PRAIRIE LOTUS

Little House but with an Asian lead. Well, not really. Author Linda Sue Park grew up loving the Little House series, but as she grew older, she realized how problematic some of the scenes were. (Ma vehemently hates Native Americans, as do other characters. Pa does blackface. Seriously. One of these days, I'll get to doing the prequels and Little House here.)

Fourteen-year-old Hanna is half Chinese. Actually, as it comes out as the story progresses, she's one quarter Chinese, one quarter Korean and half white, but she never fully articulates that and continues to think of herself as half and half. Her late mother was Chinese/Korean and her father is white.

Hanna's father moves them around a lot, finally settling in La Forge, Dakota territory, based on the recommendation of a friend, Mr. Harris.

Hanna has to overcome several hurdles throughout the book. She wants to attend school to graduate, as her mother wished, but the townspeople pull all their kids from school until it's just Hanna and the two Harris girls. The teacher is sympathetic to Hanna, but also wants to keep her job, so she has the older girls graduate a bit early, both passing their tests. That gives Hanna what she wants and the town what they want, although Hanna justifiably isn't 100% satisfied with this.

Next, there's Hanna's continual struggle with her father, who comes across as kind of a dick a lot of the time. Hanna wants to be the seamstress for her father's dress goods shop, which is what her mother was. Her parents were true partners in the business, as well as in marriage. She wants to put a dress she made in the shop window on opening day and if it generates enough orders, she'll become the seamstress. She hires Bess Harris to help her and the two become friends, despite Bess's racist mom.

Things seem to be going well when two asshole drunks assault Hanna and she's blamed for it. She has to recruit Bess and their former teacher's help to convince the town women that the incident was not her fault and she has the bruises to prove it. The two women are able to pull this off and the store opening is a firm success, giving Hanna and Bess plenty of work to do for the future. The book ends with Hanna finally getting a full-sized mirror in the store, which is what her mother had.

The book is predictably bittersweet in many ways. Hanna is on the Native Americans' side of things and struggles because she's one of the few that is. There are a couple nice scenes where she meets some Sioux women. Hanna also knows the town's racism won't stop just because they start using her to make their dresses. There may be improvements in some but never all. Hanna and a white boy seem to share mutual interest, but such marriages are illegal, so she doesn't see any future for herself other than on her own. (Unless she, like her parents, travels somewhere where it is legal. Hint hint, Hanna.) And of course there's never any real repercussion for the drunken would-be rapists. (Really glad that they only bruised her and didn't actually get away with anything further. It was hard enough to read as it was.)

Hanna's father never gets any real sort of resolution. He comes to terms with her abilities and gives her what she wants in her role in the business, but I don't know if his demeanor will change much. Part of the problem may be that Hanna looks a lot like her mother. That she does is explicitly said at the end, but her father's reaction to it is my speculation.

The author said she put some Little House bits in there. One character is reminiscent of Nellie Oleson, while the Harrises are sort of the Ingalls, which acknowledges the racist mother. The layout of the town is based on a map drawn by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

I love the idea behind this book and how long the author worked to do what she always wanted to do. I wish there were more historical fiction books like this about non-white people in places where you know they had to be but it always gets glossed over. This was quite well done and I definitely recommend it to fans of historical fiction.

Missy Piggle-Wiggle

Like many others throughout the decades, the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series was something I grew up on. The first book was published in 1947, before my mother was even born, and the next three followed between 1949 and 1957. In 2007, I remember seeing Happy Birthday. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle on the shelf in Barnes & Noble in Brooklyn and being thrilled. That book was written by the author's daughter, based on notes her mother left. 

In 2016, Ann M. Martin (Babysitters Club, Main Street, lots of other things) joined forces with the original author's great-granddaughter to create Missy Piggle-Wiggle, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's niece. 

There are some differences from the original series. Mr. Piggle-Wiggle, who was always a pirate but was deceased in the first books, is now alive and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle goes off in search of him. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle lived in an upside down house, which she sold in the third book to move to a farm, and then ended up back in the house in the fourth book with no further mention of the farm. Now the farm and upside down house have been combined, though the farm really plays no role in any of the three modern books. 

Missy Piggle-Wiggle (yeah, kinda low-hanging name fruit) is the niece of Mrs. and she comes from a magical school that I'd be interested in reading more about. She takes on Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle role as a friend to children who also assists with magical cures when need be. 

