Boys VS Books: Gaston and the Book with No Pictures

A little while ago, I started a new post series centered around the problems facing boys in regards to literacy. I framed the initial discussion around Disney's Beauty and the Beast and how reading is portrayed within that movie. The movie is famous for its positive portrayal of Belle as a modern, forward thinking princess, and that portrayal is driven home through her love of books. But while Belle is constantly shown reading, the men around her all have problematic relationships with books.

If you're interested in reading the earlier discussion, you can find the previous posts in this series here:

1. Boys vs Books: A Tale as Old as Time
2. Boys vs Books: Beating Back Against Busy

Today, we're looking at one of the three male characters Belle attempts to share her love of books with. Today, we have moved on to Gaston.




First off, I love this image. It cracks me up every time. Ahem...

From the perspective of a writer, this is one of the most problematic scenes in the movie. Belle's love of books is used as shorthand to convey her intelligence and independence to the viewer, so it's little surprise that they're similarly used as a tool to show that Gaston is stupid and domineering - the perfect threat when you consider that he fancies himself her suitor.

The domineering aspects of his personality come from the way he steals the book and eventually tosses it into a mud puddle. (I'm not going to argue. This is pretty low.)

The stupid comes from this line:

"How can you read this? There's no pictures!"

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Hilarious! He thought the book should have pictures in it! What does he want? A children's book? Ridiculous!

In all honesty... the line is actually pretty funny. His reaction and his facial expression and his behavior are so oafish. It treads the line between mocking him but also making him a threatening presence. I can see why the filmmakers wrote it this way.

And yet that comment he makes about expecting a book to have pictures plays into some persistent cultural stereotypes about what books are "worthy" of praise and attention and what books are "unworthy." And wouldn't you guess it? The very books the movie is making fun of are among the books that little boys are most likely to find interesting.

I'm talking, of course, about comic books.

Words and Pictures

During my Master's program, I had an excellent professor who taught my foundation course on children's literature. He had a deep appreciation for old books, the history of the discipline, as well as an enthusiasm for what modern writers were doing now in children's literature. More than anyone, I heard him repeat the command to read, read, READ extensively within your genre if you wanted to create work of publishable quality. He also was a remarkable writer and someone whose work I continue to admire. I plan on being just like him when I grow up.

So let's say you want to teach your child to love books as much as he does. What is the foundation on which this enthusiasm for books was based? As it turns out, comics. As a kid, comics were a far more natural love for him than the books he was SUPPOSED to love. During adolescence, he wanted to be a comic book artist when he grew up, not a novelist. Hints of this still exist in his works, such as illustrated chapter titles.

Of course, for his chosen career path, he eventually had to fall in love with honest-to-goodness-pictureless books too, but the transition between an avid comic reader to a literature super fan is not as strange as it might seem on first glance.

During my research for this series of posts, I was struck by the fact that from the perspective of educators, many of the skills that fall under the umbrella of "literacy skills" are things that you can pick up from other forms of art. Skills like the ability to follow and explain a narrative, or the ability to empathize with a character. These skills can even be developed by having thoughtful discussions with your kids about the movies they watch.

But the amazing thing about comic books is that they provide a natural bridge between visual storytelling and text based storytelling. We're used to the notion that younger children use the pictures in their books to get hints at what the text might say. The same holds true with comics, but with the added bonus that the language and storylines have grown more complicated, since they're usually aimed at an older audience. Even if you have someone who has fine reading comprehension, comics might still help with reading engagement, since they provide helps for readers to visualize the world the story is describing.

And yes, an enthusiasm and passion for comics can lead to a passion for books. And vice versa. Yet you still hear things like what my professor once said when he told us, "I didn't read a lot as a kid. I mostly read comics."

Somehow, both those sentences contain the word "read" in them, because comics are a form of reading that doesn't "count." The Ontario School Board, in their work in boys literacy, notes that many boys who are labelled as poor readers often read far more than they think they do, but they don't believe what they do counts as real reading. They don't report that they frequently will read comics, instruction booklets for video games, sports magazines, web pages filled with information about baseball or animals or Minecraft or cars or whatever other hobbies they might have. Children are highly intuitive and they pick up quickly that adults don't place a lot of stock in reading those things. So is it any surprise that they don't value their own achievements in these areas?

