By Elly Murray

By Elly Murray.

Philip Pullman is most well known for his trilogy, His Dark Materials. The first book of the series, The Golden Compass, came out in 1995, quickly followed by a sequel, The Subtle Knife, in 1997, and a final book, The Amber Spyglass, in 2000. The series was reworked as a movie in 2007 and a TV show in 2019. 

After its release, The Golden Compass was all the rage. When it came out in 1995, it won the Carnegie Medal for Children’s Literature in the UK. In 2007, it went on to be voted the best Carnegie Medal winner in the seventy-year history of the award. Time Magazine has included it on their list, The 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time, and the trilogy as a whole has garnered Pullman quite a few other awards and recognition. Even now, 25 years after the release of the first novel in the series, when it comes up in conversation it’s usually with a fond remembrance: “Oh yeah, The Golden Compass! Man, that was a good book.”

For some reason I never read it until a few months ago. I passed by it on a library shelf, remembered how much my fellow book nerds had loved it, and thought, “Well, I suppose it’s about time I got to it.” And I’d have to say, it holds up fairly well, even after over two decades. 

The story centers around Lyra Belacqua, an adventurous young girl who bounds across the rooftops of Jordan College with her best friend, Roger, and her shape-changing daemon, Pantalaimon. When her mysterious uncle, Lord Asriel, comes to visit the college on a strange quest, Lyra learns of a cosmic particle called ‘Dust’ and the Gobblers who will stop at nothing to reverse its effects on adults, including kidnapping and experimenting on children. When Roger is taken by Gobblers, Lyra is forced to leave Jordan College and embark on an exciting and dangerous adventure, full of armored bears, balloon aeronauts, and revelations about her past. She has a much bigger part to play in the fate of her world and others than she can ever know. 

I felt that the best part of the book was experiencing Lyra as a character. She’s headstrong in a way that is both refreshing and to be expected of a young child. She’s not afraid to take charge of her life, which I feel is a good message for young readers, and she shows a lot of maturity for her age. 

The children in the book were the most interesting and approachable characters to me. Pullman really makes you feel their emotions, especially their terror.  What specifically comes to my mind is the scene where Lyra encounters a boy, Tony Makarios, in a village. For some reason, the entire village is afraid to go anywhere near him, and when she goes to investigate, she discovers why; his daemon has been cut away. When Lyra realizes this, it reads “Her first impulse was to turn and run, or to be sick. A human being with no daemon was like someone without a face, or with their ribs laid open and their heart torn out; something unnatural and uncanny...So Lyra clung to Pantalaimon and her head swam and her gorge rose, and cold as the night was, a sickly sweat moistened her flesh with something colder still” (p. 214). The scene continues like this, with Lyra showing compassion while trying to help the boy, even though she’s absolutely horrified. The description of her emotions in this scene, as well as others throughout the book, really helped to pull me into the story and see the events happening through her eyes. 

There’s also just an incredible amount of vivid detail that really sticks in your memory, like when Lyra and Farder Coram seek out Iorek Byrnison, the bear:

“Dim yellow light through the rear window of the bar showed a vast pale form crouching upright and gnawing at a haunch of meat which it held in both hands. Lyra had an impression of a bloodstained muzzle and face, small malevolent black eyes, and an immensity of dirty matted yellowish fur. As it gnawed, hideous growling, crunching, sucking noises came from it” (p. 179).

The detail here is so strong that I could hear the sounds Iorek was making in my head. I love reading books like this, because almost every description throughout is this visual and striking, and you can clearly picture in your mind what is happening in the story. 

However, I felt that the motivations, inner thoughts, and emotions of the adult characters aren’t fleshed out well. I was expecting to be able to interact with them the same way we did with Lyra and the other children: being privy to their emotions and thoughts. I think Pullman may have done this intentionally because adults don’t often share what they’re thinking or feeling with children. However, the result for me was that the adult characters didn’t feel as strong or as developed as the children.

I will also say that the pacing of the book was a bit slow. I spent most of the book waiting around for something significant to happen, but then the last third of the book was action-packed. 

One of the most interesting things about the book was the underlying religious discussion. Pullman is well known for his criticisms of organized religion, Christianity in particular. In a Washington Post interview, when asked about being compared to other fantasy authors like Tolkien & C. S. Lewis, he was quoted as saying, “I’m trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief.” 

What’s peculiar, however, is that in this book the Church is really more of a stagnant background influence. It doesn’t support the work of the Oblation Board (the Gobblers who are, essentially, torturing children for research), but it would also like to keep the rest of the world in the dark about the nature of Dust and the possibility of a parallel world. One of the main themes of this book is Lyra going against that traditional authority to discover secrets that no one is supposed to know. 

