Book Reviews

David Almond’s “The Tightrope Walkers” (Candlewick 2015) is dark, yet inviting. It feels like magical realism, but it’s straight-ahead realism. Almond, a master-writer, depicts the post World War II northern England British class system showing how it defines its characters.

Dominic Hall grows up with a tough working-class father. Frightened for his sensitive son, the father, who welds in the shipyard, wields cruel love. He pushes his son’s face toward the fire in the kitchen grate, while hammering with the steel poker, saying, “Listen to the thunder, boy…This is what I bliddy do!” He’d like his son to do “Somethin that’s not cleanin the tanks like yer grandfather did.”

Dom’s adoring and wise mother tries to temper the father’s violence, but the father is head of the household, and he won’t back down.

The father may not want his son to be a lowly manual laborer, but when Dom tests into a fine public school, the father resents his son’s ascension toward a higher class. The father says, “They need us to build their ships and dig their coal and lick their boots and arses, but when things get tough they won’t give a thought to kickin us all back down again.”

Holly Stroud, whose father works as a draughtsman (a big step up in the shipyard from laboring) is as smart as Dom. Holly draws and sings. After seeing a small circus, the two are determined to walk the tightrope—starting with a clothesline two feet off the ground and progressing higher, and with better ropes. The metaphor draws us through the coming-of-age story, offering joy, heartache, longing, and hard falls.

Vincent, the neighborhood bully, looks at the “good” people and says, “Look how bliddy tame they are.” Vincent goads Dom to shoplift. Vincent goads Dom to shoot a gun and then to kill small animals. At this point, as a reader, I want Dom caught and punished. I hate what he does.

But I wonder, is this what it is to be a tough boy? Dom looks at adults and wonders if they were once as bad as he is. He says, “Maybe it was the alienation common to all adolescents. But how could I know that when I was in the throes of it?” Or “Does each of us teeter in the space between the artist and the killer in ourselves?”

To great effect, Almond lists verbs that open up this world unknown to most American readers and lets us visualize his characters’ world. About the lowly tank cleaners—“The dark figures climbed, clambered, slithered, emerged and disappeared.” In a harsh winter, he is “sick of teetering, slithering, sliding, falling.”

Dom says, “Mebbe we keep on growing up until we die.” And, “We grow in order to discover ourselves. But maybe we just discover ways of hiding our selves from ourselves.” This autobiographical fiction provokes, insights tears, shocks, and delights. I’d read anything David Almond writes.

 

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s book Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker was awarded a Sibert Honor for Nonfiction, Boston Globe Horn Book Nonfiction Honor, and a Coretta Scott King Honor for illustration. talesforallages.com

In 1911, on a farm near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Joan Skragg’s father forbids his daughter from getting an education. He burns her books. He crushes her last hope when he shouts, Who’s going to marry her? Motherless Joan tells us her father has “choked-down anger inside him. It’s like stagnant water, heavy and murky and sickening.” Her former teacher Miss Chandler cannot even visit her favorite and best student, Joan, because of Mr. Skragg’s rude behavior. Joan is doomed to cook and clean for her father and four older brothers. Until…
Fourteen year old Joan, runs away to Baltimore and changes her name to Janet Lovelace. Because she’s a “big ox of a girl” she claims to be eighteen. She gets off the train in the dark, gets lost, has nowhere to sleep. A young man comes to her rescue. Catholic Janet is hired by the young man’s Jewish family in “The Hired Girl” (Candlewick 2015) by Newbery Medalist Laura Amy Schlitz.
Janet, a naïve and romantic lover of books, compares herself in various situations to Jane Eyre, or to Rebecca in Ivanhoe. In her analysis she falls short, never to live up to the heroine who might be ennobled, edified, or even impetuous. Janet says “Heroines in novels are proud, but for a hired girl, it isn’t convenient.”
Janet scrubs, cooks, and beats carpets for the Rosenbach family, who live a kosher life. The other servant is Jewish Malka, who raised Mr. Rosenbach, and is like a family member. When touchy Malka complains about Janet’s crucifix, or for using the wrong sink, Mr. Rosenbach must instruct Janet. When he discovers her love of reading and her keen, if naïve, insights, they gently bond. Still, he insists she apologize to Malka.
Following Janet’s thought process is one of the sweetest literary experiences I’ve had in some time. Mrs. Rosenbach, who has no appreciation of Janet’s sense of romance and of doing good, is harder on Janet. Whereas Janet sometimes detests Mrs. Rosenbach, she’s fair about her assessment and appreciates the steely woman for her sharp intellect.
The Rosenbach sons come and go from the house and it’s difficult for Janet not to fall in love. They’re intermittently charming to her. And kind. After living in a farm household filled with rough hewn men, these new kindnesses look like professions of love to Janet. Of course it’s confusing. But when she sees her mistake, she does her utmost to help in the match-making with the young woman she sees as the real object of his desire. This causes worse problems. But Janet means well.
And the youngest Rosenbach, Mimi, is naughty, hates to read, and hates the strictures of her class. Janet will do her utmost to help Mimi. Oy vey!
Did I say it was a diary? It is bound to become a classic. It’s too wonderful.

