The Diamond in the Window

We Recommend: Sci-Fi for a 6-Year-Old, in Which I Fail

It's We Recommend, where (when?) you request book recommendations, and we attempt to reach our hands into the rushing river of children's literature and yank out the right book for you (or yours). Want a recommendation? Just email us at thediamondinthewindow (at) gmail (dot) com, with the reader's likes, dislikes, loves, interests, reading habits, and anything else you think might be helpful, and we'll do our best. And always, always look in the comments on these: it's where the very best suggestions are. - See more at: http://www.thediamondinthewindow.com/the-diamond-in-the-window/we-recommend/#sthash.D3KryaZM.dpuf

 

It's We Recommend, where (when?) you request book recommendations, and we attempt to reach our hands into the rushing river of children's literature and yank out the right book for you (or yours). Want a recommendation? Just email us at thediamondinthewindow (at) gmail (dot) com, with the reader's likes, dislikes, loves, interests, reading habits, and anything else you think might be helpful, and we'll do our best. And always, always look in the comments on these: it's where the very best suggestions are.

Now let's not think about this next one as difficult. Let's think about it as challenging

My son is turning six in one week. We are a homeschool family and so he has absorbed a LOT of chapter books through his older sister (nine years old, horse and fantasy lover). He likes fantasy well enough, but I think the genre that is truly going to set him on fire is science fiction, because he is a natural-born inventor, he loves anything scientific, and he's crazy about anything mechanical. He "invents" a different kind of robot every single day. The problem is that I didn't get into science fiction until high school, so my knowledge of the genre starts with A Wrinkle in Time and Ender's Game. The only book we've read lately that falls into the sci-fi category is Tony DeTerlizzi's A Search for Wondla, which should have been perfect for us, but which missed the mark for reasons I cannot identify. Is there anything at this age that will gratify a future tech-head who doesn't yet have much real-world
grounding in science?

Wow, so here is my theory: Perhaps what the young gentleman is looking for is not science fiction so much as, well, science? You know, like, good old, nonfiction, science stuff?

I say this because many young excellent gentlemen (and women!) of my acquaintance lately have been seeming like they're yearning for, well, information, for want of a better word. And I think that with a lot of kids, and (not to be sexist, but probably sexist anyway) a lot of boys especially, the desire for narrative is less strong for a while.

So. I can prattle on about various theories all I want, but theories alone don't give this person anything to read, do they? They do not. In my mind there is some perfect kid's version of Thomas Edison's life, except it'a not a biography exactly, more like a history of each invention, and then also it would have big pictures of the inventions, and....

OK. Focus. I can focus, I swear I can. What's a science-based, engrossing book that has robots in it? Or at least, science?

And I think it's time that I admit failure: I don't know a book. So I looked and looked till I found something that looked right. Is it right, though? I do not know.

I read a few pages, it looks good, but...I don't know. I mean, I think 6 years old is too little for I, Robot, right? But are their other sci-fi books for little kids? Am I barking up the wrong tree?

Help me, readers! I bet you guys know what he should read. Put it in the comments!

We Recommend: Big-Time Reading 11-Year-Old Boy

It's We Recommend! So here's how it works: a person writes in with a request for a book for someone, and we, who used to be believe we had superpowers in this area but have since been humbled, try to find the perfect choice. Need a recommendation? Tell us the age of the reader, likes and dislikes, and anything else you think we might need to know. You can write to us at thediamondinthewindow (at) gmail (dot) com. Here's the key: the best suggestions are in the comments.

We're back! And better than ev—...well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Here we go: it's not such an easy one.

Hi, my son is 11 years old, and he reads at a 12th grade level. As with many other parents, I am struggling to find books that he enjoys that have appropriate content for an 11 year old.

He has read and enjoyed the Theodore Boone series, the Hunger Game series, and Jimmy Buffet's Swine Not.

He loves basketball, lacrosse, golf, and most sports in general. He is not a huge fan of science fiction. He does enjoy military books to a certain extent. He likes suspense and is in general a fan of an interesting story. He would probably read more biographies or historical fiction, I just don't really know what to recommend.

Ah, boys. I feel I understand boys better through this blog and its requests than I do any other way. Which is maybe a little pathetic? I don't know: I am one of three sisters, no brothers. I have two daughters. I mean, I am married to a man, but that does not seem to give me instant access to a broad and deep understanding to the gender as a whole. However, here, I find out that a lot of boys like history. Military fiction. Stuff like that. Who knew?

I must say, that's the direction I would go with this young man. And maybe something a bit old fashioned. I mean, "appropriate for an 11 year old" is subjective. Lots of parents would shy away from The Hunger Games for instance, but he seems to have liked it. I am guessing though that he's not quite ready for romance? Just a guess.

First, I would point this person to this blog, which covers books about WWII in specific extensively and well. Then, for good measure, I would tell him to read this.