Another intriguing detail is that in this book, children haven’t been impacted by Original Sin yet. Some of the adults spend the entire book doing back flips to reclaim that innocence and freedom from sin for themselves, and end up becoming even darker as a result of their actions. It really made me pause and think about our society. Some people try to “better'' themselves through religion, but end up becoming even worse and more hateful. I believe that religion isn’t supposed to be about bettering yourself. It’s supposed to be about giving up your own desires to serve God and others, which is essentially what Lyra does. She gives up the life she knows, and the comfortable existence she could have had with Mrs. Coulter, to find out the truth and save the other kids. At the end of the book, she even gives up the certainty of her world to go explore the parallel world, and put a stop to Lord Asriel’s nefarious plans. 

Overall, The Golden Compass was a wonderful read. I fully intend to read the next two books in the series, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. We have the entire trilogy here in the store, and you can order them online as well. 

I enjoyed reading this book so much that I immediately went out and found the graphic novel version to read--which, incidentally, was very beautifully illustrated. You can find your own copy of the graphic novel on our online store. ​

Jarrett Krosoczka is an illustrator and author who is most famous for his Lunch Lady & Jedi Academy series. His most recent book, Hey, Kiddo: How I Lost My Mother, Found My Father, and Dealt with Family Addiction, is a graphic memoir for young adults that comes out on October 9th. It was recently longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. I was lucky enough to receive a galley copy when I went to the SIBA tradeshow last month. Krosoczka was unable to make it to speak at the event because of Hurricane Florence but he did record a very moving video about the book that we (booksellers) watched together. I left that lunch knowing that I was going to read the book before I even got back home.

Reader, I read it in one, very emotional, sitting.

In this book, Krosoczka tells the story of his family--starting with his grandparents, Joe & Shirley, who met and fell in love as teenagers. After his grandfather returned from WWII, during which the young Shirley had broken up with him, he came back to Worcester, MA to win back her heart. They got married shortly after and started having children. Jarrett’s mother, Leslie, was the second child in a family of five kids. The same year Leslie was born, Joe opened a factory that was fairly successful throughout his life, and spent most of his time working. Shirley, however, had experienced a personal tragedy that led her to start drinking heavily. This was the beginning of a tumultuous mother/daughter relationship between Shirl & Leslie.

When Leslie was 13, she began to act out. She started sneaking out, drinking, doing drugs, and getting into fights at school. Eventually, Leslie came home to say that she was pregnant. This did not help the volatile relationship she had with her mother but she did manage to stay clean while she was pregnant. After Jarrett was born, Joe bought Leslie a little home to make their own and they lived relatively happily there until Jarrett was a few years old. Leslie made a series of bad decisions and eventually went to jail. While there, Jarrett went to live with his grandparents and Joe set things up so that he, legally, had custody of him.

Ultimately, Jarrett was better off living with his grandparents than with Leslie. They were supportive of his art, encouraging him to make friends at school, and wanted to be involved in his life. However, they both drank heavily and fought constantly. It wasn’t the most stable upbringing, especially when you add in the infrequent visits and letters from his mother. After Leslie got out of jail, she spent time in halfway houses trying to get her life back on track. Jarrett always hoped, as a young kid, that he would be able to live with his mother again. It wasn’t even until he was in 3rd grade that he learned his mother was in jail and the knowledge haunted him. His hope to be reunited with his mother diminished as he aged until, eventually, he was a bitter, angry teenager.

During this time, he also began wondering about his father, who he’d never met and who’d never sought him out despite knowing that he had a child. As a teenager, he discovered his father’s last name and couldn’t shake the thoughts of him and what knowing his father would mean for his identity. So, when he got a letter from him one day, he was surprised but still not ready to get to know him yet.

Throughout middle and high school, Jarrett kept sketchbooks to draw in everywhere he went. He took art classes and began to get involved in the school newspaper as an illustrator for their comic section. Through art, he was able to explore the emotions he was feeling and express the pain he was feeling in a way that didn’t hurt him or anyone else. The drawings from this period of his life are quite dark and you can tell he was struggling with a lot.

There’s more to the story but I’ve gotten to the part where I feel like I’m going to give something integral away so I’ll stop my summary here. You’ll have to grab a copy to find out what happened to teenage Jarrett.

