The Selection by Kiera Cass is a dystopian novel that takes the same reality TV concept The Hunger Games used, only instead of making a survivor like game, this book takes a page from The Bachelor The prince of dystopia is of marrying age, so a group of age-appropriate young women are brought to the palace. Throughout the choosing, girls will be eliminated until one very special girl is chosen to become queen.
The protagonist, America Singer, is one of the girls selected, but unlike every one else who is all ready to fall for the prince, she’s uninterested because America is in love with a boy from a lower caste than her, and he broke things off before he could ruin her life by dragging her down to his level. Her disinterest is a refreshing change for the prince and the two become fast friends. In a refreshing change of pace for the genre, America also makes friends with most the girls from the competition. In an even more refreshing change for the genre, instead of the girls being cut-throat competitors, most of them affirm each other’s strengths and talk about the regal potential they see in one another. I also enjoyed the fact America is girly. She wears makeup, she likes dresses and pants. I think it’s great that there are so many examples of dystopian female heroes right now with such diverse skills and personalities, whether it be this series, the Matched series, Divergent, or The Hunger Games, each of these female protagonists are strong in different ways. What I especially like about this book is that there’s none of this “she’s not like other girls” stuff you see in a lot of YA fiction right now. That trend is damaging to young women because it sends the message that women need to distance themselves from their gender to be perceived as interesting.
The story isn’t all a Miss Congeniality reboot. There is a strong dystopian element there. The kingdom is under threat, the class differences are drastic and disturbing, and there’s a sense that things are much darker below the surface. The Selection was a good book, but I was left with the sense that the novel barely scratched the surface of a world that’s going to get infinitely more disturbing. In terms of teaching, I think this book would just be present on my classroom library for book clubs during a dystopian unit. It was a fast and very engaging read, and the rest of the series is consistently good.
Month: September 2014
Mythology Monday: Primordial Sea Gods Part 2
Oceanus was the divine personification of the world ocean, a magical ocean-stream that circled the earth at the equator. Sometimes he represented all bodies of salt water, sometimes just the Atlantic ocean. He was a huge, muscular snake man with a beard and horns. Instead of a humanoid lower body he had a snake bottom or in some depictions a fish body. He’s one of the few Primordial Titans (some of the gods kind of belong in both categories) that did not get involved with the Titanomachy.
Tethys was often listed as Oceanus’ consort. She was the daughter of Uranus and Gaia. She was mother to the Nile, the Alpheus, the Maeander, and about three thousand daughters called the Oceanids. Sometimes she and Thalassa or Thetis get swapped around in stories, but Tethys is definitely her own goddess. With the exception of raising Hera, she’s not depicted much in any of the known Greek myths or paintings, but when she is described it’s as an ancient woman. An extremely powerful ancient woman. Once, just to make Hera happy, she rearranged the constellations by sheer force of will so that Ursa Major and Minor never dipped below the horizon. One of the moons of Saturn is named for her, as is the preheistoric ocean.
Ophion and Eurynome don’t factor into many versions of the Greek myths, but in a few they ruled the universe before Cronus and Rhea. Eurynome was a daughter of Oceanus and Ophion was a giant. They fought against Cronus and Rhea and lost.
Thursday Review: Holes by Louis Sachar
Okay, so my next few reviews are going to be a bit different because they double as reviews for a class I’m taking on Adolescent Literature. Just a heads up
Holes is a middle grade novel by Louis Sachar that follows the misfortunes of Stanley Yelnats. Stanley’s family was cursed with bad luck generations ago. Incredibly bad luck. Stanley’s bad luck hits its peak when Stanley is walking along and minding his own business one day when a pair of stolen tennis shoes fall from the sky. He’s arrested for theft and sent to Camp Greenlake Juvinile Detention center. Stanley meets a unique set of characters, including (spoilers) the descendent of the woman who cursed his family.
Intertwined with Stanley’s story is the tale of Kissing Kate Barlow, whose tragic love story cursed the land of Camp Green Lake a century ago. The land isn’t green, and there’s no lake. The warden has the boys digging 5 foot by 5 foot holes to “build there character,” and to search for Kate Barlow’s treasure.
It’s an incredibly intricate plot line told in a very simplistic way to engage young readers. This is a fantastic book to use for teaching plot threads, point of view, and proper framing of stories within stories. This would be a fun book to sit down with kids and do one of those “this-happened….and so…” charts. And a class discussion on the ripple-effect after reading this book would be intense. Because the movie is such a faithful adaptation of the book (the changes would only enhance the discussion) there’s also an opportunity to compare the different mediums, which satisfies a variety of state standards.