I cribbed the idea from the comments on another We Recommend, and it struck me that she was right: it's a blend of fantasy and action and characters that matter, and it's just excellent.

But I know you guys will have other, better ideas. Put them in the comments, please! Especially if you know any sports books, a category in which I am sadly lacking.

What Did You Buy at the Library Book Sale?

You know we love a library book sale. It's where you find the random crazy book you never knew you wanted, while supporting your local library, and in my case, unfortunately stand too close to someone who definitely smelled like poop. (Oh god, I don't think I will get poop out of my vocabulary now that I have children. It's just...there. Alas.)

Anyway, I got this:

I think it will be quick and thrilling. And also this:

And maybe something else that I have forgotten because of my loose, lax brain.

But here's the thing that I found most interesting. Diana, let free among the stacks, purchased this:

Well. That was refreshing. I did not expect this at all.

How do political mindsets get formed? Certainly a person listens to her parents. And of course I am a feminist. But Diana is (I would say) far more politically conscious and aware than I am, and than I was. And she's more...radical. Which is a little bit exciting and a little bit terrifying.

Still, I was surprised. She had money and was in a library, and there was a whole bin of books with ancient celtic fonts that basically screamed. "We're about magic!" Or maybe, "We're about magyck!"

And, as I always do, I wonder what this is an omen of.

So far, she says, "It's pretty dated."

!

"It talks about George Bush a lot, which just doesn't feel relevant, but it's pretty good."

I feel there is some personality test I can market in which I give you $5 and send you into a library booksale, and then I see what you come out with. The only problem: I don't know yet exactly how to read the results. I am working on it. If you tell me what this all means, I will share my millions with you.

What I Have Read

I am biased on this one, everyone. In every possible way: I know the author. I like the author and want her to like me. If I have any critical distance, it is far, far away. But!

I really loved this book, and I will tell you so in a completely spoiler-filled way (sorry, discretion does not appear to be my great strength these days).

It is creepy, but not terrifying.

It is told in the voice of a sweet, messed up, can't hand in neat homework or excel at basketball or comb his hair 11-year-old boy.

It is funny—really funny.

It talks about love—not romantic love, but love between a boy and his father, or a father and his son, or a boy and his grandfather, or (you get the drift, multiple permutations).

It made me think about stuff.

It is—and I don't really know how to say this in way that doesn't sound entirely dorky—pure of heart.

I read it fast—really fast. It's the first book in a long while that I kept thinking about and wanting to get back to. It came into my head while I was working, shopping, dealing with life, appearing in my imagination like a chocolate bar I was promising myself.

It acknowledges the sweet, tender heart at the center of many (most?) 11-year-old boys.

There you go, happy August!

Who Do You Like?

I was actually going to ask, "Who Do You Have a Crush on?" but the more common formulation seems to be, "Who do you like?" (RIP, poor whom), and they don't even bother with "You know, like like."

Who are "they" you ask? Why, they are middle schoolers. You may remember them from your youth as "kids in junior high" or simply, "some kids." And they care who you like, and they care about the whole phenomenon of liking, and who can blame them? Their bodies are going crazy, they are almost teenagers but still secretly play at home, and they have to confront things like Taylor Swift and somehow make sense of them.

However. If your child is (or if, in fact, you are) being subjected to these questions day in and day out, and you just want a break, a moment where that isn't what everyone is thinking and talking about every single second, I have a solution. Or rather, I have three. And, of course, they are all books. And they are random. First, for the person who still wants a realistic fiction book, but wants to think about something other than romantic relations, there is this:

She goes to middle school. Her friends...change. She survives.

Then, for those who are zany, and also ambitious readers, there is this:

It is nuts, in the best possible way.

For those who are, perhaps, gentler, and willing to deal with romance as long as it's inter-species, this is a comforting friend to return to. And blissfully less sassy than the movie.

Maybe no one is asking you who you like. Or maybe you do like someone, and want to talk about it. If so, carry on, by all means.

But if you just want a moment of being away from that ubiquitous question, or to be in a time and space where no one is asking you, a moment with one of these books will provide respite.

We Recommend: Read-Aloud for 13-Year-Old, with Not So Much Mushy, Kissy Stuff

 It's We Recommend, in which we use our superpowers to find readers the perfect book. Got a kid who needs a recommendation? Write us at thediamondinthewindow (at) gmail (dot) com with the age, reading tastes, favorite books, and any other relevant (or irrelevant) information, and we'll give it a shot. And really? All the good suggestions are in the comments.

 This one will break your heart. Though maybe that's true only if you're the parent of a teenager? See here:

I have a 13 year old boy to whom I read every night, or we listen to books on tape. He likes John Flannagan's Ranger's Apprentice, Jonathan Stroud's Bartimeus Trilogy, Scott Westerfeld's steampunk Goliath, Behemoth and Leviathan, Percy Jackson etc. (which I barely survived).

