The New Valley
Josh Weil, 2010
Grove/Atlantic
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802144867
Summary
The three linked novellas that comprise Josh Weil’s masterful debut bring us into America’s remote and often unforgiving backcountry, and delicately open up the private worlds of three very different men as they confront love, loss, and their own personal demons.
Set in the hardscrabble hill country between the Virginias, The New Valley is populated by characters striving to forge new lives in the absence of those they have loved. Told in three varied and distinct voices— from a soft-spoken middle-aged beef farmer struggling to hold himself together after his dad’s death; to a health-obsessed single father desperate to control his reckless, overweight daughter; to a mildly retarded man who falls in love with a married woman intent on using him in a scheme that will wound them both—each novella is a vivid, stand-alone examination of Weil’s uniquely romanticized relationships. As the men battle against grief and solitude, their heartache leads them all to commit acts that will bring both ruin and salvation.
Written with a deeply American tone, focused attention to story, and veneration for character, The New Valley is a tender exploration of survival, isolation, and the deep, consuming ache for human connection. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Virginia, USA
• Education—M.F.A., Columbia University
• Awards—Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction
from the American Academy of Arts and
Letters; New Writers Award from Great Lakes
College Assn.
• Currently—lives in Oxford, Mississippi
Josh Weil was born in the Appalachian Mountains of rural Virginia to which he returned to write the novellas in his first book, The New Valley.
A New York Times Editors Choice, The New Valley won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from The American Academy of Arts and Letters; the New Writers Award from the GLCA; a “5 Under 35” Award from the National Book Foundation; and was shortlisted for the Library of Virginia’s literary award in fiction.
Weil’s other fiction has appeared in such publications as Granta, One Story and Agni, and he has written non-fiction for The New York Times, Oxford American, and Poets & Writers. The recipient of fellowships and awards from the Fulbright Foundation, the Dana Foundation, the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences, the James Merrill House, and the MacDowell Colony, he has taught at Bowling Green State University as the Distinguished Visiting Writer and been the Tickner Writer-in-Residence at Gilman School.
Currently living and teaching in Oxford, MS, as the University of Mississippi’s John & Rene Grisham Emerging Southern Writer, he is at work on a novel. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Read back to back to back, these novellas form a triptych—detailed works in their own right, they offer more than the sum of their parts when taken together. Weil meticulously imagines people and their histories, and presents them as a product of their places. This is perhaps the hardest thing for a fiction writer of any age, working in any form, to accomplish.
Anthony Doerr - New York Times
Critics claiming that American short fiction is on life-support should sample the healing elixir of Josh Weil’s breakout collection. In this mesmerizing debut, Weil offers up three razor-sharp novellas...that ring sincere and rarely hit a false note.... These are quiet stories of struggle, survival, heartbreak and grace.... Readers will find glimpses of Bobbie Ann Mason’s depictions of the small-town poor mixed with Annie Proulx’s evocative landscape language.... [Weil’s] writing is understated [and] as strong as steel.
Charleston Gazette-Mail
[Weil’s] language is exquisite, his sentences glorious. In fact, [he] writes the kinds of sentences you want to go sniff and then slosh around in your mouth for a while before heading into the next paragraph. The kind that make you set the book down and think, the kind that can break your heart with their truthful simplicity.... Refreshing and engaging.
Ploughshares
Weil's debut is a stark and haunting triptych of novellas set in the rusted-out hills straddling the border between the Virginias. In "Ridge Weather," Osby, a hardscrabble cattle rancher, finds himself lonely and isolated after his father's suicide. In the aftermath he struggles to make some sort of a personal connection in increasingly desperate attempts to be needed by someone. In "Stillman Wing," the elderly Charlie Stillman, afraid of his own mortality, tries to reinvigorate his life by stealing and reconditioning a tractor, all the while maintaining a relationship with his obese, promiscuous daughter and coming to terms with the death of his barnstormer parents. "Sarverville Remains," takes the form of a letter from Geoffrey Sarver, a mildly retarded orphan, to an incarcerated man whose wife he has fallen in love with, and takes on the elements of a well-told crime story. All three pieces, despite their somber tones, offer renewal for their protagonists. Taken individually, each novella offers its own tragic pleasures, but together, the works create a deeply human landscape that delivers great beauty.
