The Wolf Keepers by Elise Broach

Rating: WARTY!

Errata:
"He had a teasing look on her face" She had a pleasing look?!
"She tried a different tact" tack?!

I have to vote a 'no' for this one, I'm sorry to report. While the novel itself wasn't written badly and contained some interesting story-telling, the overall message of irresponsibility and misbehavior by these kids, and of withholding important information from parents, for which there were no consequences, really turned me off this. I don't think it's the kind of thing a middle-grader should be reading. Worse than this, I felt it portrayed people of color in an unflattering light and the young girl as easily led. I won't go so far as to say it's racist and genderist, but to me it sure felt that way from time to time.

The basic story features Lizzie Durango, who is the daughter of a senior zoo keeper if not the head of the zoo itself. I didn't quite get exactly what her father's role was. If the book mentioned it, I missed it, but he lives with Lizzie in a house on the zoo grounds. Lizzie never knew her mother, who died shortly after Lizzie was born. Her father never remarried.

Lizzie has the run of the zoo during the summer, and free food at the concession stands. This was one of the problems for me. There seemed to be no supervision, and Lizzie was essentially eating junk food all day, every day. This tells me her father was more concerned about the animals than he was his own daughter! He was an irresponsible parent. As far as it went, this is fine because in real life there are irresponsible parents. What bothered me here is that this issue was never addressed, and he was never brought to book for his behavior.

Lizzie is keeping a notebook on activities at the zoo as a summer project for school, but this was another issue. I never did get why the notebook was so important, because while it occupied a lot of the story-telling, it featured so little in events and had nothing to do with the plot. I had thought it might contain useful information that became important later in the story, but this never happened, so why there was such a focus on it escapes me. It was tied to a side-story about John Muir, but this story never really went anywhere and I didn't see the point of it. Worse than this, Lizzie's personal behavior seemed completely at odds with her adoration of John Muir. He was a very responsible and far-sighted naturalist, whereas Lizzie was about as short-sighted and inconsiderate as you can get.

One day Lizzie encounters Tyler Briggs, a kid her own age, who is a runaway from a foster home, and who is living behind the elephant enclosure at the zoo. The two kids begin to bond although no good reason is offered for why they should. One of Lizzie's favorite exhibits is the new wolf enclosure where rescued wolves live. There's also a minor side-story about her bonding with the wolf-pack leader, but this doesn't really go anywhere either and is betrayed on one occasion. It made no sense to me, but anyway, the wolves are apparently becoming sick and dying one by one, but it turns out that it's not quite that simple. There are, Tyler tells Lizzie, odd activities in the zoo at night, especially around the wolf enclosure. One night the two of them spy on these activities, and they discover that someone is tampering with the wolves.

So far, so good, but it was right around this point that the story went completely downhill for me. None of it made sense from here on out, but I can't go into very much detail without giving away huge spoilers which makes it really difficult to explain why I disliked this story so much. Let me just say that the plan for the wolves is that they will be rehabilitated and released into the wild at some point which makes the behavior of a certain zoo employee meaningless, and undermines the whole reason why Lizzie and Tyler end up alone in the Yosemite National Park. I've visited Yosemite, all too briefly, and I loved it. I became pleasantly lost among the redwoods for an afternoon and it was great. Lizzie and Tyler do not have such a pleasant experience.

My problem with Tyler was how selfish and inconsiderate he was. Again, this was never resolved and he was never held accountable for his entirely irrational behavior. As soon as he showed up, the independent and confident Lizzie became his pawn. Every time there was a conflict she was depicted as bowing to his wishes. It made her look like a stereotypical "weak and compliant woman." It also made Tyler look like a complete jerk, and a little tyrant. Curiously, no parallel was drawn between Tyler's behavior and the wolf-pack leader's behavior, and there was definitely one to be drawn!

Tyler never made any sense to me because we were never offered any kind of decent reason for why he absconded from his foster home, where (contrary to what he consistently leads Lizzie to believe) he is loved and missed. This made me believe Tyler was unreliable and an outright liar at times. This is hardly the kind of person I'd want my young child to hang out with. The fact that Lizzie clings to him from day one, almost obsessing over him, made me nervous and made me feel she really wasn't very smart after all. It also felt wrong because Tyler could have been portrayed in a much better light, yet he was not. I don't know why.

Tyler was African American and at first I was glad to see a story including main characters who were not white, but as I read more about him, I began to wonder why he was painted so negatively, and so stereotypically: broken home, drug-addicted mom, crowded foster home, and so on. It felt wrong. To me the story would have been better had the roles been reversed, and Tyler had been the one living with his dad in the zoo whereas Lizzie was the street kid. To me that would have felt less like it was profiling, you know?

But Lizzie had her own host of problems, the biggest one of which was how completely irresponsible she is. She's initially presented as smart and well-behaved, and as someone who really cares about the animals in the zoo, but her behavior reflects none of this. Instead of advising her father that there is a runaway kid in the zoo, she aids and abets Tyler, never pursuing any concern over how worried his foster family might be about him, or how at risk he is living on the street. She exhibits this same behavior with regard to the zoo animals.

