Welcome, Liesl Shurtliff!

Liesl Shurtliff is a favorite author here at A Year of Reading. Franki has reviewed Rump, Jack, and Grump. Liesl has a new series, Time Castaways, and the second book has its book birthday on Tuesday!

Time Castaways: The Mona Lisa Key

by Liesl Shurtliff

Katherine Tegen Books, September 17, 2019

Time Castaways: The Obsidian Compass

by Liesl Shurtliff

Katherine Tegen Books, October 15, 2019

Liesl has graciously shared her thoughts on The Importance of Reading Wisely. We couldn't agree more!

The Importance of Reading Widely

By Liesl Shurtliff

“You are what you read.” It’s a sentiment many people have tossed around over the years, right along with “You are what you eat.” And if both of these things are true then I challenge anyone to define who I am. I read too widely, and I eat absolutely everything. I’m a person with many tastes and interests. I think we all should be.

I see many initiatives to get people to read more, and I like them, but what I’d liked to see a little more of is encouragement for people to read more widely, move outside their comfort zones, pick up a book you wouldn’t normally choose. Here are my suggestions:

Read both fiction and non-fiction

Statistics show that women tend to read more fiction, and men gravitate toward non-fiction. This is fascinating to me, and I could delve into all kind of psychoanalytic theories about why this is and what it means, but that would be (mostly) beside the point of the post. Suffice it to say, I think we should tip the scales in both cases. Men should read more fiction. Women should read more non-fiction. Both are good for you.

I personally used to think non-fiction was code for BORING. I’ve since learned that non-fiction can be some of the most engrossing books out there. It’s one thing to get lost in a good story. It’s another to get lost in a good story that is completely REAL. Malcolm Gladwell, Erik Larson, and Elizabeth Gilbert have been a few of my favorites.

Read outside your usual genre.

Whenever someone asks what genre is my favorite I say “Good writing.” Perhaps the definition of what makes a good book is subjective, but I’ve found my own tastes have become more refined the more widely I read. Yes, I read a lot of fantasy as that is what I write, but I’ve read plenty of poorly written fantasy, and I’ve found that it helps my own writing to read a wide variety of genres and styles. I feel like I’m in a rut when I read too much of one genre. It can start to feel stale and boring, sort of like eating only one kind of food. No matter how good those tacos are, eventually I’m going to want some salad. Mix up your reading diet with a mixture of genres.

Read books and authors outside your own race, culture, religion, country, experience and world view.

Reading has been touted as an activity that develops empathy, but for whom are we developing empathy? People like us? People whose experience and world view is not so different from our own? That will not develop empathy, only self-assurance. Challenge yourself and your world view. Pick up a book that makes you a little uncomfortable. Or a lot. And please, read books written by authors who are intimately acquainted with the experience being written about (aka #OwnVoices.) It matters.

Read children’s books!

Okay, I am slightly biased here, seeing as I’m a children’s book author, but please believe me when I say there is some incredibly good literature being produced in the children’s book world. Don’t stick your nose up at it. Pick up a picture book, a middle-grade or young adult novel, or a graphic novel, and remember what it was like to be a kid. Or pick up a book you remember reading and loving as a kid and see what you think of it now. I’ve done this and usually find I love it just as much, even though I’m reading it with a completely different perspective. It’s a nostalgic experience.

Reading is good. Reading a lot is better. Reading widely is best, just like eating a varied diet. Take stock of your reading choices. See if you can mix things up every now and then.   Get recommendations for friends or co-workers. If there’s one thing I know it’s that people love to talk about what they’re reading. And if they don’t read, well then, we should all be ready to share our own reading recommendations and feed the famished. Best to have a variety on hand.

Liesl Shurtliff is the New York Times bestselling author of the (Fairly) True Tales series and the Time Castaways trilogy. The second book is available October 15th! Her books have been named to over two dozen state award lists and have won many awards including a Children’s Book Award from the International Literacy Association. Liesl lives in Chicago with her husband and four children. Lieslshurtliff.com @lieslshurtliff

Thanks for visiting, Liesl! We can't wait to read your new series!

The Stone Girl's Story

The Stone Girl's Story
by Sarah Beth Durst
Clarion Books, 2018

Mayka's father was a stone mason. He brought her to life by carving her story onto her body. She and the other living stone creatures her father created live happily together in seclusion on the mountain. But Mayka's flesh-and-blood father has long been gone, and as the reader sees in the opening scenes of the book with Mayka and her dear friend Turtle, as the marks on their bodies fade, the creatures...stop. So Mayka leaves her mountain in search of a stonemason who will return with her and repair the marks on all of her friends. When she gets to the city, she discovers an evil plot that endangers all stone creatures.

