Nimona

from the book and webcomic by Noelle Stevenson

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" 'I'm a shark!' "

" 'You can’t just go around murdering people. There are RULES, Nimona.' "

" ' This is what you wanted, isn't it? You went looking for a monster. Well, here I am.' "

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I first read Nimona online, as it was published section by section by the uber-talented Noelle Stevenson. I shared it with my kids and got them caught up, and we waited eagerly for each new chapter to appear - probably the way Victorians waited for the next chapter of the latest Dickens. We were so thrilled by all the accolades and awards Nimona has won and the fact that it's been published on paper means that it can reach an even wider audience.

Nimona is an entity like no other. When we first meet her, she's a shape-shifter who approaches the sinister and one-armed Lord Ballister Blackheart in hopes of becoming his sidekick. She wants to help him defeat Lord Ambrosius Goldenloin (how I love these names, seriously) and wreak havoc on the Institution.

Nimona doesn't look like your average heroine. Most of her head is shaved, she has multiple piercings, and she is muscly, strong, and round - there is nothing waif-like and delicate about her. She's snarky and funny, but there's a very old wound there and a mystery about her to be solved. We just love her. You can give her a read here.

Scout (Jean Louise) Finch

from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

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"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing."

"It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived."

"I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks." 

.......................

I'm not sure what to say about Scout Finch, other than that she's just wonderful. She frames the entire narrative of the incidents in the book in an innocent and caring way - she's definitely her father's daughter. Her father is Atticus Finch, trusted lawyer and one of the only people in the town that will stand up for the rights of blacks in their small town in Alabama in the 1930s. She's definitely a favorite.

It's hard to see in the photos above, but in her hands she's holding treasures left for her and her brother Jem by their reclusive neighbor Boo Radley: "Two Indian-head pennies, chewing gum, soap dolls, a rusty medal, a broken watch and chain."

Menolly

from the Pern books (beginning with Dragonsong) by Ann McCaffrey

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" 'Women can't be harpers,' she'd said to Petiron, astonished and awed.
'One in ten hundred have perfect pitch,' Petiron had said... 'One in ten thousand can build and acceptable melody with meaningful words. Were you only a lad, there'd be no problem at all."

" 'It's so beautiful. It's such a challenge, to hear the interweaving harmonies and the melody line changing from instrument to instrument. I felt as if I was... flying on a dragon!' "

.............

I love Menolly for so many reasons. First off, she's denied music as a girl because it's not an appropriate occupation for women in their society. But she can't keep herself from composing and playing and is beaten for it. She runs away to a cave on the beach where she finds herself at the hatching of nine fire lizards, which are kin to dragons (also a major part of the Pern novels). Her personal journey to find her place in the world makes her an exciting and relatable character. Especially if you love music, you'll want to follow her adventures as she hones her talent and learns that there is a place for her songs.

Éowyn

from The Lord of the Rings books by J. R. R. Tolkien

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“ 'What do you fear, lady?' he asked.
'A cage,' she said.”


'But no living man am I!' "

.............
Here be spoilers. If you haven't read the books, look away. 

Éowyn is royal. She adores her family and wants to help rid their country of the evil that is threatening to overtake them - which is originating right in her uncle's own court - but because she is a woman, she can't ride into battle and raise her sword against them.

There are very few female characters in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but thankfully, Éowyn has a chance to shine (and hang out with hobbits!) She takes matters into her own hands and breaks free, and goes into battle, succeeding where others had failed. It is only after her triumph that she has a change of heart, and decides on her own terms that she is through with war. She wishes instead to become a healer.

She doesn't decide, well, I can't have what I want, so I may as well be a healer, that's good. No, she actually fulfills what she's always wanted to do, succeeds, and then decides to turn her focus elsewhere towards something that still helps her land, but in a different way.

(I feel the need to add that today is another literary day - today was the day that Horton heard a Who!)