Another great message for kids is that for all the talk of curses and bad luck, the characters are all incredibly self-motivated go-getters. I think a lot of kids can relate to the feeling of being “cursed.” The sensation that even though you’re trying to do everything right everything goes wrong is common in the drama of middle school. However due to the complete and utter lack of young female characters (the only women in the book are the Warden, Stanley’s mom, and Kate Barlow, all middle aged, all authority figures, and also vastly outnumbered by adult men), I would recommend pairing this novel (or at least following this novel) with something like Inkheart.
Thursday Review: How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell
The incredibly short blurb:
Chronicles the adventures and misadventures of Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third as he tries to pass the important initiation test of his Viking clan, the Tribe of the Hairy Hooligans, by catching and training a dragon…
My thoughts: I love the How to Train Your Dragon movies and the TV show. Well, more accurately, I watch them and enjoy them. My four year old LOVES them and will be having a HTTYD birthday party this year. I also love David Tennant. So now that she’s old enough for me to read non-picture books to her at night, and I discovered David Tennant reads the audio books, picking up a copy of this series was a no brainer. I read her the books every night and when she wants she listens to a chapter and turns the pages. It’s been a fun and rewarding experience but wow how this book is different from the movie.
Example: Training a dragon is a hooligan right of passage and Hiccup is afraid he won’t be able to train a dragon like all the other vikings.
So in other words the names are all that are in common. But the book was still a cute story. I enjoyed reading it. The movie captured the spirit of the book if not the plot, and I’m actually glad, because unlike say the Ella Enchanted movie, which also changed almost every detail from the book, How to Train Your Dragon created an in depth, emotionally compelling, and interesting alternate version of events. I can see the places where the book inspired it but where they differ gives me a chance to explore two incredibly talented creative takes on a similar concept. It’s given my daughter and I a lot to talk about in terms of books verses film and plotting.
I liked the plot, the book had a lot of silliness, it’s definitely a kids book, but the characters had surprising depth. I was particularly impressed with the depiction of the Meathead heir, I can’t remember his name, but it would have been so easy for Cowell to turn him into a stereotype like Snotlout, but she didn’t. Just because he was big and strong and successful didn’t mean he was a bad guy and that’s a message that’s sometimes missing from books like these. It’s great to lift up traditional under dogs, but sometimes it’s at your more traditional character’s expense.
I’m excited for the next book in the series, How to be a Pirate!
Mythology Monday: Primordial Sea Gods Part 1
(want to know more about this artwork? Click here)
Hydros was the god of primordial waters. He came from Chaos alongside Thesis (creation) and mud. The primordial mud became Gaia she and Hydros gave birth to Chronos and Ananke. Hydros wasn’t water in the same sense that Pontos was. He was the fresh-water river that encircled the earch and provided water for the gods.
Pontus was the son of Gaia, sometimes son of Chaos, sometimes Aether, and sometimes “created without coupling.” He was the first sea-god, and as a primordial he WAS the sea.
He paired with Gaia to have Nereus, the old man of the sea, Thaumas (the awe/wonder of the sea), Phorcys, Ceto, Eurybia, and Thalassa, the sea goddess. With Thalassa, he created all sea life, Halia, and the Telchines.
Thalassa is sometimes considered the daughter of Aether and Hemera. Sometimes she’s the mother of Aphrodite. Since Thalassa is also the sea, when Aphrodite came from the sea (Thalassa) after Uranus lost his nether bits.
Thalassa makes an appearance In Aesop’s Fables when a farmer sees a ship full of people sink into the ocean. The farmer got upset and started cursing the sea for its cruelty and to his utter shock a woman made of sea-water emerged from the ocean and laid into him for spreading mean stories about her. Without wind, the ocean would be calm and serene so really, it’s out of her control.
Nereus, the old man of the sea, was a Titan, so we’ll deal with him in another set of mythology Mondays. Thaumas married an Oceanid named Electra and gave birth to the Harpies, Iris, the divine messenger and goddess of rainbows, and Arke, the shadow of the rainbow.
Phorcys was the primordial god of the deep sea and all its dangers. His wife/sister was Ceto, goddess of large marine life and sea monsters, and together the two produced a bunch of fearsome monsters called the Phorcydes, the Hesperides, the Gorgons, Graeae, Thoosa, Scylla, Echidna, and Laydon.
Eurybia, primordial goddess of the sea’s force, was known for having a heart of flint and for controlling the rise and fall of constellations, seasonal weather, and the winds. She married the Titan Crius and gave birth to Astraeus, Perses, and Pallas. Her grandchildren all had power over the sea. They included the Anemoi (Winds), the Astra (Stars), Hekate (Witchraft), Selene (the Moon), Nike (Victory), Bia (Force), Kratos (Power), Zelos (Rivalry) (thank you theoi) .
