Books Read and Recommended in November 2010

Life in the Pit by Kristen Landon
Skim by Mariko Hami
Charlotte's Web by E.B. White (read aloud)
Well-Wished by Franny Billingsley (read aloud)
Dark Water by Laura McNeal
One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia
Market Day by James Sturm
Persona Non Grata by Ruth Downie
The Red Tree by Caitlin R. Kiernan (i)
Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth by Jeff Kinney
Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine
Starcrossed by Elizabeth Bunce
Full Metal Alchemist Volume 1 by Hiromu Arakawa
The Hotel Under the Sand by Kage Baker
Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman
The Other Side of Darkness by Sarah Smith (i)
Accomplice by Eireann Corrigan (i)
The Secret History of Moscow by Ekaterina Sedia
Pegasus by Robin McKinley
Drawing Down the Moon by Charles Vess

Hmm, I guess I got more reading done that I thought I had.

I just finished Pegasus and thought it was very much McKinley in the way that I wanted to write when I first read The Hero and the Crown, Beauty, and The Blue Sword, during graduate school in the 90's.

1. The pervasive sense of magic in even the most mundane descriptions of things. I love this about McKinley and I think this is one of the reasons that I write fantasy. Some writers of realism are really, really good at this and also make me feel that an ordinary experience is magical in the use of their language, but I think good fantasy does it better. McKinley is a master of this.

2. The new language of the world. Lots of fantasy writers try this. Almost all fail. I tend to shy away from made up languages or even made up words. Why? Because calling a "rose" a "tarmella" does not change its roseness and most readers can tell this. I hate those little glossaries in the back for the same reason. If I need a glossary to figure out what a word means, then the writer isn't doing his/her job. McKinley always does her job. I admit, the first fifty or sixty pages, I thought the book was a little heavy in the fantasy language, but as the story progressed I began to feel like this was a real language, that it expressed concepts that English truly was insufficient to, and by the end of the book, I really felt like I had been to a new land.

3. A truly changed protagonist. This is a key element to excellent fantasy for YA. I am not saying it isn't part of great fantasy for adults--it is! But it fits very well with the YA readers who are changing themselves so rapidly. The entry into a magical world and then the return into the mundane world is as old as fantasy itself, and possibly older. But McKinley does it so well. She makes her readers feel like we, too, have undergone the same transformation. It's an amazing thing.

4. Optimism and worldview. When I read a McKinley novel, or what I think of as classic McKinley, I always know that the heroine is going to win. It's not going to be easy, but I know it will happen. I also know that the bad guys are going to remain bad guys and they will be defeated and the world will be better without them. I suppose there are limitations to this, but while I'm reading the book, I don't feel them.

5. Taking the time to tell the story. I love that McKinley has a style that is unique. It is a wandering style. She isn't going to tell a story in short bursts. Her chapters are long. Her paragraphs are long. Her sentences are long. Occasionally, I get impatient. But not very often. Because I know that it will be worth it to wait. McKinley is telling the story her way. I don't know how she works with her editor, but I like the way it turns out.

6. First person point of view, girls who are not dependent on anyone. Yes, they have people trying to take power away from them. But they are strong and they triumph. They never feel less feminine for that. I don't know how she does that, but I love it.

7. A book that is easy to sell to readers. I mean, the first line of this book is, "She was a princess, so she had a pegasus." I'm thinking the marketing department at Putnam was jumping up and down at that. It's a bankable brand, and while there are some downsides to that as a writer, feeling a little bit boxed in, for the reader, it is a good thing. I am going to be recommending this book to just about every girl between 8 and 80 I know.