The Whatever Cure introduces Missy and the animals Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle left in her care, then jumps right into chapters devoted to different children receiving different cures. The flavor of the original books remains, though with a modern twist. There's also the amusement of the names. The original series had some very interesting names, although a lot of them were also perfectly normal. I think there's more of a skew towards unusual names in the new series, though a handful of the kids have relatively normal names. My favorites from the original are Paraphernalia Grotto and Pergola Wingsproggle, while the new ones I like best are Honoriah and Petulance Freeforall, Edwina Nevermore, Almandine Clavicle and Roseate Spoonbill. Then there's a bit of romance added to it with Missy's growing relationship with bookseller Harold Spectacle. 

This is the strongest book of the three. 

Won't Walk the Dog is the second in the series and came out in 2017. This one opens with a storm that destroys portions of the upside down house, causing Missy to worry about finding a source of money. 

The strongest cures are Won't Walk the Dog and Woe Is Me. 

The book ends with Missy finally locating the silver key Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle told her to find. Turns out it's a huge solid gold key painted silver. So Missy's money worries are over. 

The third and possibly final book came out in 2018, but I only just finished reading it a couple days ago. 

This is by far the weakest with a lot of the cures having very similar styles. Three of them involve making the people around the child behave in the same way as the child so they're forced to see what a problem they've been. This is fine and amusing, but also very repetitive when they're three chapters in the same book and neither of the other two books really had any cures like this. Won't Walk the Dog sort of was, but it was way more entertaining when it was an anthropomorphized dog, so it's a bit different. A fourth chapter has a multi-stage cure that has a final stage where other people are suddenly given the power the child was given, so that's another similar instance. Sticky Fingers is the best cure by far (and the kid has two moms). 

The main story of this one, not involving the cures, is that the upside down house is stricken with the Winter Effluvia, which sometimes is a basic illness and other times causes interesting problems. Lightfoot the cat floats through the air, while Penelope the parrot speaks in commercials. Missy quarantines the house so the kids can't come in. 

Another thing I didn't care for with this book was how cowardly Harold is. He's very quick to basically flee once Missy realizes it's the Effluvia. They have a sweet moment at the end, but it's different than the Harold that's been more helpful in the first two books. 

Despite nitpicking, I really did enjoy all three of these and I wish there was another one coming! 

More new BSC covers!

Gah, Mary Anne continues to be the cutest damn thing.

I love her.

Logan looks like Cam Geary.

Awwwwww, Louie.

And Astrid.

SHANNON. Not the best outfit ever for Shannon. I think they should have used the original. But still. Shannon.

I'm guessing the blonde is Amanda, but who in the hell is the other girl? She's not a Kilbourne. Tiffany was blonde like Shannon and Maria is too young to be that tall. And also had auburn hair. It's also not Amanda, who's also too young. I can't remember Shannon's actual friends from her school, so maybe it's one of them.

The BSC is back!

As you may have heard, there's going to be a Baby-Sitters Club show on Netflix. Well, apparently in celebration, the series is being re-released for the umpteenth time.

I have to say though, I loooooooooooooove these new covers!

The first 6 books are slated to come out on May 5th, followed by one new volume near the beginning of every following month. So far, Amazon has listings for books 1-15.

I don't usually cave on rereleases, but these covers are so damn cute that I just pre-ordered every listing available. They'll be nice to have out on my shelves, as opposed to my childhood collection, which isn't in the best shape, having been stored in my off-site storage area in Florida during the hurricane.

I don't hold out any hope that they'll reprint all the books, but I'll take what they give me.

So let's take a look at the nine covers we have images for.

Kristy's Great Idea is looking good. Each character is clearly identifiable. Kristy is kneeling on the bed in a slightly more fashionable sporty outfit than what she wears in the books. Mary Anne is a little darling. She looks perfectly in character. Stacey in the lower left is a bit disappointing. She's not nearly as fashionable and sophisticated as she should be. Layered tees? Boring. And those look suspiciously like Mom jeans. Claudia looks decent, but not as out there as she should. I feel like the artist took inspiration from the graphic novels where she's also a bit unusual but not nearly as much as she should be. Claudia's bedroom is on the blah side, but I think a cover that showed all four girls plus how I imagine Claud's room to really look would be way too busy.

Well, Claudia is certainly very pretty, but she's still not dressed like herself.

Okay, now Claudia looks more like herself. In a non-80s fashion.

Mary Anne continues to be the cutest.

That is definitely a very Kristy outfit and she's tiny. Heh.

I think Stacey looks a little better here. Her face and hair are great. But I still can't see her wearing that. Do they not know what sophisticated is?

Another adorable Mary Anne.

Jenny is definitely underdressed though!

