Aug 30 2022

Magical History Tour #10: The First Steps On The Moon by Fabrice Erre & Sylvain Savoia

I continue to be genuinely pleased and impressed by the consistently high quality of this children’s graphic novel series, that speaks just as meaningfully to any adult with an interest in popular (and sometimes not-so-popular) history as to any curious child.

The tenth installment of the Magical History Tour has Annie and Nico discussing spaceflight, with a focus on moon landings. It’s a very of-the-moment topic even despite the events discussed within the book’s pages having occurred over half a century ago: with the United States’ Artemis program currently in more or less full swing, interests are running high in space exploration once more. And while the recently delayed Artemis 1 was meant to be an uncrewed mission, our intrepid sibling narrators discuss the more interesting, at least to me, topic of all the crewed missions to have left earth for, orbited and landed on the moon.

The book begins with Nico on his trampoline, and Annie jokingly cautioning him not to launch himself to the moon. This leads to their discussion of the history of space travel, from the fanciful/prescient pop culture fantasies of the early 20th century to the actual rocket science developed by German engineers during World War II. The end of that conflict saw the United States and Russia scooping up German scientists as part of the nascent Cold War, with the space race beginning in earnest once the Soviets sent Sputnik I into orbit. After cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to orbit the earth, US President John F Kennedy vowed to send and safely return a man to and from the moon by 1970. Mission accomplished, as this book details, tho President Kennedy was no longer alive when that historic moment finally came.

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Aug 27 2022

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

A Desolation Called Peace was always going to be a tough sell for me, and there’s little chance I would have started reading it if it hadn’t been a Hugo finalist. I could see the virtues of its predecessor, A Memory Called Empire, but from the way that book ended I had the sense — the sinking feeling, really — that the next book would be “plucky ambassador and her girlfriend team up to save civilization.”

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

At the end of A Memory Called Empire, the mighty Teixcalaan Empire was gearing up for a major war against an unknown, non-human starfaring civilization. The beginning of A Desolation Called Peace finds one protagonist of the first book, Mahit Dzmare, back from the imperial capital and sulking in various small spaces on Lsel Station, the outpost of some thirty thousand people that is her home. Three Seagrass, another protagonist, has risen quickly in the imperial government, but it is larger than Lsel, and wheels turn slowly. She is a Third Secretary, which turns out to be just right to be the person to receive a message from the commander of the war fleet on a weekend when most of the ministry is away. She is low enough in the hierarchy to be on duty, high enough to decide that she has all the qualities the commander has requested, to assign herself the task, and to be on her way almost before the rest of the bureaucracy notices.

Three Seagrass’ route to the war takes her through Lsel Station, where she is determined to pick up Mahit — who is not quite her girlfriend yet but who is quite clearly going to be — and take her along. Mahit has meanwhile managed to get herself into considerable trouble with the leadership of Lsel, who are, after all, her bosses as she is the station’s ambassador. Three Seagrass arrives just in the nick of time, and at least two members of Lsel’s governing council make improbable decisions to let Mahit leave with the Teixcalaanli liaison. Maybe it turns out that they had subtle reasons for doing so, maybe it’s just me thinking the choice unlikely, but I saw those choices as the characters living in the author’s favor. Martine can’t tell the story she wants to while keeping these characters apart, and so they must be together.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/08/27/a-desolation-called-peace-by-arkady-martine/

Aug 25 2022

Aven Green Music Machine by Dusti Bowling

with charming illustrations throughout by Gina Perry.

I picked up this book at ALAAC and 100% did not notice that the titular heroine does not have arms, despite the many illustrations inside and out pertaining to it, till she actually mentions it herself in the course of the first-person narrative. To a large extent, that’s one of the primary charms of this book, that Aven’s lack of arms is just a matter of fact, and that while her adventures are complicated by not having them, that latter trait isn’t what defines her as a person.

In this third installment of the chapter book series, Aven is excited for her class’ upcoming Talent Day, as she’s decided that she’s going to become a Professional Musician. Trouble is, she’s not sure exactly what instrument she’ll play, having never actually played one before. She’s pretty sure she’s going to be amazing at it when she finally does tho! Alas she soon discovers, as most of us inevitably must, that learning to play an instrument is nowhere near as easy as she thought it would be.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/08/25/aven-green-music-machine-by-dusti-bowling/

Aug 23 2022

Around The World In 80 Birds by Mike Unwin & Ryuto Miyake

Genuinely unsure how I’ve become some sort of go-to reviewer for books about birds, but I 100% love it, especially when it brings gorgeous, informative books like these into my inbox!

