“Altar of Eden” by James Rollins

Dr. Moreau lives: In a secret, deep-pockets laboratory on a remote island in the Caribbean, a greedy scientist with an unhealthy sense of entitlement (shocker) makes a fatal mistake by  sending a selection of his specimens to Washington, D.C. on a trawler. En route, a violent storm off the coast of Louisiana causes the trawler to run aground, leaving the Border Patrol with what they think is part of an illegal animal smuggling operation. But these animals are very, very strange. Organising both their rescue and the ensuing investigation is the ruggedly handsome Border Patrol officer, Jack Menard, an ex-Marine who leads the BP’s Special Response Team (the best of the best of the best plus gadgets and weapons). He enlists the assistance of Dr. Lorna Polk, a beautiful blonde (groan) research veterinarian, with whom he has a long and complicated history. They quickly tease apart the mystery and horror the cargo represents; the development of their mutual attraction is an expected diversion from what is otherwise a typically delightful Rollins excursion into mayhem and destruction, all for the greater good.

The setting, in and around New Orleans, is obviously dear to Rollins; he evokes its sights, sounds, and smells with the reverence of a native who’s been away for a while. From pain perdu, glimpses of architecture, maze-like wetlands, and Uncle Joe’s Alligator Farm, New Orleans life is presented in a whirlwind tour, conveying a distinct home advantage for Jack’s beleaguered team that also serves them well in enemy territory. In addition to teaching you more about high-tech weaponry than you’d ever thought to learn, Rollins takes a few liberties with genetic theory to explore the nature of humanity in the most inhumane environment possible. It’s all very plausible given a slightly cynical worldview. In the end, not even the maximally-fortified and -funded machinations of a morally bankrupt operation can stand up to the combined powers of love, friendship, family, and a specialised virus. Exactly as it should be. Thanks, James. I had a blast!

“The Children’s Book” by A.S. Byatt

At the end of the nineteenth century, in the last years of Queen Victoria’s reign and leading into the First World War, the certainty that faeries, sprites, and other fantastic creatures inhabited hidden worlds within the natural spaces surrounding us extended beyond the nursery to infuse everyday life with magic. It was almost impossible for a sensitive soul to walk along a country lane or through the woods and not imagine being observed by mysterious elfin eyes or hear the soft flutter of faery wings, always just out of view. Resurgent admiration for forms in nature–the dwelling places of elusive creatures (real or imagined or a bit of both)–inspired new schools of painting, sculpture, and pottery. William Morris, a textile designer and painter, was busily creating the exuberant, nature-themed wallpapers for which he is best known; Aubry Beardsley produced the gorgeously lyrical (and sometimes scandalous) illustrations for which he is best known; Kenneth Grahame was sneaking away from his banking job to explore Toad Hall; and the Fabian Society, the root of today’s Labor Party in England, was created. Fabians were in favor of effecting social change, such as the reduction of poverty, by working to achieve their goals gradually, from within the system. Many were artists and writers, including Virginia Woolf, Edith Nesbit, Rupert Brooke, and George Bernard Shaw, who used their craft to expand the definition of contemporary norms.

To this rarefied company, Byatt added the upper middle-class Wellwoods: Humphry, a handsome banker turned writer of social conscience, and his wife, Olive, a lovely and successful writer of children’s stories. They lived with their many children in a wonderful farmhouse, restored and renovated in the Arts and Crafts style with exposed beams, alcoves, and oddly shaped eaves, windows, and staircases. They embraced an unstructured lifestyle that reveled in nature and the natural; so reminiscent was it of that embraced by hippies in the late 1960s and ‘70s, it was impossible to avoid the juxtaposition of long skirts, flowered hats, and miles of embroidery with visions of Woodstock and a parti-colored bus. Called Todefright, the Wellwood’s house was surrounded by woods, hedgerows, and wild flowers, making it a frequent inspiration for Olive’s faery stories and a starting point for the individual stories she wrote for each of her children, making them at once easier for her to write and easier for the children to believe.