The Price of Literary Elitism

To me, the comic book conundrum is symptomatic of larger problems that the book world has around literary elitism. Certain types of books tend to get valued more than others. Disdain for comics and magazines grows as we age to include an ever-increasing array of books. Oddly enough, it tends to smack people in the face along both gender lines. Romance is confined to a "pink ghetto" while science fiction gets treated like the quintessential "bad books for men."

I'll never forget the first writing course I ever took as a naïve undergrad student. My instructor explained the course syllabus and then had all of us introduce ourselves by name, and favorite book. It was the early 2000s, we averaged around 18 years old and you could see the side of his lip twitching as half the class announced their love for Harry Potter. Then he told us all, very flatly, "so you know, we only study literary fiction here. You won't be writing mystery, suspense, romance, science fiction or fantasy. They're all too formulaic. We want you to learn from great writers instead."

No wizards or spaceships. Both far too childish. We weren't to deal in the whiz-bang plots of thrillers, clearly intended only for the uneducated masses. And heaven help us if we wanted to write a story that existed solely to explain how people fall in love!

I can't tell you how much I wanted that writing program to work for me. I'd wanted to study writing my whole life. But sadly, I realized it wouldn't be during my undergrad, because my world of writing couldn't function if it had to be that small. (Incidentally, my main project for that class was a short story that took place during the after-life, and I got an A+ on it because my professor knew so little about speculative fiction, he never realized I'd tricked him into reading paranormal fantasy.)

Sometimes when I think back to that first undergraduate writing course I took, I'm amazed anyone reads at all. Or writes at all. There are so many people who are foaming at the mouth, eager for their chance to tell you that what you're reading is stupid. People who might not know much at all about the books that you love, but are dead certain you shouldn't waste your time on them.

Books! Books for everyone! You get a book! And you! AND YOU!!!!

I'm a firm believer that if we want to increase literacy, it doesn't happen by demanding people like very specific things. In one of my previous posts, I touched on how important it is to meet readers where they are, rather than insist they conform to your tastes. This should also mean NOT belittling what they're interested in.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that incorporating comics and other alternatives to traditional books in education is a balancing act. I'm not here to argue that comics should replace books or that literary fiction be thrown from the curriculum in favor of Harry Potter. What I hope is that they'll be treated more as allies in a common cause.

When I first read Howard's End, a classic novel from 1911, I fell in love so quickly with the text because it reminded me of Peter Pan. Plot-wise, the two books have nothing in common. One is decidedly sillier than the other. But you know what they do share? Time period. They're both Edwardian novels and I realized that part of what I liked about the books was a particular turn of phrase that was in style just before the start of the First World War. Pan prepared me to love a classic novel, and that in turn taught me to be more curious about literature from that whole time period.

The frivolous books of our childhood - the books with pictures - are often preparing and informing our taste in adult literature. And with the sophistication of many graphic novels and comics, they can continue to be an influence, worthy of engagement. It doesn't have to be an either/or.

Rethinking Belle

So like last time with the baker, let's attempt to re-imagine the scene where Gaston steals Belle's book and make it, ummm.... better?

Gaston: How can you read this? There's no pictures!
Belle: Well, there's actually a graphic novel version of The Graveyard Book too, if you're interested in seeing the story illustrated.
Gaston: Belle, that was just an excuse to start talking to you. I'd rather we talked about me now. *throws book into mud*

Look, he's the villain of the story. We can only do so much.

The Unsettling: When Books Become Bothersome (Part One)

Sweet cover too, I might add

Towards the end of one of my university classes, we read Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. The book is something of a classic within the Young Adult literary canon, in as much as the discipline has one. YA is still very young as a distinct category, but if there are "foundation" works, Alexie's is surely one of them. The book is semi-autobiographical and deals with issues of race and poverty in the life of a young boy growing up in the Pacific Northwest on the Spokane Indian Reservation.

I knew from the moment I finished the book that I'd read something powerful and wonderful, but when I got to class, I still couldn't shake the feeling of being deeply rattled by it. I piped into the discussion a few times, but the bulk of my thoughts about the book waited until after class when I was talking to one of my friends.  I asked her one thing in particular that was really bothering me.