Around The World In 80 Birds is a delightful travelogue that uses birds as its focus. Charting the world by discussing eighty of the most distinctive birds found regionally — or, in some cases, in extremely small, protected areas — Mike Unwin discusses the scientific backgrounds, colorful histories and current realities of these remarkable avian creatures. The prose is wonderfully conversational, perfect for the amateur birder or naturalist (such as myself!) and accessible for a wide range of ages.

I really enjoyed the expansive variety of birds chosen here, with each entry bringing up fascinating new information about its subject, even when said subject was something I thought I already knew quite a bit of popular information about. From the bald eagle of Northern America to the jungle fowl of Southeast Asia, Mr Unwin always has something interesting to share regarding birds I thought was already well familiar with. And the entries on birds that were very much unfamiliar to me were absolute cornucopias of information. I’d never heard of the oilbird or the purple-crested turaco before but my world is much the richer for having learned about them here.

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Aug 19 2022

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

A few chapters into Light From Uncommon Stars, after it was clear that the violin teacher had made a pact with a demon and was under tight deadline to collect one more soul or else the usual penalties would apply and also that the local landmark donut shop was run by space aliens pretending to be human and biding their time for a couple of centuries until a galactic conflagration had passed and they could safely return to civilization by turning the solar system into a tourist destination, I was worried, concerned that Aoki would try to shoehorn all that strange into some semi-plausible systemic worldbuilding. I needn’t have fretted. Aoki has faith in her art, faith in her readers. She doesn’t try to explain why an apparently normal earth of the early 21st century has demons and aliens, has had at least one of them for quite some time, with most people are none the wiser. She leans in to her weirdness, and I love it.

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

Another great thing about Light From Uncommon Stars is that all of the characters I can think of are having their own stories, with themselves at the center of those stories. The book isn’t about all of them equally — it would be unreadable cacophony if it were — but they are not there just to support things that the author and her chosen narrative want to happen to the protagonists. They are living their own tales, with themselves as the good people at the center, and they just happen to intersect for a while with the story that Aoki is telling. The character who creates greater problems through inappropriate violence absolutely thinks he is doing the right thing; the characters who fall victim to that violence are at worst heedless folk who mostly want to have fun, and who wasn’t like that at some point or another? The demon wouldn’t say that he’s good, exactly, more that he’s fulfilling his nature of taking souls off to eternal torment, and he’s good at that, he’s practically an artiste of the diabolical contract, and the six souls the violin teacher has delivered up were so very exquisite. The violin maker from a distinguished family who thinks her gender bars her from that legacy, the aunty who figures out why the donut business is declining, other aspiring violinists who are willing to do anything for fame and fortune. Each has their story, and Aoki tells part of it while leaving no doubt that it continues beyond the confines of this book.

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Aug 18 2022

Squirrel Girl: Universe by Tristan Palmgren

Y’all know I’m all in for any Marvel superheroine named Doreen (even if I don’t like squirrels. Shocking, I know, but my brother and I have stories.)

Animal-animosity regardless, the best part of the Squirrel Girl titles has always been, for me, how Doreen Green’s positive attitude ensures that she truly is unbeatable. This novel does an amazing job of illustrating that despite being entirely prose, and I loved it so much.

We open in New York City, home to Squirrel Girl as well as her superpowered friends (and college classmates) Chipmunk Hunk and Koi Boy, as strange things start happening to the city. Every supe is on high alert, but it’s SG and co (and their closest companions, including the adorable squirrel Tippy Toes, SG’s roommate Nancy and CH’s trigger-happy girlfriend Mary. Oh, and another superhero collegemate of theirs, Brain Drain) who figure out whodunnit and where first, and go to confront the bad guy. Trouble is, stopping him involves accidentally transporting themselves to an unknown alien planet.

After hitching a ride on a cosmic whale, they find themselves held captive aboard an abandoned spaceport turned holding facility, where their captors are working the prisoners for… poetry? Turns out that an impending war has increased the demand for heroic verse, and SG and friends are trapped in the middle. But you know SG! Despite being (rightfully) accused of being a meddlesome Earther, she decides that she needs to free the prisoners, stop the war and get her roommate home in time for the finals Nancy will not stop stressing about. All in a day’s work for the Unbeatable SG! Trouble is, will saving the universe mean sacrificing far more than she ever bargained for?

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Aug 16 2022

Maddie And Mabel by Kari Allen & Tatjana Mai-Wyss

I had the pleasure of meeting Kari Allen at ALAAC and loved how she signed my copy of this delightful children’s book with the wonderful message “Share your stories!”

But could you expect less from the writer of this affirming series about a pair of loving, if not entirely friction-free, young sisters? Maddie is the older sister and bossy. Mabel is the younger sister and needy. Ordinarily, this is a pairing that works out quite well, but even the most accommodating siblings can find the foibles of their family too much to bear from time to time, as shown in the five short chapters of this book. The sisters play together, get mad at each other, learn how to apologize and forgive each other, and ultimately show how kids can manage their feelings, compromise and care for each other while still standing up for themselves. It’s a valuable, necessary lesson, couched here in easy language for even small kids to at least understand if not read by themselves.

