Otis Dooda: Strange But True

I told myself that while I was at ALA, I wouldn't pick up arcs.  Then a school marketing person handed me two arcs, and publishers gave some to me, and you know how it goes!  The result is that I've been reading a bunch, and now that it's summer and my commute is simply from my bed to the lake, I actually have some time to blog.

The first up, is Ellen Potter's new book Otis Dooda: Strange But True.  Potter has stepped out of her wheelhouse with this illustrated novel for the younger set, but since Potter is writing it, you know the writing is tight.

Otis and the rest of the Dooda family are making a move to NYC.  They are moving into the 35 story Tidwell Towers, which impresses Otis since it looks like it's made up of LEGO blocks!  Otis notices the automatic door and thinks that moving is "kind of cool, like we were moving into a Price Chopper Supermarket!" (p8)  The automatic doors aren't the only thing that is different from Otis' old place...there seems  to be a kid skulking in a potted plant in the lobby.  It turns out that he gives everyone the shakedown for candy and other goods when they come into the building, and if you don't pay up he curses you!

Otis finds this out the hard way, refusing to sacrifice his homemade LEGO lie detector.  Otis gets the details when he befriends Perry, a kid on his floor with the strangest looking and smelliest dog you've ever seen.  One of the great things about Tidwell Towers is that there are lots of kids, and before long Otis is hanging out with Perry, Cat and Boris and they are hatching plans to put the kibosh on the plant guy.

What follows is an often hilarious tale of the often dysfunctional apartment slash big city life.  As I said, this isn't what I would necessarily expect from Potter, however, I know at my library I have daily requests for "something with lots of pictures, like Wimpy Kid", and this fits the bill.  Strange parents, a creepy older brother, rats and poodles,  friends with parents with odd jobs, and trying to dodge the inevitable summer enrollment in classes all come into play.  The humor is sly and horse rear end oriented at the same time, and readers will likely laugh out loud along the way.

The Humming Room, by Ellen Potter

Roo is a crafty kind of girl.  When she doesn't want to be found, she heads beneath her father's trailer where she can look at her treasures and put her ear to the ground and listen to the earth.  It is here where readers are introduced to Roo, as her neighbor Mrs. Quick is talking to the police about what happened above her.  The officer tells Mrs. Quick that Roo has an uncle (a rich one) who is willing to take her in. This is news to Roo, as she has never been told about any family...it's always been Roo, her father and a various string of girlfriends.

After a short stint in foster care, Roo is gathered up by her Uncle's assistant Ms. Valentine.  They travel to the island of Cough Rock on the St. Lawrence where her uncle lives in the old St. Theresa's Children's Hospital.  Roo is not so happy with the boat ride as she has never learned to swim.  Once she arrives, she realizes that the water is the least of her worries.  Her uncle wants nothing to do with her, she is forbidden from entering the East Wing of the building, there are the unexplainable sounds, and before long she is under the eagle eye of her tutor Mrs. Wixton who loves to gossip about Roo's family.

But Roo is a wily one, and rules have never really applied to her, and she soon learns to evade Mrs. Wixton and uncover some of the secrets of Cough Rock.

Inspired by The Secret Garden, The Humming Room is a ghost story of sorts coupled with Roo's coming of age.  Ellen Potter has written a creepy story that ultimately has hope at its heart.

The Kneebone Boy, by Ellen Potter

As fellow readers, I am sure that some of you have experienced this. The siren song of a book simply from title and cover art alone. This was my initial experience with The Kneebone Boy by Ellen Potter. Now, I have enjoyed Potter’s work in the past, so I wasn’t worried at all about experiencing the dreaded feeling of, “but I wanted to like this book!” that happens when readers fall for covers and titles sometimes. From the creepy dark haired young children staring out with their older blond brother wrapped in a scarf and holding a cat, to the bare feet hanging from the tree, I was simply intrigued.

Upon opening the arc, I was greeted with Chapter 1 followed by a bit of foreshadowing of the upcoming chapter: “In which we meet the Hardscrabbles, unearth a triceratops bone, and begin to like Lucia even more.” The Hardscrabbles are siblings Otto, Lucia and Max, who all live in the town of Little Tunks with their artist father Casper. Their mum is simply gone. She had been there, then she wasn’t. As in most small towns, the rumours began to spread…especially when Otto gives up talking aloud (he has invented a sort of sign language that he and Lucia use) and takes to wearing his mum’s scarf everywhere.

