Chronicles of Narnia on TV, Joy Harjo is Poet Laureate, Little Women Movie, Necromancing the Stone by Lish McBride, Hot Dog Girl by Jennifer Dugan, Shadowshaper by Daniel Jose Older and Nevermoor, The Trials of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend

So this past week has been a tough one as I've had to deal with an upper respiratory infection and a lot of pain and swelling in my sinuses, ears and joints. Now that I'm on antibiotics and a short course of cortisone, I'm feeling better. I can't feel too sorry for myself, however, after watching the movie made from the wonderful YA novel "Five Feet Apart" about teenagers suffering from Cystic Fibrosis and how they manage to have relationships with friends and fall in love despite the death sentence of CF. I cried like a baby after reading the book, but the movie, with the glorious Cole Sprouse, destroyed me. There is an intensity and beauty about that young man that is ferociously sexy. Hey, just because I am old enough to be his grandmother doesn't mean I don't recognize sexy when I see it! LOL. Speaking of book to movie/TV adaptations, I loved the books and later the movie versions of CS Lewis's masterpiece, so I am thrilled to see that a Netflix series has been ordered. I look forward to it's debut.

TV: The Chronicles of Narnia

Matthew Aldrich will oversee the development and creative live-action adaptation of C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz40996054 series for Netflix. Deadline reported that Aldrich "will work across both series and film and serve as a creative architect on all projects under the rights deal inked last year." Most recently he co-wrote Coco for Disney and Pixar Animation Studios, the Oscar-winning film that grossed more than $800 million worldwide.

Netflix and The C.S. Lewis Company entered a multi-year deal last fall through which Netflix will develop stories from across the Narnia universe into series and films for its members worldwide.

One of the few things I liked about living in Florida was the manatees. I love that there's a bookstore named for them, and now a martini! Sounds delicious!

Blue Manatee Literacy Project and Bookstore http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz40996039 in Cincinnati, Ohio, is celebrating National Martini Day, which is tomorrow, by offering its own signature cocktail called a Blue Manatini, Local12 reported. The store will have a tasting for the cocktail, which was created by Molly Wellmann, co-owner of several local bars, an award-winning bartender and mixologist, and author of Handcrafted Cocktails: The Mixologist's Guide to Classic Drinks for Morning, Noon & Night (Betterway Home).

In the "its about time"  news of the week, we finally have a Native American as our Poet Laureate. Her poems are beautiful and a tribute to America.

Joy Harjo Named U.S. Poet Laureate

Joy Harjo has been named http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz41023047 the 23nd U.S. poet laureate by Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. An enrolled member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, Harjo is the first Native American poet to serve in the position. She succeeds two-term laureate Tracy K. Smith, and will begin her year-long term with a public reading of her work at the library in September.

Hayden observed that Harjo "has championed the art of poetry--'soul talk' as she calls it--for over four decades. To her, poems are 'carriers of dreams, knowledge and wisdom,' and through them she tells an American story of tradition and loss, reckoning and myth-making. Her work powerfully connects us to the earth and the spiritual world with direct, inventive lyricism that helps us reimagine who we are."

Calling her appointment "a tremendous honor," Harjo said, "I share this honor with ancestors and teachers who inspired in me a love of poetry, who taught that words are powerful and can make change when understanding appears impossible, and how time and timelessness can live together within a poem. I count among these ancestors and teachers my Muscogee Creek people, the librarians who opened so many doors for all of us, and the original poets of the indigenous tribal nations of these lands, who were joined by diverse peoples from nations all over the world to make this country and this country's poetry."

Harjo has published eight books of poetry, including Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings; The Woman Who Fell From the Sky; and In Mad Love and War, which received an American Book Award and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award. Her next collection, An American Sunrise, will be published by Norton this fall. Harjo has also written a memoir, Crazy Brave; a children's book, The Good Luck Cat; and a YA work, For a Girl Becoming.

Harjo told the New York Times that during her time as poet laureate http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz41023048 she hopes "to remind people that poetry belongs to everyone" and it can draw from a range of human and natural experiences, "sunrise, sunset, eating, enjoying company, births, death, all of it."

I am a huge fan of Little Women, as it's one of the few classic novels I've read more than twice, and with every reading it grows richer in context and meaning. I am looking forward to this new movie adaptation. 

