{"id":2278,"date":"2010-12-31T15:27:54","date_gmt":"2010-12-31T20:27:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lettersandsodas.com\/books\/?p=2278"},"modified":"2010-12-31T15:27:54","modified_gmt":"2010-12-31T20:27:54","slug":"the-steps-across-the-water-by-adam-gopnik-illustrated-by-bruce-mccalldisney-hyperion-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/the-steps-across-the-water-by-adam-gopnik-illustrated-by-bruce-mccalldisney-hyperion-2010\/","title":{"rendered":"The Steps Across the Water by Adam Gopnik, Illustrated by Bruce McCallDisney – Hyperion, 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rose, the younger sister of Oliver from Gopnik’s other kids’ book, The King in the Window<\/em>, has a little bit of a speech impediment: she’s prone to Spoonerisms, switching the starts of her words to say, for example, “U Nork” instead of “New York.” She’s adopted—she was born in Russia, and lived in an orphanage there ’til she was two—and the speech therapist thinks her trouble with words is due to some early trauma. And though Rose likes her adopted family, she sometimes wishes for things to be different: for starters, to know her real parents, and to fit in better at school, where the only kid who’s friendly to her is a little boy named Ethan, who’s kind of pathetic and puppy-like. But then one day Rose sees a glass staircase suddenly appear above the lake in Central Park: it disappears just as quickly, and no one but Rose sees it, but she’s quite sure it was there. And then, on a class trip to the Empire State Building, things get really<\/em> weird. There are midget spies, and pigeons the size of ponies, and a pink limousine that Rose keeps seeing around: all, as it turns out, are from U Nork, an even bigger city than Rose’s, as she sees for herself when she visits it. U Nork is New York and then some: it has skyscrapers several miles high, elevators up to the three-thousandth floor, and tightrope walkers delivering messages from building to building. Its city grid is like that of New York, but bigger, and no one’s quite forthcoming with Rose about where, exactly, it is. As Rose learns some of the story of U Nork and how it got to be the way it is, she also learns something that’s been apparent to readers from early in the story: U Nork is in trouble, and it’s up to Rose to save it. <\/p>\n

Rose is an appealing heroine, maybe especially appealing to me: although she has an older brother, she often reads like an only child, which is to say she’s perceptive and navigates the world of adults better than the world of other children. Also:<\/p>\n

Rose’s favorite thing to do when she was frustrated and confused was to eat something delicious—and it was her personal opinion that when you weren’t<\/em> frustrated and confused, it was still a good idea to eat something delicious. (176)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sometimes there’s too much going on here, too many different styles—adventure, and family story, and science fiction, and social satire (bits of The Devil Wears Prada<\/em>)—but I enjoyed this book nevertheless. I read it while stuck at home with a fever, and it was totally excellent sick-day reading: exciting, well-written but not mentally taxing, and a whole world into which to escape. Bruce McCall’s color illustrations suit the story well, though I like his scenery and animals better than his people, but the scenery was lovely enough that I was willing to forgive him for how weird Rose looks in some of the pictures. Speaking of forgiveness, because I was reading this while under the weather, I was probably more willing to look past things that might have bothered me otherwise (plot weirdnesses, or logical gaps, or jumps in dialogue that didn’t quite make sense), so I’m not sure how much I can say I recommend<\/em> it, though I definitely enjoyed it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rose, the younger sister of Oliver from Gopnik’s other kids’ book, The King in the Window, has a little bit of a speech impediment: she’s prone to Spoonerisms, switching the starts of her words to say, for example, “U Nork” instead of “New York.” She’s adopted—she was born in Russia, and lived in an orphanage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-young-adultchildrens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}