Event Report: The Greater Houston Teen Book Convention

This past Saturday, April 11, the annual Greater Houston Teen Book Con was held at Alief Taylor High School, sponsored by the Alief Education Foundation, Blue Willow Bookshop, Follet Library Resources, Mackin Educational Resources, Escue & Associates, and more.

One thing I thought this book convention did especially well was their selection of authors.  There was a nice mix of big names, steadily working authors, and newbies.  Debut author Henry Turner's ASK THE DARK even came out the week of the event.  There was also a diverse mix of authors, which is particularly important in Houston, currently the most diverse city in the US.  Our students need to see that someone like them can have a career as an author.  As Ally Carter said in "The Secrets That Bind Us" panel, just knowing S.E. Hinton was a teen girl from Oklahoma opened her mind to the possibility of writing professionally, and every kid deserves that.  The diverse authors included Jason Rynolds, Aisha Saeed (Vice President of We Need Diverse Books), Lydia Kang, David Levithan, Guadalupe Garcia McCall, and Jen Wang.

I noticed a few areas for improvement.  One of the panels I attended was crowded and another was extremely crowded.  I like the idea of teens getting to see as many authors as possible, but I think more smaller panels would help spread people out.  Most of the panels included five authors.  Another was that they stopped selling refreshments before the closing speech, at which point the event was supposed to go on for another two hours.  I know I wanted to buy a bottle of water and just used the vending machines instead.  I think many people could've still used a drink and a small snack at that point.  I do give the event props for having multiple food trucks during the lunch hours.  That was delicious.

I was a little late getting to the event because I had trouble finding Alief Taylor High School.  (David Levithan assured me that his escort got lost on the way too.)  The first panel I attended was "The Secrets That Bind Us" with Ally Carter, Henry Turner (who has the voice of a late-night DJ), Lindsay Cummings, and Justine Larbalestier.  They briefly introduced their books and then launched into a Q&A.  I was particularly interested in Cummings' story - she was bedridden for three years and did little other than read and write.  She wrote THE MURDER COMPLEX when she was eighteen because MOCKINGJAY made her so angry.  (I read it for this year's Cybils; it's a good book.)  They had a variety of opinions on plot twists.  Turner works his out in revision; Carter likes them best if they surprise even her; and Cummings plans them first because they're her favorite part.  None of them liked rereading their work.  When Carter needs to remember a continuity detail, she likes to ask Twitter and ask her fans to tell her if she's mentioned something before.

Review: Black Dove, White Raven

By Elizabeth Wein
Available now from Disney Hyperion
Review copy
Read my Elizabeth Wein tag

Elizabeth Wein combines the WWII setting of CODE NAME VERITY and ROSE UNDER FIRE with the Ethiopian setting of her last four Lion Hunter novels in a book that is sure to please her fans new and old. 

BLACK DOVE, WHITE RAVEN beings with a letter from Emilia to the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie asking for him to grant her brother Teodoros a passport.  What follows are the diary entries, flight logs, and stories they wrote together, the evidence Em sends to the emperor that Teo deserves his help leaving the country.  This letter is the first of many indications that the idyllic way Em and Teo's story starts is sure not to last.

Em and Teo were raised together by Rhoda (Em's mother) and Delia, two barnstormers, until Delia's tragic death due to a bird strike.  They emigrate to Ethiopia to escape the racism in the US, because it was where Teo's dad was from, and because Delia dreamed of all of them living there together.  For the most part it is a happy life, although Momma refuses to teach them how to fly.  But there are rumors of invasion, that the Italians are going to try to take over the only African country that was never colonized.  Staying in the country becomes ever more dangerous for the half-Italian Em and her mother, and for Teo, who is just old enough to be conscripted.

