Sophisticosity

It's been five years since I last encountered Louise Rennison's Georgia Nicolson, the diary-writing British teenager with the boy obsession. Her confessions entertained me through four episodes (two in audio), but then I'd figured out ... (I know, I'm slow) each book is pretty much the same. Amusing at first, but wearing in large doses. After a five-year hiatus, I enjoyed my brief visit with Georgia in her 8th adventure: Love is a Many Trousered Thing (aka Luuurve is a Many Trousered Thing in England ... I think I enjoy the U.S. publisher's renaming of some of the books as much as the books themselves; for example, it replaced ... And That's When It Fell Off in my Hand with Away Laughing on a Fast Camel).

Is there any point to a brief plot description? Evidently in the books I missed, a Luuurve God from Pizza-a-gogo land (Italy) named Masimo shows up fast on the heels of the departing Sex God, Robbie (off to Kiwi-a-gogo land [figure it out]), and Georgia falls. Now, Robbie's back and Georgia must decide between the two. While on a camping trip with her German class (Georgia goes hilariously on and on about this), she seeks advice from her friend (and, as we know even if she doesn't, soul mate) Dave the Laugh, who tells her that love is a many trousered thing ... that perhaps she can love more than one person. In between, Georgia's diary entries are smart, witty and actually not very nice. No one escapes Georgia's poison pen.

As always, Georgia's glossary for all her American chums is worth waiting for. Sample: Fringe: "Goofy short bit of hair that comes down to your eyebrows. Someone told me that American-type people call them “bangs” but this is so ridiculously strange that it’s not worth thinking about. Some people can look very stylish with a fringe (i.e., me) while others look goofy (Jas). The Beatles started it apparently. One of them had a German girlfriend, and she cut their hair with a pudding bowl and the rest is history." I've complained long and loud about listening to backmatter in audiobooks, but Georgia's is a treat.

The narrator Stina Nielsen reads these books and she is delightful. She hits the right notes of sarcasm and egotism and reads with loads of teenaged expression and humor. Since everything is filtered through Georgia's voice, the story's other characters are all her over-the-top interpretations of them. So, yes ... for adult ears, it can get tiresome. It's one of those that you should just sit back and let it wash over you ... and five minutes after you've finished, poof! it's gone. But it was fun while it lasted.

It's hard to believe now that Georgia's confessions were considered so original back in 2001 when Rennison was awarded a Printz Honor. Yikes! Ten years! Georgia is 25. The mind boggles actually.

High society

There are three novels featuring the Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart. Back in 2007, I listened to the first one, and I just finished up number three: The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner's Dilemma. In between I [eye] read the second. I certainly see the appeal of four intrepid puzzle solvers who face down physical danger and true evil practically all on their own [70 holds on the two-year-old book and 17 holds on the audio at my library!] -- the first book is in contention for next year's Young Readers' Choice Award -- but none of them really sent me.

The eponymous Society is Reynie, Sticky, Kate and Constance, gifted children all. Each has something that they excel at and each has the opportunity to bring their individual skill to the aid of the group when they find themselves in peril from the evil Ledroptha Curtain. Mr. Curtain, brother to the kindhearted Nicholas Benedict (who originally recruited the children), has ambitions about ruling the world, or some such. He is bad, bad, bad and employs a crew of henchmen, called Ten Men because they have 10 ways of hurting you, to implement his malevolent plot. Curtain and his Ten Men are fairly scary in the pantheon of children's book villains -- while they do tend to talk too much, the mayhem they create can and does cause pain, fear, and injury. These books aren't for the sensitive reader.

In the third installment, Mr. Curtain attempts to regain possession of his Whisperer -- a mind-control device that he almost successfully employed in the first novel. The Society are kidnapped -- as Mr. Curtain finds their skills as useful as Mr. Benedict does -- and their combination of wits and derring do win the day. It appears that the Society's work is done, but never say never in the world of successful sequels.