Publishers Weekly
Set in a rural West Virginia valley, this debut novel by Fulbright winner Weil uses linked novellas to show how three loners, with the resilience to make one final connection, bring meaning to their lives. In "Ridge Weather," when Osby Caudill's father dies, Osby realizes they never were much company to each other. A local woman fails to seduce him, and having a renter doesn't work out. Only when he cures a sick steer does he connect with another creature. The title character in "Stillman Wing" is a cantankerous man whose daughter brings home lowlifes to sleep with her. Stillman derides her reckless behavior, but, afraid of losing her, acts recklessly himself by taking a moonlight swim in a toxic pond. "Sarverville Remains" is narrated by Geoff Sarver, a mentally slow man, who hangs out with younger troublemakers who go to Linda Podawalski for sex behind the local bar. Linda uses Geoff to get rid of her husband, but she also gives him the courage to strike out for land where Sarvers fled in search of a new life decades ago. Intense and satisfying; highly recommended for all public libraries. —Donna Bettencourt
Library Journal
A restive nobility binds the sorrowful protagonists of Weil’s stellar debut collection of novellas, each a tender anthem to a starkly unforgiving Virginia countryside and the misguided determination of its most forsaken residents.... Throughout, Weil limns a rugged emotional landscape every bit as raw and desolate as the land that inspired it, delivering an eloquent portrait of people who defiantly cling to a fierce independence. —Carol Haggas
Booklist
Intimacy eludes the misfits in Weil's debut, three novellas set in the backwoods of Virginia. In the slight first entry, Ridge Weather, father and son used to tend their five small herds of cattle together. Now it's all on the son, 38-year-old Osby, for his father has committed suicide. At least he still has the cows for company; his greatest fear is of a solitary entombment. Yet when a middle-aged divorcee offers herself to him, Osby bolts. It's a superficial story, leaving us wondering about the causes of the father's suicide and the son's ingrained isolation. Cause and effect are clear in the second entry, Stillman Wing. The eponymous Wing is a "fear-driven man" because while a child he witnessed the death of his parents, daredevil pilots, in a crash. Fearful of risk, Wing worked for 50 years as a mechanic for a moving-equipment company and failed to tie the knot with the carefree Ginny. His daughter Caroline (Ginny is long gone) has become the new risk-taker. She drives in demolition derbies. She binges, sending her weight to 300 pounds, and craves one-night stands. Wing loves her dearly, but his censoriousness drives her away. Now retired, Wing spends his time restoring a vintage 1928 tractor, his last love. The story is contrived and overly schematic. The third entry, Sarverville Remains, though too long and cluttered, has an undeniable power. Geoffrey Sarver is a mildly retarded gas-station attendant. After his kin, all hill people, disappeared, he was raised in foster homes (Weil captures their smothering condescension). Now 30-ish, Geoff hangs out with some high-school kids. They know a restaurant worker, Linda, who fellates them for free. In his artfully garbled voice, Geoff describes how he and Linda, trapped in a bad marriage, become friends. Their one date ends disastrously when the husband shows up. Geoff loses an eye, yet the showdown is also his long-delayed rite of passage into adulthood. Weil's empathy for his damaged people has not yet found a compatible narrative.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
“Ridge Weather”
1. The trilogy of novellas creates a saga of the land and its people. How would you describe the world that Weil creates? Are there plot links or echoes of similar themes in the three stories?
2. What are the results of a hard life in near isolation in this unyielding country? Might a closer community have created easier warmth and better dinner-table conversation? Are there any people with these gifts in the stories?
3. Formal education has certainly not been available to the characters, yet some have remarkable competency in practical matters. Examples?
4. Are there moral imperatives in the trilogy? What behavior is criticized by a narrator or other character? What do we learn about tolerance? As we read about the stubborn aged, the morbidly obese, the mentally impaired, would we do a better job of living with these people than their families do?
5. Does the author provide different versions of the truth? Is reality something to be personally reconstructed by characters as well as by the reader? Did you find that your interpretations shifted as you proceeded in a novella? Can you give examples? In “Sarverville Remains,” Geoffrey says to Brian/Waker, “You just know your half of the story. And I know the same is true for me” (p. 304).
6. What differentiates Osby from his father as recalled in these pages? For instance, “His father would have just put a bullet in it” (p. 48). Are the two men alike in any ways?
7. “Osby wasn’t considered the smartest man in Eads County” (p. 7). The kids on the school bus “looked at him the way they look at adults. That still felt odd to him” (p. 20). What has kept Osby somehow frozen in time? Have there been any women in his life? Has he ever left home? Do you think his father’s dying will liberate him? Might he begin to live in the present?
8. How does the outside world penetrate the story? Consider the “Save the Children” pamphlet. And the arrival of Jim and his dreams for the Asian crop kenaf. What is the effect of Whistler’s Meadow, the hippy commune?
9. In a story largely about loss and loneliness, why does Osby reject Jim’s friendship and nurturing? Could Jim evolve into a son figure for Osby?
10. How is Deb from the gas station brilliantly portrayed? What are some of the details that create this absolutely original woman with her sadness, generosity, and fantasies? In contrast, what are Osby’s fantasies? What could he do to earn the declaration, “I don’t know what I’d do without you” (p. 67)? Do we also think of Osby’s imagined disasters for his cows, predicaments only he could help? In difficult calving, “the irrefutable fact that a living thing would not exist if it weren’t for him” (p. 29).
11. When Osby retreats to the Old House in the snowstorm, what kind of sanctuary is he seeking? Is he given any revelation?
12. How does Osby resolve the problem of the dying steer? How are the fates of Osby, the steer, and his father intertwined? Are we looking at a shared miracle?