Casper is a peculiar sort of artist in that he paints portraits of royalty…exclusively exiled royalty. Casper says, "...there is something extraordinary about the face of a person who has fallen from greatness. They remind me of angels tossed out of heaven who are now struggling to manage the coin-operated washing machine at the Scrubbly-Bubbly Laundromat" (arc p.23) As you can imagine, exiled royals are not big on settling up their bills, so the Hardscrabbles don't live a luxurious existence by any means, and it means that their father is often traveling to wherever it is that the exiles are.

Usually when their dad goes away, the children stay with kooky Mrs. Carnival from down the way, but this time Casper tells them that they are to stay with their cousin Angela in London. Lucia especially is quite excited about this turn of events, and some time in London would be great if cousin Angela were actually at home.  Stuck on their own in London, the kids come up with a plan that doesn't involve staying back in Little Tunks with Mrs. Carnival.  Instead of trying to head home, the kids go on another adventure to find their Great Aunt Haddie in Snoring-by-the-Sea.

It turns out that not-so-old Haddie is renting a castle folly that is chock-full of its own secrets, including the entrance (a Tyrolean traverse), a parent castle (named the Kneebone Castle), and some pretty interesting rats.

I don’t want to go too deeply into the plot and get all spoiler-y. Suffice it to say there are some twists and turns that will make readers want to start flipping back through the text looking for clues. From the beginning where readers are told that the narrator is one of the Hardscrabbles, but not which one, to the very big reveal, Potter has woven together a plot that flows pretty seamlessly. The characters are all well developed (I grew particularly fond of Otto) and their personalities will draw readers in. This is the kind of book that captures readers at the beginning and keeps them in its thrall all the way through. Emily Reads captures the essence in her haiku review found here.

Brooklyn Bridge

Last week I was lucky enough to attend a preview at Feiwel and Friends in the lovely Flat Iron Building. Many interesting titles were discussed, but the one I simply couldn't wait to read was Brooklyn Bridge, by Karen Hesse.

It's the summer of 1903 and Joseph is sick of bears. Ever since his mom created two toy bears in response to President Roosevelt's refusal to shoot a young bear on a hunting expedition, Joseph has been living and breathing bears. The family candy shop has turned into a bear making shop, and bear parts are all over the apartment. His parents are so busy trying to keep up with demand that Joseph's dream of getting to Coney Island seems like it will never happen.

Joseph's family are immigrants from Russia. First came his Aunt Golda (or the Queen as Joseph and his sister liked to call her) who saved all of her money to bring her siblings over, including Joseph's Papa, and his two other aunts (Aunt Beast and Aunt Mouse accordingly). His aunts stayed in Manhattan's Lower East Side, while the only home Joseph can remember is Brooklyn. Joseph knows that he is lucky...he really does. He knows other kids who don't want to go home because their parents yell, and hit, they don't have enough to eat, or they are falling over the many people crammed into their apartments. Joseph doesn't have to worry about any of these things. Still, he misses how life used to be with the candy shop, and how he used to be just one of the guys.

At least he is not one of the bridge kids. The ones that congregate there every night to try to get some sleep and stay out of harm's way. Some have nowhere else to go, others have run away from horrific situations. These kids watch out for each other, share whatever they have, and simply try to survive another day.

Hesse has penned an intriguing piece of historical fiction with a dash of magical realism as well. Who is the ghost that haunts the children under the bridge, and how can he possibly be related to Joseph's family?

The chapters about Joseph's family are interspersed with chapters telling the tales of the children living under the bridge. I am curious about the degree of fiction of these children's tales. Some are so horrific that I think they must have been recorded in a work house diary. It is amazing to think about NYC back at the turn of the century. The class divide is explored in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. The children who are cast aside are struggling every day to survive, and Joseph's family is making it, but suffering the consequence of not quite fitting in with the folks on the block like they used to.

I also love the amount of historical detail that Hesse managed to put into the book so seemingly effortlessly, that readers simply absorb them without feeling like it's work. The comments from newspapers of the day describing Coney Island are so interesting, and left me wanting to read more about the amusement parks (especially with the condo-ization of the area set to begin very soon).

Lyrical and haunting, Brooklyn Bridge is one of those books that stays with the reader. You will find yourself revisiting the characters and the situations time and time again.