I gushed on and on about Dion Graham two posts ago, but I'm having trouble rustling up any enthusiasm at all about Del Roy, the narrator of this series. I didn't like him two years ago and I don't like him now. His voice is extremely difficult to listen to, as it is raspy, saliva-filled and has very little variation. He doesn't voice any characters, and only rarely alters his delivery to reflect the story's emotions. The voice sounds compromised in some way (smoking?) that severely limits Roy's range of expression, and occasionally causes swallowed or mispronounced words. I also hear a lot of breathlessness in his delivery -- he pauses in odd places and occasionally gets strained when he runs out of air. As a listener, unfortunately, focus on the story disappears as I hear (and internally comment on) a gulp, a gasp, some juice, an elision, etc.

On the scale of audio performances, this one is just not worthy of your ears. Particularly when there are so many great ones out there waiting. Dion Graham anyone?

Friends ... together ... all year

When I became a librarian, it had been many, many years since I'd needed any beginning reader resources, so I had no experience with Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad. Wow! Pretty much better for adult readers/listeners along with their young friends than anything else out there (at the time). Despite my affinity for Frog and Toad, I'd never read the four books that are included in The Arnold Lobel Collection: Owl at Home, Grasshopper on the Road, Uncle Elephant and Small Pig. And, like Frog and Toad, these simple (but not simple-minded) animal stories are a cut above the usual fare.

I think Owl might be my favorite, as he's just plain loopy: he lets the winter in to destroy his house, can't figure out what
the two bumps are at the bottom of his bed (his feet ... I can just hear the kids giggling over this one), and cries into his teakettle for tea water. But then there are the protesting beetles who only support mornings and the mosquito who insists that Grasshopper use his ferry boat to make his way across a small puddle. There's the touching relationship at the heart of Uncle Elephant, as the elderly uncle (with "more wrinkles than a tree has leaves") cares for his possibly-orphaned nephew, who couldn't accompany his parents on their boat trip because his trunk was running (what an image!). And the wackiness of Small Pig forced out of his muddy sty by an overly fastidious owner. Each one is just a gem -- good things do indeed come in small packages.

An actor named Mark Linn-Baker narrates these four stories. It appears that he is married to Lobel's daughter Adrianne,
and he starred in a musical, A Year with Frog and Toad (he also graduated from the Yale School of Drama with my brother ... sorry, there are so few brushes with fame, however small, I must indulge). He reads these simple stories very well, reading at a tempered pace, but not a ponderous, deliberative one. There is variation in his expression, as Linn-Baker highlights the irony (for the adults) and humor in each story and situation.

He doesn't do a lot with voices, but I did enjoy those that he employs in the Grasshopper stories -- the indignant "morning-ist" beetles and the sweet little mosquito who has the ferry franchise on his little puddle. It is with Uncle Elephant, though, that I am most charmed by Linn-Baker. His grandfatherly gravitas is nicely counterpointed by the young elephant's seriousness and growing warmth for his unusual relative.

The audiobook includes some cheerful music at the beginning and end. It might have been nice to include it between the stories. A woman's voice introduces each story, which is entirely unnecessary as Linn-Baker could have done it, of course. All-in-all though, a very good audiobook. Considering that beginning readers can be absolutely deadly to listen to, this is no small praise. I give a lot of the credit to Lobel, whose way with controlled vocabulary is pretty much unmatched. Or, as the article that is the first link in this post explains, he simply tossed out the controlled vocabulary (Dolch list ... still in use after 60 years?) and just wrote a couple of good stories.

Do the loco-motion

I think I'm moving Dion Graham into the category of if-he-narrates-it-I-will-listen. In that interview that I linked to, he says: "I try to approach every book I read with integrity, humor when appropriate, and faithfulness to the words. Most books attempt to tell us something about being human, about being alive—I hope my work reflects that." I think that just about sums up his performance in Jacqueline Woodson's Peace, Locomotion -- humor, faithfulness to the text, and being alive. Graham's taken an already wonderful book and added layers that make it even better. Stop reading my blatherings! Go listen!