Dawn and the Barretts. Looks spot on to me!

No one ever quite gets Kristy's dress right. It's right there on the original cover, but no.

Is that supposed to be Karen? She should be in a similar dress.

And if that's David Michael, then Karen is too short.

Ah, well.

Janine is perfect.

Claud's sweater looks...familiar. Yep, it's almost the same one she wore on the original cover! Yay.

Hey, Stacey looks good here!

Scott could look a bit older though.

This needs an angry sunburned Mary Anne in the background.

And the last one we have so far: Dawn.

She has almost the same outfit as her original cover, too! Nice. They basically just shrunk the oversized shirts. Heh.

Jeff looks maybe a little too small. He's not that much younger than her. I mean, he is, but he's not five or six.

Definitely looking forward to all of these!

GODDESS GIRLS 24

It's been almost two years since my last brand new Goddess Girls review!

I'm such a slacker.

Eos's book released in December 2018 and I am finally tackling it now. It's been fun rereading the entire series! But it's time to do the two most recent books and then we wait until December for a brand new Persephone story! (It's seriously about time.)

Eos's book has...a lot. There is a lot going on here. Wow.

We met Eos briefly in Nyx's book. The two girls pass each other as Nyx's work night comes to an end and Eos's begins. However, unlike Nyx, Eos only works for about half an hour, producing the dawn colors until her older brother Helios brings the day. Eos also has an older sister named Selene, goddess of the moon.

Eos lives with her mother, Theia, who is a Titaness. She's described in the book as the "goddess of shiny things," but it's really more like the goddess of shining and brightness. She does give precious metals their shine, so Theia being into jewelry in the book makes sense. Eos chooses to go to a mortal school because she holds a grudge against Zeus and wants to be nowhere near him. You see, Eos's father is Hyperion, one of the Titans who fought against Zeus in the Titanomachy. Hyperion is being held in Tartarus as punishment and Eos is mad at him for promising to come home and not being able to and at Zeus for putting him there.

So Eos's daily life consists of getting up early, bringing the dawn for half an hour, then going home to prepare for her school day. She can turn herself into vapor and shrink herself, so her bedroom is actually the inside of a large urn.

Eos's school life is complicated. She's the only immortal, so many of the students are in awe of her. She also talks about how she's interested by so many things that she's constantly obsessing about a new interest and then setting it aside for the next one. So she runs many school clubs and participates in a lot of activities. She and her mother both like to keep themselves busy, likely as a coping mechanism.

During a scrollbook club meeting, Eos is insulted by a rather stupid mortal named Zoe. Eos flies threateningly over her before reigning in her anger and regaining composure. She thinks back to an incident in second grade when a girl named Nefili insulted Hyperion, and Eos yanked her into the air and threatened to drop her. (I can find no reference for this incident. The only Nephele is a cloud nymph that has nothing to do with Eos.) But since then, Eos has vowed not to unveil her powers or wings at school. The mortal girls in this club are another example of characters being negative and not getting any comeuppance. Why be in a book club if you're not going to read the book? Eos has a right to say what she did and the girls were stupid for crossing her and insulting her, goddess or not. The only further mention of them is Eos later on thinking that she'll let one of them run the club and suffer the annoyance of no one doing the reading.

So let's pause a moment and review. We've got Eos struggling with negative feelings relating to her father's imprisonment and we've got her struggling with not fitting in at school due to her immortal status.

Now we can introduce another major character. Eos's best friend is a mortal boy named Tithonus, who is obsessed with bugs. Eos's third struggle is that she knows Tithonus will only be with her for a relatively short time, so she wishes he was immortal, too.

Those are all the things weighing on her mind. Now we get to the actual plot. Nyx tossed Eos a notescroll and invited her to Ephesus to watch the unveiling of Nyx's statue at Artemis's temple. Eos accepts the invitation and for the first time, goes to be around multiple other immortals. She gets Ares' autograph for Tithonus and tries to pin down Apollo, because she thinks he can help her make Tithonus immortal. She ends up being invited to stay at MOA for the night, using Aphrodite's room because she and Persephone are sleeping at Demeter's.

Eos enjoys her time with the immortals and does get Apollo to do a prophecy for her, saying that Zeus will grant Tithonus immortality. She goes to see Zeus and uses the prophecy itself to get him to agree to help. It's an interesting twist. She made Apollo give her a prophecy, which went in her favor, and then because of that prophecy, Zeus granted her request. So Apollo foresaw Zeus granting her request, but he only did so because Apollo foresaw it. It's twisty kinda like time travel. However, due to the wording of everything, it's Eos that has to grant Tithonus immortality. Zeus gives her the ability to do so, which expires in 24 hours, but he doesn't tell her how to do it!