Matilda

from the novel by Roald Dahl

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“So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.” 

“Sometimes Matilda longed for a friend, someone like the kind, courageous people in her books.”

“She decided that every time her father or her mother was beastly to her, she would get her own back in some way or another. A small victory or two would help her to tolerate their idiocies and would stop her from going crazy.”  

.................

Matilda is a young girl who has been born into the wrong family. While she loves to read and learn, her parents (in the brilliant way that only Roald Dahl can tell it) stand for ignorance, cheating, telly-watching, and every boorish thing you can think of. They think she's four when she tells them she's six and a half and wants to go to school. They want her to stay home so that she can sign for packages. She manages to find an escape at the library where books open a world of possibilities for her.

But school is no better. The children are regularly oppressed by the principal, Miss Trunchbull. Matilda is regularly told she's small and insignificant both at school and at home: "I'm right and you're wrong, I'm big and you're small, and there's nothing you can do about it." Until the one day when she discovers she has magical powers...

So why do we love Matilda? She loves to read. She loves to learn. And she strikes a blow for every person who felt marginalized or belittled for liking something different.


(Note: This is one of the few instances where I think the movie lives up to the book. It's just delightful.)

Jane Eyre

from the novel by Charlotte Brontë

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“Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! - I have as much soul as you, - and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you!”

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”

"Reader, I married him."

...............

Jane Eyre was one of the few books I read for school that I just loved. Unfortunately, my mom, on seeing what I was reading, said, (highlight for spoiler) "Did you get to the madwoman in the attic yet?" Thanks a lot, Mom.

So why Jane? She is motivated by a strong sense of wanting to be loved and to hold fast to her belief in right and wrong. Although she works as a teacher and a servant, she is unapologetic about telling the truth and speaking her mind - not from a rude sense of entitlement but because she wants so desperately to be understood and loved for herself.

While offers of love come her way, the terms are unacceptable to her, and so she strikes out on her own rather than submit to anything false. For the time, this book was revolutionary. Part romance, part horror, Gothic as all get out, it's a great read and you'll find yourself cheering Jane on and wanting to see her get everything she asks for.

Turtle Wexler

from The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

Morgaine

from The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

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"Morgaine was not tall; she would never be that, and in these years in Avalon she had grown as tall as she would ever be, a scant inch taller than the Lady. Her dark hair was plaited down the back of the neck and wrapped with a deerskin thong; she wore the dark-dyed dress and deerskin over tunic of any priestess, and the blue crescent shone darkly between her brows.... Already she appeared ageless, and she would, Viviane knew, look much the same even when white appeared in her dark hair."

“How do you write of the making of a priestess? What is not obvious is secret. Those who have walked that road will know, and those who have not will never know though I should write down all the forbidden things.”

" 'Are you the lady Morgaine that they call Morgaine of the Fairies?'
   Morgaine said, 'I am.... Because I am of the old royal line of Avalon, and fostered there.' "

..........

The Mists of Avalon is a retelling of the Arthurian legend told through the voices of the women in his life. If your only experience with the King Arthur story is that Morgan le Fay was an evil sorceress, go pick up this book. Yes, Morgaine does all of the things she does in the legends, but in this retelling there is so much more to it than that. At a very young age she's brought to Avalon to study to become a priestess and serve the Goddess, as her entire family does. Their goal is to see that their religion reigns on the British isles, and this Christianity thing doesn't take over. Guinevere ("Gwenhwyfar" in the book) just as fiercely believes that all of Britain must unite under Christ. But the two aren't enemies. There's no inherently good or bad side. Instead we get an intimate look from both sides of the lives and struggles of the women closest to Arthur.

About Morgaine herself: like many others on this list, she is a proud and determined woman. But she's written in such a human way that you can't help but cheer her on and commiserate. Especially when you already know how the story must go... and you shake your head because you know that all the plotting and scheming in the world is only going to bring everyone misery. She does a lot of underhanded things, but she does them believing in her heart that it's the only way to bring about her goals for the good of everyone.