We're looking for new books or series in which boys do things! Action, technology and survival skills get bonus points. So does well-written. The less mushy kissy stuff the better.

The idea that a 13-year-old boy is still letting his parent read to him fills me with a bittersweet envy and joy. I am so very happy for them, and so OF COURSE I want to find them books that will feed the beast, with lots of boys doing lots of things (except for—you know. Because who wants to hear about that with a parent?).

I fear, though, that I am out of my depth here. The first thing that occurred to me is something they have probably already read:

 

And somehow, once I thought of it, it was hard to think of anything else. It was like I had a finite amount of creative energy in my brain, and it yielded this, and then that was it. I have not weathered the time change very well is the truth. If I think harder, I guess maybe The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel? But...I don't know. This is the one stuck in my head, so this is the one I am going with.

But YOU, kind readers, you are not hampered with my narrow mind. So give: what books can we recommend so that they can still read aloud (or listen together!) to books, even as the boy goes further down the road to teenager-hood? Put ideas in the comments, please!

The Facts of Life

OK, we're going to try to keep this one clean. I mean, as clean as possible while still saying what I mean.

See, I was fine with the whole "My body is changing" type of book. We have our favorite one, and really—everything was fine.

Except everything was not exactly everything, if you know what I mean.

It's all very well to talk about ovaries. And armpit hair. Very well indeed! But it doesn't begin to talk about, you know, other stuff. Stuff like: First base and erections and sexual pressure. Oh my!

Of course, these are things you should talk about with your child. Preferably while you're in a rowboat or something, with fishing rods. And then your kid, who is maybe 14, says, "I'm so confused about boys!" (or girls or whatever) and you smile wisely, even ruefully, and say, "Gee, I was confused too when I was your age." And then you say a whole bunch of wise stuff.

Trust me, this scenario is far, far better than trying to find a parking space when it is 93 degrees out and someone is honking really loudly at you and your eleven-year-old says "My friend's sister's friend said she went to third base with a boy and what does that mean anyway?" while you have a heart attack.

I am of the opinion that even if you do manage to pull it together to explain the fine points of the bases, it's always helpful to have a book as well. For one thing, people don't roll their eyes at a book (or if they do, the book doesn't mind). Also, the book is there to be perused over time, instead of someone saying to it, "Oh stop, stop, that's so gross."

That's not to say that I have the perfect book. These are the books we got from the library:

Which is, ah, a trifle hetero-normative, if you will, on the cover there.

And then this:

They are—fine? I must say, I kind of can't stand "girl power" as a phrase, especially when it's accompanied by an exclamation point. It seems so unbearably false, you know? I find it alienating. I mean, I get that it's supposed to be something to aspire to, but it's a bit peppy for my taste.

But they did, these books, talk about, you know, stuff. Which was helpful. 

The question is, are there better options? Should I haul out an old Our Bodies, Ourselves (which I, personally, read compulsively when I was a teenager)? Is there something, somewhere, that's, I don't know, better? That will make the world an easier, less terrifying place for my children to exist?

That would be nice, wouldn't it?

The Max and Ruby Dynamic—Fact...or Fiction!?!?!?

OK, so I need some information. Because the informatin I have? It is limited. I am lucky enough to be mother to the two most excellent girls, and we sit around the house being female. My husband, their dad, manfully (sorry) watches basketball, and thinks barrettes are pronounced "beret" like the French hat, but this guy-ness never really extends beyond him, if you know what I mean. There are no brothers, though we are blessed in nephews and boy cousins. But it's not enough, really, for me to know: the TRUTH about boys.

So here is my question: from the outside, it looks like the Max and Ruby stories are an incredibly accurate depicition of the dynamic between oh so many older sister/younger brother combos. That is: perfect (and bossy) big sister who knows how to do everything right, has to try to contain chaos/force field/loose cannon energy of essentially uncontainable little brother.

This is, in fact, what we see in lots and lots and lots of big sister-little brother situations. Is it that the girls just mature faster, and that coupled with being older makes them preternaturally together, and so, like goddesses, they stride the earth? Or is it that little boys just are tiny little spirits of chaos, overturning order and neatness whenever and whereever they can? Or are little boys getting a bum rap, just some more free-floating sexism to gum up the works?

I must say that we always really loved these books. Bunny Money was huge, with all the excellent cut-out money in the back. Not to mention the bluebird earrings that played "Oh What a Beautiful Morning!"

But the reality, people: what's your feeling?

Girls Read Guys Read?

There was a mass purge of bizarre branded items, review copies and other freebies where I work a few weeks ago, and I spent most of my time at the books table, where, among other things, I got this:

I just thought: what self-respecting children's book blogger would pass this up? Not that I'm exactly a self-respecting children's book blogger, but I try to be. It's a lot of memoir-type writing by male authors.

