Book Reviews

Sy Montgomery, author of “How To Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2018) shows that humans who love other species learn love, forgiveness, and grief, among other necessary human traits. The award-winning author writes for both children and adults and is a naturalist and adventurer. This is an adult book that young adults will love.

Starting with Molly, her childhood best friend, a Scottish terrier, Montgomery says, “I—standing there helplessly in the frilly dress and lacy socks in which my mother had dressed me—wanted to be just like [Molly]: Fierce. Feral. Unstoppable.” Molly inspired the author’s destiny.

Next Montgomery takes us to Australia where she studies three emus and is “caught by their grace and power and strangeness.” She says, “To begin to understand the life of any animal demands not only curiosity, not only skill, and not only intellect . . . but also my heart.”

Christopher Hogwood (like Wilbur in “Charlotte’s Web”) starts as a runt pig and grows into a 750 pound hog over the dozen years he lives with Montgomery and her husband in New Hampshire. “He taught us how to love . . . what life gives you. Even when life gives you slops.”

In the jungles of French Guiana in South America, on a National Geographic expedition, she learns to love a quarter pound spider, Clarabelle. “The huge spider thundered out of the hole . . . her head was the size of a small kiwi and her abdomen was as big as a clementine.” The reader learns: “If a leg was injured, she could pull it off, eat it, and grow a new one.” (She’s as loveable as Charlotte). And “The world . . . [is] rich with the souls of tiny creatures who may love their lives as much as we love ours.”

There’s a pure white ermine, who steals one of their Ladies—that is—a hen. But it is “ablaze with life,” and instead of anger, Sy feels awe.

Then there’s the first of three border collies, Tess, who ages until: “Never before had anyone relied on me so completely . . . loved me more deeply. And never before had I experienced grace so profound.” The love of a mother. And her grief at the loss of Tess and Chris the pig nearly brought her down.

But off she goes to the cloud forest of Papua New Guinea to study the elusive tree kangaroos, where she finds “the wildness that keeps us sane and whole.”

Sally is so different than Tess, the next border collie, but one accommodates the inevitable difference in personalities. “This is the gift great souls leave us when they die. They encourage our hearts. They leave us a greater capacity for love.”

Then there’s Octavia, a short-lived octopus at the Aquarium who endures a false pregnancy, loving and protecting her unfertilized eggs. The author says “love never dies, and love always matters.” “Love is the highest and best use of a life.”

Her present border collie, Thurber, teaches us, “You never know, even when life looks hopeless, what might happen next. It could be that something wonderful is right around the corner.”

You’re going to love this book.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell is author of Struttin’ With Some Barbecue; Loving vs. Virginia; and Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker talesforallages.com

Felix and Lee Vickery, 13-year-old twin boys, live in “The House in Poplar Wood” (Chronicle Books 2018) by K. E. Ormsbee. The book opens with, “The last day of October was creeping into Poplar House. It came through fissures in the gables and mite-sized holes in the floorboards, bringing with it the scent of burnt oak branches.” If you guess that you’re entering an alternate universe—a spooky one, you’d be correct.

The boys live in the same house—but not together. On one side, Felix lives with his father, the town doctor. Father and son serve Death. Felix’s job as apprentice-in-training is to brew herb broths such as rose petals and nightshade as an antidote to flu. On his sixteenth birthday Felix will sign the contract to be Death’s apprentice. Felix may not go to school. In fact no one in town knows he exists.

On the other side of the house Lee lives with his mother, the town psychologist, and they serve Memory. As apprentice-in-training, Lee bottles memories of the townspeople. The bad memories are labeled Forget and the good ones Remember. Lee does go to school and whereas the boys’ mother and father cannot see each other, the boys are close and hang out daily.

Felix is blind in one eye—but this eye sees Death, tall and elegant in a black suit and top hat. Lee is deaf in one ear—the ear that hears Memory. Overall, Lee has a much gentler life than Felix who confronts Death frequently, whenever Death takes the soul of a patient—or when he punishes Felix for some wrongdoing. Both boys want a united family. But the “Agreement” denies them that.

A teenage girl, Essie Hastings, has just died in an accident by falling off Boone Ridge and into the gully. Gretchen Whipple, the second child of the town’s mayor, overhears her father discussing the matter and realizes this was no accident. Gretchen is a go-getter kind of gal and she’s going to get to the bottom of this. Gretchen’s father, the mayor is the town’s Summoner, and his job is to take care of the townspeople. But is he doing his job?