"Where's the closest reserve to Pittsburgh?"

She paused and thought for a moment. "You know, I'm not sure," she said at last. "I think probably upstate New York. There aren't any nearby."

At that point it clicked as to why, though I enjoyed the book, it hurt in a more personal way than it seemed to strike my East Coast classmates. I knew where Spokane was. I could point to it on a map. And further to that, I had friends and family who had lived through situations similar to the ones portrayed by the book. Of course I had other friends of First Nations decent who lead very different lives, but those who had experienced similar trials to Alexie's autobiographical main character weighed on my mind that night. It had been, for a moment, too close for comfort.

It wasn't until after talking through the book with my friend that I really came to an opinion on it. I love the book now. It's both profoundly tragic and hopeful. It's funny and serious. It's also deeply unsettling.

I don't think that was an accident. Alexie's story was not only something intensely personal, but also one that a lot of people in North America have the luxury of ignoring. There are very few reserves in the Eastern United States compared to the West, and so - tragically, but understandably - First Nations issues are rarely top of mind for a lot of city slickers (and believe me, I can be guilty of this too).

I certainly don't think I had the market cornered on being unsettled by the book. A number of my classmates were. They expressed how glad they were that the book existed, because even though the story took place in America, it was so beyond their experience.  Perhaps the best thing about it is that it's a book that prompts questions, which I think is exactly what Alexie wanted. It's the kind of book that demands to be talked about. I'm not sure you could read it and then go "aw, ain't that nice?" and move on to make a cup of tea.

There are often two competing horses trying to pull your chariot in art. One is trying to point out what's wrong with the world and the other just wants to have fun. I've seen them characterized as escapism versus realism, but that has never seemed right to me. Cat videos on youtube are highly escapist, but their humor completely depends on their realism. (SEE? Cats really ARE that dumb!) To me, the real dichotomy is whether or not a book is escapism or... unsettlism. (Can that be a thing now? I want to coin a phrase. Let's make that a thing.)

Art can either comfort and entertain you or prod you to DO something. Maybe think or empathize or vote or something! Just something! An unsettling book is one that does not want you to "relax" but to wake up. An escapist one wants to entertain you and make you happy. It doesn't care what you do next. Granted, most art tries to achieve a mixture of both. Something that offers no call to action can seem trifling and unimportant while something that gives us no entertaining escape can become so unpleasant, we want nothing more than to toss it across the room.

Alexie accomplishes a fair degree of balance in his novel. The story falls more on the "unsettling" side of the spectrum, but it's offset by a bunch of funny pictures and a humorous narrative voice. He offers the reader that "spoonful of sugar" to go with the medicine.

Still, I've been thinking lately about a pair of other books that did not walk the line so neatly as the The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian did. (I mean, just look at the title. It screams non-committal!) They're both older books, and they both firmly planted their feet on either side of the dichotomy.

They are:

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

One of these books I love. One of these books I hate. But I'm (grudgingly) starting to admit to myself that both have been incredibly important in my development as both a reader and a writer.

So the next post I put out is going to deal with Jerome and his rampant silliness. Following that, I'll tackle Hardy and the depress-fest that is Tess. Maybe by the time I talk this one through, my opinion of it will improve.

So stay tuned, readers! And in case you were waiting for the final word, yes! Consider The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian heartily recommended.

Book Reviews - The Scorpio Races

The Scorpio Races

Every year in November, the seas surrounding the Isle of Thisby foam with the emerging bodies of capall uisce - violent, flesh eating water horses, faster than any mount on land. And every year, tourists flock to the small island to watch the Scorpio Races. Often, riders die, but the money and glory of winning propels men to enter year after year.

Puck Connolly, the first girl ever to sign her name up for the races, knows that prize is her family's last chance to pay off their debts and save their home.

Returning champion Sean Kendrick has won the races three times, but this year he's got far more riding on victory than money or fame.

But as the seas grow wild with the November winds, neither is ready for what awaits them on the beach.

