'll just put all the blogs from my Google reader into random.org and award whoever comes up (just kidding)! Well, here's the rules for this award:

•Each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass The Award on to 5 most-deserving Bloggy Friends.

•Each Superior Scribbler must link to the author & the name of the blog from whom he/she has received The Award.

•Each Superior Scribbler must display The Award on his/her blog, and link to This Post, which explains The Award.

•Each Blogger who wins The Superior Scribbler Award must visit this post and add his/her name to the Mr. Linky List. That way, we'll be able to keep up-to-date on everyone who receives This Prestigious Honor!

•Each Superior Scribbler must post these rules on his/her blog.

and here's some blogs I want to give it to:

Educating Petunia
A Work in Progress
The Book Tiger
Across the Page
Musings of a Bookish Kitty

go check them out!

Red Fox

by Charles G.D. Roberts

Reading Red Fox was nostalgic for me. I can't remember where I first picked this book up, at my elementary school library or the Burien public branch. I do know I must have read it half a dozen times when I was young. It's out of print now, but I was happy to find a copy via Book Mooch and read it one more time.

The book tells the lifestory of a fox in the Canadian woods. It is based on observations of wild foxes, many true-life incidents all complied into one adventurous story. The hero of Red Fox is the largest of his litter, stronger, braver and smarter than the rest. He learns survival lessons and hunting skills from his mother, also from his siblings' blunders and his own mistakes. He must outwit his prey, deal with changing weather conditions and confront or avoid other predators- mink, lynx, eagles, bears, rival foxes. By the time he is an adult he knows how to outwit dogs and farmers, but then a young boy who has been quietly watching him helps trap the fox and tries to tame him. That failing, he sells the fox, thinking the animal will be taken to a zoo. But Red Fox is let loose on the grounds of a foxhunting club, where he must use all his wits against the hounds if he wants to gain his freedom again. The story ends a little abruptly, but otherwise I enjoyed it. Some passages jumped out from my memory, others I had entirely forgotten and that made reading it anew a discovery all over again. The pen-and-ink illustrations by John Schoenherr are quite nice.

Rating: 3/5 ........ 187 pages, 1972

Next Panda, Please!

Further Adventures of a Wildlife Vet
by David Taylor

I was so glad to enjoy a David Taylor book again, after my last disappointment. This one describes Taylor's work with animals at Belle Vue Zoo in Manchester, as well as his travels abroad to treat sick falcons in Saudi Arabia and the first panda to live in a zoo in Madrid (the panda's story is a continual thread throughout the book). Among his animal patients are an armadillo who was kicked down a street by teenagers, a dolphin that needs a limb amputated, a deer with a dislocated eye, some killer whales with frostbite, cheetahs which have mysteriously been drugged, and young giraffes suffering from stress, on account of being included in a filmmaking project. This chapter delighted me the most, as here I "met" people known to me from other books. A few years ago I read two books on giraffes, one Raising Daisy Rothschild by Betty Leslie-Melville. Taylor knew Leslie-Melville, and went to Kenya to visit the ranch when they were making a film about how she had raised an orphan giraffe. The funniest chapter (although not its ending) was about a traveling circus where a chimpanzee took revenge on a parrot that constantly taunted him by sitting and crapping on his head while screaming dirty words at the crowd. The saddest chapter was reading about how the Belle Vue Zoo finally closed, and the difficulties finding places for all the animals to go. And of course, like always in Next Panda, Please! I was completely engaged with Taylor's easy writing style and learning the interesting facts about animals. Did you know, for example, that one of the very few animals to suffer from leprosy alongside humans are armadillos? Lucky for us (but unhappily for the armadillos) this means they were used in research on treatments for leprosy.

Rating: 4/5 ........ 196 pages, 1982