Round 2, Match 2: The Good, The Bad, and the Barbie vs. Keeper

Forgive the personal note, but if one is going to read something for a contest, being thunderstruck by illness right beforehand may not be the worst occurrence. It’s reminiscent of some beloved Robert Louis Stevenson poem about lying abed for blurred hours with mounds of rumpled sheets and one’s toys and books piled everywhere. Languid, overheated/chilled lostness enables focused horizontal absorption into material…also one is able to read straight through, pondering and napping between chapters…

So, I got sick, but I went to bed with Barbie dolls and mermaids. As a child of the 50’s & 60’s who never had a Barbie, and even developed some phobia about touching them at other people’s houses (the danger of those particular, uh, mounds)… this felt exotic. Who would know how fascinating her history really is, without reading THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE BARBIE – A DOLL’S HISTORY AND HER IMPACT ON US by the intrepid Tanya Lee Stone (Viking) – a lavishly illustrated, carefully constructed exploration of the half-century-plus history of an icon, both adored and loathed, by more people than many of us could have dreamed.

I feel as if I have somehow caught up with my childhood friends.

And who could not admire Ruth Mosko Handler, “inventor” of Barbie? Although I still have more questions about Barbie’s extremely derivative nature since the 1959 original, see. (pic. p. 29) is SHOCKINGLY (Stone says “strikingly” but I’d venture beyond that) similar-looking to the German doll Bild-Lilli, p. 27, which inspired Handler, and, uh, was carried along by her first designer to Japan… apparently, though, Ruth had already been dreaming of such a doll for years. (There were many lawsuits along the way, but was there ever a lawsuit about THIS?) Barbie’s own features and variations, as well as those of her ever-expanding entourage, would evolve throughout the years. The details about Ruth’s own life, her Jewish family & upbringing, her own kids including doll-hating Barbara for whom Barbie was named, and her co-founding with husband Elliot of Mattel Toys, are full of bravado-spirit (“I was gutsy. I made it work,” said Ruth) and presented with compact clarity.

This is a classic, jazzy book of Americana historiana, surely attractive to many generations of Barbie-players as well as Barbie-shunners, and the weirdest segments of all have to be the wildly strange abuse-of-Barbie narratives.

The endearing 10 year old namesake star of KEEPER by Kathi Appelt (Atheneum, with lovely haunting illustrations by August Hall) plays, not with Barbie dolls but with small handcarved lucky charms in the shapes of famous sea sirens. (Minor disclosure: As resident of same state, I know Kathi a bit from years back.)

Keeper is resident of a motley, miniature community down on the Texas Gulf coast. She loves her dog BD and her pet seagull Captain who adores watermelon. Her alleged “mermaid mother” Meggie Marie abandoned her 7 years prior to a mid-western escapee called Signe who is only 25 herself. I kept doing the math…Their neighbors, the stuttering Dogie who rents surfboards and the elderly Mr. Beauchamp, still longing for his young love Jack from France, as he waits for his night-blooming cyrus flowers to pop open, create a sleepy, somewhat surreal swoon of neighborhood texture for a little girl to wander dreamily through. Keeper waxes surfboards for Dogie, saves her money, watches the waves and tides closely, lives in a rich drift of fantastic thinking. She wants to see her mother again. And she’s ready to make it happen on the rare night of the “blue moon.” This is a gumbo-rich brew of magical farfetched wishing – spells – plans and lists – melodrama launched in a small rowboat…chapter 55, about all the oceans of the world being connected, is a gem-like poem shining at the heart.

Appelt’s essential way with narrative is so muscular and forward-moving, the lavish hum of place, waves, longing, wrap around a reader with hypnotic transporting power. You would look very long to find an extra word or syllable. This is a gift. By page 348, even Barbie was voting with me – KEEPER was my winner.