What makes it so good:

If you ask me, Maggie Stiefvater is one of the least pretentious writers I have ever read. When I read her books, I get the sense that she doesn't care what you think of her. She doesn't care if you think she's smart or clever. She doesn't care how you label her work. All she cares about is telling the best possible story she can, and that emotional honesty is what makes The Scorpio Races so moving.

I first came across Stiefvater in the library when one of her other books caught my eye - Shiver. The cover image was just so beautiful and intriguing. Then I realized it was a paranormal werewolf romance and promptly put it back on the shelf. It's no longer one of my prouder moments.

Shiver, I'm so so sorry.

I started to wonder if I'd judged Shiver too harshly when I heard about The Scorpio Races. There's a nice little medal on the cover of the book and my curiosity is always piqued when major awards are handed out to science fiction and fantasy novels. Still, I didn't get around to it. Not until I got a kick in the pants from Melissa, one of my MFA classmates. We were studying YA fiction and, as a class, we'd eviscerated another paranormal romance novel that had been assigned to us. Melissa braved our snide remarks and proudly brought her copy of Shiver to a later class. If we wanted to read paranormal romance - good paranormal romance - she promised us that Maggie Stiefvater was where we would find it.

Sure enough, Shiver is a pretty good book. Paranormal romance never has been (and likely never will be) my particular niche, but I could see why Melissa loved it. It was a story passionately told, with strong characters and lovely images. But the book that blew me away did turn out to be The Scorpio Races.

I've seen this novel labeled a few ways. Sometimes it gets called a paranormal, sometimes just a fantasy. In her author's note, Stiefvater herself notes that on some level, it's a dressed up version of one of the oldest chick-lit standbys ever: The sexy horse story. But oddly enough, I think the label that best fits it is one I've never seen her use. One so many other authors clamor for but never really earn - not the way Stiefvater does. This book is straight up magical realism.

What is magical realism? There's a couple ways of defining it, but I'm going to go with a definition based on plot. Magical realism is a story that's roughly 80% reality and only 20% fantasy. It's life as we usually know it, but shifted ever so slightly. Magic has an ordinary quality to it and in some cases, it might be debatable if it's even there.

This label definitely works for The Scorpio Races because Thisby is one of the most ordinary, real and emotionally compelling settings I've ever read about. Yes, the horses happen to be able to eat people. But at the end of the day, this is a story about a girl who is struggling to connect to her brothers. It's about a young man who can't get the respect he deserves from his boss. It's about American tourists buying cheap knock-offs of Irish lore. It's about loving the wind and the sea and small places and, most of all, loving an animal.

So many books want to call themselves magical realism because it carries the connotation that it's not like "normal" fantasy. No, instead it is "real." It's "literary." I dislike the idea that literary writing is confined to any sub genre of fantasy. But oddly enough, it's still all the more reason Stiefvater could have plucked up that label without a problem. The book is beautiful and has a literary quality to it that we could always use more of in YA. But Stiefvater never seemed to care about that. She only cared about Puck, Sean and the island of Thisby. And it's exactly for those reasons that she achieved that real, authentic, engaging voice that sets this book apart.

What could have made it better:

So... going in to this book... I really thought it was going to be about racing flesh eating horses. And yeah, it sort of is. But once I was about a third in I had this moment where I went, "oh... wait... the race, is like, gonna be the climax, isn't it? We're not going to get to it until the end? Oh... Okay..."

Spoiler alert: The race is the climax.

The rest of the book is more concerned with building up towards the race and making sure you really know and feel the stakes. There's a sense of dread by the time the race actually comes, which is great. But be aware that this is not a fast-paced adventure book.

This is not a bad thing entirely. At it's core, the story is about more than racing horses and it's about more than bashing the reader over the head with elements of danger. But as a result, the middle can be a little slow. Stiefvater does a decent enough job of keeping the tension alive throughout, but I can certainly point to a few chapters that wandered around a bit much for my taste. There are some scenes that could have benefited from tightening up. A romp this is not.

But within the fantasy world, its a refreshing change of pace. It's about more than swords and sorcerers. It's about us - ordinary people with ordinary problems with extraordinary horses. So do yourself a favor and do what Melissa would do: grab yourself a copy and get ready to be swept away.

Writerly News: Masters of the Universe

Okay!