When she learns exactly what's going on, she should have reported it to her father. That's the kind of person she's initially presented to us as being: responsible and caring, and protective of the animals, but instead she acts out of character and takes things into her own hands, which is how she ends up stranded at the National Park, lured into making the trip there by Tyler. When she wants to go to the village and call her father, Tyler once again selfishly browbeats her into going with him, and she buckles to his will. I really didn't like Tyler's lordly attitude and despicable behavior to begin with, and at this point I started really disliking Lizzie's, too.

The ending, where Tyler is accepted despite having been the lure which put Lizzie at severe risk in the park, felt false. Yes, Lizzie had bonded with him for some reason, but her father's complete and ready capitulation seemed entirely unlike a parent, especially after her painful misbehavior. She paid no penalty whatsoever and neither did Tyler. There was no moral to this story! There are ways this novel could have been written which would have avoided all of these pitfalls and still told an adventurous and exciting story. I was really sorry these were not explored. I can't recommend a novel which fails to avoid so many traps and which fails to give any rational and reasonable resolution to so much poor behavior. Perhaps the children at whom this is aimed will not be so critical, but I can be, and this kind of a story is where I draw the line.

Shakespeare's Secret by Elise Broach

Title: Shakespeare's Secret
Author: Elise Broach
Publisher: Scholastic
Rating: worthy

At first blush, this appears to be a Shakespeare conspiracy novel! The theory is that Shakespeare's plays were really written by Elizabethan nobleman Edward de Vere. We're offered a limp triad of evidence supposedly supporting this bizarre claim: firstly that Shakespeare wasn’t well-enough educated to have written his plays, having "only" a grammar school education; secondly that when he died he was not eulogized throughout the land as a famous playwright ought to have been, and thirdly, that Shakespeare left no collection of books and manuscripts behind when he died. I can’t believe that Broach uses the utterly absurd argument that Shakespeare used different spellings of his name! That's downright ignorant, especially when she puts it into the mouth of a purported Shakespeare scholar! I'm not a big fan of Shakespeare, so what do I care? Well, I do care about dishonesty purveyed as truth!

The fact that the Oxfordian 'theory' of Shakespeare authorship (which attributes Shakespeare's plays to contemporary Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford) was invented by a guy whose last name was "Looney" should tell you all you need to know about that. The fact that de Vere was evidently such a great author that he could compose twelve of Shakespeare's plays long after his own death in 1604 ought to tell you everything else! The spelling of words (and particularly of names) was not solidified until relatively recently, so the fact that Shakespeare (and everyone else, including de Vere) used variant spellings is meaningless. Strike one leg of this three-legged stool (with the emphasis on stool).

The fact that Shakespeare was grammar-school educated and clearly could write (if he could write his name!) means there is no issue at all with him being technically capable of writing plays. The fact that he was one of the world's best known rip-off artists, copying his plays from earlier works by others, and making a few changes here and there, removes any need for Shakespeare to have been a well-read and well-traveled man, and it also removes any basis for an argument that "a merchant" could not have dreamed up the ideas. Strike leg two. Shakespeare was revered in his own time, but not throughout the country, and not in all circles. It was only posthumously that his name has become so famous and so widely known, so it’s hardly surprising that there was no national outbreak of mourning upon his death. Thus the entire stool crashes down.

But let’s focus on the novel. Hero Netherfield and her family, including older sister Beatrice, are in Maryland - a new state, a new town, and a new school starting in the morning. Why they left their move to the last minute isn’t explained. They’ve moved into a house which supposedly has a diamond hidden somewhere on the property. Beatrice, attending as different school to hero, easily adapts to new places and new people. Hero always feels like she's the odd one out. Their parents met in an Eng. Lit. class and found a common language, and whilst each member of her family seems to have found a source of contentment, Hero has yet to find hers.

Hero is a twelve-year-old who is your standard YA (in this case pre YA, but it's all the same) female: disaffected young girl, moved to a new town, starting at a new school, doesn't fit in, she's plain yet the hottest guy in school falls for her, everyone makes fun of her, mean girls are nasty to her. On short it's the saddest collection of pathetic tropes imaginable - and it's too young for me! So why the interest? Well, I haven't reviewed anything with a Shakespeare element yet in this blog, and this novel did sound interesting. Plus, bonus: it's not first person PoV! Hurray! Elise Broach actually gets it. Also, Hero is part of an actual family! She's not all alone, or with a step parent, or from an orphanage or a broken home. And Broach can write. The intrigue and drama are a bit forced, but it's acceptable to me, and I'm sure the intended age range would have no trouble with it.

The basic plot consists of Hero's discovery that there is supposedly an old and valuable diamond hidden somewhere on the property she just moved into. Being named after a character in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, Hero is awakened to the Elizabethan era, to Shakespeare, and to King Henry's the Eight's first beheaded wife. She has to search the house for the hidden diamond, all there's the whole wondering what Miriam and her new friend Danny are up to. The ending is a bit trite and quite predictable, but for the age group, it'll do!

I had some real issues with the "Shakespeare really didn't write his works" wacko angle that Broach seems to buy into. I'll go into that soon on this blog, but be prepared for a huge amount of bias confirmation in the Broach approach, with liberal lack of any critique of the Oxfordian perspective. There are no real Shakespeare scholars who buy into alternative authorship of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, so that oughta tell ya everything you need to know about Shakespeare conspiracy theory! Broach is also seriously, indeed dishonestly, misleading about the Elizabeth 1 - Catherine Parr - Thomas Seymour scandal. Other than that, the story is a worthy read for the intended age group.