plain kate

It sometimes takes me a while to ‘catch on’ and read a fantastic book. It might get all of the accolades in the world, but if I haven’t been seduced by the cover art or simply think to myself, “that sounds good, I should read it” and immediately act on the impulse, it can take years to rise to the top of my To Be Read (TBR) pile.

As you may suppose from the title of this post, such was the case with Erin Bow’s Plain Kate. I heard nothing but good things about it, especially from Shelf Elf and bookshelves of doom (two blogs I trust implicitly for recommendations, and you should too. they know their books, yo. yes, i just said yo. i’m ashamed.). Thankfully, I remembered that I wanted to read it as I was perusing Kindle recommendations on the Metro platform. I frequently make impulsive reading decisions during my commute. Good ones, mostly. But let’s get back to Plain Kate!

A knife-sharp debut novel that leaves its mark.

Plain Kate lives in a world of superstitions and curses, where a song can heal a wound and a shadow can work deep magic. When Kate's village falls on hard times - crops fail, and even Kate's father falls victim to a deadly fever - the townspeople look for someone to blame, and their eyes fall on Kate.

Enter Linay, a stranger with a proposition: In exchange for her shadow, he'll give Kate the means to escape the town that seems set to burn her, and what's more, he'll grant her heart's wish. It's a chance for her to start over, to find a home, a family, a place to belong. But Kate soon realizes that she can't live shadowless forever – and that Linay's designs are darker than she ever dreamed.

Plain Kate is a woodcarver’s daughter from a tiny village somewhere in the middle of Russia. Her skill with a knife brings her mingled returns: when her father dies, it’s her living, but it is also her curse, for her fellow villagers believe her a witch. When life becomes too dangerous in her birthplace, Kate is forced to make a dark bargain, and sets out into the world, accompanied by her cat Taggle.

Most young adult and middle grade books address the theme of finding a place in the world. What the best of them do is show the reader that that process never ends. Erin Bow not only writes beautifully and evocatively of loss, friendship and choices made in desperation, but she has populated her story with characters who are brave, cowardly, reckless, mad and kind – all of the flavors of humanity.

Added to that, Plain Kate has a storyline that continuously builds tension, that seems both unbearably sad and incredibly hopeful, and that leaves room for both folly and redemption. It is quite simply a lovely book, and it is too good to miss.

Recommended for: fans of Patricia C. Wrede’s Lyra books and Eloise Jarvis McGraw’s The Moorchild, those with a penchant for outcasts, cats and/or gypsies, and anyone looking for a strong, affecting fantasy without a typical romance but imbued with heart.

the moorchild

I love the blogosphere. I professed my lifelong love of Eloise Jarvis McGraw in this post, and Jenny asked if I’d read Greensleeves, one of her lesser-known titles. I hadn’t even heard of it. I did some investigation, and found that it wasn’t in print, my library doesn’t have it, and copies are going for $40 or more online (a bit beyond my price range). But while looking around I discovered that McGraw had written MANY books that I didn’t know about, one of which was The Moorchild, an award-winner. Take a great author, add a fairy story, and then price the paperback at under $5, and I’m sold. And I just happened to win a Book Depository gift card in a blog contest at the right time, so…yay! Did I mention that I love the blogosphere? Yeah, that.

Half moorfolk and half human, and unable to shape-shift or disappear at will, Moql threatens the safety of the Band. So the Folk send her to live among humans as a changeling. Named Saaski by the couple for whose real baby she was swapped, she grows up taunted and feared by the villagers for being different, and is comfortable only on the moor, playing strange music on her bagpipes.

As Saaski grows up, memories from her forgotten past with the Folk slowly emerge. When mystery of her past is revealed, Saaski must make hard choices and face danger in many forms.

The Moorchild is Saaski’s story. Saaski is a changeling, though she doesn’t know it. The story of her eventual knowledge and recollection of how she came to be a changeling form the bulk of the story. I think the summary tells you most of what you need to know about the plot. What I can add are comments on the beauty of the language, the varied context of the story (which gives you enough detail, but not too much to ruin any surprises or wonderings) and the absolute suck-you-into-the-tale quality that McGraw books seem to have as a trademark.

The story is set in an indeterminate village on the edge of the moor. That doesn’t sound exciting, does it? Well, it might you have a thing for ‘the moor’ like I did after reading The Secret Garden one too many times as a child. But say you don’t have an over-developed sense of romance about the moor already. McGraw’s description will inspire a sense of longing to see it, to feel it and to hear it. The prose is effortless and yet holds deep emotion.