Are you ready for another crazy plot? Yeah, we're not done yet.

So earlier when Eos asked for Ares' autograph, she thought she saw Aphrodite frowning at them. Naturally then, it's Ares who comes to Eos for help, catching her on her way back from Zeus's office. He takes her to the boys' dorm, which is seen by Pheme, because...get this...there's a spider in his room and he heard she's got bug knowledge thanks to her friend Tithonus. Ares is afraid of spiders. Yep. Eos helps him out and sets the tiny spider outside, but along comes Aphrodite and that's where the real trouble starts.

Because, you see, after 24 previous books of having a crush on Ares and not one word of this being mentioned to my memory, Aphrodite suddenly has a jealous streak. Eos mentions that she has a reputation for jealousy, but she's never really been jealous or envious before. Aphrodite summons a bedbug to bite Eos while she sleeps in her room, but she also casts a spell on her, which will cause her to fall in love with three "bugs." It's by far the worst thing any of the main four goddesses have ever done. I'm not sure why the authors decided to make Aphrodite look so bad when they can't even be bothered to punish the random characters who act poorly throughout the series. It's an odd choice for sure.

Granted, it comes directly from myth. Eos slept with Ares in Greek myth, which caused jealous Aphrodite to curse her with insatiable desire. She abducts several males, including Orion, Tithonus, Cephalus and Cleitus. All four of these are mentioned in this book. Eos shows no interest in Orion, but Tithonus is obviously her best friend, and Cephalus and Cleitus are his friends from school.

It works with the myth, but it's still odd to have Aphrodite behave so poorly.

Eos has no idea she's been spelled and goes to the Supernatural Market with some of the other girls. On the way back to MOA, she spies two little black beetles, which she suddenly feels the urge to keep as pets. Athena helps her find a jar for them so she can take them home. Eos names the beetles...Cephalus and Cleitus after the boys from school, who have black hair and wear shiny black tunics all the time. So in a way, she does abduct them.

Upon arriving home, Eos talks with her mom and the subject of Hyperion comes up. Eos had been started when Zeus mentioned him during their meetings, saying he went to the Underworld to play chess with him. Theia also visits him there and invites Eos along with her, telling her where a shortcut is.

Eos goes to see Tithonus next, because she was going to help him with a science fair project. She tries out her immortality spell on him, but it conflicts with Aphrodite's spell and turns Tithonus into a grasshopper, which Eos falls in love with, making him the third "love bug" from the spell. She's able to capture him and get him into a terrarium that he'd been making for his own pet grasshopper. She then takes him into her bedroom urn. While she's there, she gets a notescroll from Aphrodite. Ares came clean...sort of...about what happened and Aphrodite admits to the spells she cast. So she redeems herself a tiny bit, but it doesn't lessen the shock over her behavior for me. Not a bit.

Knowing Eos's immortality spell and Aphrodite's love bug spell conflicted, Eos now knows why Tithonus is now an immortal grasshopper. She doesn't know what to do, but then she remembers her dad won an award for spell-casting and it's off to the Underworld! Taking her mom's shortcut, Eos makes her way to Hyperion's rather nice home in Tartarus. They have an awkward but ultimately promising reunion and thanks to knowing the exact wording of both spells, Hyperion is able to tell Eos what to say to right things. Tithonus will go back to boy form, but also back to being mortal. He never wanted immortality in the first place, so everything works out.

Returning home, Eos is able to change Tithonus back to boy shape just in time, as his mother is there looking for him. He's thrilled about his experience and uses it to make their science project even better. He also retained the ability to distance jump, so he finally can be good at a sport like he always wanted. Eos has to promise not to cast more spells, but she also embraces her goddessgirl differences and decides to be herself more at school. She's visiting her father now and has found that chess helps focus her restless mind, so she's both playing with him in person and via distance. All of her problems are now resolved.

Whew! This book really was quite an unexpected ride. Eos's feelings about her father are some of the most serious and complicated in the entire series, and that's just the tip of the iceberg with this one.

The actual myth of Eos and Tithonus has her asking for him to be immortal, but she forgets to ask for eternal youth, so he's condemned to age forever. She turns him into a cicada out of pity. I think they worked that angle in there pretty well! It's really only Aphrodite's behavior that's strange for this book. If they'd hinted at it throughout the series, it would be one thing, but Aphrodite is always one of the most generous characters.

Up next: Clotho the Fate!