six years is quite a while

It has been quiet at Adventures of Cecelia Bedelia over the past six months.  And that’s okay.  Life (even reading life!) changes.  That said, I’m here.  I’ve been going to book club and checking Twitter and Tumblr for the latest news from my fellow readers and bloggers.  I’ve been thinking about blogging recently, too.  Unfortunately, my reading pace hasn’t picked up much.  Still, Sunday was my six year blogging anniversary, and it seemed like the kind of thing I should write about. 

Six years (whoa. dude.)!  For my five year anniversary I wrote about five authors that blogging introduced me to.  This time around I’ll feature six more.  As I said last year, one of the best parts about blogging is that I’m constantly discovering new favorites.  I may not have read every book in these authors’ backlists yet, but the ones I have, I loved.  And to quote myself, “I trust their stories: for entertainment, wisdom, emotion, and always, always, beautiful writing.”

Merrie Haskell – I always have been (and likely always will be) a soft touch when it comes to fairy tales.  Haskell writes really lovely middle grade retellings of my favorites, and she includes strong doses of history, mysticism and other elements mixed in with the magic.  I liked her debut, The Princess Curse, but I fell irrevocably in love with The Castle Behind Thorns.  I know her books will be auto-buys for years to come.

Frank Cottrell Boyce – I very much appreciate books that are smart, feeling AND funny.  It takes a lot of skill to balance those elements, and if I had to pick one writer for young readers who gets it right every time, I’d point to Frank Cottrell Boyce.  He charmed me with Cosmic, his tale of outer space and family dynamics, and his upcoming The Astounding Broccoli Boy is just as charming.

Sylvia Izzo Hunter – I read a book* this past fall that was 100% a Cecelia book.  Meaning, I fell in love with it immediately, was not disappointed when I finished it, and I keep thinking about it after the fact.  I shall be following Hunter’s career with hungry eyes.

*The book!  Was!  The Midnight Queen!

Kate Elliott – Before I began blogging I had no idea that there were book communities online.  Obviously I learned the error of my ways, and began participating in the bookternet.  I also began noticing that these online communities were finding ways to meet up in person.  What were BEA and ALA?  I researched.  I went to ALA Annual (my first conference!) in 2010.  I was a hot mess, let me tell you.  I was a newbie blogger wandering the exhibit floor, wearing a tiny denim skirt and flip flops, surprised/pleased/terrified to find that booths were just giving away books.  One of those books was Kate Elliott’s Cold Magic.  I had no idea that she’d written previous books, I just liked the look of that one.  And I’ve liked her books (and her fantastic online presence) ever since.

Erin Bow – Dear Lord, does Erin Bow know how to write.  Her book Plain Kate is just… one of the best books I’ve ever read.  Yep, that’s a pretty good description.  I think it’s a mix of really knowing and loving language (Bow’s also a poet) and not shying away from the darkness of life.  I have her Sorrow’s Knot on the shelf, and I know it’ll be just as fantastic (all of my trusted sources say so), and there’s another book coming out soon.  All to say: if you haven’t read Bow yet, you should make the time.

Jonathan Stroud – Real talk time, subject: book acquisition.  I follow bloggers whose opinions I trust, yes.  And sometimes a book just sounds fantastic (aka it ticks all of the Cecelia crack boxes).  And sometimes I pick based on gorgeous cover art.  BUT.  Sometimes it takes an award to get a book on my radar (or in this case, a nomination for the CYBILS).  Stroud’s Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase was one of those.  Once I read it, I became its biggest fan.  I gave it to people for Christmas, I made a point to meet the author when he came on tour, and I haven’t stopped thinking about the fantasy world Stroud created.  That book made me a Stroud fan (for life).  I’m pretty happy about it.

These are some of my blogging author discoveries.  Who are yours?

cosmic

Outer space.  The universe.  The final frontier.  No, this isn’t a review of Star Trek (though I did watch the new film for the sixth time this weekend).  I mean real, void-filled-with-stars-and-planets space – when’s the last time you thought about it?  It’s been in my mind quite a lot lately, what with the Mars rover landing and occasional sci-fi reads.  Turns out that my latest read plunged me right into an astronaut adventure.  Frank Cottrell Boyce’s middle grade novel Cosmic is by far the funniest and best book set (partially) in space that I’ve read in ages.

Liam has always felt a bit like he's stuck between two worlds. This is primarily because he's a twelve-year-old kid who looks like he's about thirty. Sometimes it's not so bad, like when his new principal mistakes him for a teacher on the first day of school or when he convinces a car dealer to let him take a Porsche out on a test drive. But mostly it's just frustrating, being a kid trapped in an adult world. And so he decides to flip things around. Liam cons his way onto the first spaceship to take civilians into space, a special flight for a group of kids and an adult chaperone, and he is going as the adult chaperone. It's not long before Liam, along with his friends, is stuck between two worlds again—only this time he's 239,000 miles from home. 

Frank Cottrell Boyce, author of Millions and Framed, brings us a funny and touching story of the many ways in which grown-upness is truly wasted on grown-ups.

Liam is about to start high school, and this is a problem.  Why?  Oh, because he’s freakishly tall, doesn’t have friends to speak of, and his best skills lie in the realm of computer games.  Also, grown-up people seem to mistake him for an adult quite a lot.  But to be honest, that particular problem does lead to some interesting adventures.  It is Liam’s insatiable curiosity, enthusiasm for games, and outsize height that eventually land him in a…spaceship?  Cosmic is Liam’s story, and it’s about growing up, figuring life out, and keeping your family and friends in your heart, even if you head on a universe-sized adventure.

The story isn’t just Liam, though – it’s his family (a mum who worries and a dad who drives a taxi).  It’s the drama troupe he’s been enrolled in to help him develop his social IQ.  It’s his obsession with World of Warcraft and gaming and seeing the world in terms of quests and adventures.  Then there’s Florida, a celebrity-obsessed fellow drama enrollee who lets Liam pretend to be her dad to get free things at the mall.  And let’s not forget the other characters who make it into space and the reader’s heart.  This is a book with charm and intelligence and accessibility.  In other words?  It has no downside.

Cosmic is witty, smart, silly and endearing.  It’s full of bits of wisdom and whimsy that will make you laugh and sigh and ponder the awkward reality of the growing up years – and force you to relive those moments when you wondered why parents act that way.  It’s golden-hearted and beautiful.

Recommended for: children of all ages, shapes and sizes (young at heart counts!), and those looking for books about family, about space, about being gifted and not fitting in, about feeling alone in the midst of the universe, and about finding something good on earth to make coming home worthwhile. 

Fine print: I received a paperback copy of Cosmic for review from the folks at Walden Pond Press (HarperCollins).  And then I went and bought a copy for my brother’s 26th birthday present.  It’s really that good.  Trust me.

teaser tuesday (87)

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

Grab your current read and let it fall open to a random page (or if you're reading on an electronic device, pick a random number and scroll to that section). Post two or more sentences from that page, along with the book title and author. Share your find with others in the comments at Should Be Reading, and don't give anything vital away!

“‘I’ve got a lot of skills,’ I said.  ‘Of course, some of them aren’t that useful in real life—like dragon taming.  Some of them are illegal—like knife throwing.  I think that’s illegal.’

‘I think it probably is.’”

p. 22 of Frank Cottrell Boyce’s Cosmic