Reading this book was difficult but satisfying for me. Krosoczka writes with a openness and honesty about his troubled upbringing that I found both refreshing and reassuring. He also added a lot of special, personal touches to the book that made reading it especially moving. For example, each of the chapter title pages has the pattern of the wallpaper that was on the walls of the house he grew up in. He saved a roll of it to use in this book. He also added in actual art that he made as a child. All the artwork you see in the book that he says was drawn by him, was actually drawn by him when he was young and then superimposed into the book later. The letters from his mother are also real letters that she wrote to him. It was a very nice touch to this personal, painful memoir.

For my part, I didn’t grow up in a traditional nuclear family so seeing a representation of a loving family that maybe wasn’t quite like the families I saw in movies & tv shows was comforting. I also have experience dealing with family members struggling with addiction. Krosoczka’s memoir does an excellent job excavating the pain and anger that boil up in situations like this without feeling like he’s dramatizing for the sake of the story. Stories of addiction often have enough drama without needing any embellishment. Ultimately, the book felt real and raw and accessible in a way that I haven’t seen in a graphic memoir for a while. Comparatively though, it reminded me of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic.

Because this book was made for young adults (recommended ages 12-14), I feel that the topic is especially important. During a time when opioids are so widely available and so many people are addicted to them that the media calls it a crisis, there are many young adults who will find this book and be reassured by it’s honesty and it’s message.

I talk a lot about the importance of representation and there are lots of obvious ways that we can improve representation in literature. For example, it’s my priority to highlight books by marginalized authors or with marginalized characters both in my store and on our social media. However, I do think there are groups of marginalized people whose stories are often overlooked. The stories of those families fighting drug or alcohol addiction, and the children caught in the crossfire, are on that list. Often, addiction is a dark family secret. It’s not something you talk about outside of the family and certainly isn’t a story you share with the rest of the world, particularly in literature for young people. So, the importance of this work at this particular time in history is a bit elevated. We need these stories, not just for the sake of representation but also because the message we learn from Krosoczka is extremely valuable.

What is that message, then? The message is not particularly unique or surprising but it is one that I think we need to hear. Art saves. Art saves people. Art saves lives. Art saves families. Art saves angry kids from going to jail. Art saves. Art saved Jarrett from repeating the mistakes of his mother. Art saved Jarrett from the demons that plagued him. Art saved Jarrett from a life of doing something he didn’t love. Art saved Jarrett from the bitterness that threatened to eat him up as a teenager. Without art and a family who supported that art, we wouldn’t have the Jarrett Krosoczka we know and love today.

So, if you know a kid who’s struggling with their own demons or someone else’s, I highly recommend this book to them. If you know someone who is a parent and an addict, I also recommend this to them. It paints a vivid picture of the pain that a parent’s addiction caused one boy. If that message can help one person recognize the suffering they’re causing, then this book is more than worth the cost to purchase it. If the message that art saves can be imparted onto at least one young soul, then I think we’re on our way to making the world a better place.

You can pick up a copy of Hey, Kiddo by Jarrett Krosoczka at Foggy Pine Books on Tuesday, October 9th. You can also pre-order the ebook from us online and have it downloaded to your device that day. 
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I'm a huge fan of Katie O'Neill and loved her previous books: The Tea Dragon Society and Princess Princess Ever After, so I was excited to have the opportunity to read her upcoming book.

Aquicorn Cove is the story of a small fishing village and the people who live there, who love their way of life. A young girl, Lana, comes back to visit with her Auntie Mae after a terrible storm does a lot of damage in the village. While helping her family and friends clean up, she finds a seahorse looking animal (an aquicorn!) that needs help and rescues it to let it recover before returning it to the ocean. We learn that Lana's situation is complicated and that there's a lot of emotion to process while she's visiting her Auntie. When Lana asks her Auntie about the creature she rescued, Mae tells her the story of meeting a beautiful Aquicorn queen, Aure. She tells her how she helped their family and the message she gave her about the destruction of the ocean and coral reefs. This caused a huge rift between Aure and Mae. When another big storm threatens the island and Auntie Mae, Lana seeks help from the Aquicorns to keep both the village and her Aunt safe. When Lana is taken on her own undersea adventure, she discovers how much damage humans are doing to the ocean and to the coral reef. What can Lana do to help the Aquicorns and her Auntie's village? You'll have to read the story to find out!

This book is a heart-warming and thoughtful story about the power of family and how, if we all care just a little bit, we can each make a big difference in the world. I couldn't imagine a better follow up to Katie O'Neill's previous books. I highly recommend for anyone who enjoys sweet, adorable stories with gorgeous artwork and a moral to think about at the end. 

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟-- Mary gives this book 5 out of 5 stars!

Aquicorn Cove comes out on October 16th but you can pre-order it here at Foggy Pine Books or pick it up here on release day!

