Savvy
Ingrid Law
Walden Media
Fiction, YA Fantasy
***+
DESCRIPTION: Turning thirteen - leaving childhood behind and taking the first shaky steps toward adulthood - is a big enough milestone. When you have Beaumont
blood, like Mibs, it's even bigger. Every Beaumont has a savvy, a special skill, which strikes on their thirteenth birthday. Grandpa can create land, and her late grandmother
used to bottle radio broadcasts. Her older brothers Rocket and Fish control electricity and weather respectively. Mom always does everything perfectly. Terrifying as some
savvies turn out to be - Rocket can blow a city's entire power grid when he gets upset, and Fish can't be near any water deeper than a bathtub without risking a hurricane -
Mibs can't wait to blow out her candles and find her own gift.
Just days before her birthday, a terrible call comes during dinner. A car accident lands her beloved Poppa in critical care in distant Salina. Mom and Rocket rush off to be
at his bedside, while the local preacher's busybody wife - blissfully ignorant of savvies - steps in to take care of the younger Beaumonts left behind. Sick with worry, Mibs
wakes on her thirteenth birthday determined to get to her father: her savvy, whatever it turns out to be, may be the only thing that can save his life. But her plans go awry
from the start, stranding her and a collection of unexpected companions miles away from anywhere, with a wakening savvy she can barely control.
REVIEW: A fast read, Savvy picks up quickly and maintains a decent pace. The Beaumonts reminded me of an exaggerated version of the LaZelles, a gifted family featured in several short stories (and at least one book, which I've yet to read) by Nina Kiriki Hoffman. Mibs struggles with the twin problems of her unexpected savvy and growing up during her ill-advised road trip. Her companions do some struggling of their own, as well; each of them, from the rebellious teenaged preacher's daughter Bobbi to the hapless Bible salesman who inadvertently becomes their driver, have their own troubles to overcome, some more easily than others. Most of the characters remain fairly superficial, just deep enough to contain their problems and the means to resolve them. It goes without saying that, eventually, Mibs does make it to Salina... but not, as she'd hoped, the bearer of a miraculous savvy that will make everything better. Aside from that, the rest of the plot wrapped up just a bit too sweet and neat to be believable, fixing problems and shooing extras off to happy endings whether or not they'd worked for them. It almost seemed that Law was overcompensating for the few plot points that didn't wrap up in sparkles and rainbows. The extra dose of sugar cost it a half-star, giving the finale a shallow sheen over an otherwise deep and moving moment. Otherwise, I found it reasonably entertaining, despite the sticky sweetness gumming up the edges.
You might also enjoy:
Dragons Wild (Robert Asprin, Fiction - A college-grad slacker learns he's about to grow into some unusual powers, thanks to dragon ancestry)
Bright Shadow (Avi, YA Fiction - A dying wizard gifts a kindly serving girl with five powerful wishes)
The Lost Years of Merlin (T. A. Barron, YA Fiction - A boy must learn to control his terrifyingly powerful magical gifts)
The Wizard of Oz (L. Frank Baum, YA Fiction - Swept into a magical land, a girl searches for a way home with three peculiar companions)
Bruce Coville's Book Of... anthologies (Bruce Coville, editor, YA Fiction - Excellent collections of fantasy/sci-fi short stories)
Hatching Magic and The Dragon of Never-Was (Ann Downer, YA Fiction - A chance encounter with a medieval wizard's pet wyvern wakes a modern Boston girl's hidden powers)
The Inkheart trilogy (Cornelia Funke, YA Fiction - A bookbinder's daughter learns she may have inherited his ability to read people out of stories... and into them)
The Lives of Christopher Chant (Diana Wynne Jones, YA Fiction - A boy's ability to travel to other worlds via dreams obligates him to a future he doesn't want)
The Seventh Tower series (Garth Nix, YA Fiction - In a world of living shadows and light magic, one boy struggles to gain the magic needed to heal his ailing mother)
The Circle of Magic quartet (Tamora Pierce, YA Fiction - Four children must learn to use their elusive, powerful magical gifts)
Percy Jackson and the Olympians series (Rick Riordan, YA Fiction - A troubled preteen learns that his father was a Greek god when monsters out of mythos try to kill him)
The Harry Potter series (J. K. Rowling, YA Fiction - An orphaned boy discovers his magical heritage at a boarding school for young wizards)
Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians (Brandon Sanderson, YA Fiction - A boy discovers that the true nature of the world has been kept hidden by an insidious cult of evil librarians)
The Dragon Box (Katie W. Stewart, YA Fiction - A game pulls a boy into an imperiled magical land)
A Plague of Sorcerers (Mary Frances Zambreno, YA Fiction - A young apprentice finally taps his magical powers... only to attract a skunk as his familiar)
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Dreamscapes: Creating Magical Angel, Faery & Mermaid Worlds in Watercolor
Stephanie Pui-Mon Law
Impact
Nonfiction, Art
****
DESCRIPTION: Covering faeries, angels, and mermaids, this book teaches how to make fantastic humanoids glow with life in watercolor. Aside from the basics, she also covers embellishments, backgrounds, and watercolor techniques.
REVIEW: I have a few books which cover fantastic humanoids, but this is the only one I have that delves deeply into mermaids and angels as well as the usual pixies and faeries. Her sections on embellishments - creating translucent wings for faeries, adding fins and skin textures to mermaids, deciding on wing proportions for faeries - are excellent, and her paintings do indeed glow with that light only skilled watercolor artists seem able to accomplished. (I've never gotten along with watercolors, so I can only sit on the sidelines and dream, here.) I wish she'd gone a bit more into perspective and anatomy, showing some of the musculature and bone structures which she mentions adapting for various faefolk and such, but you can't really have everything in one book. Assuming that the artist/reader has some basic skills to build on - painting and drawing - this is an excellent instruction book, and certainly inspiring even for those of us who can't get watercolor to work worth a darn for us.
You might also enjoy:
Illustrating Nature: How to Paint and Draw Plants and Animals (Dorothea and Sy Barlowe, Art - How to draw and paint animals, plants, stones, and more places fairies would enjoy)
The Art of Amy Brown (Amy Brown, Art - A gallery of the popular fairy artist's works)
Drawing & Painting Fantasy Figures (Finlay Cowan, Art - Creating fantasy characters)
Painting Dragons in Watercolor (Paul Bryn Davies, Art - How to paint whimsical watercolor dragons)
Anatomy for Fantasy Artists (Glenn Fabry, Art - Bending the rules of anatomy for fantasy archetypes)
DragonArt Fantasy Characters (J. "NeonDragon" Peffer, YA? Art - Creating fantastic fairies, elves, and more)
How to Draw and Paint Fairies (Linda Ravenscroft, Art - Painting fairies of many kinds)
Watercolor Fairies (David Riché and Anna Franklin, Art - Using watercolors to paint fairies)
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