rhymes in Angela Brazil

Angela Brazil's books are fun except where they are racist as fuck. For instance, in A Terrible Tomboy, we are introduced to a young English girl who loves music and composes pretty little songs, how nice. In the next chapter, we find out that what she composes are songs about enslaved people in the American South, complete with romanticized situations and dialect. No other kind of songs, but three or four of these. Why would you specialize in that? Why would people think it was cute? The whole thing is almost too weird to be offensive, but only almost. (There are plenty of racist moments that are just straight-up offensive as well; usually one per book, but don't let your guard down.)

Apart from that they are stories about girls, usually in schools, using all those school-story tropes that everyone else has subsequently appropriated, and highly enjoyable.

What I wanted to mention, though, was the new perspective that they're giving me on folk rhymes. Because of some combination of author choice and focus on children of a certain period, there are a fair number of jumprope chants and little songs and things appearing, so you can see a snapshot and infer the folk process. For instance, I did not know that Simon and Garfunkel's "April Come She Will" was a riff on a rhyme about a cuckoo -- you know, the nest parasite? Possibly I should have noticed this when they sang it in Moonrise Kingdom, but seeing it in text was necessary. I don't think S&G meant to be especially misogynist, but I have a sneaking doubt now. (Note that Brazil includes a final couplet I haven't seen on the web: 'And if the cuckoo stays till September, It's as much as the oldest man can remember.' So it wasn't necessarily S&G who extended it.)

[ETA: And now I have edited Wikipedia in a thoughtful and structured fashion to include this information, which probably no one but me actually cares about, because --> Actual Geek Girl.]

I was also disturbed by "No more Latin, no more Greek, no more cane to make me squeak" as a clear antecedent to "No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks." I guess a decline in corporal punishment is something I approve of! (Also on this topic: Ana Mardoll points out physical abuse in Farmer Boy.)

Touchstone (trilogy), Andrea Höst

Someone mentioned this, maybe coffeeandink someplace? I need to either keep better notes or find a good way to search "all the things I've looked at on the web in the last month."

The Touchstone trilogy (Stray, Lab Rat One, Caszandra) is not only portal SF, but also takes place largely in military school for psychic kids. I believe it is relevant to many of your interests.

Cass is an Australian who's just graduated high school and is on her way home when suddenly she's in another world struggling to survive. The format threw me off a little at first -- it's meant to be a paper journal that Cass is writing by hand, but all the entries have subject lines. I decided it makes sense as a way someone who learned to journal from software might do it. She does pretty well for someone with no survival training, and, after finding some strange and helpful technology that becomes important later, manages to live long enough to be rescued into a society of rather alien humans.

The tone is smart and young; I completely bought Cass as a late-teen, somewhat fannish person. Her growing proficiency in the new language across the three books is handled well. Actually, I kept imagining her inventing second-language curricula; it's normal, if infrequent, for the alien society to have the occasional stray person show up through natural wormholes, but vanishingly rare for those people not to be from known worlds in the same language group, so they haven't any systematic way to teach the grammar.

My feminist rage quotient was generally low: depilation is, unexamined, a "girl thing" Cass has to learn how to do in this society, but men traditionally change their names at marriage and the military types are completely egalitarian. Lots of good female characters, some standoffish, some bouncy, some nasty, some kind. Cass is perceptive enough to make the characters and relationships clear despite her difficult situation. The inevitable romance is handled responsibly on both sides, which is really nice. Plus, sex is okay and a normal part of life, which different people handle differently. (Some weirdness about ZOMG they control reproduction!!1! early on, though. They basically live in domes, of course they'd need baby permits.)

As for plot, it goes: Survival! Super special talents! Scary immaterial enemies! Psychic space ninjas! Having your life made into television! Archeology! Relationships! Building a new society! Saving the universe!

So that's pretty much all awesome.

The author self-publishes, so there may not be paper copies sitting in bookstores, but there's a good variety of ebook formats available. The books have a few minor quality issues such as search-and-replace errors, but I've seen worse from publishing houses many times. I really enjoyed these, and the ebooks are reasonably priced. I recommend them.