— Naomi Shihab Nye

Wait! First, Pablo Neruda picks Barbie and now Barbie is voting for Keeper?!?!?! It’s metafiction run amok! With Sugar Changed the World and They Called Themselves the KKK bowing out in the first round, all of our nonfiction hopes were pinned on The Good, The Bad, and the Barbie, and as much as I liked the book, I didn’t feel very confident about its chances going up against Keeper, a book that many of us thought had Newbery written all over it. For those of us who fell under its spell, we would indeed have to look long and hard for an extra word or syllable, but the Heavy Medal discussion of this title focused on whether the book was actually too wordy or not. I’m definitely a Cardturner fan, but I’m rooting for Keeper to sail through to the final round, very much hoping that she bucks this trend of favoring her opponent to advance.

— Commentator Jonathan Hunt

THE JUDGE

Let me make one thing clear: I’m not going to be dispassionate about
this. I agreed to be a judge, but I refuse to be judicious; I’m not going to nitpick and split hairs. If I had been given two mediocre books, I might have managed it: one can be beautifully dispassionate about mediocre books. But COUNTDOWN and THE CARDTURNER are remarkable books, and the proper response is not assessment, but appreciation. I’m going to fling objectivity out the window (let’s face it; it’s overrated) and have myself a good time.

THE BOOKS

It’s fascinating to compare COUNTDOWN with THE CARDTURNER, because they are so much alike. They are radically different in flavor, but Ms. Wiles and Mr. Sachar were forced to grapple with the same technical problem: how to incorporate great lashings of exposition into a story without losing momentum. (I like to imagine both authors in a bar, enjoying a good grouse about it.) Anyone who reads THE CARDTURNER has to pick up enough bridge to follow what happens at the card table. In COUNTDOWN, the reader must assimilate the culture of the early sixties and feel the impact of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In order to develop the background of Franny’s story, Ms. Wiles makes expert use of visual materials, conversational essays, and quotations. Mr. Sachar teaches the reader about bridge through dialogue, puzzles, and the strategic use of whales. Both authors are virtuosi, blending story and exposition as deftly as a cook creams sugar and butter together.

COUNTDOWN

I was seven years old during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I remember my mother weeping with relief when the crisis ended. My grandfather built a fallout shelter in his basement, and at school, I ducked and I covered. Reading COUNTDOWN was like stepping back into my childhood. Ms. Wiles’ evocation of the sixties (Sing along with Mitch! TV dinners! Aqua-net!) is pitch-perfect.

At the beginning, COUNTDOWN seizes the reader’s attention with fifteen pages of photographs and quotations. Then Franny’s story begins: “I am eleven years old and I am invisible.” I felt a faint jolt as the book switched from the global to the personal. At first, Franny’s problems seemed trivial to me, and I wasn’t sure I was going to like her. Franny is not an idealized heroine. She’s neither sweet nor especially spirited. She’s a rule-follower and an apple-polisher; she’s a bit sneaky, and she’s sometimes mean to her sweet-tempered little brother. Small slights devastate her. She is plagued by feelings of inadequacy, envy and guilt.

As I went on reading, I came to see that the character of Franny is one of the triumphs of the novel. Franny is a real and specific little girl. As her world comes into focus, we see that her state of mind is not just rational, but inevitable. Franny mirrors the anxiety around her, and as that world becomes more chaotic, the reader comes to share Franny’s tension. As I read, I felt my stomach knot up. I found the cumulative dread of the story unsettling, powerful, and hypnotic.

I have a strong prejudice against novels written in present tense. I’m giving this one a special dispensation. By setting her historical novel in the present, Ms. Wiles made me feel that the Cuban Missile Crisis hadn’t yet been resolved. The bombs might fall; the world might end. I read deep into the night, unable to relax until the story had reached its conclusion. I came to love Franny, and I was wholly caught up in her heroic struggle to save her worthless friend.

