Book Reviews

“Blood Water Paint” by Joy McCullough

November 17, 2019 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

Artemisia’s mother died when she was twelve years old, in 1605. Artemisia could have joined a convent as a nun. Instead, she chose to grind pigment for her father’s art in “Blood Water Paint” (Dutton 2018) by Joy McCullough. Artemisia is now seventeen and paints most of her father’s paintings for which he takes credit ,in this passionate verse-story based on the life of the artist, Artemisia Gentileschi.

A handsome and famous artist, Agostino Tassi, visits her home and soon becomes her tutor. Artemisia falls in love with him and thinks he might be a way out of her father’s house—and into a world where she’ll be able to paint under her own name in a marriage with another talented artist. Unfortunately, Tassi cannot wait—and cannot take no for an answer. He rapes her. In this world where men take what they want, Artemisia must decide if she will be silent or tell the truth to the world. She says:

Why, though, does it take/a mother, daughter, sister/

for men to take/a woman at her word?

I wish men/would decide/if women are heavenly/angels on high,/

or earthbound sculptures/for their gardens/
But either way we’re beauty/for consumption.

This certainly puts one in mind of the contemporary #Metoo movement.

Artemisia is buoyed by the memory of the biblical stories her mother had told her years before. Susanna (in the Book of Daniel) was a strong woman who was accosted by two elders while bathing in her secluded garden. The elders threaten her—if she does not have sex with them, they will accuse her of meeting a young lover. Susanna will not be blackmailed. She speaks her truth and is nearly executed for it. But Daniel steps in and questions both the elders. A discrepancy is discovered in their stories. Susanna is absolved of guilt.

Artemisia cannot stay silent. With the help of her somewhat reluctant father, Artemisia accuses Tassi of rape. In court, Artemisia is accused of fornication and subjected to torture to verify her claims. For her sanity, Artemisia conjures the biblical story until the lines between herself and Susanna are blurred. She will not give up.

Artemesia thinks back to another story told by her mother—about the heroine Judith, who, with her maid, beheads the oppressing Assyrian general Holofernes to save the Jewish people.

Eventually, Artemisia will paint each of these biblical heroines, from the point of view of a woman, rather than that of a man. They will make her famous. As told in McCullough’s story, Artemisia is understandably angry, bitter, and tenacious. Young readers need to know it’s okay—it’s even good—to feel anger—and to demand justice.

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue among others. She teaches community classes at Parkland. talesforallages.com

“Falling Over Sideways” by Jordan Sonnenblick

October 27, 2019 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

Eighth grader, Claire, did not pass into the next level of dance classes—and her classmates did. She might lose her second chair alto sax position and first chair Riley does nothing but insult her. There’s no way she can live up to her big brother Matthew’s reputation in school. Everyone is doing fine—except Claire—in “Falling Over Sideways” (Scholastic 2016) by Jordan Sonnenbrink.

Claire is Claire-centric. She’s hyper sarcastic—but funny. Jordan Sonnenbrink is always laugh-out-loud funny. When it seems that nothing could get worse—the unspeakable happens. While home alone with her lively author father, she witnesses him fall over sideways, unable to speak. Claire calls 9-1-1. She rides with her disabled father in the ambulance to the hospital. Her mother doesn’t even answer her phone. Claire is scared. Will her father die?

When Dad, who was once so funny and fun, finally arrives home—well, he’s just not her father anymore. Was it better if he’d just died rather than have a stroke? Claire wonders. When he finally does speak he calls her “Piggie,” a childhood nickname. Claire is mortified. He manages to call her brother by his real name: Matthew.

Everyone at school—her friends, their parents, teachers, the counselor—says she’s depressed, which makes her angry, because she insists that what she is, is mad. She’s really mad at everyone including her father. And Riley never stops being mean and snarky to her

Matthew is spending a lot of time with their father, rather than going to soccer practice and studying, but Claire doesn’t see the point. I mean, he’s not himself. Claire’s sweet mother is exhausted. Eventually Matthew shames Claire into helping to care for their father so he can get his homework done.

