On Monday, I finally got around to reading the article in the latest Horn Book magazine about Kindle and other electronic reading devices.  The article saddened me, since I am such a huge lover of actual books, and I worry that paper books will be gone the way of the dinosaur within my lifetime.

But then yesterday the 6th grade book group met to discuss City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau (a great discussion, and hopefully I’ll find time to summarize it in the next couple of days).  After our discussion, I handed out the next book we’ll be reading, Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy.  One of the kids in the group commented on the rough-cut edges of the paper in Skulduggery, and I mentioned that I love books that have those rough, imperfect page edges.  Then Sue piped up and said, “Whenever I get a new book to read, I like to feel it and open it up and smell it.  I just like the feel and smell of books.”  Several of the other kids in the group enthusiastically agreed, and began talking all at once about how much they love Books.

So I asked them how they feel about electronic reading devices.  None of the kids had ever seen or used one, but they all immediately and completely dismissed the idea of an electronic reading device.  “How would I show my friends which book I’m reading now?  They couldn’t see the cover!”  “But I like to hold a book, and sit with it in my lap.”  “But I like the smell of books!!”  “It just wouldn’t be the same.”

A very encouraging sign.  Hopefully their generation will love books as much as I do, and hopefully we’ll always have books.

I posted several entries in July about the letters that the 5th grade book group members and I wrote to Angie Sage, author of Magyk and its sequels.  I told the girls in the book group to not get their hopes set on an answer from Ms. Sage, since she’s a bestselling author and lives in England, and because the letters had to be mailed to Ms. Sage c/o her publisher, since I couldn’t locate an address (either real mail or email) for her anywhere.

But Angie Sage rocks, let me tell you.  Not only is she a great author, she’s also a kind and intelligent person who took the time to write three separate letters (one to me, one to G., and one to P.), each letter specifically addressing questions and comments made in the letters we sent to her.  For example, in her letter to Ms. Sage, P. asked how Ms. Sage was doing, and added that she was probably busy writing.  Ms. Sage answered P.’s question, saying yes indeed she was busy, thank you for asking, and then launched into a long description of the part of her new book (the next in the Septimus Heap series) that she’s currently writing.  Wow.

So far only G. has come in to pick up her letter from Angie Sage, but she was completely and totally thrilled.  Thrilled.  The look on G.’s face as she read the letter – a combination of blissful happiness, awe, and hyper excitement – totally made my day, and I only wish that Angie Sage could have seen it, too.  Thanks, Angie Sage!!  You’re awesome!!

When I told Jean that the library’s fifth grade book group was going to be discussing Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, she mentioned that she vividly remembered the scene with the little boy bouncing a ball.  Since we couldn’t locate the scene in the book at that moment, I made sure to mark it as I read the book for book group.  There are actually two scenes that Jean might be remembering, so I thought I’d quote them below (both are quoted from the Farrar, Straus and Giroux reprint of the 1962 Crosswicks edition):

Below them the town was laid out in harsh angular patterns.  The houses in the outskirts were all exactly alike, small square boxes painted gray.  Each had a small, rectangular plot of lawn in front, with a straight line of dull-looking flowers edging the path to the door.  Meg had a feeling that if she could count the flowers there would be exactly the same number for each house.  In front of all the houses children were playing.  Some were skipping rope, some were bouncing balls.  Meg felt vaguely that something was wrong with their play.  It seemed exactly like children playing around any housing development at home, and yet there was something different about it.  She looked at Calvin, and saw that he, too, was puzzled.

“Look!” Charles Wallace said suddenly.  “They’re skipping and bouncing in rhythm!  Everyone’s doing it at exactly the same moment.”

This was so.  As the skipping rope hit the pavement, so did the ball.  As the rope curved over the head of the jumping child, the child with the ball caught the ball.  Down came the ropes.  Down came the balls.  Over and over again.  Up.  Down.  All in rhythm.  All identical.  Like the houses.  Like the paths.  Like the flowers.  (pp. 98- 99)

 Second quote, from when Charles Wallace has fallen under the control of IT:

“Now see this,” he [Charles Wallace] said.  He raised his hand and suddenly they could see through one of the walls into a small room.  In the room a little boy was bouncing a ball.  He was bouncing it in rhythm, and the walls of his little cell seemed to pulse with the rhythm of the ball.  And each time the ball bounced he screamed as though he were in pain. 