Meg Murry

from A Wrinkle in Time by the fabulous Madeline L'Engle

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" 'Maybe I don't like being different,' Meg said, 'but I don't want to be like everybody else, either.' "

" "Nobody suffers here,' Charles intoned. 'Nobody is ever unhappy.'
'But nobody's ever happy, either,' Meg said earnestly. 'Maybe if you aren't unhappy sometimes you don't know how to be happy.' "

" 'Like and equal are not the same thing at all!' "
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Professor Minerva McGonagall

from the fabulous Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling

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“Have a biscuit, Potter.”   

" 'Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts,' she said. 'Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned.' " 

… Harry witnessed Professor McGonagall walking right past Peeves, who was determinedly loosening a crystal chandelier, and could have sworn he heard her tell the poltergeist out of the corner of her mouth, 'It unscrews the other way.' 

" 'He [Dumbledore] will not be single-handed!' said Professor McGonagall loudly, plunging her hand inside her robes.
'Oh yes he will, Minerva!' said Dumbledore sharply. 'Hogwarts needs you!' "

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Claudia Kincaid

from the book From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg

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“I've been the oldest child since before you were born.”

"I didn't run away to come home the same."

“Claudia knew that she could never pull off the old-fashioned kind of running away. That is, running away in the heat of anger with a knapsack on her pack. She didn't like discomfort; even picnics were untidy and inconvenient: all those insects and the sun melting the icing on the cupcakes. Therefore, she decided that her leaving home would not be just running from somewhere but would be running to somewhere.” 

............

I'm pretty sure that most people remember this book very well, but not our heroine's name (unlike another Claudia I could mention).  Claudia Kincaid decides one day that she's just not appreciated at home, so she plans to run away. But not just anywhere - to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, so that she can have art and culture as well.

Claudia is immensely practical; she takes her little brother Jaime along because he has the most money in his piggy bank. And that yearning for something more for herself than the everyday monotony of being a big sister to three younger brothers, and being in charge of them and doing chores while they did none - making straight As as well - I get that and I appreciate that. She didn't just run away from home, she did it in style. And while I never longed to run away from home as a kid, I did secretly want to live in a museum and be surrounded by more art than I could handle, and have the luxury of staying and enjoying it as long as I wanted to.

If you've read the book, you'll know what the mysterious symbol means on the paper Claudia is holding. (And if you haven't, that's even more reason to read this Newbery Award winner now as an adult.) Claudia leaves home - and returns there - on her own terms. And for that, I love her.

Nancy Drew

from the series by Carolyn Keene

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“Chuckling to herself, Nancy said aloud, "Romance and detective work won't mix tonight!” 

“When threatened with a hairbrush by a vicious woman, remain calm and speak in cold level tones.”  

“Ned said "Nancy Drew is the best girl detective in the whole world!""Don't you believe him," Nancy said quickly. "I have solved some mysteries, I'll admit, and I enjoy it, but I'm sure there are many other girls who could do the same.”  

..........

One of my earliest memories is of sitting on my mom's lap, reading The Secret of the Old Clock together. She would read one page, and I would read the opposite one. I think I was 5. I gave the teacher a bit of a surprise when she asked what I read at home and I said, "Nancy Drew."

Little did my mom know that she was opening up my world to a totally heroic lady. She had her own car (a convertible!) and drove herself wherever she needed to go. She had a band of girlfriends that came with her to solve mysteries when she needed backup, but mostly she went solo. I loved reading about her adventures. I appreciate even more now how she was an independent woman at a time when many women's options were getting married, being a nurse, a teacher, or a secretary. Not that there's anything wrong with that - but Nancy Drew must have been a breath of fresh air.

I'm glad to say that we have a stack of Nancy Drew books (and Hardy Boys) on our shelves. Some were mine, some belonged to friends and family that wanted to see them be enjoyed again. I wouldn't mind spending the afternoon with Nancy in her roadster every now and again myself.