So the blog has been a bit sparse for updates lately, but for good reason.

Right after I wrote my last post - the one mentioning my course in seriated speculative fiction (oh, how could you forget?) I got a nice surprise in terms of current "life trajectory." My older sister needed some help with her children, due to her husband getting a long distance job. He would be commuting for the next several months, home only on week-ends, and so poor big sis would be all by her lonesome.

EXCEPT SHE WASN'T!!! Why? Well, because instead, yours truly flew to the other side of Canada to be with her. What resulted was a whirlwind trip where I finished my Masters, wiped my nephew's noses, helped my sister move from Montreal to Ottawa and then, to cap it all off, I flew out to Halifax to celebrate Christmas with my brother's family.

So with my past several months amounting to a "who's-who" of Canadian cities, I didn't have much time for blogging. With how limited my free time was, I tended to need to be either working on school assignments, or plugging away at revisions on other manuscripts. I do enjoy keeping this blog, but at the end of the day, I'm a fiction writer and that has to serve as my priority. Also, I figure you're all so used to my erratic update schedule that in some sense, I would "get away with" these blogging transgressions.

Oh and did you notice something up there?

Behold the thesis!

So technically I defended this thesis all the way back in April and this photo is almost a year old, but whatever. I do my Master's in my own order. The point is that I am done! Yes, the day you are waiting for has come. You may all refer to me as "Master and Dark Lord of the seven realms of Children's Literature." I'm pretty sure Chatham stipulated somewhere that this was the official title given to graduates of my discipline.

Obviously, this is an exciting time. I'm thrilled to be done, and yet still close to those I shared my program with. I'm thrilled to have been a part of Chatham. And it also means that now I'm looking forward to whatever comes next. I'm still in eastern Canada, and we'll see how that goes. Maybe there's something exciting for the Little Writer That Could to do here. Like drown in the snow.

What does that mean for this blog? Hopefully more regular updates. And luckily... I still want to do the series I promised you! So stay tuned for those promised posts on seriated speculative fiction. Don't worry. You'll get all the goods from me. You'll be sick of it in no time.

Writerly News: Why you wish you were taking Seriated Speculative Fiction

It's been a bit longer than I'd hoped between blog posts, mostly due to technical difficulties.

I own a laptop, (I call it Critter) that is mighty in soul but not in body. Critter's actual computer-y components work fine. It's just exceptionally fragile and prone to crumbling. When I first received Critter, it got so excited it's hinges started bursting apart. With some creativity and a few coats of glue, we've managed to weather a few years without any major incidents, but the end of this summer proved to be the time when Critter threw in the towel. Once again, the inner computer worked fine, but the metal that joins the power cord and the inner computer decided to break and pop out after I did a whole lot of nothing to it.

Luckily, the laptop doctors managed to fix Critter up and Critter has since returned home, slathered in a fresh coat of glue (seriously. There is additional glue on my computer. Along with replacing the part that broke, they generously squirted more glue on Critter) and humming away happy as ever.

This all happened just in time for my Twitter account to malfunction and lock itself up for several weeks. So while I could finally write again, I had limited options for alerting people of blog updates. Mercifully, the account is back to normal again. So I now have a healthy computer and a healthy connection to the my interwebs "presence" (such as it is).

At the same time, the usual September business engulfed me as I moved to a new job and, even more importantly, into the final semester of course work for my Masters degree! It feels very exciting and I've worked towards this for a long time. So hurray. :)

As my writing life is once again being dictated by course work, I thought it might be fun to switch up some of my posts to reflect what I'm working on, especially since my final classes are SO COOL!!!

Due to the fact that I am currently working with my school by distance, my final course is something of a self-directed study. It's half literature/readings course and half writing/workshop seminar and since I'm the only student, its somewhat tailored to my interests.

So what is this mystery class? (Other than fabulous, of course)

I have proudly and pretentiously titled it: Seriated Speculative Fiction

But what does that MEAN?? Well, to those uninitiated in the jargon of University Creative Writing, "seriated" means "something that comes in a series" and "speculative fiction" is basically code for "science-fiction and fantasy, but we're calling it something else because SERIOUS writers keep making fun of us for writing science-fiction and fantasy."

