The Librarian Always Rings Twice by Marty Wingate

The Librarian Always Rings Twice  by Marty Wingate, 2022

 

Hayley Burke returns as curator of the First Edition Society  and things are not going well. Charles Henry Dill, the only living relative of Lady Georgiana Fowling, the First Editions Society's founder, has wormed his way into being hired to assist Hayley. His only interest is to find a way to get more money from his aunts' estate.

When John Aubrey arrives at the First Edition Society's first open-to-the-public afternoon and announces that he is Lady Georgiana's grandson, it sends people who knew the late Lady Georgiana into eddies of suspicion. Lady Georgiana had no children as far as anyone knew.

There you have the set-up. Someone connected to John Aubrey is murdered. The open afternoons bring in all sorts of people, most dedicated to the Golden Age of Mystery and the authors thereof - Christie, Sayers, Wentworth, Marsh, Allingham - just to name a few. But some visitors may not be what they seem.

 

I finished this book last night. Today, I want to go back into the world of Bath, England and the library of the First Edition Society and the canals that crisscross the countryside and the narrow boats and a new character that exudes an almost fairy tale charm.  

Wingate populates each of her mysteries with several characters that may or may not be the culprit. Some we hope to see again. Most we'd just as soon avoid. This book was a poser. The mystery of the murder was not nearly as consuming as the mystery of who or what John Aubrey was. 

Also, now I have to read Daphne Du Maurier's Frenchman's Creek.  The Librarian Always Rings Twice is a charming book filled with charming people. Read it.

Kevin Henkes and the inevitability of change

I just - JUST- closed Kevin Henkes' book Sweeping Up the Heart, (contented sigh).  So calm, yet so dramatic, I got what I expected from Kevin Henkes, who is one of the best authors and illustrators out there.  Also, rabbits.

I read somewhere that Kevin Henkes - who has written and illustrated lots of books about mice and kittens and rabbits - has taken to sculpting small rabbits from clay.  I can't find that interview so maybe I dreamed it up!  No matter.  Amelia, the hero of this new book, sculpts animals of all kinds and in this book, she concentrates on rabbits.

The book is about emotions, not clay rabbits, - especially the emotions of confusion and sadness.  And the book is about communicating with all kinds of people.  It covers a few days of Spring Break, meeting and making a new kind of friend, seeing adults in new lights, appreciating what has always been and worrying about the future.

The set up is simple. 12-year-old Amelia lives with her father because her mother died when she was only two.  Her father seems uncomfortable in his own skin, perhaps because of this great loss. They are lucky that their neighbor, Mrs. O'Brien, is there for them as housekeeper and friend.

During this Spring Break, Amelia runs to the clay studio, her home away from home, and meets Casey, the studio's owner's 12-year-old nephew! A new friend and a new kind of friend, Casey introduces Amelia to the idea of "signs" and he points out a red-haired woman as a "sign" for Amelia.

This red-haired woman ends up being more important than Casey or Amelia could imagine and not in the ways they both hoped.

Quiet, calm drama - no action scenes, no high-impact blow-ups, pulled me effortlessly along to the last page.  Read it.

I do have afterthoughts.

When I was 12, I had an insight so profound that nothing before in my life prepared me for it. My life was devoid of trauma. The most disrupting thing that ever happened in our life - I mean permanently re-arranging - was the arrival of a new sibling. That happened with such regularity that by 12, I was no longer excited by yet another kid. There were 6 of us by then.

Still, the emotions that Amelia feels; the magical possibilities, the sudden appearance of adults as people with unexpected facets, the realization of change as a constant, - I felt all of those things with aching force.

But without that trauma, or other upsetting traumas, such as moving to a new home, the end of a friendship, a divorce in the family, the death of a beloved older relative, - without a life altering trauma to initiate the plot, can an author write effectively about these emotions? I mean SOMETHING has to happen in the book. Something has to change. Without a missing mother, that red-haired woman would have had little or no significance to Amelia or Casey.

Of course, other things do happen in this book. The sculpted rabbits, the friendship with Casey, Casey's home situation, - in themselves they do not make a compelling story line.  It is that one fact of Amelia's person-hood, her motherless-ness, that moves everything along.

I am sure that someone has written a book that displays this time of change in a pre-teen's life, in a stable family without a huge catastrophe, effectively and well.  And I suspect that I probably read some of those books. Still, a major shake-up grabs the reader's attention.  That is not a bad thing.

A sudden afterthought:  If the reader is a more literal person than I am, will he/she relate to a character whose situation is so very different than his/her own?  Just wondering.

Viva, Rose!

Rose (Viva, Rose!) has a secret about where her brother, Abraham, has gone.  (Hint: he lied.)  When she tries to deliver a letter to someone who can reach Abraham, she is abducted by guerillas working with Pancho Villa.  For the next several days, Rose becomes a reluctant member of the Villistas. 

The Good:
1. Rose learns to ride a horse!  This was something she never did before and she loved it - until she fell off.
2. Rose gets a lesson in being less judgmental.  The rebels are rough and wild but their cause is just.
3.  Rose learns that she is brave, independent and resourceful.  YAY!

The Bad:
1.  Dorotea, the General's spoiled "niece" (probably his daughter).  Rose, who is small for her age, becomes a forced friend to the much younger Dorotea.  (Once you get past her headstrong nature, Dorotea is actually kind of sweet.)
2.  Pico, Dorotea's cosseted dog.  He bites.
3.  The food.  The rebels eat a lot of javelina, wild pig, which Rose can not eat.
4.   The fear and loneliness.  Rose's attempts to get back to El Paso usually come to naught.