She hasn’t practiced her sax in weeks, but her dad isn’t talking, so she figures at least maybe she can get some practicing in. Dad who had seemed so dull becomes enlivened at the sound of the horn. Claire discovers that a left hemisphere stroke victim can be helped by listening to music. She keeps playing for him.

Time passes and her father doesn’t seem to be improving. Claire won’t invite her

friends over because she’s embarrassed by her once life-of-the-party father who is now drooling and doesn’t even seem to want to improve his speech and motor abilities.

Her mother tells her that she is her father’s favorite—that “Piggie” is such an affectionate name. Claire starts spending more time with her father. She keeps playing her sax. She cajoles him into working harder on regaining speech, coordination, mobility. The reader learns a lot about stroke and stroke rehabilitation.

I borrowed this book from my library and listened to it via Overdrive, read by Miriam Volle. What a great reader. How can an adult sound this much like a sweet young girl. I’m sure the recording made me like the book even more than if I’d read it off the page.

“The Downstairs Girl” by Stacey Lee

October 6, 2019 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

“The Downstairs Girl” (Putnam 2019) by Stacey Lee is set in 1890 Atlanta, thirteen years after Reconstruction has ended. Chinese American Jo Kuan, an orphan, lives in a basement cave that was once part of the Underground Railroad system, unbeknownst to its owners, the Bell family. By means of a long forgotten listening tube—a holdover from runaway slave days—Jo listens to the Bells discuss the news as they print their newspaper, The Focus. She acquires a pretty hefty education as well as vocabulary.

Raised by Old Gin who has a way with horses and is employed by a rich white plantation owner, Jo has gained Chinese wisdom in the form of aphorisms—such as “the Chinese believe coincidence is just destiny unfolding.”

Jo is fired from her job as a milliner because the clients are made uneasy by being served by a woman of color. Never mind that she is an extremely talented hat maker and the owner uses all of Jo’s designs. Now she is forced to take a job as the servant to a spoiled young woman, Caroline, daughter of the plantation owner where Old Gin works in the stable. Caroline’s older brother pursues Jo, which of course is nothing but trouble for the beautiful heroine of color. In fact the cover of the book depicts a lovely flower of a girl, who doesn’t convey to me the scrappy girl of the story, but it will have young readers pulling the book off the shelf, which is a good thing.

I love learning history by way of well-researched stories such as this. When black slaves were freed, Chinese people were brought in to work Southern plantations and were barely more than slaves—being poorly paid, and not accorded the rights of a white man. There is big prejudice afoot. Yet, it’s worse for the African Americans in the story.

A rumor has circulated for years of a Chinese man with “rabid eyes” having assaulted a white woman and was run out of town. Jo says, “Chinese men everywhere tried their best not to look rabid.” Jo has a way with words and uses some great similes, such as, “Caroline’s scornful expression has set in her face like a fly in the aspic. Digging it out would only make it worse.”

Jo needs to move freely about town, and if she covers her eyes with a bonnet, she could pass as white. But, “passing as white is a punishable offense whose severity depends on who is duped and to what degree.” And “We have been born with a defect . . . of not being white.”

In her despair, Jo anonymously pens an “agony aunt” columnfor The Focus, under the name of “Miss Sweetie” in order to convey her view of women’s confining fashions, suffragettes (including their exclusion of women of color), and who can sit where on the bus. The clever and controversial column sells subscriptions to the failing Focus. But everyone wants to know the identity of “Miss Sweetie.”

Another newspaper deems Miss Sweetie a rabble-rouser and spreads lies. Jo says, “Where false light falls, a monster grows.”

Along with her research, Jo discovers information about her own past. This is an important read and a page-turner.

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award winning Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue among others. She teaches community classes at Parkland. talesforallages.com

“Darius the Great is Not Okay” by Adib Khorram

September 15, 2019 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

High school student Darius doesn’t fit into American life or Iranian life in the warm hearted “Darius the Great is Not Okay” (Dial 2018) by Adib Khorram. Named after the great Iranian leader Darioush, Darius visits his mother’s family for the first time, in Iran.