This is a pretty special kind of course to do. Most of the time in English literature courses, there are a lot of confines on what you do and don't have time for. I took a class in my first semester on English novels that prominently feature manor houses and use them as a thematic element. Yes, that sounds really specific, but there was still plenty that was being left out by the course. The novels were dense and we only had time for five. Also, it turns out a LOT of people have written novels about crumbling English manors. When you think about it in those terms, it's easy to see that I could have done a whole course on just Charles Dickens featuring manor houses as a strong thematic element. But of course, in order to do the topic justice, our teacher chose breadth and we read five different authors, just one book by each.

Last year I studied Young Adult literature, which was a fantastic course, but there the subject matter was even broader. We plowed through over a dozen novels for this course, but again, there was only time for one book by each author. This meant, for instance, that when we were covering the topic of science fiction and dystopia, our professor had us read The Hunger Games but neither of the books that followed. Frankly, it's difficult to make time for a series within a class, unless you're studying the work of a single, specific author. (Example: I took a course on August Wilson, one of Pittsburgh's favorite sons, and we read his entire Pittsburgh Century Cycle. But unless you're a two time Pulitzer winning playwrite, like Wilson, it's unlikely you'll get to read every work by a single author.)

But as a science fiction and fantasy writer, the topic of the "series" is a highly relevant topic for someone like me. Certainly there are stand alone novels within these genres, but a large number of the most "important" works within sci-fi and fantasy are series. With authors creating whole new worlds, isn't it natural to use those worlds for as many stories as possible? The pattern is obvious as early as The Lord of the Rings or The Chronicles of Narnia and not much has changed since.

On top of that, in my first year in my program, I wrote a sci-fi/fantasy novel, which I then had to put on the back burner so that I could finish my thesis the following year. But I'd confided to my thesis director that I did have ideas for a second book in the same series and she's been looking for an excuse to teach a course like this - one that focuses on how a series builds over time rather than as stand alone novels.

And so here I am! Studying the coolest thing ever and writing some of my own *ahem* seriated speculative fiction on the side. I'll be reading three full series for the course, each published relatively recently and each aimed at a different age group. And as I finish each, I plan on posting a few of my thoughts about the series as a whole and what can be learned from them. So for those reading along, the series are as follows!

As my middle grade series, I will be studying The Giver Quartet by Lois Lowry

Because reading it for YA lit clearly wasn't enough, my YA series will be The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins

And ending the year, I will tackle the adulty adultness of The MaddAddam Trilogy by Margaret Atwood

I just finished up The Giver, so expect a follow up post to this one coming soon! Until then, happy seriated speculative fiction to all!

Book Reviews - The Night Gardener

The Night Gardener

With the potato famine in full, terrible glory, a pair of Irish siblings are destitute and looking for work. The jobs they finally secure at a crumbling English manor, deep in the ominously named Sourwoods, are their only way of staying out of an orphanage.

But the longer they stay in the house, the clearer it becomes that every bystander who warned them to avoid the road into the Sourwoods might have been right to be superstitious. Illness lurks inside the house and a stranger prowls the grounds at night.

And then there is the tree. The great, terrible, black tree, growing beside the manor house...

What makes it so good:

So I have a bit of a history with this book! This review is probably going to be part review, part self-indulgent reveling in the past. You have been warned!

I had just started attending classes at Chatham University. I was living the dream, studying what I'd wanted to since grade school. Creative writing. Better than that, creative writing, with my primary genre focus being writing for children and young adults.

One of my foundation classes was therefor in Children's Literature, taught by Jonathan Auxier. You might recognize him as the gent whose name is directly below the night gardener's feet on the  book's cover. At the time, this book was a year and a half away from release and Jonathan was knee-deep in revisions. And that, friends, is very deep. He's a tall man.

As a result, The Night Gardener was one of the first books I've ever had any insight into the "journey" of. As one of his students, we certainly weren't the ones giving critique and feedback on it in its infancy. We heard little snippets. What it was like working with an editor on a novel-in-progress, what writing a duel point-of-view novel meant. How important it was to start your second book as soon as possible after the release of your first.