Peace, Locomotion continues the story of Lonnie Collins Motion (aka Locomotion) an orphaned 6th grader whose greatest tragedy is being separated from his beloved little sister, Lili. In Woodson's first book about Lonnie, Locomotion, Lili's foster mother refused to take boys so Lonnie is placed with Miss Edna -- a loving, older woman with two grown sons. Through one of those great teachers, Ms. Marcus, Lonnie begins writing poetry and Locomotion is told entirely by Lonnie through verse. As Peace, Locomotion begins, Lonnie feels secure as a member of Miss Edna's family, but he still misses Lili. He decides to write her a series of letters about his life, letters that he will share with her once he is old enough to live independently and look after her. The book is those letters -- funny, sad, brave, observant, affectionate, thoughtful and loving. When I read it in March, I wrote: "I feel so hopeful." And nine months later, I just feel more hopeful.

Dion Graham is amazing here (evidently, I used "terrific" about him earlier this year). He is an adult, speaking in an adult's voice, yet he captures Lonnie's youthful optimism perfectly. How does he do this? It's his inflections, his pacing, and -- most importantly, I think -- a sense of enthusiasm and yes, middle school humor that infuses his reading. You can hear the undercurrent of laughter or sadness every time Lonnie signs off his letters. In a format that can easily become stultifying to a listener ["Dear Lili"], Graham reads each and every one of the letters differently -- he finds the nugget of the letter and expertly portrays that in his reading. He is, as he stated, "[faithful] to the words." Quite simply, this book is over too soon.

I think it is so important in audiobooks to have culturally appropriate readers (someone has said this better than I ... see the term "racial drag" used here), but does that mean that books predominantly about white people should only be read by white people? A narrator like Graham shouldn't just be reading books with African American characters. He can -- and should -- read anything. (Like many a black actor, I suspect that he can read white, just the way an American like Katherine Kellgren can read British.) His skills transcend race -- he has mastered the art of suffusing his reading with the emotional intent of the text; in the so-overused phrase, he brings books alive. (Sherman Alexie successfully does this in reading his own work.) Ultimately, to a listener, that is more important than any accent.

While I enjoyed the (presumably) white narrator of the book I listened to just before this one (Days of Little Texas), that narrator was called upon to portray a black character. That character was the weakest link in Luke Daniels' fine narration (although it wasn't egregiously bad, 'cause I've heard egregiously bad). So, if a white guy can read a black guy, why not a black guy (or Asian, Native American, etc.) with the chops to pull it off (and not all of them can, I'm sure) reading a white guy?

While I'm waiting for that semi-perfect world, what Dion Graham should I listen to?

The devil will drag you under

Days of Little Texas took me by surprise. I've never read anything by the author, R.A. Nelson, and didn't know anything about the book, but wow! It's one of those where the audiobook is likely better than the book read to myself, where the voice in my head would be mine -- utterly inauthentic and a little ordinary. This book needs a reader who can provide some serious local flavor, and with narrator Luke Daniels, the ghost story involving Little Texas just takes off.

Ronald Earl Pettway performed his first healing when he was 10 years old. He travelled a Southern small town revival circuit with the elderly (and former child) evangelist Sugar Tom since his mother died in a meth-house fire along with her latest boyfriend and he was taken in by his great aunt Miss Wanda Joy. Rounding out this entourage is an old black man -- who wears his thrice-great grandfather's slave tag around his neck -- named Certain Certain (and I'm sure there was an explanation for this in the book, but it is lost in the mists of hours of listening). When Certain Certain was struck by lightning, Ronald Earl laid on his hands and brought him back to life. Little Texas and the Church of the Hand -- managed with the iron hand of Miss Wanda Joy -- were born.

Six years later, Ronald Earl is having doubts. Not doubts of faith, but doubts of his abilities. He dreams about naked girls and has had a few wet dreams, yet is understandably reluctant to mention these to Miss Wanda Joy. Certain Certain seems to understand and offers general words of support. But Ronald Earl is restless -- "The devil is standing over me." At a healing service in Alabama he lays hands on a very sick girl named Lucy. Her parents carry her away, declaring her cured, but Ronald Earl isn't as certain. Lucy's face first appears on the girl in his dreams, and later he sees and talks with her ... ghost? At the next stop on their circuit, he finds himself unable to preach. To get Little Texas back on track, Miss Wanda Joy proposes a huge revival meeting at the flooded ruins of the Alabama plantation called Vanderloo. At the last revival held at Vanderloo, the devil appeared, and the preacher was never seen again.