It was a wonderful, indulgent time to be a child; the Wellwood children were free to explore worlds of their own (and their mother’s) creation. But children grow. The Wellwood children grew and discovered that the real world, even the world inside Todefright, was not what it should be. Their let-down is inevitable and A.S. Byatt never does anything by halves. The Children’s Book is complicated and engrossing; art and politics are woven together like one of Morris’s patterns, as are the lives of the Wellwoods, old and young, with the events that eventually bring England to war. As messy as self-discovery can be in the best circumstances, in the absence of real guidance it becomes a nightmare. Throw in some distracted adults, a predatory author, a bi-polar genius, a straitjacket of expectations, and a touch of Tom Brown’s schooldays, and this novel is both timely and timeless. Now go talk to your kids.

Suggested Reading for the Imaginative Child

Reading is absolutely the most important activity in which to engage a child of any age. In much the same way that adding oatmeal to chocolate chip cookie batter gives it a hidden fiber boost (shhhh), children unwittingly absorb nuances of sentence structure, grammar, spelling, and vocabulary as they turn every page of a fascinating story or have it read to them. There is no down side and no doubt that, especially in today’s competitive academic climate (your children practically have to bio-engineer vaccines and distribute them personally to the remote village they built previously in some equally remote corner of the globe in order to make an impression on a seen-it-all college admissions staff), reading provides critical enhancement for both their written and spoken skills. Every page-turning susurration (great SAT word) is a small mark of progress until, closing the book at last, you hold in your hands another tidy accomplishment. Satisfying, entertaining, and educational, in one small rectangular construct that can be taken anywhere.

Here are of a few of my favorite books for children, listed by author, chosen because they are both fun and very well-written. For many of these authors, I have mentioned a book that anchors a series. Naturally, because they are my favorites, their subject matter skirts the supernatural. There is something life-affirming about facing your fears but I’ve always preferred mine on the improbable side.

Blue Balliett,  Chasing Vermeer, Scholastic, paperback,  304 p. Two children, Calder and Petra, combine their talents to solve the mystery of a missing Vermeer painting, besting their teachers and a detective or two along the way. The reader can even take a crack at code-breaking. Teacher and student guides are also available.

John Bellairs, The Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt, Puffin, paperback,  176 p.   A sequel in a series devised around Johnny Dixon, whose best friend and fellow conspirator is a retired university professor. Bellairs’ plots are delightfully creepy and full of references to works of literature. In this story, an unpleasant cereal magnate has died, leaving only a cryptic note to show the location of his will; his widow has offered a $10,000 reward to the person who solves the puzzle. Natural curiosity and a family emergency provide sufficient inducement for Johnny to work it out and soon he is running for his life in an old mansion, using his twelve-year-old wits and a keen power of observation to outsmart an ancient evil.  The publisher has given this book a new cover but I am partial to the original Edward Gorey design (the image at the top is from the back cover of the original).

Michael Chabon, Summerland, Hyperion, paperback, 500 p.   A boy who’s not very good at baseball is recruited to play baseball to save the world; of course, this game has giants, goblins, werewolves, and a Sasquatch to contend with.

Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising, Aladdin, paperback, 232 p. Eleven-year-old Will Stanton discovers he is the seventh son of a seventh son, the last Sign-Seeker, sought out by a wizard to find and guard symbols of the Light which can be joined to defeat the Dark. Okay, it sounds a little hokey (the series was first published in the ’70s) but, really, the writing and the story are solid.

Roald Dahl, The Witches, Puffin, paperback, 208 p.  A boy is both entertained and instructed by his grandmother’s stories of witches. One day, he comes face-to-face with The Grand High Witch herself and, learning of her fiendish plot against all children, must find a way to defeat her. Scary and funny and a must. And don’t forget Matilda!

Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book, HarperCollins, hardback, 307 p.  A tragedy allows a baby to crawl unobserved to a nearby cemetery where he is adopted by a ghostly couple and raised by a variety of other ghosts from all periods of history. Called Nobody Owens, the boy eventually discovers what happened to his real family and, using his specialised skills, finds a way to avenge them and save himself.

Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time, Dell Yearling, paperback, 211 p.  Meg Murray, the daughter of scientists, thinks she is a very usual girl in a very unusual family. Her father has been missing since his experiment with time travel went awry and, when a mysterious visitor arrives to give Meg a clue to enable his return, she sets out to find him. Covering dimensional travel, the existence of evil, and the power of love, L’Engle created a classic in which a young girl learns to trust herself against overwhelming odds. Rebecca Stead’s recently published and Newberry candidate When You Reach Me is an homage to L’Engle’s treasured Wrinkle in Time. Do your child (and yourself) a favor and read both.

Arthur Ransome, Swallows and Amazons, Godine, paperback, 352 p.  This is the first book of a very special series, first published in 1930, about two families of children, the Walkers and the Blacketts, living in England’s Lake District between the First and Second World Wars. They have their own small boats, the Swallow and the Amazon, in which they are free to explore the waterways and islands that surround their homes. Pirates figure prominently in their imaginations as they take full advantage of their independence, developing a good deal of self-reliance and organisation along the way. I learned the rudiments of sailing from these books, and what ‘pemmican’ is, and generally admired the extraordinary freedom these children had to both explore a natural paradise and to have the influence of such a wonderful setting on their imaginations. Granting so much autonomy to children does not even seem possible today, a factor which, very sadly, allows me to place it in the ranks with fantasy. But these stories are very real, based on Ransome’s own childhood wanderings and should be read by every child, so they can learn how much they can do, and read by adults as well, so we don’t forget our own adventures in a less complicated world.

There are, of course, many choices from the fantasy/mystery/scifi genres that I did not include but would certainly put on this list (J.K. Rowling and C.S. Lewis among them). These authors stand out, for their messages as much as for their writing, especially for readers from the 8+ age group who I hope will pick up the habit of reading as easily as they master a video game. Learning to see pictures in your head is much more difficult than maneuvering through those placed in front of you and infinitely more personal. And imagine how great they’ll do on the SATs later on!

“A Test of Wills” by Charles Todd

Detective Inspector Ian Rutledge brought a cranial stowaway home from the trenches of World War I. Forced by the rigid statutes of military procedure to field-execute a broken man for his refusal to participate in another horrific run at the enemy, Rutledge has his men form a firing squad. In a bit of battlefield irony, due to fatigue and lack of heart, and despite the small target pinned to the large target’s chest, Rutledge must deliver the coup de grace himself. Thus dispatched, Corporal Hamish MacLeod finds continued life in the tortured brain of his dispatcher and, while having a Scotsman’s voice offering running mental commentary doesn’t sound half bad on the face of it, this proves problematic for Inspector Rutledge as he attempts to resume his career with Scotland Yard.

He is unaware that his colleague, Inspector Bowles (who seems to have a few invertebrates in his family tree), has set about engineering the hopeful failure of that attempt as a means to clear the field for his own ambitions. Recognizing the better man, though Rutledge has returned somewhat the worse for wear, Bowles contrives to send him on a politically delicate case involving the gruesome murder of a respected officer at the probable hand of another. For the War Office, and the Monarchy, such an outcome would be a public relations disaster; even if the right suspect turns out to be the one with all the medals, it could be a career-ender for the detective in charge. But on the rainy drive to Upper Streetham, Rutledge is only mindful of his own painful memories and the pithy voice in his head that he desperately hopes he won’t actually answer in front of anyone else. Adding to his discomfiture is the fact that, although ‘shell shock’ appears to be a medically accepted and well-treated condition, it is little understood or tolerated by the public. And so he arrives to sort out the villager’s stories and slights, real or imagined, struggling to uncover the truth about a murder even as he tries to hide the truth about himself.

My inner clinician is curious to know how Rutledge will continue to deal with Hamish’s observations and wry asides. Despite the obvious annoyance, Hamish seems to serve a therapeutic purpose as a sort of caretaker for the instinctive assessments Rutledge was known for before the war but was sure he’d lost. This is the first book of eleven in the series written by this (surprise! American) mother-and-son collaboration. It is a worthy addition to the genre of wartime mysteries that couple the psychological and moral adjustments imposed by war with the more mundane murderous impulses that appear to seethe beneath the quiet façade of normal English life.