Movies: Little Women

Vanity Fair showcased a first look at the movie adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's classic novel Little Women http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz41024856, which is written and directed by Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird) and stars Saoirse Ronan as Jo, Emma Watson (Meg), Florence Pugh (Amy), Eliza Scanlen (Beth), Timothée Chalamet (Laurie), Laura Dern (Marmee) and Meryl Streep (Aunt March).

"This feels like autobiography," Gerwig said. "When you live through a book, it almost becomes the landscape of your inner life.... It becomes part of you, in a profound way."

Gerwig shot on location in the book's Massachusetts setting, where Alcott and her three sisters grew up. "It gives gravity to what you're doing," Ronan said. "The physical place really reminds you of the story you're trying to tell." 

The director also relied on paintings from the era "to give the film a vividness that the black-and-white and sepia portraits of the era couldn't accomplish," Vanity Fair wrote. "An 1870 painting by Winslow Homer called High Tide created the texture for the beach scene; costume designer Jacqueline Durran modeled Jo's look after a figure in the work."

"They were just people. They were not in a period piece, they were just living," Gerwig added. "They were the most modern people who had ever existed, up till that point."

Necromancing the Stone by Lish McBride is the sequel to her hilarious and wonderful urban paranormal fantasy Hold Me Closer, Necromancer, which I read last week. Our confused and somewhat tender-hearted vegetarian protagonist Sam (Samhain) LaCroix, grows up considerably in this book, and we find out what he's made of as he learns to stick to his own code of morality and lead with his heart, even when no one around him believes he will survive (and they all believe they're stronger and wiser than he is). Here's the blurb:

With the defeat of the evil Douglas behind him, Sam LaCroix is getting used to his new life. Okay, so he hadn't exactly planned on being a powerful necromancer with a seat on the local magical council and a capricious werewolf sort-of-girlfriend, but things are going fine, right?
Well . . . not really. He's pretty tired of getting beat up by everyone and their mother, for one thing, and he can't help but feel that his new house hates him. His best friend is a werebear, someone is threatening his sister, and while Sam realizes that he himself has a lot of power at his fingertips, he's not exactly sure how to use it. Which, he has to admit, is a bit disconcerting.
But when everything starts falling apart, he decides it's time to step up and take control. His attempts to do so just bring up more questions, though, the most important of which is more than a little alarming: Is Douglas really dead?
Necromancing the Stone is Lish McBride's sequel to Hold Me Closer, Necromancer.

Though Sam comes off as too self effacing and weak, especially in the first book, it becomes obvious here that his kind heart is actually his strength, because he understands loss, pain and love. The fact that he shows mercy to his greatest enemy proves that strength, and I found it appalling that all the other male characters (and some of the females) didn't want to support him, but judged and ridiculed him instead of trying to help him navigate his new world as a necromancer. I also found his Uncle Nick and his mother strangely aloof and not willing to help Sam, even when his survival was at stake. The fact that Sam manages to figure it out despite crappy parenting is a minor miracle. Oh, and I think his girlfriend is an idiot, but I won't spoiler you as to why. I'd give this excellent tale, told in springy prose and with a jaunty plot, an A, and recommend it to anyone who has read the first book. 

Hot Dog Girl by Jennifer Dugan is a summer YA LBGTQ romantic novel that is delightful and inspirational, as it follows the journey of Elle/Lou Parker as she connives and schemes with her best friend Seeley to win the affections of handsome swimmer Nick over their summer vacation in a run down amusement park in Florida. Here's the blurb: Elouise (Lou) Parker is determined to have the absolute best, most impossibly epic summer of her life. There are just a few things standing in her way:

