MMGM- Near and Deer and The Mythmakers

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Unleashing Readers

Liu, Sylvia. Near and Deer. 

1 October 2024 by Scholastic

Copy provided by the author

Sienna Chen's parents have recently moved the family from D.C. to the Virginia countryside to get away from the rat race and run a bed and breakfast. Sienna's grandmother (Nainai) has come along, and when the book starts, the two are running everything while the parents are away. Sienna is in charge of the baked goods, and everything is going well until her sheepadoodle, Jules, runs off. She goes after him and finds that he has discovered an abandoned fawn. The animal is adorable, and since a neighbor has said very threatening things about the local deer population, Sienna is concerned about it. She rushes home, but not soon enough to save the muffins, which burn and set off the smoke detector. This must be wired into the local fire department, because they are soon at the door, shooing the guests outside. Sienna is mortified, since her parents are trying to get a star accreditation to help the business, and this will not lead to good reviews. She manages to get the fawn to safety (coyotes are lurking about), and does some research to learn that she should contact a local wildlife rescue. Sadly, their phone mailbox is full. She finds out that she can feed the fawn milk from the family's goats, and struggled to do that. When her parents return, she doesn't tell them about the fire or the fawn. A woman who is studying local mushrooms, Dr. Klein, is staying at the B&B for a month with her son, Max, and her parents want Sienna to help entertain him. He's very energetic, but she eventually tells him her secret and enlists his services. She's named the fawn Persimmon, and micromanages Max when he tries to help. Jules seems to get along with the animal, but when the two manage to stumble into the house when the accreditors are visiting, Sienna's parents are furious! She still doesn't tell them that she's keeping the fawn in the shed, and continues to lie... and she's not entirely sure why. She and Max sneak out at night, and Max breaks his arm falling out of a tree. She still doesn't tell them. She even skips school to try to deal with Persimmon, and eventually ends up seeking help from Dr. Klein, since she just doesn't want to bother her parents, since the B&B is stressing them out so much. Dr. Klein takes her to the wildlife refuge to talk to Maite, who says it is best if Persimmon is away from people and hanging out with other deer, but Maite does allow Sienna to keep the deer for a while, if she and her father can build an enclosure. Feeling bad about the fact that her parents didn't get the star they were working for, Sienna e mails the accreditors and tells them her sad tale, and the grant a second chance. In the end, the family gets the star, Persimmon goes to the wildlife rescue with Maite, Max and Sienna keep in contact, and things are looking up. 

Strengths: To start, this cover will sell itself. A sheepadoodle befriending a fawn? Any young reader interested in animals is going to want this one! Sienna is a very well portrayed middle school character, with some facets of her personality that we don't always see. She's moved, but she's not whining about it. Her parents' business isn't going quite the way they want, but she is trying very hard not to add to their burden and help them out without complaining, even if she does make some missteps. She has some anxiety, with is on trend with the current middle school zeitgeist, but tries to handle it on her own. She's kind to Max, even if she micromanages him a bit, and does her best by the fawn. The fact that she doesn't tell her parents is quintessentially middle grade. My own daughter managed to hide a stray cat in her closet for two days in middle school, so I absolutely bought the fact that Sienna was able to hide the fawn in a shed! There's plenty of good information about why one shouldn't take animals from the wild, and Maite is kind but firm with Sienna about what needs to happen. This is a great realistic fiction novel that has a lot of appeal to a wide variety of readers. 
Weaknesses: Sienna's actions are absolutely true to life. Of course, she doesn't want to stress her parents out. But also, of course, she wants to keep the adorable fawn her dog has befriended. She is sure she can do everything she needs to do, but she really can't. This was frustrating to read as a parent, especially when Sienna is sort of rewarded at the end of the book. Young readers will think this is all fine, but the adult in me wanted to ground Sienna until she was 35. I did appreciate the author's notes about how trying to deal with wildlife on one's own is not a good idea at all! 
What I really think: I am hoping that Follett or Perma-Bound will offer this in a prebind, since paperbacks don't hold up very well in middle school backpacks! Readers who enjoyed this author's Manatee's Best Friend, Wood's Just One Wing, Hoyle's Just Gus or Millie, or other books involving animal rescue will enjoy this enDEERing tale! 

Hendrix, John. The Mythmakers: The Re

markable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien
September 24, 2024 by Abrams Fanfare
E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

It's easy enough to find biographies of C.S. Lewis (although I don't have one in my library) or J.R.R. Tolkien (I like Doris Lynch's 2003 J.R.R. Tolkien : Creator of Languages and Legends), and, sure enough, there are quite a number of books about these authors and their relationship to mythology and to other writers at the time. These, however, tend to be rather long and academic sounding; tweens and teens are not really the demographic for these books. 

Teens and tweens are, however, the demographic for both Tolkien and (to an increasingly lesser extent) Lewis. Not a lot of teens and tweens, but the ones who take The Hobbit to heart get VERY serious about it. I have friends who have actually read (and can opine about) The Silmarillion, who dabble in Elvish, and who were SUPER excited when the live action movies came out and were better than the 1977 Rankin Bass Hobbit. My son-in-law is toying with the idea of a LOTR themed bathroom. These fans don't necessarily know much about the author of the book, and this is where The Mythmakers is a helpful resource. 

Hendrix, with his great artwork, introduces a Lion (representing Lewis' work) and a Wizard (representing Tolkien) and has them talk a bit, in graphic style panels, about myths, legends, and fantasy. There are even points in the narrative when it is suggested that we go to later pages ala Choose Your Own Adventure books, to get more information on certain topics. Once that intro has the reader hooked, we get some straight biography of both men, accompanied by pages illustrations. Tolkien was born in 1892, was just a year older than my grandmother, something I'd never considered before, and Lewis was born in 1898. They both lost their mothers, had some difficulties in childhood, got scholarships to Oxfors, had to fight in the Great War, and eventually met in 1926.

This is where the book gets interesting. The two bond over a love of Norse mythology, and have a group of other academics who meet up a couple of times a week to discuss stories over a pint. Both men teach, have home lives, and dabble in writing the kind of stories that they have enjoyed reading. Tolkien publishes The Hobbit in 1932, then spends a lot of time working on the Lord of the Rings series. Lewis publishes The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in 1950. The two had different opinions about what constituted a good story, and also didn't necessarily share their personal lives with each other. After Lewis got married without telling Tolkien, the pair's relationship became even more strained than it had been, and the two weren't in much contact. Lewis died in 1963, and Tolkien ten years later. 

It somehow seems fair that Lewis' Chronicles have more or less fallen by the wayside (at least in my library), while Tolkien's works have seen resurgence after resurgence. Lewis was much more famous during his lifetime; not only because of the Chronicles, but also because of his Christian writing (even I owned a copies of The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity in high school). Tolkien was less well known. 

I'm not the target demographic for this, but I found it fascinating. Half tempted to look up William Morris' 1896  The Well at the World's End, which influenced both men. Tolkien isn't my jam, but I have friends and family who are enormous fans. They will be tickled with the discussions of the lion and the wizard, nod delightedly at the biographies, and remember the 1960s and 70s counterculture affection for all things Middle Earth. Will this book get checked out constantly at a middle school or even a high school library? No. Will the readers who check it out adore it? Absolutely. Have I pre-ordered a copy for my son-in-law's Christmas present? You bet I did.