There is No Ugly, just a little slowness at the take-off.

 From Rose's testy relationship with her mother, to little Dorotea, to a Pesach meal that substitutes tortillas for matzoh, to the American reporter, barnstormers, and sharp shooters that attach themselves to the camp, this story is a fun introduction to the Mexican revolution led by Pancho Villa.

The author's note at the end of the book gives some surprising insight to the origins of this novel.  Read it.

PS.  The set up reminded me of Bandit's Moon by Sid Fleischman.  Younger sisters look for older brothers and get abducted/captured by Mexican "outlaws".  The time periods and political atmosphere are completely different. 

Moody Monday

Actually, Friday, Saturday and Sunday were the Moody days.  Today, I feel cooooolll - as in summer breezes blowing through my window.  Yeah.

Man, I was in a funk.  I had some very angst-ridden conversations with two people - about each other - and I came away wondering which version was closer to the truth.  When that happens to me, I begin to find cracks in all the safe places.  I start to wonder if other people have secrets that would shock or upset me... if everyone is hiding some horrid past.

Then I snipe at those people closest to me.  And I cringe at my own tone of voice.

I found the absolutely PERFECT book for my mood; Lauren Myracle's The Forgetting Spell. 

 

I suspect I may have found Darya's confusion a bit much at another time, but I was that perplexed and twisted that it was a relief to read about someone - even a young teen - who had similar feelings.   

If you read Wishing Day, you understand the set up.  The girls of Darya's town have a tradition of making three wishes (one impossible wish, one wish she can make come true, and one wish closest to her heart) by the wishing tree three months to the day after their thirteenth birthday.  Darya's family, rumored to possess magic,  started the tradition ages ago. 

The flashbacks - most involving the mysterious Bird Lady - help fill in the gaps.  Darya approaches her thirteenth birthday full of doubts.  A new friend missed the tradition of wishing.  Darya wonders if she should use one of her wishes for that friend.  Someone from Darya's family pressures Darya to use one of her wishes to solve a long standing problem.  The request is almost threatening and certainly creepy.  Darya doubts everyone, including herself.  

It was like we were emotional twins.  I feel your pain Darya and I am 5 times your age.

She makes her wishes. Whew!  That pressure is off.  And, like almost everyone else who admitted their wishes, she regrets them and hopes they work out in the end.  The pressure ends but not the drama.

Darya is the second of three sisters, all aged a year apart.  There will be one more book, for sure.  This is good because a lot of stuff is left hanging.  And I want someone to let me, and Darya, know that her wishes -or anyone's wishes -  are not the cause of happiness or pain in other people's lives. 

I had one wish - to return to equilibrium.  I read a book.  It worked. 

Open Mics - Speaking up

Last night, I went to an open mic at Coffee house without Limits in Allentown PA.  My youngest brother and I offered up three children's songs we have been working on.  And we had FUN!

He stayed until closing.  I hung around for the next few artists.  Overall, awesome!!  Musicians sang and played original music - and they played and sang very well.  Poets spat words that wove the air around them with images.

Getting up and strutting your stuff - it's the subject of a lot of middle grade fiction.  Finding the nerve to weather possible ridicule, possible embarrassment - just thinking of it can give a person a wiggly stomach, and a dizzy feeling.

Catching a Storyfish by Janice N. Harrington focuses on just this problem.  Keet has moved from Alabama where she was a world class storyteller.   In her new home, her accent amuses her classmates no end.  Soon, Keet is as quiet as a mouse.  Fishing with her grandfather becomes her refuge.  How she finds her voice again is a touching story.

The Glass Town Game

The nice Riveted rep that sent me a box of ARCs (for the KUCLC event about a month ago) referred to Catherynne M. Valente's The Glass Town Game as a brick.  It is that - over 500 pages.  But, oh, what a brick it is!

When Emily and Charlotte Bronte are sent back to Cowan Bridge school, the boarding school where their older sisters died, their brother, Branwell, and youngest sister, Anne, walk them to the train station.  It is the Beastliest of Days and they play one of their favorite games on the way, the Game of And.  Not as complicated as the Glass Town Game which employed all of Branwell's wooden soldiers, the Game of And was played by imagining the most delightful or nonsensical things and challenging the other players to match or top them.

When they get to the station, the things they imagined on the way, and things they imagined in the past, have become real!  All four children board the train, using buttons as tickets, and ride to Glass Town with the wooden soldiers, come alive.  Glass Town is at war.  The forces of Wellie (the Duke of Wellington) and Boney (Napoleon Bonaparte) fight and die and come to life again. 

When Anne and Branwell are stolen away by one of Boney's spies - made of magazines and newspapers - Emily and Charlotte must find them.  Meanwhile, Anne and Branwell find the kidnapped Princess Victoria, the cause of this awful war.

At first, everything they see comes from one of their play adventures. As the story progresses, the adventures spin out of control.  The four wonder if they will ever be reunited and if they will ever see their father and home again.

As I read, I was reminded of Alice in Wonderland, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,  and The Wizard of Oz.  Each town in Glass Town has peculiarities and a specific type of resident.  The publishers and book sellers in Ochropolis deliver some of the funniest dialogue in the book.  Valente uses fanciful descriptions and eccentric language that adds a sense of time and place.  I can't wait to see the book when it comes out in September.  I hope for illustration - just a few - that are as whimsical as the story is.

I am giving this book away (with others).    Click here to learn more about this giveaway.   And to enter.