Patricia Hruby Powell’s book Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker was awarded a Sibert Honor for Nonfiction, Boston Globe Horn Book Nonfiction Honor, and a Coretta Scott King Honor for illustration. talesforallages.com

“These Shallow Graves” (Delacorte 2015) by Jennifer Donnelly set in New York City, 1890, is part Edith Wharton and part Charles Dickens and altogether young adult. Jo Montfort is the 17 year old daughter and only child of Charles, an aristocratic ship and newspaper owner, and Anna his wife. Jo is called home from boarding school when her father has a gun accident in his study at home in Gramercy Square.
But is it an accident? Or suicide? Or something else? If word gets out, the scandal will destroy Jo’s chances of a brilliant marriage. So her Uncle Philip pays off the police to keep it quiet. Jo is somewhat ambivalent about the marriage prospect, but she’s grateful to Philip who is now the head of the household since the mourning period began.
Jo aspires to be newspaper reporter like Nellie Bly—a woman!—who had gone undercover to write “Ten Days in a Madhouse,” bringing to light the brutality and neglect found in such institutions, in a successful attempt to improve the situation of the “insane.” Eventually Jo would be brought to an insane asylum in her own harrowing story.
So the Edith Wharton part is, of course, the subject and setting of the privileged class at the turn of the twentieth century in the shadow of Gramercy Park. Dickens is represented in an Oliver Twist sort of underworld where a Faginesque character, known as the Tailor, pimps for child pickpockets including Nancy of the original, but in this story the Nancy character is the lovely Fay.
When Jo delivers a gift to the family’s newspaper manager downtown, she meets the “cub” reporter, Eddie Gallagher. He’s SO handsome. And Irish. And streetwise. You can guess that there’s a brewing romance. But Jo agrees to marry the far more suitable and gentlemanly Bram Aldrich. But stuff happens.
This is also a mystery and a thriller, and the early forensic information conveyed by the confident medical student, Oscar–is more than fascinating. Jo explains the complicated part of the mystery as she speculates and solves it. It’s, let’s say, surprising that she cannot guess the scandalous ship cargo in which her family’s shipping business is dealing. Well, she’s sheltered. But Eddie Gallagher, who’s working on the story with Jo can’t guess? Maybe the author feels that and a few other obvious clues are best solved by her YA readers, but I kind of think she’s underestimating her audience.
Never mind. While working way too hard on my own writing all day, I couldn’t wait to get in bed and read ten pages of “Shallow Graves” but would usually end up reading about a hundred pages a night. Which is good because it’s nearly 500 pages long, but what a fun read! And it shouldn’t be limited to just young adults. Adults will love it.

Patricia Hruby Powell’s book Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker was awarded a Sibert Honor for Nonfiction, Boston Globe Horn Book Nonfiction Honor, and a Coretta Scott King Honor for illustration. talesforallages.com

“Don’t Fail Me Now” (Penguin 2015) by Una LaMarche is worth getting, for the photo on the cover alone. But there’s so much more.

When her mother is imprisoned for heroin use, 17 year old Michelle takes charge of her siblings. Cass, 13, is diabetic and withdrawn. Denny, 6, is being kicked out of school for behavior problems. Before going off to prison, their mother has charged Michelle with keeping the family together and seeking the aid of Aunt Sam. Aunt Sam doesn’t care about these kids.         She says to Michelle, “‘Honey,’…in a tone that strips the word of its endearment. That’s nice, but what I mean is I need some rent money.” She means—a lot—of rent money.

Even when her mother was clean, Michelle supported the family with her after-school job at Taco Bell in a bad Baltimore neighborhood. She has two hundred dollars saved. That won’t cover her mother’s bail or rent.

Tim arrives at the Taco Bell with his sister Leah and tells her that her long-absent father (who is also Leah’s, as well as, Cass’s father) is dying in California and has something for them. He wants them to come to California before he dies.

Michelle and Cass knew there was a half sister, but had never met her. Oh yeah, Michelle, Cass, and Denny are black, as is their mother. Leah is porcelain-skinned and blonde, as is her step-brother, Tim. Everyone is surprised. But the reader might be even more surprised by their journey.