I love fantasy, but only if the author can build a world that is absolutely believable. Sarah Beth Durst has done that in The Stone Girl's Story.

This is fantasy at its best: a hero's journey to save family and friends. An Oz-like journey with fellow travelers who are also looking for help. A story with big themes:

• the quest to be accepted for who you are is a worthy one
• don't judge others based on their appearance or your assumptions
• absolute power is dangerous
• pay attention to who is telling the stories
• know your own story and tell it proudly
• choice is important...necessary...vital to your story
• you have the power to shape your own story
• an obedience mark is dangerous
• the right words can give you freedom
• you can learn to be brave
• together we can rise up against evil and overpower it
• even a monster's story can be rewritten to be AWESOME

Move this book to the top of your TBR pile. I hope you love it as much as I do. It might just be one of my first read alouds of the year next year!

How Much You Love a Book

Did you ever love a book so much that you deliberately slowed down your reading for the last third so you wouldn't have to come to the final page?

That's why I'm blogging instead of reading -- I'm desperate to find out what happens, desperate to see how Kelly Barnhill completes her masterful weaving of story strands, hopeful that the small stories will be strong enough to heal the big story.

I'm in love with the characters -- the lumpy, multi-armed monster-poet; the adorable little dragon whose sense of self is starting to match his reality; the "mad woman" in the tower ("hope is the thing with feathers..."); the witch who hides in plain sight for the first half of the book, while the one called "witch" clearly isn't. And of course, the girl who drank the moon.

I thought about her on my early morning walk today. There were puddles of moonlight on the street and sidewalks. The moonlight pouring down on me felt substantial enough to catch on my fingers and drink...almost.

While I walked, I thought of the dark cloud that's looming over our country. I'll try to remember this story's insistence on the power of hope. No matter how much darkness there is, hope has the power of light to overcome it.

Thank you, Kelly Barnhill, for this beautiful story. Thank you, Franki, for insisting I read it. I'm not sure when I'll finish the last 30 pages, but I know they'll be magical.



The Girl Who Drank the Moon
by Kelly Barnhill
Algonquin Young Readers, August 2016

Nuts to You

"Nuts to you" might have been what I was saying on Saturday when the class cold hit me so hard there was nothing I could do but lie in bed and create a mountain of soggy kleenex on the floor beside me. When I felt better enough to sit up for some soup and hot tea with honey and lemon (and more than a small splash of Old Charter), I picked up this recent library reserve and within 20 pages was laughing out loud and thanking my class for sharing the germs that stopped me from doing anything more than sitting up in bed reading:

Nuts to You 
by Lynne Rae Perkins
Greenwillow Books, 2014

This story was ostensibly told by a squirrel to the author. That may or may not be the factual truth, but since it's a rollicking good story, let's just go with that. Like another favorite Perkins title, As Easy as Falling Off the Face of the Earth (my gushing review here), there are interruptions by the (human) author, footnotes, and illustrations that clearly demonstrate that Perkins has done her fair share of squirrel-watching.

The story begins when the grey squirrel Jed is carried away by a hawk, manages to trick the hawk into dropping him, and lands fairly softly on a dog and then in a pile of leaves. (Journey #1) Luckily, his friend TsTs sees where he lands and sets off with another squirrel friend, Chai, to find him. (Journey #2) Along the way, they discover that the rumblings they've been hearing are a crew of humans who are clearing the trees from the "buzzpath" (power lines). And the crew is headed right to their home grove. After they find Jed, they have to get back and warn their friends and family. (Journey #3) Convincing squirrels to do anything as organized as run away from a danger they cannot yet see is as easy as herding cats (apparently). But Jed and friends manage. (Journey #4)

Fun stuff. Perfect middle grade (grades 3-5) novel. Will be a fabulous read aloud.

You're welcome.

Emma in Buttonland

Emma in Buttonland
by Ulrike Rylance
translated by Connie Stradling Morby
illustrated by Silke Leffler
Sky Pony Press, October 1, 2013review copy provided by the author

I have already proclaimed my love for fantasies "with small worlds, or toys that come to life, or characters that shrink."

Emma in Buttonland is my newest favorite in this sub-genre of fantasy. I wrote in my Goodreads review that this book is "part Borrowers, part Wizard of Oz." When I checked out the only other review (so far) for the book, that person said the same thing!

Emma is stuck at her aunt and uncle's house while her mom is on a trip to Africa. Her aunt and uncle are preoccupied with their jigsaw puzzles, leaving Emma free to wander through their rambling, many-roomed house. She discovers a locked room, and the lure of adventure is too much. She swipes the keys from the sleeping cook, opens the door, and discovers a room full of buttons. Boxes and boxes full of buttons. When one of the buttons speaks to her, and then when her fingers touch it as she reaches under a cabinet to grab it after it runs away, the magic begins -- Emma shrinks to button-size and enters Buttonland!

The first character she meets, Louise, a small silver button with a large red hat, introduces one of the main themes throughout the book: What does it mean to be VALUABLE? Louise is on a quest to discover her value.

Next, she meets Gustav, a button from a pair of lederhosen. His quest is to find his true love, his matching button, Constance.

Both accompany Emma on her quest to find the gold button that made her shrink so that she can touch it again and perhaps be restored to girl-size.

The book is illustrated with full-color illustrations, mostly along the bottom edges of the pages. The illustrator, Silke Leffler (according to the back flap) was "trained as a tailor and then studied textile design." There couldn't have been a more perfect pick for an illustrator! Her collages bring all of the fabrics, sewing notions, and different buttons (and other small lost items) to life.

I can't wait to book-talk this in my 5th grade classroom. I've got several readers who I think will love it as much as I do!

My Favorite Kind of Fantasy

Yesterday, I wrote about my favorite kind of science fiction.

Hands down, my favorite FANTASIES are those with small worlds, or toys that come to life, or characters that shrink.

I'm not sure how many times I re-read The Borrowers when I was a kid.

In high school, I met Archy and Mehitabel, the poetry-writing cockroach and his sidekick alley cat.

In the 80's I loved The Indian in the Cupboard series, though I probably wouldn't recommend it to kids these days. Too many negative stereotypes.

More recently, I have loved The Night Fairy and Masterpiece.

At a loss for other titles that fit this "genre," I turned to the collective brain of Twitter, and my Tweeps did not let me down! Check out this list we/they came up with:

The Littles
Stuart Little
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
The Cricket in Times Square
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
Hitty Her First Hundred Years
Toys Go Out
The Friendship Doll
The Castle in the Attic [Paperback]
Mistress Masham's Repose
Traction Man Is Here!
The Doll People
The Eraserheads

My mom and her coffee klatch came up with these classics:

Pinocchio (Little Golden Book)
Gulliver's Travels
Tom Thumb
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass
Nutcracker
Toy Story (yeah, it's a movie, but it's a perfect fit!)
Thomas the Tank Engine Story Collection (Thomas & Friends) (The Railway Series)
The Little Engine That Could (Little Letters)

And, then, of course, there's The Sixty-Eight Rooms Series. My current favoritest fantasy.

The Pirate's Coin: A Sixty-Eight Rooms Adventure
by Marianne Malone
illustrated by Greg Call
Random House Books for Young Readers (May 28, 2013)

review copy purchased for my classroom library

This is the third book in the Sixty-Eight Rooms series. One of the main settings of these books is the Thorne Rooms in the Art Institute of Chicago. The characters have a magic key that shrinks them so that they can go into the rooms and even out into the different historical periods of some of the rooms.

In this book, Ruthie and Jack have to deal with that conundrum of time travel whereby if you change the past, you might erase yourself from the future/present. They also help a classmate's family clear the family name.

I'm thrilled that Marianne Malone left the door wide open at the end of the book for another volume in this series!

Format, Not Genre

We are working hard in fifth grade to be more specific in our identification of genre. Knowing that a book or story is fiction or nonfiction just isn't good enough anymore! We have identified the qualities of fantasy and science fiction, historical fiction and realistic fiction, and more. 

One of the first hurdles we had to cross was that "graphic novel" is NOT a genre. We have seen graphic novels that are fantasy, science fiction, biography, memoir, and mythology. So a graphic novel is a FORMAT for presenting a story, rather than a single GENRE.

The same is true for wordless books. It might be a fun informal assessment to give a group of students a stack of wordless books and ask them to sort the books by genre!

Here are two you could include in your stack -- one fantasy, and the other historical fiction.

The Night Riders
by Matt Furie
McSweeney's McMullens, 2012
review copy provided by the publisher

In this fantasy, Frog and Mouse go on a journey together. They meet a scary dragon who turns out to be friendly. Dragon and his underground video-game-playing friend join Frog and Mouse and their journey takes them all the way to the ocean.


One of the best things about this book is the dust jacket -- it unfolds into a big poster with the characters on one side, and parts of the setting on the other!

Unspoken: A Story From the Underground Railroad
by Henry Cole
Scholastic Press, 2012

The silence of a wordless book is perfect for UNSPOKEN. When the girl discovers a runaway slave hiding in the outbuilding, she keeps his secret.

Henry Cole uses well-chosen details to evoke the setting (both time and place), to build suspense, and to give the story a satisfying ending. For those with background knowledge about the Underground Railroad, such images as the lantern, the Big Dipper, and the quilts will resonate. This gorgeous wordless book belongs in classrooms at all levels. It will prompt great discussions, and perhaps some will want to try to write the story with words.