My youngest kids actually had a little bit of trouble reading this. They’re rising third graders but developmentally delayed, and had trouble differentiating between the ds and bs of the protagonists’ names. Otherwise, they had a blast with it, with Joseph really liking Mabel — or Mabble, as he insisted on calling her — because of her love of rabbits (never mind that Maddie likes rabbits, too.) My eldest son gravitated towards Maddie, ofc, as they’re both on the bossy side.

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Aug 11 2022

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers

Oh no, this isn’t the last in the series, is it?!

The Galaxy and the Ground Within by Becky ChambersI mean, it’s not a bad way to end it, but there’s still so much more to explore of this amazing sci-fi universe. This installment tells us a bit more of the Rosk war, and further explores the cultures of the Quelin and Akarak introduced as antagonists in prior books. In fact, two of the viewpoint characters here are of those species, with Roveg being a Quelin in exile and Speaker being an Akarak linguist, whose paths cross when they’re forced to stay moored to a habidome of the arid planet of Gora after a catastrophic accident litters the skies above them with debris, making it impossible to leave or even communicate with anything outside of atmosphere.

Fortunately, they’re berthed, more or less, at the Five-Hop One-Stop, a modest but thoughtfully equipped habidome rest facility run by Ouloo, a genuinely hospitable Laru, and her adolescent child Tupo. With them as they first resupply then while away the hours until they can get back on the road (or space lane, rather) is Pei, the Aeluon captain introduced in the first book of the series. She’s already feeling pretty ambivalent about the way she’s been hiding her relationship with Ashby, Human captain of the Wayfarer, but her time at the Five-Hop will find her questioning herself even more about her priorities and her obligations to her culture, which frowns on interspecies romance.

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Aug 09 2022

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

As we sprint towards the deadline for Hugo voting and I, for the second year in a row, concede defeat over being able to read all the books in time, I wanted to make sure that I at least got to cover a book Doug was raving to me about (tho I see he hasn’t yet gathered his thoughts together here for a review, tut tut.)

While I’ve found that he and I can both like and be lukewarm over books for different reasons, when we agree on something being rad, it’s truly spectacular. And that latest something is Ryka Aoki’s Light From Uncommon Stars, which for me was like the manga/light novel remix of my dreams! Sweet, soft teenage protagonist who’s gone through more than anyone her age should ever have to but has a wondrous talent and inner light: check. Ambivalently forbidding mentor figure who’s made a demonic pact but is still the protagonist’s biggest champion: check. Household helper to the mentor who is both motherly and adorable: check. Granted, the space alien love interest of the mentor is rather out of the ordinary, tho said love interest’s family going undercover on earth running a donut shop goes back to delightful reverse isekai form.

And in fairness I haven’t read much sci-fi manga, so maybe genre mashups are more common than I expect. But what I can confidently say is that all this mixed together — with our protagonist also being a trans girl, btw — makes for a truly uncommon if not outright rare delight. Ryka Aoki does not care about genre and neither should you, as you enjoy this virtuoso novel of a violin prodigy who finally finds a home with an unusual cast of utterly delightful people.

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Aug 05 2022

Hello Nature Activity Book by Nina Chakrabarti

with the subtitle “Explore, Draw, Color, and Discover the Great Outdoors”.

Okay, can I be real? While this is marketed as a children’s activity book, I am 100% keeping it for meeeeeee. I did, ofc, reluctantly offer it up to my children, but my youngest two are still enthralled by their excellent Gail Gibbons’ workbooks and my eldest is deeply suspicious of anything that looks remotely like schoolwork as summer vacation draws to a close, so I get to keep this wonderful, wondrous book all to myself!

And oh what a joy it is, especially in these pandemicesque times, to have a guided exercise in appreciating the nature around you. While this book skews ever so slightly towards temperate climes, it is very much usable by readers with access to any outdoor spaces with rocks and birds and leaves. It’s also a book that encourages different creative outlets, whether it be the coloring you’d expect from volumes like these, to poems, scrapbooking and paper arts.

In fact, that multi-disciplinary encouragement is one reason I appreciated having both the physical and electronic versions of this volume available to me. While nothing beats having the slightly oversized activity book printed on art paper in my hands, having the pdf also means I can print out extra pages as needed, particularly for the activities that require a little cutting out but still have other exercises printed on the back of the sheet. This way I don’t have to choose between which I’d rather do more, cut out a page to make a tree bark rubbing or draw a bird on the reverse side. Plus, I can now make multiple rubbings using the different techniques suggested by the author!

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