Laura Ingalls

from the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder

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“Laura felt a warmth inside her. It was very small, but it was strong. It was steady, like a tiny light in the dark, and it burned very low but no winds could make it flicker because it would not give up.” 

“We'd never get anything fixed to suit us if we waited for things to suit us before we started.” 
“When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, "What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?"
"They are the days of a long time ago, Laura," Pa said. "Go to sleep, now."
But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods,…
She was glad that the cozy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.”

............

Claudia Kishi

From the Baby-Sitters Club series by Ann M. Martin

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"Oh my lord!"

"I think clothes make a statement about the person inside them. Also, since you have to get dressed every day, why not at least make it fun? Traditional clothes look boring and are boring to put on...I like bright colors and big patterns and funny touches, such as earrings made from feathers. Maybe this is because I'm an artist. I don't know."

"I love everything about art. And I'm good at it. I can sculpt, paint, make collages and jewelry, you name it. I'm not bragging. This is just the way things are."

..........

If you read the Baby-Sitters Club books, your favorite was either Claudia (stylish artist girl) or Stacey (popular girl from NYC). For me, Claudia wins hands down.

Claudia Kishi is in 7th grade at the beginning of the series, and is the Vice President of the club, mainly because she has her own phone with its own line in her room, so that they can hold club meetings there and people can call to hire sitters. She's cool enough to have her own line! She makes her own earrings and jewelry, and is forever described as putting crazy outfits together that would never work on anyone but her (even by 1990's standards) because she's so artistic and cool, she can pull it off. But the best thing about her is that she's so unapologetically her own person. She has to hide her beloved junk food and Nancy Drew mysteries because her parents don't think they're good for her and she does it anyway. I loved her relationship with her grandmother and how she's a good friend to other members of the club and all of the children she sits for. In one book a fellow art student tries to convince her that if she was serious about her art, she'd give up everything else, including the BSC, to make time for it. Claudia tries it and decides that she can still love art without having to sacrifice everything else in her life for it, and it won't make her less of an artist. THANK YOU, CLAUDIA.

My girls adore this series and we pick up BSC books whenever we see them at book sales. They are forever borrowing books from their Aunt Mary's old room to read. I'm actually a little disappointed that this series hasn't really taken off as a reboot because so many situations just wouldn't work anymore - the BSCers would just take out their phones, and either call for backup or google what they needed to know. But that's another story.

Amelia Peabody

from the incredibly adventurous Amelia Peabody series, by author and Egyptologist Elizabeth Peters

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“No woman really wants a man to carry her off; she only wants him to want to do it.”

“Your trousers are on fire. I would have told you, but you so dislike advice...”

“There was no warning, not even a knock. The door flew open, and he forgot his present aches and pains in anticipation of what lay in store. The figure that stood in the door was not that of an enemy. It was worse. It was his mother.”

..........

Unlike Alice and Ramona, I don't think Amelia Peabody is as well-known. I've written before about how the Emerson family is like a family of Indiana Joneses - if he was based in the Valley of the Kings and his mother and father went on adventures with him. The stories borrow a lot from Rider Haggard novels, and if you're looking for action and adventure with some romance and a healthy portion of Victorian sensibility, you are in for a treat. It's funny, too.

There are murders, mysteries to be solved, a Master Criminal, love, sword fighting, spying, and loads of information about Egypt and excavations at the turn of the century, as the author was an Egyptologist herself and made the series as historically accurate as possible. In Tomb of the Golden Bird, they are present at the discovery of King Tut's tomb and must watch as Howard Carter finds "beautiful things" as they work on their own excavation nearby.

If you're looking for a fun, adventurous book to read, give the series a try. There are 19 books, so if an early one isn't your cup of tea, try Lion in the Valley or The Last Camel Died at Noon. Then you can work your way up to The Falcon at the Portal and He Shall Thunder in the Sky (heart heart heart).