In the days (and nights) leading up to the revival, Lucy continues to haunt Ronald Earl -- who is simultaneously terrified and comforted by her presence. Something is very wrong at Vanderloo plantation, and Little Texas is going to every ounce of faith he has to survive this particular meeting.

So, what is this book? A ghost story, Christian fiction, bildungsroman? It's all three. What it thankfully isn't is a book that mocks evangelicals. Little Texas believes that the Holy Spirit is using him to heal others and no one in the Church of the Hand is serving Mammon (well, maybe Miss Wanda Joy a little, but only for the means to serve God and Little Texas). Ronald Earl knows that his deep faith is required in order to defeat the devil.

For a non-believer, I was sucked right into this book. I think the narrator got me at Little Texas' first sermon: "The Lord is a-coming, ah! He's a house afire, ah! He's a freight train, ah! He's a wrecking ball, ah!" Daniels' voice gets deeper and more musical and he starts reading with rhythm. Each "ah!" pops out and sweeps Daniels into the next phrase. I was practically standing up and shouting myself (well, not really ... but I was definitely smiling in acknowledgement of the excitement the narration generates). Then, when the revival is over and we're back hearing from Ronald Earl, it's a younger voice -- (much) less confident, almost innocent.

All the characters here are unique and vivid. Everyone speaks with Southern-tinged inflections, but no one sounds stupid. Certain Certain speaks with a deep, craggy-edged growl (the author says his voice is "full of creek gravel") that is unlike any other character. He doesn't sound "black" to me, but I appreciate the narrator's attempt to make him different. Daniels was completely consistent with all his character voices. There is a scene early on in the novel when the four evangelists are in an IHOP, being waited on by an Afghani named Azeem. The conversation is flying quickly around and Daniels keeps track of everyone. It was terrific listening.

Nelson's two other novels sound equally fascinating/edgy. Yikes! He's a rocket scientist in his day job!

In search of adventure

Few could resist opening a book with the title The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis (although the cover is kind of blah) and once you have opened it, you will be unable to resist Popeye and Elvis themselves. Author Barbara O'Connor seems to have such a sympathetic eye and a talent for appropriateness in telling the stories of poor families.

Popeye lives with his grandmother, Velma, in a ratty old house in Fayette, South Carolina, depressed at the thought of a summer watching the heart-shaped water stain on his bedroom ceiling grow ever larger. Velma is keeping her brain sharp by regularly reciting the kings and queens of England in chronological order and giving Popeye a weekly vocabulary word. Words just meant to be read aloud, like vicissitude, taciturn, serendipity. Velma's afraid of "cracking up" and so is Popeye. He realizes that Velma is the most stable adult in his life. Popeye's Uncle Dooley -- a layabout with a fondness for beer who still lives with his mother-- accidently shot Popeye in the eye with his BB gun, giving him his nickname.

Then, a Holiday Rambler gets stuck in the mud practically on his doorstep and out pop the six wild Jewell kids. Led by oldest brother Elvis, who recognizes a kindred spirit and immediately names him vice president of the Spit and Swear Club, the Jewells are loud, rambunctious and thrillingly slapdash. Popeye is enchanted. Elvis, however, wants to get away from his younger brothers and sisters -- he calls one of them a "toe-jam tattletale" -- and proposes that the two boys quietly seek their own adventure. Even though he knows that Velma will not approve, Popeye signs up (he couldn't not!). As they explore the woods of Fayette, they spy a Yoo-hoo box transformed into a boat. There's a cryptic note inside. Popeye and Elvis have found their small adventure.

Scott Sowers reads the book with all the energy and rowdy enthusiasm of the Jewell kids. The verbal jousting and physicality of that family are humorously portrayed in his reading. There are many "characters" to work with here: doofus-y Duane, Mrs. Jewell (who writes country music lyrics), the butterfly-winged Princess Starletta (who creates the Yoo-hoo boats), and those Jewell rugrats (Calvin, Prissy, Walter, Willis and Shorty).