13. Do you see in “Ridge Weather” a hymn of praise for the land? Not only has it been home for multiple generations of Caudills, but how does it have an inestimable value of its own? Waste of land is sinful, as in the pasture land taken over by the government. The old hay bales once “had been large and round, but they’d sat there for almost three years now and had sunk in on themselves, decomposing, just mounds of rotten grass. . . . Now, what had been a smooth field of good grass was mostly scrub: junipers, cedars, broom sedge, briars that were getting worse all the time” (p. 30). Is there a note of hope at the end? What do you think Osby has learned?
“Stillman Wing”
1. How are Stillman and the Deutz linked? What propels this “mountain-raised, long-working, hard-minded, fear-driven man” (p. 87) to steal and restore the tractor? A forced retirement and shaking his fist at fate? An offering—and proving something—to Caroline? “There are days when the world outside his shop seems spinning too quickly for him to get his hands on it, and he comes in, and the Deutz is there like a bolt right through the axis of it all” (p. 117).
2. Caroline accuses her father of iron control. How does his health obsession reveal his character? His diet and exercise fetishes? Are his love and concern for his daughter heartfelt? To the point of sprinkling seaweed on her cereal and delivering it to her in the bath? Do you think it is old age and diminishing blood flow that accentuate his need to control?
3. In this land of elemental struggle, some events recall biblical catastrophes. One thinks of the mysterious slaughter of all the Demastus cattle (pp. 94-95). Recall the grackles smothering the trees “like some biblical plague” (p. 105). Does Caroline, bent on self-destruction, create her own Sodom and Gomorrah? Might she herself call it survival? And self-medication? Does her total lack of discipline reflect a perversion of Stillman’s “carefulness”?
4. “Risks?...What would you know about risks, Dad? You’ve never took a risk in your life” (p. 115). (Can this still be said at the end of the story?) What might have made Stillman such a careful man? What does he recall of his parents? (Who besides them has abandoned him?) When told the story of her grandparents’ death, Caroline, age six, said, “You don’t look sad…you look angry” (p. 130). Even in old age, Stillman is haunted. The plane circling his workshop, real or hallucination? “Something in him iced over. He could feel it spread like frost dusting his bones” (p. 122). As he then tries to remember…and to feel…he goes to the cemetery. Are we reminded of several characters in King Lear? Of “unaccommodated man”? “Turning the basin upside down, he held it over his head and got out. The rain beat above him. It was cold on his fingers. He splashed around the car, crouched beside the fence, scrunched his eyes at the chiseled stones. He tried to summon some kind of sadness” (p. 131). Later, thinking of his “one-time nearly wife…the anger, and fear, and regret boil to the surface like pot scum…Outside the snow covers everything in quiet. He will sleep. He will rejuvenate and heal and sleep” (p. 139). It is a stunning picture of old age and despair. In King Lear, how does Cordelia’s standing up to her tyrannical father (and later reconciling) compare to Caroline’s role? What other characters in novels or myth does Stillman make you think of, characters at the very verge of chasm or apocalypse?
5. How does the past become present in “Stillman Wing”? Think of the pond at the commune. And the “rusted hulk of a B-26” (p. 164). The ringing of Old Les Pfersick’s bell. Other instances? Ginny’s pregnancy?
6. What are some of the surprising acts of generosity in the story? Do you recall the surprise posthumous gifts of old Pfersick? And that of the Booe child?
7. How do you understand the end of the novella? “... he felt ready, unafraid, even eager to see at last what a new valley might look like..." (p. 187). After a heroic journey, has Stillman achieved his quest?
8. What do the time warps mean in the story? At one moment Stillman is waiting for Caroline to pick up the phone at the commune. The next ring he hears is from a California orphanage, an event of forty-one years ago (p. 154). And there is the phantom plane. Other examples? Are these signs of deterioration and mental disorder? Or are they times when Stillman is trying to integrate disparate, jarring events in his life?
9. “These were a strange people who lived down there, a people not of this land, not of this valley. This valley was a place of homes scattered far from homes, and meant to be that way, of lives built around cattle more than conversation, timed to rhythms of the crops, not the need to keep pace with other people’s heartbeats. This was a place where people knew how to keep apart” (p. 162). In vivid contrast, how does the commune serve as both refuge for the living and the dying? What are the ironic links between pollution and healing, or at least comforting?
"Sarverville Remains”
1. What is Geoffrey’s motive for writing? Is he seeking some unity with Linda’s husband? Is it expiation he’s after? Does the second-person narrative pull in the reader effectively? Is Waker the only (captive) audience Geoffrey could hope for?
2. Talk about Linda and Geoffrey’s relationship. “You aren’t like anybody else, she said” (p. 276). Does the man-boy give her some self-respect? And on Geoffrey’s side, he says, “She’s the first who ever made me feel full growed” (p. 219).
3. In the coon episode, what propels Geoffrey to commit this neighborhood chaos and carnage? At the point of Roy’s gun and rage, how does Geoffrey perform a Herculean labor, like cleaning out the Augean stables?
4. What do we learn about Roy at the dump? His nostalgic dreams of childhood? His capacity for “magical” moments (p. 260)? Comment on his question to Geoffrey: “You ever hear the one about the guy that brings his retarded buddy on a hunting trip?” (p. 262).
