Egg & Spoon, by Gregory Maguire

Egg and Spoon is a great book almost all the way through -- funny and full of inventiveness, like J.K. Rowling at her best.

It also has a weird kinda racist non sequitor.

"You know the rules. Don't let anyone in, Mewster," said the witch.
"You and your rules," said the kitten, with admirable East Asian detachment.

I just... yeah, that came from nowhere. The kitten is Russian like everybody else in the book, as far as I can tell. I have no earthly idea why it's admirable East Asian detachment instead of some other kind of admirable detachment, or just plain admirable detachment.

And so it becomes one of those books that I regard with admiration and great affection but feel iffy about recommending to anybody else.

But I will make a case for the other 474 pages of it.

This is a story of 19th century Russia. Of Elena, who lives in a desperately poor village in a desperately poor family; her father is dead, her mother very sick. Of Ekaterina, raised in extreme wealth mostly in English boarding schools. Ekaterina is traveling across Russia to St. Petersburg, where she will meet the Tsar's godson and perhaps convince him to marry her (though it's not exactly what she wants for herself.) But lightning destroys a trestle bridge and leaves her stuck in Elena's village, where she and Elena become -- not friends, exactly, not yet. But people who are curious about each other. And then, by accident, when the train gets moving again it's Elena who's on board and Ekaterina who's left behind; which results in adventures for them both, involving a Firebird and its egg and a marvelous Baba Yaga who can quote Broadway musicals and namedrop her old acquaintance Dante Alighieri.

I like John Green's speech on YA in which he talks about needing "Encouragements that aren't bullshit." It's easy to be cynical about morality in books because books mostly can just tell us to do things that we already know we should do; compassion and empathy and justice aren't some nifty lifehack that you just found out about. And yet, once in a while, you read a book that argues so convincingly and so warm-heartedly for compassion and empathy and justice that you feel like you've been set back on the right road again. And it is a funny and rollicking book with plenty of adventure and plenty of colorful detail (and I liked it a great deal better than Wicked, which had that lit-fic thing of everybody being awful to each other, and which was therefore much more fun as a musical, once songs and morals got added in.)

Favorite YA books, 2014

Brown Girl Dreaming, Jacqueline Woodson

A beautiful verse memoir of a complicated childhood -- you can see a lot of pain and sadness, much of it oblique, on the edges, but mostly it's stripped down to the basic units of poetry -- single moments, single memories.

The Children of the King, Sonya Hartnett

A ghost story, and a story of World War II. A well-off British family evacuates to the countryside, where they pick up an evacuee, and run into some ghosts ... whose story is also the story their uncle tells about the Princes in the Tower. Beautiful writing, and thoughtful things to say about courage and responsibility.

Egg and Spoon, Gregory Maguire

In which Baba Yaga shops at Bloomingdale's and filks from "Fiddler on the Roof" -- Baba Yaga is the best thing in a book full of great things, from the immortal hen of the tundra to giant matryoshka dolls to empathy and justice.

Gabi: A Girl in Pieces, Isabel Quintero

Serious without being dreary, timely without being an issue book, surprisingly sharp and funny despite its darkness, perhaps the most feminist YA book I've read this year.

How I Discovered Poetry, Marilyn Nelson

This year we have TWO great memoirs-in-poetry for children and young adults by African-American women! And I feel like this one got a little overshadowed by Brown Girl Dreaming -- which deservedly won the National Book Award -- but it's excellent in its own right; I particularly related to the author's descriptions of moving around so much in childhood.

I'll Give You the Sun, Jandy Nelson

Complicated feelings! And not an unequivocal recommendation! It's a story of twins, and artists, and family secrets, and people being terrible to each other. It's easy to overdose on Nelson's magical-realism-touched, exploding-with-metaphors prose, but when it works, it works.

The Story of Owen, Dragon-Slayer of Trondheim, E.K. Johnston

It's rare for a story to be so much fun and also so deeply rooted in values of pragmatism, community, responsibility, and not having a ton of needless romantic drama.

This One Summer, Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki

Oh, but maybe THIS is the most feminist YA of the year? It's such an accurate description of those awkward and uncertain moments on the cusp of adolescence, on the cusp of entry into the terrifying worlds of sex and romance -- and also on the cusp of realizing that your parents are actual human beings. And it's brilliant to use horror movies as a metaphor for all this.

Through the Woods, Emily Carroll.

This is a good year for Canadians and people named Emily and Canadians named Emily, huh? (E.Lockhart, who is not Canadian, and E.K. Johnston, who is.) It's a genuinely spooky horror graphic novel with great artwork.

We Were Liars, E. Lockhart

I'm not a huge fan of twist endings and unreliable narrators, but I appreciated the clarity and minimalism of the prose, and the horrible inevitability of it all.

Why We Took the Car, Wolfgang Herrndorf

A road-trip novel with a strong voice, and pathos, and danger, and the realistic foolishness of young teenagers. There's something rough-around-the-edges about it, the kind of thing where you run out of ego and posturing and it's just people as they really are, a little bit shabby and a little bit pathetic but you still can't help liking them.