I’d like to point out one or two other things about COUNTDOWN. One was how brilliantly Ms. Wiles conveyed life on the edge of the volcano. Franny is worried that the world will come to an end, but she’s also worried about what she’s going to wear to the Halloween party. This seemed absolutely truthful to me. I was also impressed by how Ms. Wiles conveyed the grown-ups in the story. They are mostly inadequate, each in his own way, but they are doing their shoddy best. I was particularly moved by the tender passages between Franny and her shell-shocked Uncle Otts. I was startled and impressed when Franny’s teacher, Mrs. Rodriguez, managed to console her terrified students by telling them about the culture of Cuba.

COUNTDOWN is part of a trilogy about the sixties. The novel stands alone, but it is clear that Ms. Wiles has other fish that she intends to fry: the Civil Rights movement, the Women’s Movement, and the rise of rock and roll. I look forward to watching her fry them. What Wiles is doing is big and ambitious and multi-layered and inventive. COUNTDOWN is a stupendous Book One.

THE CARDTURNER

Let me come clean here: I play bridge. I’m a Bridge Lady. Party bridge, not duplicate—but I’ve been known to play for nine hours at a stretch. I first shared THE CARDTURNER with my fellow bridge players. Then I shared it with adults and children who know nothing about bridge. They loved it, too.

The story gets off to a good start. Alton is a likable narrator. He is convincingly adolescent—keenly aware of his parents’ hypocrisies, and sarcastic about his own defects. When he talks about girls, he’s a wistful hound dog. Alton is the nice guy who never gets the girl. He is unconsciously and instinctively decent.

As the story continued, I began to forget that I was reading a book. Mr. Sachar’s narration is so seamless that I scarcely noticed how many balls he was juggling: Alton’s personal story, the Alton-Trapp relationship, the Annabel-Trapp back story, and, of course, bridge. Mr. Sachar also has to prepare his reader for the supernatural twist that occurs three quarters of the way through the book.

He manages this by developing Alton’s philosophical bent, by staging Alton/Trapp dialogues about synchronicity, perception and metaphysics. In the hands of a less practiced storyteller, these conversations might have been heavy going, but Sachar handled them so playfully that I never realized he was advancing the plot. I thought his characters just happened to talk about things like that.

As for the characters, they are sketchy, but dynamic. With the exception of Alton, they are rendered impressionistically, drawn with a few skillful strokes. We come to know them by seeing the relationships between them change. When Trapp died, I was surprised by how fond I had grown of him. I grieved for the unfinished relationship between Alton and his uncle. I felt some of the bewilderment one feels at a real bereavement: Wait a minute, it’s too soon.

We’re not done here.

And in fact, Mr. Sachar isn’t done. When Trapp dies, Sachar’s still got half- a-dozen balls in the air, and he’s going to keep them aloft until the story finds its proper end. At the heart of THE CARDTURNER is Trapp’s tragic back-story: An abused wife is wrongly imprisoned in a mental hospital, and commits suicide.

The man who loves her develops a heart as cold as a brick. Like the Bridge Nationals, this story is going to be played out a second time—but with a different ending: A girl who has been diagnosed schizophrenic is going to find someone who understands that she’s sane. A diffident boy is going to gain the confidence he needs to play his own cards and take a chance on love. For once, the postmortem game is the game that counts—and as the story reaches its conclusion, the tragic knot is untied, and the ghosts are laid.

THE CHOICE

And now I have to pick a winner. How does one choose between two good books? One selects a standard, I suppose, or one contrives a set of criteria.

But both the selection and the criteria are a little fishy. It’s likely that what I choose will say more about me than about the books I judged.

However. I was chosen for this Battle in order I might choose, and I am not such a coward as to bail out now. So I will make my choice—and I’m going to choose THE CARDTURNER.

My reason may seem arbitrary. But here it is. It seems to me that THE CARDTURNER is a comedy, and that real comedy is rare. I’m not talking about funny books. DIARY OF A WIMPY KID is a funny book, but it is not a comedy; the jokes (variants on you can’t win) are blue. But THE CARDTURNER seems to me to be a comedy the way A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM is a comedy.