“That’s the little boy we saw this afternoon,” Calvin said sharply, “the little boy who wasn’t bouncing the ball like the others.”

Charles Wallace giggled again.  “Yes.  Every once in a while there’s a little trouble with cooperation, but it’s easily taken care of.  After today he’ll never desire to deviate again.”  (pp. 136 – 137)

A Wrinkle in Time is one of my all-time favorite books, but I hadn’t read it for a few years and had forgotten just how masterful it is.  And I was very gratified to find out that every child in the fifth grade book group loved it as much as I do; some have even read it multiple times.  We had a great conversation about the book, focusing primarily on the dark thing and what the dark thing means and does.  It was great to have such an in-depth discussion with this group of kids, where we zeroed in on one aspect of the book and studied it in detail. 

And, in rereading the book, I realized that a book I recently discussed on this blog, The Sky Inside, owes much to L’Engle’s novel (for instance, the quote above that describes the sameness of the houses and the children is very much reproduced in the concentric suburb of The Sky Inside), though the newer book doesn’t really even begin to compare with L’Engle’s masterpiece.

Yesterday’s 5th Grade Book Group book was Brian Jacques’ Castaways of the Flying Dutchman, a book that had been recommended by one of the group members.  Though I started out not liking the book much, by the end I was hooked by its vivid writing, great characters, and unique premise.  Divided into three unequal sections, the story begins with a young mute boy who winds up on the ill-fated ship The Flying Dutchman as he escapes from his cruel stepbrothers.  This first section of the book sets the stage for the boy’s future: when an angel condemns the captain and crew of the ship to wander the world for all eternity, that same angel spares the boy and his dog, granting them eternal life and youth in exchange for their helping those in the world who are in need.  Dog and boy are also granted the ability to speak and communicate with each other. 

The second small section of the novel covers the time that Neb (the boy, who later calls himself Ben) and Den (the dog, who later calls himself Ned) live with a poor shepherd in South America.  Neb and Den bring joy and love to Luis’s life, and though he dies a few short years after they arrive at his cottage, the angel tells them that they gave Luis the happiest years of his life.  Mission accomplished, time to move on.

The largest section of the book is the third, which fastforwards a couple of hundred years to an English village that has been threatened with destruction by an unscrupulous man who wishes to raze all of the homes and open a limestone factory.  Now called Ben, the boy and the dog, now called Ned wander on to the scene when they both feel called to the place (surely guided by the angel).  In my opinion, this chunk of the story is by far the best, as Ben and Ned work with the villagers to defeat the evil developer and to prove that the villagers own their properties.  Following clues in an ancient scavenger hunt, they work as a team to solve the mystery of where the deed to the village has been hidden, and of course Ben and Ned make many wonderful friends in the process.

There is a happy ending, but also a sad ending: the developer is thwarted and defeated, but Ben and Ned must move on just as the happiness begins, driven on to their next destination by the angel’s ringing of a bell, unable to bid goodbye to their new friends or to even pick up Ben’s rucksack before leaving.  Jacques has written two sequels to this adventure, which I’m anxious to read (and ashamed to admit were missing from our library’s collection).

As always, the real question here is: what did the book group think of the book?  Though more than half of the book group members hadn’t come close to finishing the book, we were still able to have a terrific conversation about it.  Surprising.  The kids who had read the whole book were gushingly enthusiastic about it, and some of those who hadn’t finished it were inspired to renew their copies and take them home once again.  (I suspect that those kids who didn’t read the entire book simply ran out of time, because the writing is denser than any of our recent books.)  In discussing the book, we teased out the reason that Jacques put Ben and Ned on The Flying Dutchman, made connections to movies and books (like Pirates of the Caribbean and Tuck Everlasting), and shared the bits of the story that we liked best.  There were no earth-shattering revelations in our book discussion, but it was lively and fun, and the kids proved once again that they have matured and grown into an excellent and intelligent book group. 

And if you haven’t read the book, I highly recommend it.  It’s not often that I do that!