“The Big House: A Century In The Life Of An American Summer Home” by George Howe Colt

It was my great honor to be asked to review this book for Sabra Smith’s engaging blog, My Own Time Machine, about all things relevant to the preservation of historic buildings as well as to the discovery and appreciation of our own histories. While you’re checking out my review, have a look around at the other issues Sabra brings to timely attention.

“My Life in France” by Julia Child with Paul Prud’Homme

Despite the fact that Julia McWilliams Child went to Smith, I am in awe of her (tongue firmly in cheek—there is a long-standing but good-natured rivalry between her alma mater and mine, Mount Holyoke). When Julia first arrived on the shores of France in 1948 with her husband, Paul Child (her adventurous and talented equal), she was served in a small restaurant with what she described as the “most exciting meal of her life”. It was oysters on the half-shell, rounds of ‘pain de seigle’ (a pale rye bread), one of many types of unsalted butter to spread on it, and ‘sole meuniere’, the fish arriving whole and browned in butter sauce. To borrow shamelessly from “Willy Wonka”: the oysters tasted like oysters, the fish tasted like fish, the snozzberries tasted like snozzberries, and the butter! It was the revelation of a mystery; why was this simple food so uniquely satisfying to all her senses? The answer eventually filled more than 700 pages and kept her occupied for the better part of ten years.

Julia Child’s determined pursuit of cookery perfection for what would become “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” is amazing when considering that her serendipitous collaboration with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle was done sans the aid of email or Skype. When the women were not in Paris together and a new “foolproof” method of preparation was intuited, or a change considered, they sent letters back and forth. There was always more cooking and research to do; the collected recipes were bolstered by descriptions of techniques and, revolutionarily, the reasoning behind the requirements. All of this presupposed that the “servantless American housewife” would appreciate the knowledge that would bring such rarefied classics as ‘boeuf bourguignon’ and ‘aigo bouido’ (garlic soup) to American tables with American ingredients. Her show, “The French Chef”, on WGBH Public Television from Boston’s Channel 2, was a staple of my grade school-age viewing though none of her recipes ever made it to our table where, I’m sorry to say, Chef Boyardee reigned supreme despite my mother’s best efforts. However, Julia Child’s message to me was clear. Do your very best and if it doesn’t work out quite the way you intended, smile and adjust. Merci, Julia.

“Meg: Hell’s Aquarium” by Steve Alten

Sometimes a girl just needs the good old-fashioned mayhem that only prehistoric biologicals on a rampage can provide. This is the fourth of Steve Alten’s Meg books and the action is centered in and around the Tanaka Oceanographic Institute and Lagoon where Angel, a captured Megalodon shark, is resident with her pups, the new Dubai Mall Aquarium, and the deep ocean environment where several new yet more ancient playmates reside. Jonas Taylor and his family are again faced with multiple crises on several fronts, their expertise with prehistoric sharks now being exploited by the ambitious and unsavory Saudi Arabian businessman Fiesal bin Rashidi. His only concern is to populate the new aquarium in Dubai with the world’s rarest (though as yet undiscovered) specimens. It is his deepest desire that the Taylors find the specimens for him using the skills and techniques they’ve perfected with Angel and that, even as the Saudi Arabian collection grows, there will be a concomitant decrease in the number of Taylors as a result.

Once again, Jonas Taylor demonstrates his McGyvery mettle and his son, David, now twenty-years-old and an expert in his own right, is tested professionally and personally in ways his father never imagined. From the Monterey coast to Saudi Arabia to beneath the Philippine Sea, there is constant and surprising peril. Alten’s imagination has created another wondrous and violent world filled with nightmare creatures brought to startling life in the complete darkness of the ocean depths by the lights of exploratory craft. The initial excitement of scientific discovery is quickly supplanted by a fight for simple survival, complicated in turn by bin Rashidi’s pursuit of commercial gain regardless of the financial and human cost. The Taylors are caught between several antagonists; they must use all their mental and physical resources if they hope to avoid the wickedly gruesome ends that claim so many others. Thanks, Steve, I needed that.