Still, it’s believable when the five kids take off cross-country in Goldie, the thirty year old heap of a car that Buck, their white father, left with Michelle’s mother thirteen years ago. They are so down, there’s no further to go—they think.

The poor black family knows how to be resourceful—although they will not beg. They have their pride. They stop at malls to eat the food left on the tables. The rich white kids have their resources, too. Leah finagles a fresh hamburger and fries from McDonald’s. The white parents stop payment on Leah’s credit card—the very first night at a motel. The parents know their location. For a moment. An amber alert is issued for the runaway—or kidnapped—white kids.

The two families of siblings are hostile to each other—particularly Leah and Cass—but through complicated and fascinating shifts, it changes, sometimes through the innocent questions of the youngest, Denny. They become a family.

With Michelle’s $200, they buy cheap blankets and a tent and camp at free sites. They siphon gas from concerned motorists, never stealing it. They suffer disasters that are real and keep pages turning at a rate.

The book definitely brings tears, but this is no tear-jerker. You love this damaged family and they deserve your tears. Because this is a young adult book, you assume there will be hope at the end and there is. It’s not gratuitous, it’s real. Terrific book!

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s book Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker was awarded a Sibert Honor for Nonfiction, Boston Globe Horn Book Nonfiction Honor, and a Coretta Scott King Honor for illustration. talesforallages.com

 

Missouri 1849. Samantha, a Chinese girl, watches her father’s grocery store go up in flames. Her father dies, trapped inside. Ty Yorkshire under the guise of helping Samantha, tries to rape her. She whacks him with a scrub brush and he’s dead. Being Chinese puts her at a disadvantage with the law, so she flees with Annamae, Yorkshire’s black slave girl.

So begins “Under a Painted Sky” (G.P. Putnam 2015) by Stacey Lee. The girls cut their hair, wrap their chests, dress as boys, become Sammy and Andy, and set out on the Overland Trail.

Sammy and Andy stow away on the last wagon of the evening being ferried across the river, headed west. They hear a conversation. The law is after a Chinese and a black girl. They know that their disguise is flimsy. Besides which, a gang of escaped slaves known for breaking the hands of their victims roams the wilderness, wanted for murder. Dangers lurk everywhere.

The “boys” soon meet three young cowboys. Cay is a handsome skirt-chaser. His brooding cousin West has rough-hewn good looks. Peety is a Mexican horse whisperer. Peety nicknames the “boys” Chinito and Andito. The “boys” trade their cooking and healing skills for the opportunity to move fast on horseback with the cowboys.

At first Sammy has to share a horse with West. She fears he will feel her female figure. Does he know or not? We wonder. A mule is eventually procured so everyone has a mount.

Besides the adventure, Sammy and Andy are getting to know each other. Andy is Christian. Sammy uses Chinese lore to identify her place in the world. For instance, one’s fate is vastly affected depending on whether one is born in the year of the Rat or the Dragon. When a storm breaks on the prairie, Sammy knows that “thunder and lightning end and here come their dawdling children, plump droplets falling from the sky,” which lends a lyrical sensuality to the story.

Sammy is a violinist and knows languages. These skills get them out of tight spots. Andy wants to find her brother who she has promised to meet at Harp Falls. But where is that? It’s not on the map.

The five overlanders battle prairie fires. Three of the five contract cholera, fights break out. But there’s also violin music and new friendship. The “boys” learn how to ride, lasso, all kinds of skills that cowboys have—things that come in handy when rescue is required. The cowboys learn languages from Sammy. That becomes helpful, too.

At first you appreciate the cowboys’ care of these seemingly younger “boys.” Then you wonder why the cowboys are so gentle with these “boys.” Do they know the truth? These cowboys don’t talk like men. They’re downright tender toward the “boys.” Sammy is falling for West. West is falling for Sammy. Gay cowboys in the 1850s? Do the cowboys know the girls’ secret? There are many reasons to turn pages—rapidly.

 

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s book Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker was awarded a Sibert Honor for Nonfiction, Boston Globe Horn Book Nonfiction Honor, and a Coretta Scott King Honor for illustration. talesforallages.com

“Last Leaves Falling” (Simon & Schuster 2015) by Sarah Benwell is the story of Sora who has ALS, the neurodegenerative disease better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

I have a friend who has ALS and another who died of it. Statistically, death occurs within 2-5 years of diagnosis. There is no cure.

It’s unusual for a young person to have ALS, but, tragically enough, it happens. Sora, 17 years old, lives in Tokyo with his mother. Because his school cannot accommodate wheelchairs, Sora is homebound while his mother goes off to work. He would like to have been a scholar and professor. This will never happen.

Sora reads poems of the Samurai—Japanese warriors—to find insights about dying. