Armchair BEA: Introductions

I'm still recovering from my last trip to BEA, so this year I decided to try something different: Armchair BEA. That sounds about right.

Please tell us a little bit about yourself: Who are you? How long have you been blogging? Why did you get into blogging? Where in the world are you blogging from? 

I have an About page which needs updating, but in the meantime, Hello! My name is Anamaria. I'm a museum educator, a researcher and writer, and, for as long as I can remember, a reader. I've been blogging at books together since 2007 (also a long time in blog years). Before that I had a blog about making things, which I still like to do. I'm married to a college professor (handsome and smart) and have two children (13 and 10). And I'm blogging from Arlington (VA), a near suburb of Washington, DC.

What genre do you read the most?

I read mostly novels of the middle grade and YA variety, and especially like fantasy and historical fiction--sometimes both at once. I also read (and review) a lot of picture books. Within those genres, I look for multicultural and international children's books. I'm interested in the whole book: writing, illustration, and design.

What was your favorite book read last year? What’s your favorite book so far this year? 

Thank goodness for Goodreads, without which I might not remember what I read last year (or even what I've read so far this year). It's not a perfect record--I don't keep track of picture books there, and often forget to add books I don't blog about--but it's a start. Narrowing the question down just a bit, my favorite middle grade or YA book published in 2013 which I also read in 2013 might have been Picture Me Gone by Meg Rosoff (Putnam Juvenile). My favorite middle grade or YA book published in 2014 which I've read in 2014 is probably the The Children of the King by Sonya Hartnett (Candlewick). Although that one was first published in 2012 in Australia, so maybe it doesn't count? Then I can say The Story of Owen: Dragon Slayer of Trondheim by E.K. Johnston (Carolrhoda).

I should also mention Marcus Sedgwick: I read Midwinterblood (Roaring Brook, 2013) in January of this year (after it won the Printz), and am reading She Is Not Invisible now, and like them both lots.

What does your favorite/ideal reading space look like?

Anywhere (outside of a moving vehicle) will do--I'm more concerned about being caught somewhere without a book than I am about having an ideal place to read one. At home I like to read curled up on the couch in the front room, or lately in the hammock. 

Spread the love by naming your favorite blogs/bloggers. 

Three favorites are Charlotte at Charlotte's Library, Karen at Ms. Yingling Reads, and Zoe at Playing by the Book.

Share your favorite book or reading related quote. 

That would have to be Cicero, from Letters to friends 9.4: If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. Charlotte might agree, Karen could confirm that the sense of the translation is correct, and Zoe is probably already planting the garden.

Thank you for visiting!

At the same moment, around the world

My ten-year-old daughter got a watch for her birthday--go ahead, ask her what time it is! She loves her watch and says it makes her feel both more independent and, somehow, more connected to the world.

At the Same Moment, Around the World by Clotilde Perrin (Chronicle, 2014) says the same seemingly contradictory thing, that our experience of time is both shared and varied. Perrin takes readers on a journey east from the Greenwich Meridian ("It is six o'clock in the morning in Dakar, Senegal. Keita wakes up early to help his father count the fish caught during the night"), stopping at a more-or-less specific location in one of the original 24 time zones on each page. So we go from breakfast in Paris at 8am to lunch in the Himalayan Mountains at noon; sunset in Honolulu at 8pm, and midnight in Mexico City. [And meet Benedict, Lilu, Allen and Kiana, and Pablo, respectively, along the way.] Even though the text reminds us, at every new time, that it's still the same moment, it's easy to forget that the book is not structured as a 24-hour day--not exactly, anyway. The final spread, identical to the first, makes this point beautifully.

Perrin's illustrations, rendered in pencil and colorized digitally, are likewise beautifully drawn and designed to convey all sorts of information--geographic, cultural, personal, whimsical. Even when the locations sharing a double-page spread are very different, Perrin connects them visually, as in this image (one of my favorites, although it's hard to see here) of tropical New Caledonia and snowy Russia:

Perrin's illustrations also relate to each other across the page turns, although this is less obvious in the American edition. Originally published in France in 2011 as Au même instant sur la terre…, the French edition is in a leporello format, which unfolds like an accordion so readers can conceptualize the world in the round:

Chronicle went with a more traditional--although still very vertical--format, substituting a fold-out map specially created for this edition, so readers can locate where in the world each character (pictured on the map's borders) lives relative to the others. Perrin created a lovely new cover and endpapers, too.

Both book designs work wonderfully, albeit in different ways. Which do you prefer?

A Candle in Her Room

I'm so pleased to have picked up A Candle in Her Room by Ruth M. Arthur (Atheneum, 1966) at the book sale, despite (or perhaps because of) its dated cover. It's just the sort of book I would have been enraptured by as an eleven-year-old, one in which three generations of young women living in Pembrokeshire, Wales are haunted by a wooden doll. Even now I read it in a similarly rapt state on a rainy Saturday, and felt closer to my eleven-year-old self than I have in a long time!

I'm also pleased to have discovered the work of Ruth M. Arthur, who wrote a whole list of Gothic novels for girls in the 1960s and 70s, none of which I had previously read. How could that be? Anyway, A Candle in Her Room was the first of those, and introduces a lot of the conventions that Arthur seems to have returned to again and again: a female first person narrator; an evocative setting to which the narrator moves; a multi-generational (or parallel historical) plot; and an element of fantasy or magic, usually involving a talisman of some sort.

A Candle in Her Room actually has three narrators (they all sound remarkably alike). The first section is narrated by Melissa, whose family moves from London to the Old Court in Pembrokeshire sometime before WWI. Melissa has two younger sisters, Judith and Briony, and while it's Briony who finds the wooden doll, Judith--the artistic, sophisticated sister--is the one who becomes almost possessed by it. After Melissa falls off a cliff and is confined to a wheelchair, Judith runs off with Melissa's boyfriend Carew and the two of them are married in London.

Subsequent sections are narrated by Dilys, Judith and Carew's daughter; Melissa again, as she searches for Dilys's child following WWII; and Nina, who comes to live with Melissa at the Old Court. Dido, the wooden doll (her name is carved into her back) is a mysterious, malignant presence throughout: her origins are never explained, and ultimately Nina must destroy her and her hold on the family in a terrific bonfire (as seen on the cover).

While the plot of A Candle in Her Room is often melodramatic (I'm thinking of poor Dilys in particular), the narration of events is somewhat removed from the experience of them. There is a lot of matter-of-fact telling. Intentional or not, I think this tension only heightens the overall feeling of foreboding that makes this such a creepy book. 

Now I'm actively seeking out some of Arthur's other books, namely Dragon Summer (1963), Requiem for a Princess (1967), and The Saracen Lamp (1970). And if there are any Arthur fans out there, your recommendations are most welcome! In the meantime, it's nice to add an author to my most-wanted list for the next book sale.

[Margery Gill's distinctive pen-and-ink illustrations for A Candle in Her Room (she illustrated many of Arthur's other books as well) do a lot to enliven the text. This one is of Melissa examining Dido as Briony looks on.]

First Impressions: Andrew Wyeth

My grandmother had a framed print of Christina's World (1948) by Andrew Wyeth, and even though I've never seen the actual painting (I wonder if she had? It's in the MoMA's collection), I still love it. It's such an evocative image. So I'm excited about the National Gallery's forthcoming exhibition, Andrew Wyeth: Looking Out, Looking In, featuring another favorite Wyeth painting, Wind from the Sea (1947); and reading a bit about Wyeth in advance.

Fortunately, I have my own copy of First Impressions: Andrew Wyeth by Richard Meryman (Abrams, 1991). Meryman, who first met Wyeth while writing an article for LIFE magazine in 1964, became a friend of the artist and has gone on to publish a number of books about Wyeth and his work, most recently A Spoken Self-Portrait (NGA, 2013). Their friendship undoubtedly informs Meryman's biography of Wyeth, written while Wyeth was still living; the author describes it as "a distillation of years of talk and understanding." It's part of the First Impressions series of artist's biographies developed especially for older middle grade and young adult audiences and published by Abrams in the 1990s--insightful and thorough, these are all well worth seeking out.

Susan Goldman Rubin covers a bit more ground in Everybody Paints! The Lives and Art of the Wyeth Family (Chronicle, 2014), including three generations of artists, N.C. (Andrew's father), Andrew, and Jamie (his son). Also part of a series (I reviewed Rubin's Delicious: The Life and Art of Wayne Thiebaud here; Wideness and Wonder is about Georgia O'Keeffe), Rubin's book would make an interesting comparison with Meryman's, at least as far as Andrew is concerned. I will report back.