Proteus was a primordial sea god of oceanic rivers. The children of Proteus, include Eidothea, Polygonus and Telegonus, (the latter two were both killed by Heracles)
He can see the future, but in order to hear it you have to catch the shape-shifting deity. In the Odyssey, Menelaus learned that if he could capture Proteus, then Menelaus could force Proteus to reveal which of the gods he had offended, and how he could get them to lay off so he could go home. Proteus’ daughter told Menelaus where he slept (with the seals, apparently) so Menelaus snuck up on him while he was sleeping and grabbed hold of the primordial god. Proteus shifted from lion, to serpent, to leopard, to pig, to water and then to a tree, but Menelaus didn’t let go. Defeated, Proteus told Menelaus the fates of everyone else on the way home from the war.
Another myth involving Proteus’ shape shifting took place when all of Aristaeus’ (son of Apollo) bees died. Since Ancient Greece took mass dying of bees much more seriously than we do now for some reason, Aristaeus got a hold of Proteus to learn how to prevent more bees from dying. He held on through all the changes and Proteus finally told him the gods had struck down his bees because he was responsible for the death of Eurydice (Orpheus’ wife, on her wedding day, Aristaeus decided he wanted to rape her, so he chased her through the woods where she was bitten by a snake and died.) He sacrificed to the gods, said he was sorry, and all the bees lived happily ever after.
Thursday Review: Frey by Melissa Wright
The Blurb: Unaware she’s been bound from using magic, Frey leads a small, miserable life in the village where she’s sent after the death of her mother. But a tiny spark starts a fury of changes and she finds herself running from everything she’s ever known.
Hunted by council for practicing dark magic, she is certain she’s been wrongfully accused. She flees, and is forced to rely on strangers for protection. But the farther she strays from home, the more her magic and forgotten memories return and she begins to suspect all is not as it seems.
My Thoughts:
I got Frey free on Kindle, and I enjoyed reading Frey, though there was one formatting thing that kept bothering me. There were no scene breaks. There were chapter breaks, but within a chapter if the scene shifted it was just the next paragraph. That brought me out of the story a few times.
Another thing that took me out of the story every now and then was when Frey would do something uncharacteristically violent and despite being in her head, I had no idea it happened, nor did I understand her rationale for it. I get that her character is progressing down a certain path, but it almost seemed like for those scenes the author popped me out of her head and turned me into an observer. But I also think that might have been an intentional effect. So I’m withholding judgment on that for now.
Otherwise, I found the characters engaging. Ruby was my favorite. The descriptions very well done, and the plot held my attention by slowly unraveling one mystery after another. I’m curious where the next book will lead, especially after some major revelations at the end of the book.
I also loved the whole twist on fairy tales. Humans were the myths and elves were the norm. Awesome idea.
Mythology Monday: Children of the Night: Hemera and Aether
Hemera (day) and Aether (light) were two of the children of Nyx and Erebus, though some versions of the myth claim they are the children of Chaos instead, or the children of Nyx and Chronos or jut Chronos. They don’t appear in a lot of myths because while you might hear these gods referred to as personified concepts, they’re not like other gods down the line. Hemera WAS day, not the goddess of daytime. She didn’t just represent her element, she was that element, and concepts like day and light are kind of hard to come up with active stories about.
One thing that is known is that Hemera didn’t spend a lot of time with her mom, the two would greet each other at the end of every night when Nyx returned home and Hemera was on her way out the door.
Aether is called the god of light or brightness, but that’s kind of a misnomer in the sense that a modern person would think of light. Technically he’s the god of the bright, glowing upper air that only gods breathe as opposed to the gross lower air reserved for us mortals. During the night, Nyx separated the flowing divine air from the mortal air with a veil of mist (which makes me think of Mistborn). During the day, Hemera dispels the mist so man can see the divine light of the gods.
Being a very powerful divine couple that can’t perform an active role in most myths reduces gods to impressive names to throw around in divine lineages. Hemera and Aether might have been parents to Thalassa (a primordial sea goddess), or they might have been parents to Thalassa, Uranus, and Gaia. Or Aether might have hooked up with Gaia too and produced “Grief, Deceit, Wrath, Lamentation, Falsehood, Oath, Vengeance, Intemperance, Altercation, Forgetfulness, Sloth, Fear, Pride, Incest, Combat, Ocean, Themis, Tartarus, Pontus; and the Titans, Briareus, Gyges, Steropes, Atlas, Hyperion, and Polus, Saturn, Ops, Moneta, Dione; and three Furies – namely, Alecto, Megaera, Tisiphone.” (thanks Theoi.)
Busy man.
Kaitlin Bevis 