Comedy is a celebration of human resilience.  At its best, it takes the tensions and failures and tragedies of life, and transmutes them. It pulls the threads taut, mending the rift in the cloth. It draws the toxins out. And of course this is tremendously refreshing, because we are surrounded by tensions and failures and tragedies.

Both COUNTDOWN and THE CARDTURNER are immensely good. I would not like to stake my life on which is better. But THE CARDTURNER is that rare and undervalued thing, a true work of comedy, and as a child of the Atomic Age, I can’t resist it.

— Laura Amy Schlitz

I mentioned that Countdown is a bit of an acquired taste for me, not being a natural character-driven reader.  It was easiest for me to appreciate the documentary aspects of the novel, but I had forgotten about the characterization and character development of Franny until Laura so eloquently laid it all out.  (I am so with you on the aversion to present tense narration.  It’s so trendy right now, but it rarely serves the story very well.  It drives me crazy that so many authors are using it!  Aaargh!)   On the other hand, I am very intrigued with the notion of viewing The Cardturner as a comedy.  I thought Cardturner could take Barbie in the next round, but I had my doubts about Keeper.  This decision has me second guessing myself, however.  In fact, it’s the rare one that makes me want to return to the books for a second look.   Well played, Bridge Lady.

— Commentator Jonathan Hunt

I was assigned novels featuring two unforgettable trios of guys: Raphael, Gardo, and Rat in Trash, and Tiny, Will, and Will in Will Grayson, Will Grayson. I loved all six of these boys. Focusing first on character, I felt like Meryl Streep as Sophie forced to choose between two sets of favorite sons—a virtually impossible task. So far, it was a tie.

I moved to setting. As usual, expert young adult writers David Levithan and John Green portrayed the angst and agony of life in America’s suburban high schools perfectly in Will Grayson, Will Grayson. Trash’s setting was fictional, but Andy Mulligan’s vivid descriptions brought to mind the squalor in several cities I’ve visited. Once again, when it came to setting, I had a tie.

Next I considered language. Clever turns of phrase, funny and moving dialog, rich vocabulary, and scrupulous avoidance of cliché gave Will Grayson, Will Grayson an edge over the more sparely told Trash. I wondered if this was partly due to the older target audience Levithan and Green had in mind, but nonetheless, the language point went to Will Grayson, Will Grayson.

What about plot? Both books were page turners. I tore through Trash, rooting for the boys in their impossible quest to escape the force of corrupt authority and start a new life without fear and suffering. In Will Grayson, Will Grayson, the narrative arc was compelling, but the interesting language and strong characterization (I didn’t want to stop spending time with Tiny, Jane, Gideon, and the Wills) kept me reading. The plot point had to go to Trash. I could easily picture reading this suspenseful Dickensian novel aloud to spellbound young people, reluctant readers as well as savvy bibliophiles.

For me, the final choice came down to theme. Will Grayson, Will Grayson adeptly explored the power of love (two of my favorite scenes were the redemptive gift of a glass bowl and a declaration of love in a baseball dugout), but Trash was about the love of power and the power of love. After the “weakest” characters in a story use street smarts and loyalty to outwit brutal police officers and cruel politicians, you close the book with an unmatched feeling of satisfaction. For a heartfelt, page-turning exploration of power, justice, friendship, and freedom, round one, match eight goes to … Trash by Andy Mulligan.

— Mitali Perkins

Tiny Cooper is arguably the most memorable literary creation of the year, and Will Grayson, Will Grayson is one of the best books that John Green or David Levithan have written.  I’m a little bit surprised it only got a Stonewall Honor and an Odyssey Honor at the ALA Youth Media Awards.  Like Mitali, I didn’t want to stop spending time with these characters, but I also felt likewise about the Trash boys and their chilling story of power, greed, and corruption.  The book reminded me of Mal Peet’s soccer novels (Keeper, The Penalty, and Exposure) but younger and more accessible.  Since Trash was relatively unheralded, I’m very happy to see it advance to meet A Tale Dark and Grimm. How many of us had They Called Themselves the KKK meeting Will Grayson, Will Grayson in the next round?  I know I did, and I bet I’m not the only one.