For more information about Steve Alten and his newest projects, check out his website. Fans of this dynamic author will be interested to read more about his fight with Parkinson’s Disease, and his efforts to facilitate a cure, on Variance Publishing’s ThrillerBlog.

“Fragment” by Warren Fahy

This is my kind of book. Its foundation carries the echo of a premise from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World : a geographic anomaly has caused tiny Hender’s Island to be isolated from the rest of the globe. However, rather than have evolution frozen in Dinosaur Time, Fahy has created an undisturbed evolutionary hothouse where new and more deadly paths have been taken. It still doesn’t bode well for the hapless sailors and scientists who accidentally discover this evolutionary gem and there is an inevitable clash between those who wish to study the new life (a few dedicated and brilliant scientists), those who wish to profit by it (a reality show called ‘SeaLife’), and those who would like the whole thing to just go away (the military).

The originality of the various creatures’ biology, morphology, and ecosystems is brilliant, making up in large part for a few of the more one-dimensional humans with which they interact (read shred), be they soldier or scientist. Some of the horrifying new discoveries are also illustrated as they would appear on the pages of a scientist’s field notebook (which does help to visualize such fantastic creations). Avid readers of the genre will be familiar with the question of whether or not we can accept life forms vastly different from our own but perhaps the most satisfying aspect of the plot is that those who ignore the tenets of science and humanity always get their comeuppance. Always. [No idea how “The Mummy” reference popped into my head but the (fingers crossed) movie of Fragment should be as much fun.]

For more information about Warren Fahy, check out his website.

“The Monkey’s Raincoat” by Robert Crais

More English village mystery girl than L.A. hard-boiled detective girl, I was pleasantly surprised by Elvis Cole, a man so secure that he not only appreciates the small lessons and lifestyle irony represented by Disney’s characters but populates his office with them. This book was a nice mix of suburban mayhem and military organisation. An interesting translation of skills learned in Vietnam is used to restore a small boy to his mother in the midst of drug-related violence; in the process, a welcome transformation is wrought on the boy’s mother, Ellen. Cole and Pike (his quietly dangerous and enigmatic partner) are contemporary knights, embodying the essence of Arthurian tradition (with a few ad-libs) in the midst of palm trees and populated valleys, crowded freeways and disparate lives. I will definitely put on my sunglasses and read a few more.

“The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon” by David Grann

Because I am not a fan of high heat, excessive humidity, or the sensation of having bugs feed, crawl, and otherwise carry out their life cycles all over me, I love to read about those who have the ability to ignore these conditions in the pursuit of some noble goal. Colonel Percy Fawcett was indeed an extraordinary individual: loved, admired, and held in contempt in fairly equal measure. Physically resilient and mentally tough, he had an intuitive feel not only for the men he led but for the native tribes he encountered. Exploration at the time was as daunting as it was popular; as Fawcett was delving into the Amazon, mapping much of it for the first time, Ernest Shackleton was making better-funded forays in the Antarctic. At one point, Grann mentions that a trip taking three days for him required more than a month for Fawcett. Conditions were brutal and a rather unbelievable number of men died either trying to explore the Amazon or trying to find its previous explorers. This excellent book illuminated the personalities, the politics, and the sacrifices behind the Victorian mindset to conquer all the dark spots on the maps of the world.

As an addendum: for the reader interested in the trials and tribulations of attempting this type of exploration, I strongly recommend Redmond O’Hanlon’s “Into the Heart of Borneo” and “In Trouble Again: A Journey Between Orinoco and the Amazon”. Both are exceptional reads and O’Hanlon is brilliant at finding humor in the most disgusting details. At the same time, he manages to convey his respect for the cultures he encounters while warning of their imminent loss to ‘civilization’.