Gretchen isn’t even in line to be the next Summoner. Her rough-edged brother, Asa, as firstborn, gets the job. This irks Gretchen. She knows she can cast a spell, if they’d only teach her. The determined girl goes to Poplar House to see her classmate Lee and discovers the little-known Felix. After some ups and downs the three become allies, if not friends. Gretchen wants to know what happened to Essie Hastings and the twins want to break the Agreement, if possible.

Oh yeah, Death and Memory are Shades and so is Passion. It was Passion who got the boys’ parents together in the first place—and is probably responsible for the divided house.

I’m not normally drawn to fantastical stories, but this is so wonderfully spooky and so well written. Highly recommended.

 

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s Struttin’ With Some Barbecue: Lil Hardin Armstrong Becomes the First Lady of Jazz (Charlesbridge) releases December 11, 2018 just in time for Christmas.     talesforallages.com

Ronney, fifteen years old, takes care of his little sister Mina. He repairs the damaged wall, reseals the driveway, and has the carpet changed because it’s soaked in blood. Why? His depressed father rarely gets out of his bedroom or even his pajamas, since he lost his job, and attempted suicide. And Ronney’s mother is busy supporting the family and popping pills to calm herself in “All That I Can Fix” (Simon Pulse 2018) by Crystal Chan. “We’re the mixed-race family with two helpless parents, the genius kid sister, and the fix-it son.”

Ronney’s world is falling apart in Makersville, Indiana. What’s more, a keeper of exotic animals has released them all—lion, cheetah, tiger, python, wolf, and others—then shot himself. Not only are the animals loose in town, but so are gun rights activists who say they need guns to protect themselves and gun control activists who are horrified by the pro-gun people shooting the animals. Adults clearly cannot be trusted here.

Ronney’s best friend Jello suggests a suburban safari to make his name as a wildlife photographer. Ronney, thinking this is childish, muses, “Maybe having normal parents means you get the privilege of being a kid.” Ronney’s mother “deemed [Jello] ‘a good influence on me,’ which illustrates her total lack of judgment.”

Ronney yearns for George, a girl on the valedictorian track. Ronney notes her problems: “It has to be pretty precarious, to have only perfection or the abyss as your two real options in life.” George allows Ronney to comfort her, but he’s not her boyfriend. That’s painful.

Then a mysterious little kid Mina’s age—about nine—starts following Ronney. The annoying little kid, Sam, wants Ronney to “fix” his broken family. Sam’s big brother Nick disappeared months ago. Sam sobs, “Like . . . the end of the world is upon us sob. And what could I do?” Ronney sees that “the love that [Sam] had for Nick was big enough to hold up the sky.”

Ronney used to feel that way about his dad, but after a year of disappointment, that big love for his father seems to have snapped off. When his father says, “My life had gotten too heavy.” Ronny calls him pathetic, a hypocrite, and “you’ll like the new carpet I just installed. . . don’t mess it up again.” Ronney’s cruel and honest, after all he’s been through.

The animals have killed area livestock and family pets and now they’re going after people. Gun-toting residents are going after the animals. Everything is a mess and it’s pretty dark. Yes, that shooter might have saved a woman’s live, but “forty-four bullets for one cheetah was a bit much.”

The boy repartee of sarcastic profane Ronney with Jello is a riot. Take my word for it and read the book. It’s wickedly funny. But loyalty and love prevail. Complicated issues invite discussion. This is a winner.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell is author of Loving vs. Virginia; Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker and the forthcoming Struttin’ With Some Barbecue   talesforallages.com

“Getting kids interested in history isn’t always easy. Reading dry textbooks and memorizing dozens of dates can make even the most exciting era seem boring. Luckily, historical fiction has the power to bring the past to life. Kids and teens who read the nine novels listed here might find that they’re suddenly a lot more invested in history class.”

Watch 9 quick reviews of Wiki’s chosen historical novels. I look forward to reading those I haven’t read. The nine are:

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

Beyond the Bright Sea

Hamilton & Peggy

The Woman in the Photo

The Dirty Cowboy

Loving vs. Virginia: A Documentary Novel on the Landmark Civil Rights Case

Navigating Early

The Last Suppers

The Dollmaker of Krakow

 

 

A love-sick teen wandering his neighborhood finds himself in his ex-girlfriend Laura’s backyard. He slips into her basement and is trapped there overnight due to the alarm system, in “Hiding” (Clarion 2018) by Henry Turner. The next morning the family members leave but the maid arrives. And there’s a large dog in the house. He’s got time to think.

He thinks about his close friend Suzy who knew everything about him, but Laura had let him hide, keep his secrets, so the mystery held, which had to do with why he couldn’t get over her. Besides discovering things about himself while trapped in the house he discovers plenty about Laura and what seemed like her perfect life.