It came home with me and went to live on the coffee table, which is essentially our holding pen, where things wait to be blessed or damned. Did I read it? Of course I didn't read it. I've been too busy feeling sorry for myself for an array of ordinary-life trials and browsing aimlessly in the internet to actually read anything. Who did read it? Diana.

What a strange cognitive dissonance it is to see a girl reading a book that cries out on its cover: Guys Read.

She came at it fairly pissed off: "What do you mean guys read? Are you saying I can't read this?" She soon transitioned to irritation and suspicion: "This isn't a novel at all. It's not even fiction? WHY would you have Garth Nix, who is so awesome at writing fantasy, write something that's not even fiction?" Which gave way to absorption. She just read it. And read it. And then she read it some more. It migrated up to her room, where it lives happily shuttling between her desk and her dresser, a much-sampled, confusing new genre.

She did want to know why there would be a book just for guys, the very concept rubbing her the wrong way, and gnawing at her easily triggered injustice reflex. I talked a little bit, and probably none too coherently, about the covers that a lot of YA and middle-grade books have, and how they might be embarrassing for a guy to carry around, and the general stereotypes of who likes to read etc. She took it under consideration.

She feels that books should have no gender. I feel like that's sort of akin to saying there should be no racism. Of course there shouldn't be, but given that it's there, it's better to acknowledge it and try to eradicate it? Right? Maybe?

But really, what I thought would end up being about gender, instead ended up being about a kid reading authors she loves, but reading them in another genre—reading their memories, their actual voices. It's been strangely earth-shaking for her, at least that's how it looks from the outside. When you read a novel by Garth Nix, he's there on the cover, but other than that you're inside his mind. He vanishes from sight, because you're looking through his eyes. When you read his nonfiction story of his youth, he's there in front of you, inescapable, a person. It's like the end of the Wizard of Oz when they lift the curtain.

Did you guys ever read memoir type stuff when you were kids? What do you think?

We Recommend: Facts + Captain Underpants = True Love

It's We Recommend, in which we use our superpowers to find readers the perfect book. Got a kid who needs a recommendation? Write us at thediamondinthewindow (at) gmail (dot) com with the age, reading tastes, favorite books, and any other relevant (or irrelevant) information, and we'll give it a shot. And really? All the good suggestions are in the comments.

All the brave young men! Not that this particular piece has to be about boys, really. As hard as I find it to believe, some kids somehow find themselves (or we find them) in the "not interested in reading camp." A very nice 10-year-old girl was at my house the other day, and while Chestnut and I were wrangling about how and when she would do her homework, overheard one of us say "And of course save the reading part for last as a reward."

She said, "Wait! You save the reading for last...for fun? I would rather do a thousand math sheets than do 40 minutes of reading." And bear in mind, this was reading a novel of your choice. I can't understand it or explain but I must acknowledge that this is somehow the case for many people.

Often, though, as with our question today, something happens that changes this person. And if and when it does, we would be wise to honor it properly.

My son (7 - about to be 8) was not interested in reading.  What books he brought home from the library were non-fiction - generally about animals.  He has always loved "fact" books.  We went to the library to try out some books and he fell in love with Captain Underpants.  He read every one in short order, then the 2 Super Diaper Baby books, then the Black Lagoon series - all of them in about 3 days.  I have been reading Wee Free Men (Terry Pratchett) to him, but those books are too old for him to read on his own and I am running out of ideas for him.  I just ordered a Stinky book (Megan McDonald) - hoping he will like it, but I would love some other recommendations. 

First of all: Captain Underpants, YES. Because: why not? What's tricky for me is that I don't know (exactly) what he liked most about the Captain. The silliness? The rudeness? The whole package? In any case, the question remains: what next?

I originally thought I should go with The Day My Butt Went Psycho, for obvious reasons. (Also, interesting to me at least, is that this was originally called The Day My Bum Went Psycho due to the author's being Australian, which because I am a stupid American I think sounds even odder and funnier.) However, it's not really a great book. I mean it's fine, but—I want to offer this young gentleman a great book.

So I went to one of the excellent resources out there for boys, Guys Read. Bear in mind: this is an excellent site for any kid. It offers a certain easiness that makes kids feel less like they are being scolded and more like they might just find something awesome to read. It is maybe not being as closely curated as one would wish (I spotted a few inaccurate titles) but it offers kids a chance to vote on how much they like a book by clicking buttons, and hey—when you're 7 that's kind of awesome.

And there I saw a book that is really and truly a great and silly book, that made me realize—duh!—why did he love Captain Underpants? Because it's funny! And so I would give him Sideways Stories from Wayside School:

Because it's great. And it's funny. 

I am, however, aware that I myself am not in possession of a 7 about to be 8-year-old son. So maybe others can chime in, and tell this kid what to read?