5. “Most like you think there ain’t no Sarverville at all” (p. 263). Talk about the range of views of the Sarvers, before and after their fifty years out in the wilderness on their own. An Eden? Is it a deliberate rejection of conventional behavior that actually seems to work? Ma B says “all of them diminished…but they was diminished only in the narrow sight of them who was so alike they could be swapped from wife to husband or job to job and wouldn’t nobody know the difference” (p. 292). What were the special gifts of the Sarvers?
6. “It was Ma B teached me how to give good hugs” (p. 281).What else has she given Geoffrey? Is it possible that living with her and her brood was the last time he felt normal? “They was all diminished” (p. 288). How does her insisting on “yes Ma’am” relate to her advice about how he should treat Linda?
7. If we read “Sarverville Remains” as a fable, does it make you think about other stories about “diminished people”? I.B. Singer’s Gimpel the Fool? The film King of Hearts? Others? What truths of the heart are the writers trying to alert us to?
8. Is the story set up, with all its time shifts and misperceptions, to make the reader share Geoffrey’s confusion about Brian and Waker? Do we begin to question individual perspectives and their limitations?
9. What is Jackie’s idea of a good life for Geoffrey? “You remember how it was. Things was good. You got a good job. People like you. Like to watch you wave and wave back . . . It’s the way it’s meant to be” (p. 310). But Roy says “. . . just let him be . . . alive” (p. 310). What do these attitudes reveal about Jackie and Roy? And expectations for people who are different?
10. “I wanted to do it right,” I said. “I wanted to have it out like growed men.” But Linda says, “Grown men don’t do it like that, Geoffrey” (p. 335). What is it to be a grown man in this story? Do we see any? “Why did He let her break them rules and kiss me like I was a full adult?” (p. 336)
11. Are the land and his heritage to be Geoffrey’s salvation? Has he made the right decision? Do you think he will continue to write?
(Questions developed by Barbara Putnam and are found on the author's website.)
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Skellig
David Almond, 1998
Random House Children's
192 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780440416029
Summary
Young readers will by enchanted by this magical tale of friendship and family: Michael was looking forward to his new house and neighborhood, until his infant sister became very ill. Now his parents are constantly frantic, the scary doctor is always coming around, and Michael feels helpless.
When he goes out into the old rickety garage, he comes across a mysterious being living beneath spider webs and eating flies for dinner. This creature calls himself Skellig, and over the weeks Michael and his new friend Mina bring Skellig out in to the light, and their worlds change forever. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 15, 1951
• Where—Felling and Newcastle, England, UK
• Education—University of East Anglia, England
• Awards—2 Whitbread Awards; Carnegie Medal, 2 Michael L.
Printz Awards
• Currently—lives in Northumberland, England
In his own words:
I grew up in a big extended Catholic family [in the north of England]. I listened to the stories and songs at family parties. I listened to the gossip that filled Dragone’s coffee shop.
I ran with my friends through the open spaces and the narrow lanes. We scared each other with ghost stories told in fragile tents on dark nights. We promised never-ending friendship and whispered of the amazing journeys we’d take together.
I sat with my grandfather in his allotment, held tiny Easter chicks in my hands while he smoked his pipe and the factory sirens wailed and larks yelled high above. I trembled at the images presented to us in church, at the awful threats and glorious promises made by black-clad priests with Irish voices. I scribbled stories and stitched them into little books. I disliked school and loved the library, a little square building in which I dreamed that books with my name on them would stand one day on the shelves.
Skellig, my first children’s novel, came out of the blue, as if it had been waiting a long time to be told. It seemed to write itself. It took six months, was rapidly taken by Hodder Children’s Books and has changed my life. By the time Skellig came out, I’d written my next children’s novel, Kit’s Wilderness. These books are suffused with the landscape and spirit of my own childhood. By looking back into the past, by re-imagining it and blending it with what I see around me now, I found a way to move forward and to become something that I am intensely happy to be: a writer for children.”
David Almond is the winner of the 2001 Michael L. Printz Award for Kit’s Wilderness, which has also been named best book of the year by School Library Journal, Booklist, and Publishers Weekly. He has been called "the foremost practitioner in children's literature of magical realism." (Booklist) His first book for young readers, Skellig, is a Printz Honor winner. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Skellig is the first mainstream Gothic novel for kids to deal unblinkingly with the genre's big time themes, including the fragility of life and redemptive power of love.