BLACK DOVE, WHITE RAVEN builds up the intensity slowly.  About halfway through the novel there is an awful, life-changing reveal that kicks everything into a higher gear.  I loved the slow dread of what was to come, the hints of war on the horizon and their mother's careless optimism putting the family in a dangerous situation.  Throughout it all, there's the infallible relationship between Em and Teo, who never regard each other as anything less than siblings no matter how outsiders treat them.

I also liked how deeply Wein delves into the details of the setting.  The first half portrays everyday life, the clothes, the flashy church, the minutiae of learning to fly.  The second disrupts that.  Throughout the novel, good and bad things are shown about both the Ethiopians and the Italians.  For instance, the Ethiopians are still in the process of ending slavery and the Italians commit war crimes such as using mustard gas.  I knew very little about the the setting of BLACK DOVE, WHITE RAVEN before I started reading the novel, and I was horrified by many of the events that really happened.  Wein provides a detailed author's note about the actual history and the liberties that she took for the story.

BLACK DOVE, WHITE RAVEN isn't as brutal of a reading experience as CODE NAME VERITY or ROSE UNDER FIRE, but it is still not for the faint of heart.  It's a wonderful portrayal of how children get caught up in war through no fault of their own.  It's also a wonderful portrayal of family and community and how humans seek out a place for themselves.  I'm definitely still a fan.

Fellow Houstonites and Wein fans, be sure to go out to Houston Teen Book Con to see Wein this Saturday, 4/11!

Review: The Sunbird

Book three of the Lion Hunters
By Elizabeth Wein
Available now from Open Road Media
Review copy
Read my review of The Winter Prince

The first three books of the Lion Hunters series switch focus between three members of a family: Medraut, then his legitimate half-sister Goewin, and then his son Telemekos.  This means that although the books build on each other, they also stand fairly well on their own.  (The last two books focus on Telemekos and should be read as a duology.)

Hosted by Angie

THE SUNBIRD first came out in 2004, and in some ways feels dated despite only being ten years old.  It is very short compared to most current YA novels, although it cannot be confused with an MG novel despite Telemekos's youth.  (He's eleven.)  The Lion Hunters novels address some very dark themes, including torture and dehuminization in this entry.

The start of the series plays with Arthurian mythology, but the series does not stick to a traditional path.  THE SUNBIRD takes place in Aksum, now known as Ethiopia.  Telemekos is half-British and half-Aksumite, but he is still accomplished at hiding in plain sight despite his distinctive pale hair.  It is that skill that causes the Emperor to recruit him.  Plague is spreading through Europe, and quarantine has been instituted to protect Aksum.  But there are those who would take this as a chance to make money on the black market, no matter the risk of spreading disease.

In THE SUNBIRD, Elizabeth Wein skillfully weaves together an espionage adventure with a coming of age and the story of a broken but loving family.  Medraut does not speak, and Goewin is a princess of Britain first, grooming her nephew (who is unknowingly the heir apparent).  Fans of her breakout novels CODE NAME VERITY and ROSE UNDER FIRE will not be surprised at the depth of emotion in THE SUNBIRD nor the exploration of darker themes.

This historical fantasy will appeal to fans of Megan Whalen Turner and Jennifer A. Nielsen, which also feature clever and secretive young boys having adventures with consequences for entire nations.  I do recommend reading THE WINTER PRINCE and A COALITION OF LIONS first.  It is not necessary to understand THE SUNBIRD, but it makes the experience richer.  Plus, they're also terrific novels.  This series is criminally underrated.

Review: Rose Under Fire

Companion to CODE NAME VERITY
By Elizabeth Wein
Available now from Disney-Hyperion
Review copy
Read my review of The Winter Prince

I loved ROSE UNDER FIRE, perhaps even more than CODE NAME VERITY.  Covering the last six months of Ravensbruck concentration camp and the Nuremberg trials, it is perhaps even more harrowing than its companion.  Characters do carry through, particularly Anna Engel, who is German and is again perhaps an ally of our protagonist, perhaps not.

This review will be short, I know, because it's hard for me to find the right words.

