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Dairy Queen -and- The Off Season, by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

I am so surprised at how much I loved these books!  Why?  First of all, they didn’t strike me as books with Big Thinking involved, and I thought they’d be a little TOO fluffy.  Trust me, I’ll take a dose of fluff any day, but it’s hard enough to read a book with my 1yo running around – I don’t want to feel like I’m wasting my time on top of it.  Also, knowing that the book was written as a first-person teen narrative, I wondered what I would get in terms of language and sexual content.  Especially because many authors seem to think the Authentic Teen Experience *must* include sex and pervasive language.   Murdock doesn’t shy away from all relevant adolescent issues in these books – there’s teenage drinking, some fooling around, and a character who comes out as a lesbian – but I’m grateful she didn’t let them overwhelm the thoroughly engaging voice of her main character – the tall, slightly awkward, small town, uber athletic, dairy farming DJ Schwenk.

Catherine Gilbert Murdock has created an endearing character in DJ.  She is complex, honest, confused, and frustrated as she tries to navigate her way through social, farm, and family politics in the small town of Big Bend, Wisconcin.  I found DJ’s voice believable, and I really, truly cared about her character.  She determines early on in Dairy Queen that she does not want to “be a cow.”  No reference here to her size (though she does lament just how much bigger she is than other girls her age – it seems dairy farming and athletics are in her genes, and jeans).  By “cow,” she means someone who just shuffles around like cattle, moving from one meaningless task to another in life.  She’s always done just what she is told, and she wants to break out of that mold.  Break out of the mold of her uncommunicative family and the small town mentality all around her.

DJ’s efforts lead her to pursuing something totally outside the box – playing for the high school football team.  In fact, there is a lot of football in Dairy Queen, and its sequel, The Off Season, but I love how Murdock manages to keep it almost restrained – football by no means takes over the scope or landscape of these books.  They are still, at their core, about a girl trying to find her place, about the complexities of family relationships, and about how we choose to live and what we choose to live for.

Though it is DJ who narrates the story, Murdock makes sure that all characters are fleshed out and get their due.  I really appreciated the full cast of characters – from DJ’s silent brother to her newfound love interest (who just happens to be the quarterback for the rival high school’s football team!).  I also love how Murdock doesn’t follow the temptation to wrap everything up in a nice, neat bow when all is said and done.  Some things still go unsaid, undone, and you are left at the end of The Off Season wondering how the Schwenk Family will ultimately make out.

A quick note about The Off Season – as far as sequels go, I think Murdock did an impressive job with character development.  If I liked DJ before, I loved her after the second book.  Murdock also develops deeper themes and greater challenges for her characters, leaving me absolutely positive that the term “TOO fluffy” definitely does NOT apply.

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, by Kim Edwards

I have made it a goal with most of my reviews to keep from rehashing the plot of the books I read.  It’s easy enough to get a summary from a hundred different sources online – what makes THIS blog MY blog are the opinions I share, and the perspective I provide.  Having said that, I think it’s important this time around to tell you a little about this book.  You see, it’s just not going to be for everyone.  It’s heavy, sad, kind of a downer of a topic.

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter takes place during a snowstorm in 1964.  An orthopedic doctor and his wife are surprised when she goes into labor three weeks early.  Because of the snow, they cannot get to the hospital, but they can get as far as the doctor’s clinic, then wait for the arrival of an OB in his practice to deliver the baby.  The baby is coming quickly, though, and the OB has a car accident and can’t make it on time.  With the assistance of one of the clinic’s nurses, the husband/doctor must deliver the baby himself.  Only…it’s not just one baby.  After bringing a beautiful, healthy boy into the world, the husband realizes his wife is actually pregnant with twins.  He stays to deliver the second child – a girl, with Down’s syndrome.  Fearing a terrible prognosis for the life she will lead, the husband gives the baby to the nurse to take away.  His initial instructions are for the nurse to take the baby to an institution outside of town.  Though he plans to tell his wife the truth, when she comes back to clarity after the births, he tells her the baby girl has died.  When the wife asks to see the baby, he says she is already gone, to the cemetery.

The nurse follows the doctor’s instructions, and takes the baby to the group home.  Seeing the terrible conditions there, she cannot bring herself to leave the child.  Instead, she moves to a different city and raises the girl as her own daughter.

The book follows the story of these two worlds – the grieving parents and their son, the nurse and her adopted daughter – as they orbit around the decisions made and lies told on this one night in 1964.  It’s true that there is a lot of sadness in this book, but strangely, there’s a lot of honesty, too.  Edwards makes a close examination into how it is to love others, or try to, despite the things we keep from each other and the walls we build to keep ourselves protected.  I could never relate to the specific situation in this story, but I could relate to a lot of the intricacies of family relationships – as a child, as a parent, as a spouse.  I also found it interesting how Edwards explored why each of the characters did what they did – are our motivations always so clear?  Are they always as innocent as we want to believe they are?

There is so much meat to this book; I am eager to discuss it at my book club’s meeting in October.  As I said, though, this book may certainly not be for everyone.  It is thought-provoking and well-written, but a pretty heavy piece of work.

The Tale of Despereaux, by Kate DiCamillo

I am such a sucker for book design.  I’ve always wanted to read this book, simply because of how it’s packaged – the title font, the cover illustration, the French-inspired title, and the choppy, uneven cut of the paper edges.  The little Newberry Medal seal doesn’t hurt it’s curb appeal, either.  Am I the only one who sometimes includes the physical qualities of a book with the experience of reading the story?