And our reading list, it turns out, consisted of numerous titles that eventually made it into the author's note at the end of The Night Gardener - books like Something Wicked this way Comes and The Secret Garden. *coughI think someone might have had ulterior motives for making us read and discuss those bookscough*

But that's actually one of the reasons I wanted to cover this book now! On the heels of the earlier discussion of books that are "derived" from earlier sources rather than "derivative" of them, I thought it would be fun to discuss books that are very upfront about their literary influences and which can only be described as reveling in those connections.  The Night Gardener is among them.

I recently discussed with someone whether or not Gardener could be considered historical fiction. Certainly the history and the setting play into the richness of the story. And even the more fantastical, horror elements harken back to the Victoria era. As Auxier says in his own author's note, the era was one of rapid scientific discovery, but also fascination with the spiritual and occult, something The Night Gardener plays with.

But overall, I couldn't conclude that it was historical fiction. Usually the genre is interested in teaching something about the past as one of it's primary goals, and I never got the sense The Night Gardener held this as its motive. This book isn't trying to teach the reader something about the "facts" of the Victorian era - it's aiming to teach you about it's stories.

Among the characters are two story-tellers. First, the old Hester Kettle, a vagabond story teller who always seems to know more than she should, and second, one of novel's heroes, Molly. Only fourteen, Molly is still learning the difference between a story and a lie. 

That a story this steeped in literature and the history of children's books also comes with a satisfying element of horror meant that I loved the book. And this isn't bias speaking, either! This isn't Jonathan's first book, but in my humble opinion, it is his best. All the elements just came together beautifully - the horror, the old fashioned prose, the characters. It's all there. It's funny, touching and terrifying. I highly recommend it.

What might make it better:

This is a very, very long and very, very verbose children's book.

For me, it works. The reading level isn't easy, and while it's a quick read, it isn't as quick as some comparable books. To give an idea, Neil Gaiman is well known for his children's scary stories. Coraline, definitely a Middle Grade book, is only 30,000 words. The Graveyard Book sort of straddles the line between Middle Grade and Young Adult, and is around 67,000. Definitely on the longer end of Middle Grade, but okay for the anticipated audience. The Night Gardener clocks in at over 79,000 words. It also straddles the line between YA and MG, but I think it's pretty clear that for some kids, that's a lot of reading.

Tonally, it still reads like a Middle Grade book rather than YA, but with it's dark subject matter and hefty sentences, it's not going to be a breeze for all children. Still, I think it does fill a niche that a lot of people worry about in children's literature. I hear plenty of people who love books bemoan that we no longer get books for children like The Hobbit. They usually say something like this:

"When I was eleven, I read all of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings books! I wanted to be challenged. These kids books today, they just aren't challenging. Have you read Twilight? Way too easy! Such bad writing."

First, I'm not saying that The Night Gardener necessarily bares a lot in common with The Hobbit or Twilight. It's just that most of my friends are sci-fi/fantasy nerds and they all somehow think it makes sense to compare epic fantasy to paranormal romance (it doesn't). I thought it had more in common with older books - ones like those by Robert Louis Stevenson and Charles Dickens which, again, people wished children read. Or were prepared to read. This is exactly the type of book that introduces the wonder and creepiness of the Victorian era to young readers.

Second, I don't personally believe that a book being an "easy" read or not is the same as whether or not it's good or bad. Charlotte's Web is a very easy book and its completely brilliant. But there is something to be said for a book that gets its beauty from its use of complex language. To give you an idea of what The Night Gardener challenges its reader with, I spent a lot of the book trying to remember what a dumbwaiter is.

Behold the dumbwaiter!

If you know what a dumbwaiter is, or if you know a child who would like to learn that sort of thing, then don't worry about the length or the words. I do feel the need to add  that the book IS creepy, scary and at times, down right violent. Nothing Auxier included felt gratuitous to me. Any horror story has to include some actual horror, but take that into account. It is shelved among the children's books and while it belongs there, and I'm glad of its presence, its scares are not to be taken lightly. Again, think Coraline and The Graveyard Book and Something Wicked this way Comes.

And in general, do read it. And think of the wonderful tradition of stories that it places itself a part of. Think of the history of books we draw from, and how we all derive something from that history.