USA Today
British novelist Almond makes a triumphant debut in the field of children's literature with prose that is at once eerie, magical and poignant. Broken down into 46 succinct, eloquent chapters, the story begins in medias res with narrator Michael recounting his discovery of a mysterious stranger living in an old shed on the rundown property the boy's family has just purchased: "He was lying there in the darkness behind the tea chests, in the dust and dirt. It was as if he'd been there forever.... I'd soon begin to see the truth about him, that there'd never been another creature like him in the world." With that first description of Skellig, the author creates a tantalizing tension between the dank and dusty here-and-now and an aura of other-worldliness that permeates the rest of the novel. The magnetism of Skellig's ethereal world grows markedly stronger when Michael, brushing his hand across Skellig's back, detects what appears to be a pair of wings. Soon after Michael's discovery in the shed, he meets his new neighbor, Mina, a home-schooled girl with a passion for William Blake's poetry and an imagination as large as her vast knowledge of birds. Unable to take his mind off Skellig, Michael is temporarily distracted from other pressing concerns about his new surroundings, his gravely ill baby sister and his parents. Determined to nurse Skellig back to health, Michael enlists Mina's help. Besides providing Skellig with more comfortable accommodations and nourishing food, the two children offer him companionship. In response, Skellig undergoes a remarkable metamorphosis that profoundly affects the narrator's (and audience members') first impression of the curious creature, and opens the way to an examination of the subtle line between life and death. The author adroitly interconnects the threads of the story—Michael's difficult adjustment to a new neighborhood, his growing friendship with Mina, the baby's decline—to Skellig, whose history and reason for being are open to readers' interpretations. Although some foreshadowing suggests that Skellig has been sent to Earth on a grim mission, the dark, almost gothic tone of the story brightens dramatically as Michael's loving, life-affirming spirit begins to work miracles.
Publishers Weekly
Exploring a tbumbling-down shed on the property his family has just bought, Michael finds Skellig, an ailing, mysterious being who is suffering from arthritis, but who still relishes Chinese food and brown ale. Michael also meets his neighbor Mina, a homeschooled girl. When she's not trying to open his eyes and ears to the world around him, she is spouting William Blake. As Michael begins nursing Skellig back to health, he realizes that there is something odd about his shoulders. Together, he and Mina move Skellig to a safe place, release the wings they find on his back from his jacket, and look after him until he eventually moves on. Throughout the story, readers share Michael's overriding concern for his infant sister, who is gravely ill. In the end, little Joy comes home from the hospital safe and happy and Michael's life has been greatly enriched by his experiences with her, Skellig, and Mina. The plot is beautifully paced and the characters are drawn with a graceful, careful hand. Mina, for all her smugness, is charmingly wide-eyed over Skellig. Michael is a bruising soccer player but displays a tenderness that is quite touching and very refreshing. Even minor characters are well defined. The plot pivots on the question of what Skellig is. It is a question that will keep readers moving through the book, trying to make sense of the cleverly doled out clues. The beauty here is that there is no answer and readers will be left to wonder and debate, and make up their own minds. A lovingly done, thought-provoking novel. —Patricia A. Dollisch, DeKalb County Public Library, Decatur, GA
School Library Journal
(Junior high.) Mina and Michael have seen Skellig together, a strange creature who lives in Michael's old garage, eating Chinese take-out and owl pellets. One magical time the three joined hands and danced in a circle, and the children grew wings from their shoulder blades and learned what it means to fly. In the midst of these wondrous things, Michael is trying to understand why his tiny baby sister is so fragile, and he worries that she will die. He and his father are trying to take care of each other while the mother is staying at the hospital with the baby. Michael's concerns for his little sister have taken him to some edge of awareness where he is able to see Skellig.... Skellig is a strange book, certainly a memorable one. It isn't the usual fantasy, rather there is something about it that makes the reader feel if he or she just looked a bit harder and listened more carefully, many wondrous creatures would be there to find... Almond, who is British, has written for adults, but this is his first world for children. (Editor's note: Skellig is the winner of England's Carnegie Medal; it is a Horn Book Fanfare Book and an ALA Notable Children's Book.)
KLIATT
Almond pens a powerful, atmospheric story: A pall of anxiety hangs over Michael (and his parents) as his prematurely born baby sister fights for her life. The routines of school provide some relief, when Michael can bear to go. His discovery, in a ramshackle outbuilding, of Skellig, a decrepit creature somewhere between an angel and an owl, provides both distraction and rejuvenation; he and strong-minded, homeschooled neighbor Mina nurse Skellig back to health with cod liver pills and selections from a Chinese take-out menu. While delineating characters with brilliant economy-Skellig's habit of laughing without smiling captures his dour personality perfectly-Almond adds resonance to the plot with small parallel subplots and enhances his sometimes transcendent prose ("'Your sister's got a heart of fire,'" comments a nurse after the baby survives a risky operation) with the poetry of and anecdotes about William Blake. The author creates a mysterious link between Skellig and the infant, then ends with proper symmetry, sending the former, restored, winging away as the latter comes home from the hospital. As in Berlie Doherty's Snake-Stone (1996) or many of Janet Taylor Lisle's novels, the marvelous and the everyday mix in haunting, memorable ways.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Michael is very unhappy at the beginning of the novel. Discuss how Michael's life changes after he discovers Skellig and meets Mina. Think about ways that you deal with fear and loneliness. How can you help a friend who appears unhappy?
2. Almond never gives the reader a specific description of Skellig. Based on the glimpses of Skellig found throughout the novel, what is your impression of Skellig? How might Michael describe Skellig at the end of the novel?
3. Michael brushes his hands against Skellig's back and detects what appear to be wings. When he asks his mother about shoulder blades, she answers, "They say that shoulder blades are where your wings were when you were an angel...where your wings will grow again one day." What does this statement reveal about Skellig?