I particularly enjoyed Sowers' gruff, yet loving Velma. Every once in awhile, we fade into one of Velma's recitations -- Richard III, Henry VI, Henry VIII, Edward VI -- in her tired, determined voice. Popeye, though, really stands out: He's the quiet observer most of the time and his wry, inner voice as he incorporates Velma's vocabulary words into his story, and his curiosity at discovering a new world outside his ken are sympathetically created by Sowers. Everyone speaks in a Southern twang, that sounds authentic to my ears. These are poor people, yet I never felt that either O'Connor or Sowers was caricaturing them.

At my work, we give a presentation every summer on good recent books for literature circles and we never have enough recommendations for the younger end. I'm looking forward to recommending Popeye and Elvis next year. The complex language vividly describes the rural setting, and then there are the vocabulary words. Perfect for 4th graders!

Happily ever ...

I started out this blog post to say that generally I'm not fond of the dead teenager genre ... but in thinking about this a little more, I realize that that is completely not true! I loved Elsewhere, I loved Thirteen Reasons Why, I loved Before I Die, I liked If I Stay and A Certain Slant of Light, and even Deadline. (Technically, Before I Die and Deadline don't qualify as dead teenager books, but I liked them anyway.) And I really liked The Everafter ... much more than I thought I would. The Everafter is by Amy Huntley (and has just been shortlisted for the 2010 William C. Morris YA Debut Award).

When I look back on that list, every book but A Certain Slant of Light is a book I listened to ... maybe audio makes the dead teenager book [sorry!] really come alive?

Maddy Stanton is in what she calls Is. She knows she's dead, but she doesn't know how it happened. And, as she floats in Is, she comes across objects -- all things that she lost at one time in her life. Maddy finds that by grasping these things, she is transported to the point in her life where she lost them. She quickly discovers that she can get back into her body and experience the loss (along with the love of friends and family) again. Once the object is found, or she physically gets too far away from it (in its still-lost state), Maddy finds herself back in Is. There are no lost objects past Maddy's 17th year.

Like Maddy, we experience her life out of order: She loses and finds her car keys, then she loses a baby rattle, then she loses a favorite hair clip. Most of the novel is spent in the year or so before she has died -- the year she fell in love with Gabriel -- and she probes the events she relives in an attempt to solve the mystery of what happened to her.

As I said, I was intrigued despite my tendency to disdain young-love-forever-type books. Maddy is an appealing character and we are quickly drawn into the peeks into her life. Soon we are as invested as she is in finding out what happened. This is due, in no small part, to the excellent narrator, Tavia Gilbert. (See above comment about audiobooks and dead teenagers.)

I hear all of Maddy's confusion and grief in Gilbert's performance, along with the intelligent humor with which the teenager Maddy views the world. The novel is fairly short (it reads it just over five hours), and Gilbert really builds the tension as Maddy gets closer to figuring out her death. The narration allows Gilbert to portray Maddy as a little girl at a Father/Daughter dance, as an irrepressible middle-school giggler, and even as a four-month-old infant who has lost her rattle, and she brings her vocal skills appropriately to each of these versions of Maddy. The other characters that people this novel -- young and old, dead and alive -- all have distinctive voices that sound natural in the moments of dialog. Gilbert's mastery of ages and genders (and even species -- we hear from a cat in this novel) is impressive.

This is a teen-friendly book that should appeal to Twilight fans along with readers looking for something a little more complex. It's pretty clean as well, and so might be appropriate for those fourth and fifth graders who proudly lug about the tomes of the "Saga" (I finally watched the [first] movie this weekend), wanting all their friends to know they are reading it. It nicely fulfills that yearning to read about true love forever.

Oh grow up already!

I'll give you a warning up front: The facade of pleasantness that I maintain is just that -- a facade. I will not be able to contain myself on this particular audiobook. This is dreck, pure and simple. An author of Christian fiction for adults named Wanda E. Brunstetter also writes a series of books about (for?) Amish children ("Accurately portraying the Amish way of life.") featuring a girl named Rachel Yoder. Evidently, Rachel is Always [making] Trouble Somewhere. In Book 8, Growing Up, we experience a series of episodes in Rachel's life -- in each chapter she forgets her chores, gets distracted, messes something up, etc. and has to be told by her grandfather, father, mother, teacher, or two older brothers that she can't seem to grow up.