His eight year old sister Laleh speaks Farsi, which Darius never learned because his mother had wanted her firstborn to be truly American. But this keeps Darius isolated at his grandparents’ house in Yazd. Darius’s father, Stephen Kellerman, is Scandinavian, or as Darius says, “a Teutonic UberMensche.”

Darius, a sensitive and clinically depressed boy, meets the neighbor and says,

“No one ever threw their arm over my shoulder the way Sohrab did. Like it was perfectly fine to do that sort of thing to another guy. Like that was a thing friends did to each other. Sohrab had no walls inside. I loved that about him.” And so will the reader. Friendship outside America—in another culture—is enlightening.

Nowruz is sort of like our Christmas. About his dark moods, Darius says, “I hated that I couldn’t make it through a Nowruz party without experiencing Mood Slingshot Maneuvers.” But Sohrab understands him, smiles at Darius and Darius ends up laughing.

When Darius feels he doesn’t belong, Sohrab says, “Your place was empty.” And now Darius is filling it. What a great concept! You alone can be you. About friendship Darius says, “I loved being Sohrab’s friend. I loved who being Sohrab’s friend made me.”
Darius feels that his whole family is disappointed in him. “My chest felt heavy, like someone had dropped a planet on me.” At times it’s laugh-out-loud funny, oftentimes due to the kinetic recognition the reader gets, with the author’s use of images: “Without the shade of Babou’s (grandfather’s) fig trees, the neighborhood was a luminous white, so bright, I was certain I could feel my optic nerves cooking.”

Or they drive in Babou’s old van—“the Smokemobile.” “The Black Breath enveloped us again, heavy with the scent of burnt hair and scorched popcorn and hint of The End of All Things.” Or: “I held out my hand to the other boy, who had lost the genetic lottery and ended up with the dreaded Persian Unibrow.”

Smells are such a powerful way to convey a culture: “But the steam-filled air was bursting with the scents of turmeric and dill and rice and salmon and dried Persian limes.” There’s a lot of time spent on food, causing this reader’s mouth to water, and a good deal of time on tea.

“Taarof” is a “Primary Social Cue” for Iranians, encompassing hospitality and respect and politeness all in one. “Would you like a cup of tea? No. Please. I don’t want to put you out. I’d love to make you a cup of tea. Well, yes, thank you.” It’s bewildering to Darius who calls himself a “Fractional Persian” rather than a “True Persian.” And: “Rook is a card game that, as far as I can tell, is encoded into all True Persians at the cellular level.”

What a great way to get insight into another culture. And rejoice in family and friendship.

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award winning Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue among others talesforallages.com

“A Heart in a Body in the World” by Deb Caletti

August 25, 2019 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

High school senior Annabelle is running from Seattle to Washington, DC—2700 miles—in Deb Caletti’s “A Heart in a Body in the World” (Simon Pulse 2018). She’s running away from excruciating mental pain and toward having to face her recent trauma.

Along the way you get what she’s so upset about, in general, but you want to know the specifics. Annabelle is a victim, yes, but her run becomes a form of activism against violent injustice.

Before the event happened, Annabelle Agnelli was a sweet girl with a life full of friends. She worked at a coffee house and for an elder care facility. Caletti writes, “She is sick to death of being a sweetheart. Also, that kind of naïve kindness is akin to standing on a busy freeway and gazing at the beauty of the sun.”

Grandpa Ed follows in his old RV to feed and lodge her each evening. Back in Seattle her younger brother Malcolm starts a PR team, which creates her route, and sets up a funding page, publicity, and support. Her mom, Gina, tries to allow her daughter this freedom. Her estranged father left the family years go to become a Catholic priest.

Annabelle is on the cross-country team at school, but a half marathon—sixteen miles—every day is grueling. Still, running is tiring her out and the rhythmic pace soothes her, which helps the anxiety. “It was like driving a screaming baby around in a car.”

What do we know? There was a boyfriend named Will. He dropped her. There was a BFF named Kat. There is someone only known as “the Taker.” And who is Seth Gregory? What does Annabelle remember? She flirted. She feels guilty—so guilty.