4. When Michael questions why Skellig eats living things and makes pellets like an owl, Mina answers, "We can't know. Sometimes we just have to accept that there are things we can't know." Why is this an important moment in the novel?
5. When Michael's soccer teammates discover his friendship with Mina, they begin teasing him. How does this affect Michael's relationship with them? Why do you think they make fun of Mina? How does she handle the teasing? How would you handle the situation if your classmates made fun of a special friend?
6. Discuss Michael's relationship with his mother and father. How does the baby's illness put a strain on these relationships? How is Michael's relationship with his parents different from Mina's relationship with her mother?
7. At the same time that his sister is undergoing heart surgery, Michael discovers that Skellig is gone. Mina calms Michael by quoting William Blake: "[Blake] said the soul was able to leap out of the body for a while and then leap back again. He said it could be caused by great fear or enormous pain. Sometimes it was because of too much joy. It was possible to be overwhelmed by the presence of so much beauty in the world." Why do you think Mina quoted this passage to Michael? How are fear and pain related? How are joy and beauty related? How does Skellig represent all these qualities?
8. What does the nurse mean when she describes Michael's baby sister as having a "heart of fire"? Why does Michael want to name the baby Persephone? Why is Joy an appropriate name for her? What other names might symbolize her journey and her place in the world?
9. Skellig returns for one last visit with Michael and Mina. What do you think is Skellig's purpose for entering Michael's life? How does he touch other lives? Do you think he'll ever return?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Swindle
Gordon Korman, 2008
Scholastic, Inc.
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780439903455
Summary
After a mean collector named Swindle cons him out of his most valuable baseball card, Griffin Bing must put together a band of misfits to break into Swindle's compound and recapture the card. There are many things standing in their way—a menacing guard dog, a high-tech security system, a very secret hiding place, and their inability to drive—but Griffin and his team are going to get back what's rightfully his...even if hijinks ensue.
This is Gordon Korman at his crowd-pleasing best, perfect for readers who like to hoot, howl, and heist. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 23, 1963
• Where—Montreal, Canada
• Education— New York University
• Currently—lives in Great Neck (Long Island), New York, USA
Gordon Korman was born in Montreal, Canada, and grew up in the Toronto area. Since he had no brothers, sisters, or pets, he started writing to keep himself entertained. Then his 7th-grade English teacher gave the class an exciting assignment: "He gave us four months—45 minutes a day!—to work on the story of our choice. My project was This Can't Be Happening at Macdonald Hall, which became my first published book. I happened to be the class monitor for the Scholastic TAB Book Club, so I figured I was practically a Scholastic employee already! I sent my novel to the address on the TAB flyer, and a few days after my 14th birthday, I had a book contract with Scholastic."
By the time Korman graduated from high school, he had published five other novels and several articles for Canadian newspapers. He then moved to New York City, where he studied film and dramatic writing at New York University.
Known for his funny, realistic novels for children and young adults, Korman has also collaborated with his mother on two books of poetry written by the fictional character Jeremy Bloom. Never short for ideas, Korman is grateful to the real kids he meets for inspiration: "The best place to get ideas is at the schools I visit. No matter how inventive we writers try to be, the real characters are always the best ones."
Gordon Korman lives in Great Neck, New York, with his wife and son. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
This novel by the very popular author contains all of the perfect elements of a story for middle school readers, including suspense, fully-developed characters, relevant plot, humor, and a surprise ending that is difficult to predict. The main character, Griffin Bing is the boy who always has a plan. He is also a 6th grade student who is known for his sometimes outrageous actions. One of his recent ideas is to have a sleepover in a condemned local "haunted house." While scoping out the house, Griffin discovers a very rare George Herman Ruth baseball card. This card is the key to his Griffin's new plan to save his family from their financial problems. He sells his card to a dealer for $120. Later, he discovers that he has been swindled. The dealer sold the rare card for $200,000. Griffin knows he needs a new plan. He enlists the help of his friend in his mission to get his card back. His plan is not perfect, and he and his team soon realize they must outwit a guard dog, a security system, and a secret hiding place. One more problem stands in his way: No one can drive. Readers will enjoy the page-turning adventure, the quirky characters and the revenge factor. This book is destined to become a favorite read-aloud for librarians and classroom teachers. It is a must-have for middle school libraries. —Sue Reichard
Children's Literature
(Gr 3-7) When Griffin Bing and his pal Ben discover an old Babe Ruth baseball card in a home about to be demolished, Griffin—aware that his dad's lack of success as an inventor is causing increasing stress at home—dreams of selling it for thousands and using his share to keep the family financially afloat. The boys are somewhat deflated when they present the card to collectibles dealer S. Wendell Palomino and he suggests that it is a reproduction and buys it for just $120. They soon discover that the sleazy dealer plans to auction off the card, which is actually an extremely rare misprint, and that it is expected to sell for well over a million dollars. Outraged at having been taken advantage of, Griffin plans to steal the valuable card back from Palomino—or "Swindle," as he now calls him—but doing so is no mean feat. Among the obstacles the boys face are a large fence, a high-tech security system, and a ferocious guard dog. Clearly, special skills are needed, so they recruit a ragtag crew of oddball accomplices including an expert climber, an electronics whiz, an aspiring actor, and an animal lover who claims to be able to put even the most hardened, snarling canines in touch with their cuddly inner puppies. This kids-versus-adults-themed story is pure plot-driven fun from top to bottom. If you read it aloud, don't be surprised when your listeners beg you for "just one more chapter." —Jeffrey Hastings, Highlander Way Middle School, Howell, MI
School Library Journal
Eleven-year-old Griffin Bing enlists sixth grade friends who have computer, climbing, acting, animal handling, and swindling skills to retrieve a possible million-dollar Babe Ruth baseball card from a shop owner who scammed it from Griffin for only $125. Griffin hopes that selling the card will solve his parents' financial problems brought on by his father quitting his engineering job to focus on his invention, the SmartPick, which picks fruit without bruising it. The crew sends the shop owner tickets to a hockey game and break into his house while he is gone. With the help of the SmartPick, they overcome hostile guard dogs, security systems, neighbor surveillance, and betrayal to secure the card, but Griffin must return it to its rightful owner. Eventually the card funds the building of a town museum that includes a skate park, which is dedicated to Griffin and his team, and the caper brings attention and investors to the SmartPick so that Griffin's family is financially secure. Korman's fast moving, feel-good suspense novel will have middle schoolers, especially boys, turning the pages. Griffin, "The Man With a Plan," is resourceful but believable and likeable. He needs his friends, learns from them, and makes some poor choices for good causes. He out thinks the bad guys, supports his father (the good guy), and commits a crime with which even the police sympathize. The dog cover, large print, and ample white space make it reluctant reader material. —Lucy Schall
VOYA
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Swindle:
1. How would you describe Griffin Bin, "The Man With the Plan"? Do admire him? Is he the kind of person you would like as a friend?
2. What about Ben? What kind of friend is he? Why does he worry about trying to get the baseball card back.
3. What do you think about Griffin's advice for getting around adult rules—suggestions like how to sneak out of the house or "always maintain eye contact" when lying to your parents? Good advice...or not so good?
4. Why does Griffin organize the sleep over in the Old Rockford House?
5. Because Griffin was the one to find the baseball card, does that mean he owns it? What does Ben think?
6. Griffin intends to retrieve the card from Palomino and use the money to help his parents. Do the ends justify his means? Is he right to steal the card—in fact, is it stealing? Is there another way for Griffin to get the card back?
7. How does Griffin plan to get the baseball card back from Swindle? What are the problems he faces...and how does he attempt to solve them? Talk about Griffin's "team" and their special skills.
8. Did you enjoy this book—did you find it an exciting story? Are you happy with the way the book ended? What would you like to have seen happen to Swindle?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
Kate Douglas Wiggin, 1903
~240 pp. (Varies by publisher.)
Summary
In this 1903 children's classic, 10-year-old Rebecca, energetic, high-spirited, and full of mischief, goes to live with her spinster aunts, one harsh and demanding, the other soft and sentimental, and spends seven difficult but rewarding years growing up in their company.
The two aunts who are raising her on a Maine farm try to turn her into a proper young lady—which eventually happens. Adults enjoy the book as well, especially the vivid glimpses of turn-of-the-century New England and its virtues. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 28, 1856
• Where—Philadelphia, Pennnsylvania, USA
• Death—August 24, 1923
• Where—Harrow, Middlesex, England, UK
• Education—Gorham Female Seminary; Morrison Academy
(Baltimore, Maryland)
Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin, born in 1856 in Philadelphia, was of Welsh descent. A 1873 graduate of Abbot Academy (New England's first girls' school founded in 1929), she started the first free kindergarten in San Francisco in 1878 (the Silver Street Free Kindergarten). With her sister in the 1880s she also established a training school for kindergarten teachers.
Kate Wiggin devoted her entire adult life to the welfare of children in an era when children were commonly thought of as cheap labour. Kate herself experienced a happy childhood, even though it was colored by the American Civil War and her father's death. Kate and her sister Nora were still quite young when their widowed moved her little family from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Portland, Maine. Then three years later, upon her mother's remarriage, to the little village of Hollis. There Kate grew up in rural surroundings, with her sister and her new baby brother, Philip.
Her education was spotty, consisting of a short stint at a "dame's school," some home schooling under the "capable, slightly impatient, somewhat sporadic" instruction of Albion Brabury (her step father), a brief spell at the district school, a year as a boarder at the Gorham Female Seminary, a winter term at Morison Academy in Baltimore, Maryland, and a few months' stay at Abbott Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. Although rather by-the-way, this was more education than most women received at the time.
In 1873, hoping to ease Albion Bradbury's lung disease, Kate's family moved to Santa Barbara, California, where Kate's stepfather died three years later. The circumstance of this move put Kate at the forefront of the kindergarten movement in America. A kindergarten training class was opening in Los Angeles, and Kate enrolled. After graduation, in 1878, she headed the first free kindergarten in California, on Silver Street, in the slums of San Francisco. The children were "street Arabs of the wildest type," but they were no match for Kate's warm personality and dramatic flair.