I really enjoyed Brenna Thummler's first original graphic novel, Sheets, a middle grade/early young adult story about a lonely girl trying to keep her family's failing laundry business alive and the ghost boy who helps her. She illustrated the recently published graphic novel adaptation of Anne of Green Gables and I absolutely adored the art work, so I was excited to check out her original story.

Marjorie is a 13 year old girl who is going through a very difficult time. Her mother recently drowned in a tragic accident and her father has fallen into a deep grief that even the care of his children cannot seem to shake. Marjorie spends all her time after school working at her family business, a laundry service, and taking care of her 5 year old brother. The story is sweet and heart-warming while also touching on some deep and dark subject matter. Watching Marjorie deal with all her family struggles and trying to keep the family business running after her mother's death was difficult, especially because I felt frustrated with her dad's behavior. There's another character who is trying to sabotage her business in an effort to get the property for himself. Enter Wendell, a young, lonely ghost, who ends up making quite a mess of things for Marjorie on accident. When he realizes what he's done, he decides to help her and goes back to the Ghost World to ask for support. After this, the story becomes so much more hopeful. A small friendship between a ghost and a girl can change things for the better.

I love how accurately working in a service industry role is depicted, as well as grief and loneliness. Thummler takes dark elements of a very human story, mixes in a little supernatural fun, and illustrates it with a Wes Anderson-esque color palette. A quick read and something I'd recommend for readers of Raina Telgemier who want something similar for older kids.

🌟🌟🌟🌟 -- Mary gives this book 4 out of 5 stars

Sheets comes out August 28, 2018! You can pre-order with Foggy Pine Books or come pick it up on release day!

I started this book because the title made me giggle every time I looked at it. The summary sounded interesting and I always enjoy something that's different from what I typically read. This was definitely a departure for me but one that I'm thoroughly pleased I decided to make. 

I expected something funny and light-hearted which is, mostly, what I received. However, I was surprised that, from the beginning, there was a vein of insidiousness winding it's way through the story. Though the title and the subject matter lead you toward something fun and exciting, there was more to this book than I was anticipating. 

We begin our story by meeting Nikki, a young British & Punjabi woman living in London. Her relationship with her family is strained after she drops out of law school and moves out of her mother's apartment, something young women in her community are not expected to do until marriage. Despite that, she and her sister still talk often. Nikki feels aimless after leaving college and has been working at a pub. When posting a marriage flyer at a temple for her sister (who is seeking an arranged marriage), she sees an advertisement for a job at the local community center, teaching Punjabi women how to write stories. Nikki applies and interviews for the job so is very pleased to be hired, despite her lack of experience. However, when the time comes to teach the class, she realizes that the Punjabi widows who have come to learn how to write stories also need to learn how to write. Feeling frustrated, she thinks about quitting but wants the experience to include on her CV. 

During one class, she comes into the room to find that one of the younger women is reading aloud from the erotica book Nikki had purchased for her sister as a joke. Embarrassed, she explains why she has the book and tries to bring the class back on track. The widows, however, have another idea. Their husbands have died and they are lonely. They miss intimacy and sex. To Nikki's horror, the women start sharing erotic stories with one another. Some are stories about their own lives, some are from their imaginations, and some are ideas gleaned from the late night soft-core movies they've discovered on cable. Despite her original discomfort at hearing these otherwise conservative women discuss their passions, Nikki begins to realize that sharing these stories is good for the women. It makes them feel strong and makes them willing to seek the passion they so desire in their own lives. The stories start to spread around the community and more women begin to seek out Nikki's class. 

Not everyone is happy that the widows are opening up and learning more about themselves though. A group of ultra-conservative young men in the community with no jobs and nothing better to do have started harassing women and men who are not behaving as traditionally as The Brothers believe a respectable person should. Women who are out too late, enjoying time with friends in mixed gender groups, or who aren't covering their head have been assaulted and attacked. In addition to the fear mongering by The Brothers, the widow of a community religious figure is blackmailing people in exchange for "prayers" concerning the immoral or unfavorable behaviors being held against them. 

As the story progresses, we begin to see exactly what kind of threat the women's classes are to the traditionally conservative community in which they live. The women are beginning to stand up for themselves, to fight back against the injustices wrought by The Brothers. The men in the community are confused and worried. They have typically never had to worry about things like this from the elder women in the community; only the younger, more British, girls give them problems regarding authority, sexuality, and education. When Nikki begins to unravel community secrets about the death of her boss' daughter, she draws the attention of The Brothers. The concern about the women's classes burns into hate and fear. 