That’s what I can say about The Moorchild. It’s fraught: with confusion, with sorrow, with loveliness and just a touch of mischief.

Best of all? It’s a story suitable for all ages. I’d recommend The Moorchild to those interested in: ridiculously good children’s fiction, myths and legends, fairy tales, family dynamics and a taste of the wildness that lives in all of us.

This book qualifies for both Once Upon a Time reading challenges.

teaser tuesday (35)

It's Teaser Tuesday, a bookish blog meme hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Here's how it works:

Grab your current read and let it fall open to a random page. Post two (or more) sentences from that page, along with the title and author. Don’t give anything vital away!

“Saaski was kneeling at the pond’s edge, leaning over the water like a winged thing just alighted, long fingers braced on the grassy rim, hair like a strange cloud floating about her head. She had never looked less human, despite her apron and dress. Now, said a voice suddenly in Old Bess’s mind, I could do it now and it would be all over.”

-p. 43 of Eloise McGraw’s The Moorchild

mara, daughter of the nile

Alyce at At Home with Books is doing a weekly feature where she highlights one of her favorite reads from the past and encourages others to do so as well.

True confession: I was homeschooled. Not for all of my primary and secondary school years, but for a substantial chunk of time. Third grade through eighth grade, to be exact. In non-US parlance, that’s from age 8 to 14. Reason? At age 7, the local public school system tested children to see who they would place in the ‘gifted’ program, which was an advanced track of study and which prepared you for all sorts of ‘honors’ courses.

The test was an IQ test, I think. It was hard. There were questions about how many different ways you could use a fork. I didn’t make the cut. Cue: horror! My mom, who’d been helping in the classroom, was a tiny bit bewildered. Why didn’t I qualify? (it’s obvious to me now that she thought I was a little child genius…luckily I know better. ha!) That led to her think about education and what sort of things she wanted her kids to have access to. In the end, she took all of us out of school and started our home education.

That’s a brave step, no matter who you are. Thankfully, my mom has a Master’s degree and knew or got advice on how to take advantage of curriculum fairs, cultural exhibits, science programs and anything that might help. The result was memorable. It was fun. And it was definitely the start of my love affair with books and reading. I remember one school year when my mom was particularly frazzled by trying to teach my brothers to read – she just gave me a stack of books, and told me if I finished those, to come back for more.

But let’s get this back to one of my favorite reads. I was 11 when mom/teacher decided we were going to do an Ancient World unit. We started with Egypt and worked our way through Greece and Rome. All of us kids remember those lessons vividly: salt-dough relief maps, sugar cube pyramids, writing plays about Greek myths and acting out the Punic Wars. I mean, super fun, right? And we had some awesome fiction and non-fiction books to go with the themes.

One of those books was Mara, Daughter of the Nile. It’s an adventure featuring a feisty slave-girl in Ancient Egypt. It has action, intrigue, mummies, tombs and scarabs. In other words, it’s perfect for a fanciful eleven year-old steeped in the world of the Pharoahs.

Mara, Daughter of the Nile is one of Eloise Jarvis McGraw’s (author of Newbery Award-winning The Golden Goblet, Moccasin Trail and The Moorchild) most beloved stories. It chronicles the adventures of an ingenious Egyptian slave girl who undertakes a dangerous assignment as a spy in the royal palace of Thebes, in the days when Queen Hatshepsut ruled. Pulled in different directions by her head and her heart, Mara must decide what her role will be, who to believe and who to trust. The fate of Egypt depends on it!

I think Mara, for me, was one of the first characters whose experiences I wanted to crawl into and live for myself. I didn’t know what she would do next, but she was brave and she was different and she lived in a time I could imagine with my eyes open or shut. I dreamt of being Mara. I also appreciated the richly-drawn historical background. There’s nothing like an Eloise Jarvis McGraw novel to plant you deeply in the past (unless it’s an Elizabeth George Speare novel). The details, the scenery, the cultural differences are all there – and yet it’s not clumsy. It’s believable.

On top of that, I still remember the flow of the prose. Action and adventure written in such a way that you find yourself savoring each word. What fun this book was! I haven’t reread Mara in a while, and I think it may be time. After all, you can definitely measure the absolute popularity of a book when the 1985 version remains in print and available to this day! I bought myself a new copy only this summer.

Recommended for: fans of historical fiction, Newbery books, classic children’s fiction, Ancient Egypt, mystery, and spunky, out-of-the-ordinary heroines.