About the illustration: she carries a red parasol that's been retrofitted to hide a blade, and she has a belt she's rigged up with everything she may need in an emergency: "Pistol and knife, canteen, bottle of brandy, candle and matches in a waterproof box, notebook and pencil, needle and thread, compass, scissors, first-aid kit and a coil of stout cord (useful for tying up captured enemies)." Her hair is perpetually black, even when she has grandchildren, and her husband Emerson never makes the connection with the small bottle Amelia keeps on her table next to her hairbrush. I just love her.

Ramona Quimby

(from eight books by the wonderful Beverly Cleary)

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“She was not a slowpoke grownup. She was a girl who could not wait. Life was so interesting she had to find out what happened next.”

“Didn't the people who made those license plates care about little girls named Ramona?” 

"Oh say can you see/ By the dawnzer lee light"

..........

I loved Ramona when I was a kid, but found a renewed appreciation for her when my Sophia was in Kindergarten with a 5th grade reading level and nothing appropriate to read. Ramona to the rescue!

She is the kind of kid I wanted to be friends with. She makes her Qs into cats, she is fierce and proud and tries her hardest. She is convinced that a lamp is a "dawnzer" and it gives a "lee light". She is not above boinging a classmate's perfect, perfect curls. And, like I was, she is not squeamish about worms, and declares one is an engagement ring from her sister Beezus's classmate, Henry Huggins.

A word about the hairstyle choice: I desperately wanted to give her the "pixie cut" she gets at the teaching salon. Her sister Beezus saves up money to get what she thinks will be a glamorous and sophisticated cut and instead gets "40-year-old hair" (ouch) while a student asks to try out a new style on Ramona who walks away with a pixie cut that suits her perfectly. In my mind, this was actually a wedge cut like Dorothy Hamill had in the olympics, not a pixie cut. But either way.... my Ramona with short hair looked like an old man. (Ask my kids, they all laughed at me. Seriously, they did.) I went back to the traditional Louis Darling illustrations of Ramona, with her short bob, which to me are the definitive Ramona anyway. My justification for this too is that if she's holding the earthworm, that's more Ramona the Pest territory and not Ramona and Her Mother.

I want to note also that Beverly Cleary just turned 100 and we spent the day appropriately reading her work. Long may she live.

Alice

Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass

“Do you know, I always thought unicorns were fabulous monsters, too? I never saw one alive before!"

Well, now that we have seen each other," said the unicorn, "if you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you.” 


“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”


Starting off my list of 31 literary ladies that I would want to hang out with, is Alice. She kept her head in a trippy world where everyone else was losing theirs. My Alice, unlike other representations I've seen, is a lot younger. I thought that the real Alice Liddell was about 7 or so when Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, started telling her the Alice stories. I wanted to paint a kid who was properly brought up according to the times but was sensibly having none of this nonsense from anyone: queens, chess pieces, cats whose heads floated in the air, talking caterpillars. She just goes with it.

Fun fact: When I was in college I had a mirror-image version of Jabberwocky hanging in our dorm room that I had painstakingly typed out with carbon paper to get the backwards effect.

This year's Valentine would be entitled, Boy, Those Kids Got Big.

What have I been doing since I last posted? A lot of designing, creating, crocheting, Girl-Scout leading, teaching, and oh yeah, raising these guys. I am trying to make more of an effort to get back to the blog and post more. But before the artwork and news, no Valentine's Day can go by without the traditional Nazzaro Family Valentine! (What you can't see behind Sophia's tight-lipped smile is her new braces. She is fabulous, natch.)


And now my favorite part... scroll down and turn back the hands of time!

















(2015)



(2014)



(2013)



(2012)


(2011)


(2010)


(2009)


(2008) - the first year I didn't have to photoshop together three separate images



(2007)



(2006)



(2005)