Why had Laura, a popular talented girl, chosen him when he was such a loser? Maybe she was attracted to a life that didn’t have to look perfect. Maybe her life wasn’t as perfect as she’d claimed. Is that why he was here? That’s one of his major questions. Why was he here?

Why did Laura love his house and all the “dopey” artwork he’d done that his mother put up on the walls? He wishes his mom would tear them down. But he remembers Laura saying, “Don’t ever do that. She loves you. You’re so lucky to have that.” Ahah. He sees that Laura’s perfect house has no personal touches—it looks expensive and unused. Is that why Laura had never invited him over? Not because she was embarrassed by him, but because she was embarrassed by her own home?

He’s good at hiding. Lots of teens are. “Growing up like I did, there was a lot to tell me that I was just a sort of total nobody . . .” but he actually feels that he’s better than that. However, no one would agree with him, he tells us, “because people don’t actually see me, or see any real value in me, which was probably the best reason I ever had to just start hiding all the time.”

He describes a past experience when he pretended to be a rich boy—a day of lies. He says, “I’d made myself feel like nothing by not being me.” He’d sensed that there was something deep and dark in Laura, and in her house he discovers the truth of that. That’s perhaps why they were initially drawn together. Laura had hidden from herself. “That’s the most dangerous kind of hiding. Everybody knows you, but you’re not really there, even for yourself.” There’s a lot to discuss in this book.

The humor is wry. He’s upstairs wandering and avoiding the maid, and we readers are nervous for him. The living room furniture is reddish so he grabs a reddish tablecloth and hides behind it so the surveillance camera doesn’t detect him skulking through the house.

I found his teen voice refreshing at the outset. Eventually all the repeated phrases such as, “if you know what I mean,” “sort of,” “you know,” “in my opinion,” grew annoying but made it a great candidate for practicing speed-reading. “He” is named only in the surprise twist ending, in the last lines of the book. Good for thoughtful readers.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell is author of Loving vs. Virginia; Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker and the forthcoming Struttin’ With Some Barbecue   talesforallages.com

When Jake Liddell returns home wounded from a tour of duty in the Middle East, everyone says he’s a hero. Jake says, “My body may have returned home, but my brain is still wired for war.” He needs pills to sleep. His grandfather, a war hero called The General, is already urging Jake back to the battlefield. Jake waits—and questions—the Silver Star he will be awarded.

Acclaimed author Todd Strasser examines military service in his new novel, “Price of Duty” (Simon & Schuster 2018). Jake visits his former high school JROTC and is asked, “What’s it like?” He answers, “It’s hard.” What he can’t say to them is, “. . . you’ll wish to God that you’d never come. . . you’ll lie in bed at night so scared and trembling and sick with fear that you’ll be a hair’s width from bawling loudly for your mommy.”

Jake shows us the camaraderie among soldiers, the irreverent pranks and nicknames like Morpiss, Skitballs, Magnet; the unlikely friendships with the likes of Brad, the corporal who is married to Jake’s middle school girlfriend. He shows Brad’s over-the-top jealousy, how normal tensions grow in the light of daily shelling, bombings and the ongoing threat to life. There’s plenty of graphic battle scenes here—and legs being blown off.

You learn about “hillbilly armor,” welded extra iron plating to the undercarriages of their vehicles, because some of the gear was badly made. Morpiss says, “Never forget, my friend,” . . . “Your life is in the hands of the lowest bidder.”

Once home Jake has a girlfriend to visit—a girlfriend who wants to know if she should wait for him when he returns to duty. And there’s Brandi, who writes for the Franklin High School newspaper, Brandi, who is making an anti-war video. She claims that JROTC is military preparation. She says that 40% of its members go directly into the military versus 2% from the general population—20 times more. She tells us that 12% of America’s population is black, but 30% of the U.S. Army is black. She tells us that 50% of JROTC are black or minority. She says, “Wouldn’t you say that sounds a little disproportionate?”

At first Jake argues. He comes from a military family, particularly on his mother’s side. Plus, he has a paternal uncle who said the Vietnam “war was immoral, nothing more than mass murder,” was called a “draft dodger” and jailed for refusing to fight. Jake has to be careful of the historic shame this caused his family. But he’s considering not going back to battle. His grandfather, the General, would be disappointed but could pull strings to keep him from returning.

And what about that? He has special care. Jake says that the US tells the world we have an “all-volunteer Army. We just changed the method of conscription…” He asks, “Why should it be the poor and minorities, the disadvantaged and luckless, who have to bear the burden of risking their lives for our country.” And what about “guys like me who are seduced by the action ads and unethical recruiters.”

There’s so much here to think about. And talk about.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell is author of the young adult documentary novel Loving vs. Virginia and Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker among other books   talesforallages.com