Interwoven between the erotic stories the widows tell and the mystery of what happened to her boss' daughter is Nikki's love story. She meets a man, at the temple of all unlikely places, and is swiftly falling for him. They are incredibly happy together and Nikki is coming to terms with loving someone of whom her family would actually approve. However, Jason starts to act sketchy, taking quiet, argumentative phone calls before leaving briskly. This happens several times before he leaves and doesn't return for weeks. When he does, Nikki must decide if she wants to listen to what he has to say or if his bailing is something she can't forgive. 

The story ends in a way that was entirely unexpected though the author did sprinkle clues about it throughout the story. I was just too absorbed to try to put together a mystery ending. We reach a satisfying conclusion for every thread of the story and I finished the book feeling entirely pleased. 

While being funny and enticing and entirely engaging, this book was also a social critique about the way women are treated in the Punjabi community and how immigrants are treated in the United Kingdom. The book mostly takes place in the largely Indian community of Southall, London and most of it's characters are Punjabi Indians and immigrants (or from a family of immigrants). I learned a lot about their culture through this book. Tradition and community are extremely important to the characters we meet. Arranged marriages are still fairly common, though much different than our stereotypical idea of what that means. Women are expected to serve in their in-laws homes after marriage, some are pressured to give up their jobs entirely. Men and women still wear traditional dress and speak Punjabi in their homes. Because of these things, they have been made to feel unwelcome or uncomfortable in London as a whole. Their community is tight knit and the gossip can be insidious. Your standing in the community is a very important aspect of an individual's social status. By the end of the book, the author makes it clear that while they support the idea of community and cultural tradition, they do not support the oppressive forces that are often inextricably tied to religion. Especially those traditional aspects of religion that force women to serve men and put their own needs, desires, and passions at the back of the line in support of their husband, father, brother, or son. 

I highly recommend this book for anyone who loved A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, or Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James.

In Red Clocks, Zumas paints the picture of a not-so-unimaginable future in which the U.S. has banned abortions. After the election of an ultra-conservative president, women of the United States find themselves in dire straits. Abortion is now punishable with prison time, as well as in vitro fertilization and adoption by any "nontraditional" couples or individuals--meaning LGBTQIA+, single person, and non-Christian families. The story follows several different women as the author explores how this new legislation has impacted their lives:
--a young girl just learning to navigate her sexuality
--the single teacher at her school who desperately wants a baby but can't conceive or adop
--the local healer, a woman considered a witch for her herb knowledge and pleasure in her own company
--the harried stay-at-home mom unhappy in her marriage and wishing she'd continued her law career instead

This novel is an exploration of harmful legislation and how the people impacted by it must navigate their lives in new and uncomfortable ways. It's also a warning that the freedoms are cherish can be eroded at slowly until, with a single election,  they no longer exist. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and absolutely could not stop listening to it. The audiobook was extremely well done and I enjoyed the reader's voice and reading pattern. Read if you loved The Handmaid's Tale or The Power. 

You may purchase copies of this book at the bookstore or you can click the links below to order them from us online in different formats.

 Digital Audiobook  (which is how I read the book)
Paperback (pre-order for 10/2/18 release)
Hardcover (large print)
Hardcover
eBook
Audio CD

As always, keep reading!
​-Mary

Let me be clear: I love short story collections. When done well, short stories can hold great literary (and personal) value to me. Most collections have a few stories that aren't on par with the rest and one or two stellar stories. Difficult Women is not like this. Each story feels real, often magical, but always tangible. Some are allegories, some are simply insightful, while others are brimming with emotion--and they are all excellent. 

It is ovbious that Gay is using the female experience as her focuse of this collection--something that she has successfully drawn upon in the past with her essay collection, Bad Feminist. Her stories explore self-realization, sexuality, hope, relationships in romantic and familial states, birth, and death. They're full of both mundane moments and magical ones. Her characters are unflinchingly real. They are flawed, have desires, shames, secrets, and one's father-in-law destroyed the sun and plunged the earth into a darkness that matched his heart. One woman is even perpetually followed by a rain cloud.

In short, they're difficult women. Their emotions and actions don't operate within societal standards. In Hollywood, we see these women as witches, whores, and failed mothers. We see them as drug addicts, mistresses, and screeching soccer moms. Gay turns that trope on its head and explores women, in all their unique beauty and dysfunctionality, as individual persons worthy of exposition. And she executes this skillfully. Her words flow off the page while each story leaves you craving for the next one. 

My favorites were: "I Am A Knife", "The Sacrifice of Darkness", "Baby Arm", and "Open Marriage". 

Read if you loved: Bad Feminist & An Untamed State (both by Gay), A Guide to Being Born by Ramona Ausubel, and The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. 

I give this book 5 out of 5 stars!
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