Reading Again
I finished reading Fog Magic this morning. The first thing I felt as I closed the book was a sense of intense dissatisfaction because not all the questions were answered. For example, there was this:"There were some questions that Greta was sure her father could answer. What, for instance, had happened to the village of Blue Cove itself? Prosperous villages didn't turn into a cluster of sod-covered cellar holes over night. If some persons in such towns made fortunes and moved away, there were always others to stay on and live and die in the homes of their fathers. But it was a question she could never ask."The way she put that, it made me wonder if she left multiple unanswered questions intentionally, just as fog leaves a lot of questions, like "what's over there?" ...and "how do I get home from here?" ...and where's the road?"
The book is written for kids - it would go over big with the typical eight-year-old. Though I think it might not have achieved such great fame if it had been written in 2002 rather than the early 1940's... I can see why it has been a much loved childhood treasure of thousands of growing girls over the years. With the combination of magic, mystery, and whimsey, this was like a collection of snapshots of village people in a time long gone.
Next...
I decided to read a book I've been putting off for months. I didn't want to look at it because I knew it was about the death of a child:
On My Honor
By Marion Dane Bauer...
This was a short novel, I estimate about 22000 words. I read it in just a few hours.
I sure would not want to write such a sad story. I think stories like this one and Katherine Paterson's Bridge to Terabithia should have warning labels. At least this time I knew the subject matter before I read the book. When I read Paterson's book I was blindsided - thinking I was reading a nice cozy story about the friendship between two children just to have the rug pulled out from under me when one of them died. You see, I don't like to cry. I really, really hate crying -- the painful eyes, the runny nose, the inconvenience of it all. These books both made me cry. With On My Honor I did pretty good until page 79... then I couldn't stop the tears.
Though I didn't like the subject, I have to say that it was very well written. The character descriptions were great - and I knew right away how very different the boys were from one another. The first paragraph of the book is this:
"'Climb the Starved Bluffs? You've got to be kidding!' Joel's spine tingled at the mere thought of trying to scale the sheer river bluffs in the state park. He looked Tony straight in the eye. 'Somebody got killed last year trying to do that! Don't you remember?'"Right away we know we've got a daredevil boy and a more conservative boy. The author stands out of the way for the entire journey and the characterizations are very realistic, as are their actions.
One other good thing I can say about this book is that any boy that reads it is much less likely to ever want to dare his best friend to do something dangerous. While I was reading it, my own 12 year old son was out riding mountain bikes in the hills near here with his friends. I couldn't help but say a few prayers during the course of this reading, asking God to bring them all home safely.
Next I plan to read... The Renegades of Pern by Anne McCaffrey. Wish me luck. I've never read any of her books before, and it is far from what I usually take interest in. Despite all that I feel it may have some elements common to the kinds of things I've been writing lately, so I want to take a look. Right now I'm only a few pages into it and see it is much more complex (aimed at adults or teens, not children), and situations are mature, including violence. Like in two of my manuscripts, she's created her own world with its own terminology and name forms. I don't know if I'll finish this novel, but I look forward to seeing how she develops it. This particular McCaffrey novel was published in 1989, the year my 13-year-old daughter was born.
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