— Commentator Jonathan Hunt

A TALE DARK & GRIMM by Adam Gidwitz

When I was in elementary school, I was already fascinated by the worlds of fantasy and magic and horror. I read every book of fairy tales in our school library. I then proceeded to our town library where I moved up and down the shelves of fairy tales, Norse legends, and Greek myths, devouring book after book.

As a long-time devotee of these stories, I opened Adam Gidwitz’ A Tale Dark and Grimm with great anticipation. I’m happy to say the book provided a wonderful return to the Grimm world—the world of dark woods, unspeakable evil, not-so-innocent children, witches, dragons, and more—that had enthralled me as a child.

Gidwitz has not only presented us with a masterful retelling and re-imagining of the original Grimm works. His book provides a wonderful lesson in story-telling—how stories are made, how they can be twisted and turned, and how they change over time.

The book is inviting right from the start. The author warns that the old Hansel and Gretel story isn’t what you expect, that fairy tales aren’t for the faint-of-heart. His warning that “the one true tale is as violent and bloody as you can imagine” makes the book irresistible. Who could stop reading after a warning like that?

He then presents a retelling of several Grimm tales, beginning with Hansel and Gretel and using them as protagonists for the ensuing stories. We follow the brother and sister from adventure to adventure, into the woods and out, into king’s castles and witch’s hovels, into deep darkness, and finally to  redemption– and even a happy ending. Thus he has cleverly tied the stories together and turned them into a novel.

Gidwitz’ writing is simple, clean, easy-to-read. In a word: delightful. He manages to capture all the dark feelings and atmosphere of the original tales in language appealing to kids today. He doesn’t modernize. He doesn’t camp it up. The writing is crisp and clear, and he takes the story-telling seriously.

He interrupts often to comment on what has just happened or warn against what is about to happen. Or to comment on a puzzling or bizarre plot point: Can you really kill a warlock by boiling him in a cauldron of serpents? (It’s definitely worth discussing, right?)

He achieves a light, teasing tone with these interruptions. They add a great deal of humor. They entice the reader to keep reading. And, they treat the reader as an insider, someone who is in on the joke, who understands how Gidwitz is manipulating the stories—and teasing the readers.

This is flattering to the reader. But I have one negative comment here. The author has far too many warnings about not letting little kids read the “next part.” These warnings are funny at first but eventually become tedious. By the time you reach page 70, you know whether you are enjoying the stories or not. You do not need the author’s repeated “warnings.”

I don’t think kids need to be warned about the many wonderful scenes of horror in these stories. I think kids will relish them. For me, one of the most horrifying is when the king, their father, is convinced he must chop off Hansel and Gretel’s heads. The axe is swung. The heads are cut off. In fact, axes are swung many times in these stories. Children are hacked. Gretel chops off her own finger. Hansel and Gretel have a revenge of sorts at the end with a gruesome act of fratricide.

Gidwitz doesn’t delve into the psychology of the acts here. They are what they are. But what he does so masterfully is to seemingly end a tale—then tease more out of the story… and more… and more. Until without even realizing it, the reader has been given a clear lesson in story structure and how an author builds a tale.

One negative comment: The jacket cover is humorous and cartoony and not as sophisticated as the text. I only wish the cover artist had taken the material as seriously as the author.

All in all, this is a wonderful, entertaining book. I think middle grade readers will find it as enticing and rewarding as I did.

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THEY CALLED THEMSELVES THE K.K.K. by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

Ms. Bartoletti has won many awards, including a Newberry Honor and the Sibert Medal, for her works of historical nonfiction. Previous books explored Hitler Youth, the horrors and hardships of the Irish Famine, and growing up in coal country.