Honestly, what makes these books so great is their exploration of the many people, especially women, involved in WWII.  There's a humanity to all of Elizabeth Wein's characters, even at their worst.  She doesn't sanctify Rose Justice, the Rabbits, or the other women in Ravensbruck.  They're allowed to be cowardly or cruel at logical moments.  But they manage to cling to hope and love.

They also cling to poetry.  Rose is a poet, and her own works and memory of others keeps her alive.  She plays off of famous works, like Emily Dickinson's "Hope is the thing with feathers" and is inspired by William Carlos Williams.  But her biggest influence and love is Edna St. Vincent Millay, one of my favorite poets.  But our perspective on Millay is very different.  For Rose, she's still alive, writing about current events.  Millay is vital, the woman who inspired Rose to join the Air Transport Auxiliary, without which she wouldn't have ended up in Germany.

I managed not to cry through CODE NAME VERITY, possibly through sheer force of will.  But I cried during ROSE UNDER FIRE, and there was one death that almost broke me.  Wein makes the ride as smooth as she can with her beautiful prose, but this is a rough book.  The subject matter is, to take a word from the novel, grotesque.  But while Wein doesn't hold back on the horrors, she doesn't revel in them or try to make them sexy.  They're horribly mundane.

If you didn't like CODE NAME VERITY, then I doubt you'll like ROSE UNDER FIRE.  If you haven't read CODE NAME VERITY, it is not necessary to read ROSE UNDER FIRE.  Just be prepared to be a touch shell shocked after reading.  There's a useful bibliography in the back for nonfiction reading about the people, places, and time covered.

Review: The Winter Prince

Book One of The Lion Hunters
Written and illustrated by Elizabeth Wein
Available now from Open Road Media (orig. published in 1993)
Review copy

This is a little bit of a Retro Review for me, although not entirely.  I just about burst with glee when I saw that THE WINTER PRINCE and A COALITION OF LIONS were back in print.  Two reasons for this: 1) I needed a copy of THE WINTER PRINCE for my own and 2) Now I can spread the love more easily!  If the last three books come back into print that will just be the icing on the cake.  (Warning: do not read the fourth book until you have the fifth book handy.)

Hosted by Angie

Nowadays Elizabeth Wein is well known as the author of smash hit CODE NAME VERITY.  But once upon a time she was Elizabeth E. Wein, debut author of an Arthurian retelling called THE WINTER PRINCE.  Artos has three children.  Medraut, the oldest, is a illegitimate and cannot inherit.  Lleu, the prince, is beautiful and fragile and talented and spoiled.  Goewin, his twin, will not inherit either since she is a woman.  The children love each other, but there's also a great deal of resentment and hurt feelings between them.

THE WINTER PRINCE is written like a letter from Medraut to his aunt and mother, Morgause.  She's a cruel woman with a terrible hold on her sons, but at the same time almost understandable as a woman trying to grasp all the power a woman can have.  Medraut perhaps loves and hates her even more than her loves and hates Lleu.

There isn't much of a plot to THE WINTER PRINCE.  It's a book about a relationship, and two people coming to terms with who they are.  It's wonderfully written, Wein's prose lending the book a fittingly seductive and sharp beauty.  It's a little messy, just like it's protagonist, and swiftly covers a great deal of time.  It's one of those books that sticks in your mind long after you read it, and comes back to you immediately once you read the first sentence again.

It's just everything I want out of a book on the Matter of Britain.  And believe me, I'm an Arthurian geek and I want a lot.  It has questions of honor and what makes a good ruler, family and romance, and it's all bound up in insane episodes of cruelty, incest, and violence.  It holds its own with some of the greats of Arthurian legend, like Malory and Marie de France and Rosemary Sutcliff.

Let's all give a big hand to Open Road for reprinting this under appreciated classic.  They've done it quite nicely, with a biography of Wein in the back and illustrations prefacing each chapter.  The illustrations by the author have a nicely simple, old-fashioned look to them.