By 1880 she was forming a teacher-training school in conjunction with the Silver Street kindergarten. However, according to the customs of the time, when Kate married Bradley Wiggin in 1881, she was required to give up her teaching job.
Still devoted to her school, she began to raise money for it through writing, first The Story of Patsy (1883), then The Birds's Christmas Carol (1887). Both privately printed books were issued commercially by Houghtom Mifflin in 1889, with enormous success.
Ironically, considering her intense love of children, Kate Wiggin had none. Her husband died suddenly in 1889, and Kate took her grief home to Maine. For the rest of her life she struggled with depression, and in order to combat it she travelled as frequently as she could, dividing her time between writing, trips to Europe, and giving public reading for the benefit of various children's charities. Her literary output included popular books for adults, scholarly work on the educational principles of Friedrich Froebel, and of course the classic children's novel Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903).
In 1895 Kate Wiggin married a New York City business-man, George Christopher Riggs, who became her staunch supporter as her success grew. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm became an immediate bestseller; both it and Mother Carey's Chickens (1911) were adapted to the stage. Houghton Mifflin collected her writings in ten volumes in 1917.
For a time, she lived at Quillcote, her summer home in Hollis, Maine. Quillcote is now the town's library. Wiggin founded the Dorcas Society of Hollis & Buxton, Maine in 1897. The Tory Hill Meeting House in the adjacent town of Buxton inspired her book (and later play), The Old Peabody Pew (1907).
In 1921, Wiggin and her sister Nora Archibald Smith edited an edition of Jane Porter's 1809 novel of William Wallace, The Scottish Chiefs, for the Scribner's Illustrated Classics series, which was illustrated by N. C. Wyeth (father of Andrew)..
In the spring of 1923 Kate Wiggin travelled to England as a New York delegate to the Dickens Fellowship. There she became ill and died, at age 66, of bronchial pneumonia. At her request, her ashes were brought home to Maine and scattered over to the Saco River. Her autobiography, My Garden of Memory, was published after her death.
Kate was also a composer of music, including "Nine Love Songs and a Carol" (1896) for voice and piano. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Beautiful, warm and satisfying.
Mark Twain
May I thank you for Rebecca?... I would have quested the wide world over to make her mine, only I was born too long ago and she was born but yesterday.... Why could she not have been my daughter? Why couldn't it have been I who bought the three hundred cakes of soap? Why, O, why?
Jack London (letter to Wiggin, 1904)
Another title celebrating a century marker, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin...reveals a lively, generous spirit in the heroine who leaves her home to live with her two elderly aunts.
Publishers Weekly
Rebecca is an unforgettable character. Rebecca is someone you want to get to know, and hate to leave at the end of the book. Young girls will enjoy reading about her adventures as well as her humorous and extroverted personality. This story is 100 years old, but readers can still connect to it today. Her story is set in the late 1800's. Rebecca leaves her home at Sunnybrook farm to live with her two older aunts. Although it is difficult at times, Rebecca tries desperately to fit in at the brick house. This story tells of her efforts.
Louise Parsons - Children's Literature
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm:
1. Why is it necessary for Rebecca to leave her family and live with her aunts in Riverboro? Why had the aunts hoped that Hannah, Rebecca's older sister, would be sent instead of her—but why wasn't Hannah sent?
2. Difficult as it would have been, splitting up families was not uncommon, at any time or place in history. What would it feel like as a child to be torn from your roots and the closeness of family love? How did Rebecca accept her lot?
3. Talk about the aunts, Jane and Miranda Sawyer. They are sisters, but as seemingly different as night and day. How does each treat Rebecca? What are their expectations and hopes for her? Are Miranda's expectations fair? Miranda considers Rebecca "All Randall and no Sawyer"—what she mean? What is Rebecca's relationship to each aunt and does her relationship change?
4. Much of Rebecca's charm as a heroine comes from the fact that she isn't perfect. What are some of the mistakes she makes? How does Rebecca respond to Aunt Miranda's scoldings? Does she give reasons or excuses? Does any of it sound familiar to you—if you are a young person who has been scolded by your parents...or a parent holding your children responsible for their actions.
4. What does the soap-selling episode say about Rebecca and Emma Jane Perkins and the kind of girls they are? Are the two girls different from young people today? Consider, too, Rebecca's anger when Minnie Smellie taunts the Simpson children?
5. What are the character traits that enable Rebecca to win the respect of her teachers and schoolmates. In what way does Rebecca become a leader?
6. How does Rebecca change over the course of the novel? Living with her aunts was to be "the making of her." What does this mean, and does she achieve the goal?
7. How important is education in this book and why? Compare it to the emphasis on learning today? Do we take school as seriously—we all say we do, but do we ? What things detract from—or enhance—today's education?
8. Are you satisfied with how Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm ends? What do you like—or dislike—about the ending?
(Questions by LitLovers, Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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