Bookwitch bites #52

Could really do with an Emergency Labrador right now. Not sure what it would do for me, but feel  it’s a reassuring concept. I noticed the sign for one on the train a while ago. When I looked again, it appeared that all they had was an emergency ladder.

From the train it’s not far to Fiction Express. This is interactive e-fiction where you control the plot. (Has to be better than losing the plot.) Different authors have written first chapters, which you can access free online (assuming I’ve got my facts right) and then there is a vote on what direction the story should take. Sounds like fun, unless of course you’d rather the story went somewhere different from what others have voted for.

More online writing for readers can be found at 247 Tales. This month’s author story is by Gennifer Choldenko, and it might be just a couple of hundred words, but they were quite scary words. Unlike Fiction Express, you don’t get more than 247 words, and there I was, all ready to read on. Last month’s winner is a pretty good one. Nice to see the future of writing is safe.

If you’re not sure you can write without help, I found just the thing for you: Writing a novel, six month curse, starts October. Or should that be course? If anyone wants to try it, I’m sorry but I can’t remember where I saw the ad.

Me, I’m surprisingly bad at both the writing and the remembering. As you know, I don’t set out to upset, but an ambition like that is never 100% water tight. And if I intended to insult, I wouldn’t actually send the ‘victim’ a link to the post. I had a response to just such a link recently, which I will share with you: ‘Thank you. Are all your blogs negative? It doesn’t have anything positive to say.’ Polite. If I had meant it to be bad, I’d have come up with something far juicier. Even without the help of the October curse.

To end on a much pleasanter note, I do wish I was in Glasgow this Thursday! I will be in Edinburgh on Friday, but it just isn’t the same. The lovely Bill Paterson will be doing an Aye Write! event at the Mitchell, reading from his own Tales From the Back Green. I must have one or two readers in the Glasgow area? Go! Enjoy!

Al Capone Shines My Shoes

I wish. Or perhaps I don’t, now that I think about it. Having a world famous crook anywhere near my footwear may not be a good idea. Especially seeing as Al Capone is dead.

I came late to the first book, Al Capone Does My Shirts, but ever since I found that Gennifer Choldenko was writing a sequel, I have waited and waited. My wait is now over, and the book was more than worth waiting for.

Setting aside the autism angle yet again, which on its own is enough to please me, this is such a marvellous story! It’s deceptively simple, but as you begin reading you’re immediately sucked into the story about Moose and his family and friends and neighbours on Alcatraz. You’re there. I felt as if I lived in a flat on Alcatraz, next door to Moose. Except since I don’t play baseball I would be a disappointing friend.

We have been made to believe that Al Capone helped get Moose’s sister Natalie into a school where she would learn to be a little less autistic. And a favour requires another in return. The big question for Moose is what Capone will ask for.

Apart from Capone problems, Moose also has love problems, friend problems, baseball problems. But he deals with them all, though not necessarily in the best way. His friend Annie asks if, when he has children, they would all play baseball. ‘Why else would you have kids?’ Moose replies.

You can tell that Gennifer has worked on Alcatraz, because the attention to detail is outstanding. Nobody could come up with so many details without knowing the place inside out. I don’t want to suggest Gennifer is old enough to have lived in the 1930s, but she does have a knack for making you think she was there. It’s like the reader is watching an old film.

The cover is in the same vein as her earlier books, and looks good enough to eat. Blue Converses and ice cream colour lettering. Delicious. So I could possibly buy the book for its cover alone without even knowing what’s inside. Al Capone is. Inside.

Al Capone Does My Shirts

I like an amusing book title as well as the next witch, and Al Capone Does My Shirts has a lot going for it. But if Gennifer Choldenko had only as much as breathed the word autism, when she sent me her book, or if Bloomsbury had thought to mention autism in the blurb, I’d have read this book seven months ago. As soon as it arrived, in fact, because of my particular interest in autistic fiction.

On the other hand, it made for a very pleasant surprise to find this gem nestling among my selected holiday reads, which were about the only part of my packing that had any care taken about it at all. By page two I knew in my heart that I was reading a novel about autism. Set in 1935 on Alcatraz, it never mentions the word autism, as it hadn’t been “invented” at the time, but no matter. Moose Flanagan, who is 12, has just moved to Alcatraz with his family, which includes his sister Natalie who is ten, for the fifth year running. Natalie loves buttons, maths and lemon cake. Moose has to help his parents by looking after his sister rather more then he would like.

Al Capone was on Alcatraz in 1935, and worked in the prison laundry; hence the title of the book. Even without the autism angle, this novel is wonderful, with a really good 1930s feel to it, and Alcatraz itself is fascinating. There’s so much happening here, and the book is crammed with information on life on the Rock during the Depression.

Gennifer has, by all accounts, done a lot of research, and it shows. Also, her sister was autistic, and Gennifer obviously knows what she is talking about here. Unusually for a children’s novel, you also get an author’s notes section which is very interesting.

Al Capone Does My Shirts is about the best autistic novel I’ve read, and I don’t feel Gennifer has any reason to feel intimidated by Mark Haddon’s Curious Incident. Gennifer tells me there’s a sequel on the way (with plans for a third book), and I can’t wait.

If a Tree Falls at Lunch Break

The title is good, and so is the ice cream and sweets style cover. I like the book, too, but I’m unsure whether it’s too American for the average young reader in Britain.

This new book by Gennifer Choldenko reminds me of Sarah Dessen in content, if not in style. It’s about two twelve-year-olds in San Francisco; Kirsten and Walker. One is rich, one is less so. They each have problems at home and at school, and then find they have a shared problem as well.

I think the problems they they face are a good idea to write about, but I’m less sure about the very affluent setting. And most of the adults are perfectly ghastly. This is a short and easy read, and by the second half it got a lot better. There’s almost too much padding in the first half.

I wouldn’t mind trying some of Gennifer’s other books, because the titles are temptingly amusing. Maybe Bloomsbury could provide a glossary and explanations of the US school system for us born on the wrong side of the Atlantic.