This book—an astounding feat of research—begins after the Emancipation Proclamation and traces the problems of the freed slaves during Reconstruction and the growth of the white supremacy organization that formed in reaction to the social and political changes in the South.

According to the jacket notes, Bartoletti’s research included studying an 8,000-page Congressional document—The Ku Klux Klan Report. In addition, she compiled and read 2300 slave narratives, many of which accompany the text. And she read newspapers, diaries, and memoirs of the time.

This is a very complete and well-organized history. In addition to describing the events, the participants, and the reasons behind all that ensued in the South after the Civil War, she presents fascinating documents, newspaper fragments, and eyewitness accounts.

Young readers will especially be interested in examples of codes used to disguise secret KKK messages. Also, a 10-question quiz given to prospective new KKK members. Bonuses like these are a result of Bartoletti’s painstaking research.

Her research also allows her to include page after page of illustrations, editorial cartoons, and even photographs of the time. Photos of actual costumes worn by Klan members are chilling to see. So much hatred and fury in a mask and a robe. They were ornate and designed to look ghost-like. Klan members believed that blacks were inordinately afraid of ghosts. In actuality, they were more afraid of being beaten or hanged.

The wealth of illustrations and their concise, well-written captions offer a story on their own and provide glimpses of real life that go beyond the words of the text. In addition, the testimony of freed slaves, in their own words and dialect, is invaluable in bringing a human dimension to the story.

In They Called Themselves the K.K.K., we read the story of Nathan Bedford Forrest, first Grand Wizard of the Klan. We learn how he and his followers built what came to be called the Invisible Empire. They divided the country into realms, dominions, and provinces. They built a country within a country, with its own constitution, leaders, and law enforcement—all dedicated to the idea that white people should reign supreme in all areas of American life.

Bartoletti shows us that this group was not a small clique. At one point, Forrest boasted that he could raise an army of 40,000 men if goaded to action.

Frightening.

The author has provided us with an invaluable resource—in words and visuals—of this tumultuous post-war time in the South. And a clear description of how a hate group such as the KKK can use people’s anxieties and prejudices to spread fear, hatred, and violence.

Near the beginning of the book, there’s a nice description of the chores a young house slave might be expected to do. I wish the author had presented more of the story from the point-of-view of kids and teenagers. How were kids affected? How did they feel about the events of this tumultuous time?

I was disappointed by the lack of focus on the young. This book will be used by high school students and anyone older who wishes to study this time period. But not much of an attempt is made to relate the material to young readers. How were young people’s lives affected by the rise of the K.K.K.? The answer isn’t found here.

In addition, I think the language level might prove difficult for many young people. I kept wishing terms such as “Reconstruction” or “Emancipation” were explained for a young audience. The difficult reading level will prove a roadblock to many young readers.

THE WINNER

They Called Themselves the K.K.K. is a valuable resource, a thoroughly researched work, and a well-organized piece of historical writing. But because it focuses so little on young people, and it isn’t written in language designed to  appeal to them, I feel many young readers will have difficulty with it.

For this reason, I’m declaring the winner to be A Tale Dark and Grimm.

— R. L. Stine

R.L. Stine is an appropriate and inspired judge for this pairing as each book has some horror, whether the delightfully gruesome hackings of A Tale Dark and Grimm or horrifying terror of the Klan in They Called Themselves the KKK.  I personally would have gone with Bartoletti for this round, but I certainly appreciate the virtues of Gidwitz, and I appreciate the insightful analysis of both, although I do have a couple of quibbles.  First, I don’t think children and teens necessarily need to read about themselves in order to connect to nonfiction.  Although Bartoletti has made that connection in some of her previous books, there’s no point in forcing the issue if it doesn’t emerge organically.  And second, I’m actually quite fond of the cover for A Tale Dark and Grimm, cartoony silhouettes notwithstanding.  Which foe is more formidable?  Tiny Cooper and the Will Graysons or the dumpsite boys: Raphael, Gardo, and Rat?