A few weeks ago I saw a preview for the movie version of DiCamillo’s The Tale of Despereaux, and not knowing a bit about the storyline, thought the movie looked kinda cute.  Beautiful colors and wonderful lines in the animation, a cute little mouse of a hero, and I do love Matthew Broderick.  Even if it did look faintly like “Ratatouille,” I felt excited about the movie and thought I’d finally read the book.

The immediate problem:  I am not sure a filmmaker on earth could have captured the magic of this book.  It is almost indescribable to me, the way this book made me feel.  Then again, I felt the same way about reading Charlotte’s Web, and I do think the 2006 film version did it a lovely bit of justice.  So maybe there’s no excuse for why filmmakers for Despereaux felt they needed to throw in a big mean cat (not in the book), mouse school (not there either), and a field of vicious mousetraps (nope, nope, nope).  The book is about being brave, yes, but not being brave because of danger.  It’s about being brave enough to be who you were born to be.

Despereaux is born different from all the other mice – bigger ears, smaller body.  And born with his EYES OPEN (which no mouse, apparently, ever is).  He is drawn to light, he feels music in his body like the sound of honey (”sound,” he says, not “smell”).  He loves books not for the glue or paper to chew on, but for the tales they weave and truths they create.  And he doesn’t fear humans, but falls in love with them, well – with one in particular.  He is brave not because he is being pursued by the castle cat, but because he himself pursues something transcendent in his life – light and love.  Not what anyone expects of a mouse!

This is such a gorgeous, lush, lovely book.  It made me chuckle, frown, and cry just a little.  DiCamillo’s storytelling is like silk – luxurious and soft, and sturdy and sure.  I love the narrator, how he/she directly addresses the “reader.”  I love how in such a short span of time and space, these characters are made complicated and complex.  Everything is not perfect, noone is without their faults.  How did DiCamillo create a world so divine and still so infinitely human?  She’s amazing.

My throat tightened (as it does now) upon reading the “Coda” to Despereaux’s tale:

Do you remember when Despereaux was in the dungeon, cupped in Gregory the jailer’s hand, whispering a story in the old man’s ear?

I would like it very much if you thought of me as a mouse telling you a story, this story, with the whole of my heart, whispering it in your ear in order to save myself from the darkness, and to save you from the darkness, too.

“Stories are light,” Gregory the jailer told Despereaux.

Reader, I hope you have found some light here.

Oh, yes, I found light.  For me, it was as bright as the sun.

Related Link:  DiCamillo’s narrator asks the dear reader at one point to look up the word “perfidy.”  Unfortunately, the word is very relevant to Despereaux’s experiences with his family.  To give you a head start on the book, you can find the definition HERE.

Into the Wild, by Sarah Beth Durst

One nice thing about having a small, underused library system where we now live:  popular books are either right on the shelves, or have a very short wait time.  I have seen this book reviewed on many blogs lately, so the cover was fresh on my mind when I spotted it at our weekly trip to the library last week.  (A quick word about the cover = ick.  Sorry, just my personal opinion, but it’s really not my favorite.  Considering how fun and imaginative the book itself is, I feel the cover could have done it a little more justice.)

Into the Wild is about Julie Marchen, a seemingly ordinary girl, until you consider that her last name means “fairytale” in German, and , oh, her mother is Rapunzel.  Julie and her mother (”Zel”) live in a suburban Massachusetts town, trying to blend in, even as they have 7 dwarves over for dinner, serve clientel like Goldilocks (now “Goldie”) in Zel’s hair salon, and try to contain remnants of The Wild (the magical force that imprisons all fairytale creatures into their never-ending stories) under Julie’s bed.  Five hundred years ago, Rapunzel lead the battle to defeat The Wild, so the fairyland denizens could be free to decide their own fate, to live their own stories.  Something goes horribly wrong, though, and The Wild is freed from Julie’s room and grows to absorb the town and reclaim its former inhabitants.

I love Julie as the heroin of this story – she has a great mix of self-doubt, courage, and resourcefulness.  I enjoy the dynamics between mothers and daughters in the story, as we see Rapunzel with her once evil adoptive mother, and Julie try to get her own mother to listen to and understand her.  Durst made inventive use of familiar fairytale characters and gave them a modern-day spin.  Finally, I think there is a great message in this book, especially for younger readers:  a great story awaits you, if you’re brave enough to write it.

Related Link:  Mega young adult blogger Miss Erin has created a book trailer for Into the Wild.

The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy, by Jeanne Birdsall

Parts of this book reminded me of Little Women – the movie version, with Winona Ryder (I am embarrassed to admit I’ve never read Alcott’s book itself).  At any rate, here with the Penderwicks we have four diverse sisters – one motherly (Meg/Rosalind), one a writer with an adventurous spirit (Jo/Jane), one practical (Beth/Skye…I admit, this is the longest stretch in terms of character association), and one young and sweet (Amy/Batty). They make friends with a neighbor boy (”Laurie”/Jeffrey) and have their secret sisterly societies (The Pickwick Society/MOOPS).  Even the fathers (Mr. March/Mr. Penderwick) are both gentlemen, intelligent and wise.

In this summer tale there are plenty of adventures and opportunities for the characters to grow. There is a sweet, old-fashioned pace and feel to the story, but it’s not too syrupy to me.  If anything, I was disappointed that the story was so brief – the littlest bit of complexity introduced in each of the characters could have been explored so much more.  I was happy to see, though, that Birdsall has written a follow-up to this summer story, so perhaps there are many more Penderwick adventures in our future.

Related Link:  To read kidlit blogger Big A Little A’s 10 yr old daughter review this book, visit this site.