So, kind of like Ramona Quimby, right? But for poor Rachel, it is always about what she's doing wrong. There is none of Ramona's joie de vivre. It's just Rachel making mistakes and wait for it ... learning her lesson. Over and over again. Now granted, I am an adult listener (and an adult listener with little interest in Christian fiction), but I think any 8-year-old will have no problem figuring out what is going to happen about a page into each chapter. As for the accurate portrayal of Amish life, I can't say; but I have difficulty believing that Amish people are as lifeless and one-dimensional as the Yoders.

I'm waiting for the story of Rachel's time in the "English" world, her Rumspringa. Now that might be interesting!

The narrator, Ellen Grafton, has little to work with, but she doesn't do much with what she has. She seems determined to read with the same sense of artificial cheerfulness that the author has used. So, not only does each chapter have the same, predictable story arc, but each chapter is read in exactly the same way. Where she does have the opportunity to liven things up -- some animal sounds, a baby, a semi-thrilling buggy ride -- she just plugs along. Maybe she is just determined to see things through.

I checked the World Cat holdings for this title, and 102 libraries own it. But the summary I found says it all: "Rachel is not enjoying the school year and shirks many of her responsibilities. She wants to be all grown up but will she ever learn the value of growing up into a dependable adult?" I'm not sure I would want any children I know reading a book that's all about becoming a dependable adult.

I did learn that the Amish have answering machines ... in the phone shed. Well, I never.

Hoot

I regularly complain about having to come into a series in the middle, but when I look back on my listening this year, I really haven't had to do it very often. Maybe I'm mellowing, but when Book 5 of the Guardians of Ga'Hoole reached me, I just opened it and began listening without a murmur (or a search of the web to bring me up to speed). The Shattering by Kathryn Lasky tells the story of the young barn owl Eglantine, resident of the Great Ga'Hoole Tree -- which means (I think) that she is in training to be part of a special order of owls who will do good in a world of evil. Eglantine's big brother is Soren, who is (again, I think) the overall hero of this series -- now up to its 15th installment.

Eglantine's mind is being messed with by the evil owls, called The Pure Ones. Through their agent, Ginger, Eglantine has waking dreams of finding her long-lost mother. This owl is -- of course -- not her mother, but she wants some documentation from the library in Ga'Hoole that will help The Pure Ones defeat the owls of the Tree using biological weapons. Fortunately, Eglantine has a good friend, Primrose, who realizes what's going on and -- while the owls led by Soren conduct some sort of warlike action, Primrose and Eglantine escape from The Pure Ones. (I'm pretty sure I don't have that quite right ... but it really doesn't matter, does it?)

After listening to this and recalling my antipathy to the Warriors and Redwall series (having read the first books of each), I wonder at the appeal of these animal stories for older readers. Does they always have to be about war?

The reader of the Ga'Hoole books is Pamela Garelick. She reads the book's narrative passages with a pleasant English accent, and her familiarity with the series means that she reads the character and place names with confidence. However, almost every single one of her character voices are earshatteringly strident and screechy. Perhaps she is attempting to imitate owls, but it was just unbearably painful for adult ears to listen to.

I also find her character voices fairly inconsistent. In one section, Primrose is voiced with about three different registers (medium-high, high, stratospheric). Soren seems to speak in several vocal ranges as well.

The information that is on the cover the audiobook says that Garelick records her books in a lovely little studio in Greece. That sounds much better than some windowless box doesn't it?

The circus is coming!

The author and illustrator Chris Van Dusen was inspired by a real-life tragedy to create his delightful (and not tragic) picture book, The Circus Ship. In his book, a steamship runs aground near the coast of Maine in a dense fog and the 15 animals aboard all swim to safety on a nearby island. The human residents are a bit nonplussed: "There's a tiger in the tulips." But when the aforementioned tiger rescues a little girl from a burning building (since he remembers what he supposed to do when he sees fire), humans and animals settle in to a pleasant co-existence. But then the evil Mr. Paine, "owner" of the circus animals shows up on the island to get them back. The animals all hide in plain sight (a deliciously puzzling two-page spread) and Mr. Paine stomps away forever.