— Commentator Jonathan Hunt

I’ve been asked to decide which book is better–The Ring of Solomon by Jonathan Stroud, or Sugar Changed the World by Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos. That is, I’ve been asked to choose between a rollicking fantasy about a waggish djinni who becomes unwittingly embroiled in plots to steal a ring of unfathomable power, and a nonfictional exploration of the sociopolitical influence that sugar has had over world history and culture. I’m especially suited for this, since I’m always posing these sorts of questions to myself in my daily life: which is better–jogging or goldfish? A really good haircut or Thai food?¹

So it was with absolutely no trepidation at all that I plunged into reading The Ring of Solomon, which just happened to arrive four days before the other one.

Thanks to my background as an illustrator I’ve had the almost unheard of privilege of designing all or part of each of my book covers, and not once has it occurred to me to ask if there’s any money in the budget for iridescent ink. You probably know what I mean–the prismatic oil slick sheen that varnishes the illustrations on the covers of each of Stroud’s Bartimaeus books.² Otherwise the cover is quite traditional, similar in composition to the sort of color plate-pasted-over-cloth-binding you’d see on a book published almost a hundred years ago. I feel like the contrast here is a halfway decent analogy for the story within. Stroud has crafted what you might claim on one hand to be an old-fashioned³ save-the-world adventure, complete with the requisite all-powerful MacGuffin and a real mustache twirler of a villain or two. He’s also made something that’s fresh and modern–modern in its sense of humor, modern in its irreverence. Okay, maybe irreverence isn’t all that modern, but it always feels like it is. Doesn’t every generation think they invented it?

Maybe it’s the heroic rogue of a main character, or the Arabian setting, or possibly even the Disney logotype on the spine of the jacket, but I got to thinking about the animated feature Aladdin. The first ten minutes of that movie contain a sprawling musical action set piece in which we learn that the titular hero

–Has to steal to eat

–HAS to eat to live

–Works really, really hard at it

–And did we mention he’s an orphan?

and anyway after he finally absconds with his hard-won loaf of bread he just gives it to the first adorable pair of street urchins. Contrast this with heroic rogue Bartimaeus, who in the first twenty pages of The Ring of Solomon

–Defiles an ancient temple

–Burgles a holy relic

–And kills and eats an old man.⁴

The djinni Bartimaeus, and by extension Stroud, is not going to make some cloying play for our affections. This is not SPOILER ALERT a story about reformation END SPOILER ALERT. I’m even going to go out on a limb and say that Bartimaeus is refreshingly without an arc here. Throughout the book he behaves only in the singularly free-thinking fashion that has made him the irritant of both humans and spirits alike, what with his universal impudence and humorously digressive footnotes.⁵ In the interest of full disclosure I should mention that I previously read The Amulet of Samarkand, the first of the original Bartimaeus trilogy, so I’m aware that he’s starred in at least four stories now. I suspect that Stroud understood early on that he had a very special character here, and it wouldn’t do to keep neutering him with sentiment in Act II of every book. He is who he is, and I think he would be alarmed to know that I found him to be the most human of all Stroud’s characters.

His first-person chapters alternate with third-person chapters that focus on other actors, particularly a young and deadly Sheban named Asmira who is tasked with assassinating the powerful Solomon in order to save her homeland. And here lies my chief criticism of the book: Bartimaeus is so effervescent that chapters in which he doesn’t appear (much less narrate) sometimes come off like flat soda by comparison. Bartimaeus is such a force that he spills out in every direction–through the fourth wall, into the margins of the page, and onward into self-awareness and anachronism, such as when he invokes copyright (actual copyright) to protect one of his signature fighting moves, which he informs us he’s been using since 2800 B.C.E. Note that The Ring of Solomon is set 900 years before there was a C.E. to be B.

I realize it’s a weak critique to complain that an otherwise great story is only intermittently fantastic. That’s why I got in that early dig at the iridescent ink. Take that, book designer! What I haven’t admitted yet is that the eleven-year-old me probably would have thought the iridescent ink looked great. He would have loved the story as well, and on this we wholeheartedly agree. Every chapter left me wanting more–if Stroud and I were in a Scheherazade/King Shahryār situation I totally would not have killed him at any point.

