Google Alerts Round-up

News flash! Just a couple of quick round-up alerts to share:

Edi at Crazy Quilts includes Samurai Shortstop on her list of Essential Asian American books...

Miss Attitude at Reading in Color read Samurai Shortstop as one of her 2010 Historical Challenge books, and posted a really in-depth and thoughtful review of it on her blog...

And Samurai Shortstop gets a namecheck in a great Mother Jones article about a high school teacher who really knows how to reach even the most difficult kids.

Thanks, everybody!

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Early Fantasy Baseball reviews

Tis the season for me to start biting my fingernails: the first reviews for Fantasy Baseball are appearing!

First, Dave at the Just One More Page blog (and bookseller at The Blue Marble Bookstore in Ft. Thomas, Kentucky) reviewed an advance reader copy, and says Fantasy Baseball is "one not to miss."

Then I found out that Publishers Weekly reviewed Fantasy Baseball! Here's their review:

Continuing to use baseball as backdrop, Gratz (The Brooklyn Nine) moves from historical fiction to fantasy with a story that playfully mixes storybook characters with stadium action. When Alex finds himself in Ever After he's sure he's dreaming--case in point, he's recruited to play in a high-stakes tournament for a team captained by Dorothy Gale, she of the ruby red cleats. Dorothy's teammates include lesser-known Oz characters like Tik-Tok, Scraps, and Button Bright, who's in danger of fading away because nobody reads the sequel he appears in. They insist Alex is a "Lark," somebody's daydream, and not a book character at all, but they keep him because the kid can flat-out play. Eventually, Alex figures out whose daydream he is in a thread that adds poignancy and tension to a slightly unwieldy narrative, as the Oz team encounters Mother Goose, the critters from Redwall, L'Engle's Charles Wallace and Mrs. Which and Whatsit, among numerous literary cameos. The predictable ending is the only one possible, but Gratz frames it with an interesting question about what effect dreams can hope to have on the dreamer. Ages 8–12. (Mar.)

Thanks Dave, and thanks PW!

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The Brooklyn Nine in Horn Book

My friend Clay Carmichael reports that The Brooklyn Nine is featured in a Good Sports Books guide supplement in the January issue of Horn Book. Thanks, Clay, and thanks Horn Book!

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Map-making, Part II

Here's my map! The book is called "The League of Seven," and it takes place (pretty obviously, I guess) in an alternate American history...

Click on the image to see it larger.

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Map-making

Today I am making a map of the world from my new alternate reality fantasy novel. All good fantasy novels need maps in the front, don't they? I'll post it when it's finished.

Above: a map of The Land of Oz

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Manufactured by Gratz Industries

We knew there was a foundry on Long Island called Gratz Industries, but we didn't know they were famous for making Pilates equipment* until our friend Sarah Mlynowski snapped this pic with her camera phone. Awesome! We applaud industrious Gratzes of all ilks.

*And is it me, or do Pilates machines look like torture devices!?

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Is Ferris Bueller the Cat in the Hat?

Wendi and I watched Easy A last night, which was fun, and has lots of great 80s teen movie references, including quite a few Ferris Bueller refs. That prompted us to pull out Ferris Bueller's Day Off and watch it as a sort of teen-movie, multi-generational double-feature, and we had fun all over again. ("Ladies and gentlemen, we'd like to play a little tune for you. I dedicate it to a man who doesn't think he's seen anything good today. Cameron Frye, this one's for you...")

The odd thing about rewatching Ferris Bueller for perhaps the thousandth time (a conservative estimate) is that this time, I saw it as Cameron's story, not Ferris'. Ferris is the fun one. He's the one for whom everything always works out. But most of us aren't Ferris Bueller, no matter how much we want to be. We're more like Cameron Frye. We're nervous, we're scared, we're tentative about life. And it's Cameron who changes by the end of the movie, not Ferris. Cameron's the character who grows and changes. We love Ferris for not growing and changing, much as we love Peter Pan for the same reasons, but none of can ever really be Peter Pan, either.

In fact, as I watched the film, I couldn't help comparing Ferris to another character who shows up in some nervous and tentative characters' lives and mixes things up for one crazy day:

The Cat in the Hat, who promised two children they would have some "fun that is funny." I can't think of a better way to describe Ferris and his day off. Of course, when the Cat in the Hat leaves, everything is put back exactly the way it was when he arrived, and in Ferris Bueller's Day Off...well, if you've seen it, you know what isn't exactly the same as it was in the beginning of the movie. (I can't believe I'm even being careful about spoilers here. Seriously, if you haven't seen this movie, go out and rent it RIGHT NOW.)

So, is Ferris Bueller the Cat in the Hat? Discuss amongst yourselves...

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