The real-life story, which Van Dusen explains in his author's note, was that of the Royal Tar, which sank off the coast of Maine in 1836. All the animals aboard were drowned.

Except for that page spread where you need to pause in order to look closely to find all the animals (a snake serves as an exotic shawl for example), this is a fun book to listen to. The story is all told in rhyming couplets (mostly), so a read-aloud works very well. The narrator, Andrew Watts, keeps to the rhyme but takes the opportunity to vary his delivery as called for in the book's dramatic action. He voices a few characters -- most notably the pompous bluster of Mr. Paine.

Easily the most recognizable voice at Recorded Books (and possibly the industry), George Guidall, reads the author's note. His calm, authoritative delivery tells the sad story with dispassion. Those who know small children who love animals may wish to stop the audiobook before this point.

Number 8 of 13

I remember few school assignments from primary grades (except those lovingly retained by my mother), but I do recall a 5th grade state report that I had to complete -- which included a five-day itinerary around Iowa seeing sites of historical and cultural interest. I might have been interested in the Iowa equivalent of A Primary Source History of the Colony of South Carolina when I was doing my research (although I don't think I would have wanted the audio version). But if you aren't a grade school child needing to do a report on South Carolina, the above title -- by Heather Hasan -- is only mildly interesting.

The most fun fact in here is about some 16th century French Huguenots who attempted to build a colony on present-day Parris Island. The men weren't particularly skilled at meeting their basic needs and soon began to starve -- even with help from the Native Americans living nearby. They jerry-built a ship to sail back across the Atlantic. Halfway across they ran out of food (again!). After eating their leather shoes and other supplies they decided to kill one member of their party and eat him. By the time they were rescued off the coast of England, "they had lost their minds." Now that's American history!

After a sop to the original residents, the book becomes a simple recitation of what Europeans arrived and what happened next. It focuses mostly on Colonial and Revolutionary times, but fast forwards to the Civil War.

I'm sure this audiobook was published as an alternative learning tool -- listening while having the book in your hand is no doubt helpful for some young researchers. But listening to it straight through -- without illustrations -- is really just a bore. The names and events just blend together (since the only thing I can remember is the cannibalism). The reader is Eileen Stevens and she gives this a straightforward no-frills narration. She has a habit of pausing before she says the name of a non-English person or place that is kind of odd to listen to, but otherwise she just produces the words.

I've complained here about listening to the recitation of timelines, glossaries and other backmatter (and I wouldn't want to listen to it here), but as a nonfiction book -- a book that states it's from primary sources -- the absence of these sources is noteworthy. The Table of Contents here indicates that there is quite a bit of material not included in the audiobook. If that's the case, this really needs to be a print/audio combination. Although, like the Huguenots aboard that ship in 1563, I would have gone mad sitting with the book in my lap following along.

Listen my children ...

I listened to another one of those blah biographies from the Library of American Lives and Times over the Thanksgiving weekend, this one was called Paul Revere and the Minutemen of the American Revolution. The author is Ryan P. Randolph. I didn't learn much here, since I recently read James Cross Giblin's much more interesting The Many Rides of Paul Revere.

Revere was a bit of a radical among radicals, and seemed to be everywhere during the probably illegal activities that went on in Boston in the years just prior to the signing of the Declaration of Independence: organizing the protests against the Stamp Act, engraving the scene of the Boston Massacre, participating in the Boston Tea Party, and riding that horse from the North Shore to Concord. According to Randolph's book, he had pretty much been forgotten by American history until Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote that poem in 1861. Randolph also contends that Revere was just an ordinary silversmith -- with which I think the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (and others) might disagree.

This audiobook is read by Benjamin Becker. He keeps things moving along at a brisk pace, but no amount of speedreading is going to make this anything but a chore to get through. He's too enthusiastic, almost viewing his role as that of cheerleader: Listen up kids! This guy was really important and here's why! Becker is occasionally interrupted by another voice -- who reads footnotes with appropriate gravitas. Then, we're back to the main story and its race through history.

May this Library never cross my path again ...