I’ll admit I originally assumed I was being sent two works of fiction, and eagerly awaited Sugar Changed the World, no doubt the story of an irrepressible girl named Sugar who would teach us all a lesson about tolerance or whatever. What I got, of course, is a powerful look into the best and worst of humanity through the lens (not to mention focus) of a single commodity. But while we learn a great deal about sugar’s scientific, agricultural, and industrial history, it’s all about the people on the ground.

SCtW is my kind of history book. Relatively uninterested in kings and politicians, this is more of a Howard Zinn-style people’s history, albeit one which far more gently grinds its axe. Christopher Columbus gets mentioned, for example, on three separate pages. The longest passage by far is only fifty-seven words. Readers will learn far more about Olaudah Equiano, an enslaved African taken to Barbados to work in sugar, or even Thomas Thistlewood, a white overseer who wrote with a kind of nauseating jocularity about the cruelties he inflicted on his charges. They’ll also learn about the university of Jundi Shapur, which flourished fifteen hundred years ago in what is now Iran and which sounds so wondrous I can’t believe I’d never heard of it before. They’ll learn that the “whitest and purest” sugar of the ancient world came from Egypt of all places. Suddenly those sugar cube pyramids we all built in grade school are elevated above the level of busywork to some kind of totemic historical metaphor.

It would be easy to call this a bitter book about a sweet spice, and there are unquestionably some difficult truths in Sugar Changed the World. There were also, for me, odd moments of pride–it was interesting to discover that the slave trade was focused so heavily in the Caribbean and South America, for example, and when I learned that only four percent of the slaves taken from Africa ended up in North America, and that these slaves had a comparatively low death rate, I chanted the feeblest U-S-A of my life. So why did I come away from this book inspired? A section on Gandhi didn’t hurt. Likewise sections on new (to me) heroes like the Haitian leader Toussaint, and English abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, a contemporary of William Wilberforce. This is an ultimately hopeful book, and I hope it finds a place in the classroom.

Excellent period illustrations and photos abound, including sample pages from a grim old children’s picture book that painstakingly details how sugar got from the West Indies to your sweet shop, and unintentionally details everything that was wrong about the Victorians. The back matter of SCtW contains a great set of appendices that include, among other things, a timeline, a web guide to additional images, and an essay aimed at parents and teachers that explains how the book was researched.

So now we get down to the absurdity of this decision. Apart from a few locales these books share nothing in common. Wait, Sugar Changed the World is a scholarly work–does it have footnotes?⁶

Whatever, I’m calling it. Advantage Stroud.

¹jogging, Thai food.

²Not to mention unicorn trapper keepers and sticker albums everywhere. It’s not my thing, personally.

³Old Testament, even.

⁴He accomplishes this with a piece of ancient Mesopotamian slapstick and has the social graces not to describe the actual old-man-eating in any detail, but still.

⁵(cough)

⁶No.

— Adam Rex

I love this match-up, but I hate that it’s in the first round.  Bartimaeus does steal the show in The Ring of Solomon with his first-person narrative, and it’s not that the contrasting third-person chapters are weak, as much as Bartimaeus is just so utterly irresistible.  What I most appreciated about Sugar Changed the World is how it connected the dots for me in an entirely different way.  Yes, there is Gandhi in South Africa helping Indian workers—and what were those Indians working on?  Sugar.  Yes, there is Columbus sailing around the world—and what is his cargo?  Sugar.  Yes, we bought the Lousiana Purchase so Lewis and Clark would have something to explore, but sugar plays a key role here, too.  My child self prefers The Ring of Solomon; my adult self prefers Sugar Changed the World—but just barely.  It’s too close to call, and I don’t envy Adam having to make this decision.

— Commentator Jonathan Hunt