  *  She's landed a job at Magic Castle Playland . . . as a giant dancing hot dog.
  *  Her crush, the dreamy Diving Pirate Nick, already has a girlfriend, who is literally the Princess of the park. But Lou's never liked anyone, guy or otherwise, this much before, and now she wants a chance at her own happily ever after.
  *  Her best friend, Seeley, the carousel operator, who's always been up for anything, suddenly isn't when it comes to Lou's quest to set her up with the perfect girl or Lou's scheme to get close to Nick.
  *  And it turns out that this will be their last summer at Magic Castle Playland--ever--unless she can find a way to stop it from closing. Jennifer Dugan's sparkling debut coming-of-age queer romance stars a princess, a pirate, a hot dog, and a carousel operator who find love--and themselves--in unexpected people and unforgettable places.
I laughed when I read that poor Lou spent last summer as a hot dog, as well, leaving Nick to respond to her name on the cast list by saying, "Another summer in the bun, huh?" But though Lou identifies as bisexual (though she's afraid to come out to her father, you realize he already knows) and her best friend is a lesbian, her infatuation with Nick seems to take on a stalkery cast as she determines that the best way to win him is to pretend that she's seeing her BFF Seeley. Her opposition to the park closure, though the park owner tells her repeatedly that he is determined to sell it, also seems terribly insecure and wrong headed, and more a response to her grief at losing her mother (who fled the relationship and divorced her father), and resistance to change and growth than anything. Dugan's prose is a light and airy confection, and her humor carries the oddly straightforward plot along at a clip. I'd give this book an A, and recommend it to anyone who remembers what it is like to be a yearning teenager.

Shadowshaper by Daniel Jose Older is an urban paranormal YA fantasy that brings together the legends of the Latino and African American communities of New York's Harlem and Spanish Harlem. Here's the blurb: Sierra Santiago planned an easy summer of making art and hanging out with her friends. But then a corpse crashes their first party. Her stroke-ridden grandfather starts apologizing over and over. And when the murals in her neighborhood begin to weep tears... Well, something more sinister than the usual Brooklyn ruckus is going on.

With the help of a fellow artist named Robbie, Sierra discovers shadowshaping, a magic that infuses ancestral spirits into paintings, music, and stories. But someone is killing the shadowshapers one by one. Now Sierra must unravel her family's past, take down the killer in the present, and save the future of shadowshaping for generations to come. 

It's hard to describe how tightly woven Older's prose is, and how intricate his plot, other than to say that it's so engrossing and fascinating that you can't miss a word, lest you find yourself losing the thread of what is happening to Sierra and her family and friends. I loved the diversity of this book, and the way that urban art became essential to survival. Sierra is a fierce and wonderful young woman who soldiers on despite prejudice and sexism at every turn. I'd give this haunting book an A, and recommend it to those who enjoy learning about cultural magic and urban legends.

Nevermoor, The Trials of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend is a delightful combination of  Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Neil Gaiman's children's books, the Harry Potter series and The Addams Family, with a bit of Tim Burtonesque Nightmare Before Christmas thrown in for good measure. Here is the blurb: A breathtaking, enchanting new series by debut author Jessica Townsend, about a cursed girl who escapes death and finds herself in a magical world--but is then tested beyond her wildest imagination.

Morrigan Crow is cursed. Having been born on Eventide, the unluckiest day for any child to be born, she's blamed for all local misfortunes, from hailstorms to heart attacks--and, worst of all, the curse means that Morrigan is doomed to die at midnight on her eleventh birthday.

But as Morrigan awaits her fate, a strange and remarkable man named Jupiter North appears. Chased by black-smoke hounds and shadowy hunters on horseback, he whisks her away into the safety of a secret, magical city called Nevermoor.

It's then that Morrigan discovers Jupiter has chosen her to contend for a place in the city's most prestigious organization: the Wundrous Society. In order to join, she must compete in four difficult and dangerous trials against hundreds of other children, each boasting an extraordinary talent that sets them apart--an extraordinary talent that Morrigan insists she does not have. To stay in the safety of Nevermoor for good, Morrigan will need to find a way to pass the tests--or she'll have to leave the city to confront her deadly fate.

Perfect for fans of the Harry Potter series and Neil Gaiman, this fast-paced plot and imaginative world has a fresh new take on magic that will appeal to a new generation of readers.

I flat out loved this engrossing and fast-paced YA fantasy. Our protagonist Morrigan, or Mog as Jupiter likes to call her, reminded me of Harry Potter and of Charlie in her life of being a despised and disposable child, and in her lonely belief that she's not talented, not beautiful and generally worthless. Jupiter is the first person who can see Morrigan for who she really is, a talented and rare person who will change their world for the better. As is often the case with magical orphans, Morrigan builds a family out of those surrounding and supporting her in the Hotel Deucalion. From the giant cat to her troublesome friend Hawthorne, Mog has help when she needs it most, to get her through the trials and into the Wundrous Society. I loved the imaginative prose and the rolicking plot, and I'd give this fun fantasy an A, recommending it to anyone who likes Harry Potter with a bit more of a gothic/Irish spin to it. 

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