We hear about Annabelle’s insights on running, blisters so bad she is in the ER one night, and a pretty major breakdown after she witnesses a deer soaring into the air when hit by a truck. In between she reveals what had happened. In the meantime her very Italian Grandpa Ed meets an aging hippie, Dawn Celeste, and her grandson Luke Messenger. Every now and then the four meet up overnight along the route. Annabelle doesn’t want anything to do with them. Until she does.

In the middle of the summer they pause in Chicago—right downtown. She, her family and entire Seattle team unite for a little respite. Along the way she turns 18 and there’s another party at a diner. The all-day running gives her time to think. And feel. “There are so many colliding messages—confidence and shame, power and powerlessness, what she owes others and what is hers—that she can’t hear what’s true.”

It’s not easy, to talk about it, but she agrees to speak to a gymnasium full of high school students in Pennsylvania. She says that, when the trouble began she thought the adults would handle it. “I thought they’d keep us all safe. That didn’t happen. That still isn’t happening.” She does more speaking. She tells a group, “When I am on a mountain road, say, and the wind is pressing me . . . I am pressing back. I am shoving against my helplessness.”

I think you will find the story and the insights more than useful.

Patricia Hruby Powell teaches “Writing for Children and Young Adult Readers” at Parkland Continuing Education talesforallages.com

“Stepsister” by Jennifer Donnelly

August 4, 2019 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

There are fractured fairytales and there are shattered fairy tales, such as “Stepsister” (Scholastic 2019) by Jennifer Donnelly. This is Cinderella told by the elder ugly stepsister Isabelle. Both Isabelle and her sister Octavia were cruel to Ella. But we all know that (Cinder) Ella won out and got the prince in the end. Our story begins just before that outcome.

The Prince comes around with the glass slipper and the stepsisters’ social climbing mother insists that Isabelle cut off her toes so that she might fit into the shoe. It works for a few moments, until the blood pours out of the slipper and her ruse is discovered.

Donnelly writes, “Mama wielded shame like an assassin wields a dagger . . .How many times had [Isabelle] cut away parts of herself at her mother’s demand? The part that laughed too loudly. That rode too fast and jumped too high. The part that wished for a second helping.” Isabelle’s sister Tavi also fails the shoes test and Cinderella’s fate is sealed. She rides off with the Prince.

It’s not easy to write an unsympathetic protagonist but in Donnelly’s hands we eventually love Isabelle and eventually we understand her younger sister Octavia (or Tavi) who had the historically unappreciated traits of being scholarly and outspoken. What is appreciated in past centuries and continues today is beauty. (Cinder) Ella has beauty.

Isabelle is athletic, bold, and her forthright declarations are considered rude—all traits not valued in girls of yore. Even today, this girl can have issues. But we’ve come a long way in our culture. So from our present American culture we can value Isabelle’s traits. She was a tomboy who, with the groom’s son, Felix, played pirates and fought play-battles and actually rode a moody stallion named Nero. Isabelle wanted to be admired. When she wasn’t, jealousy took hold. “Envy’s fine, sharp teeth sank deep into Isabelle’s heart.”

Isabelle says, “Sometimes it’s easier to say that you hate what you can’t have rather than admit how badly you want it.” She claims to hate Ella. Further along in the story she realizes it’s herself that she hates—and that is what she must overcome.

Fate, characterized as a crone, has cast Isabelle’s lot. But Chance, characterized as the handsome Marquis, wagers that he can change Isabelle’s future. Isabelle would be a pawn in their game of chess except for the presence of Tanaquill (Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother) who is not all goodness and shimmer, but shape shifts into a fox, making her quite fascinating. She tells Isabelle to find the lost pieces of her heart. And Donnelly, a master of similes says about the fairy, “Tanaquill snarled like a fox who’d lost a nice fat squirrel.”

Isabelle has lost Felix and Nero, in her mother’s efforts to smooth out her rough edges—to make her the girl Maman wanted. As you know will happen, Isabelle shows that a mean girl can atone, but it requires love—starting with self-love. And in order to have that, she must follow her dream.

Patricia Hruby Powell is teaches writing at Parkland Community education and is the author of the award winning Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue among others talesforallages.com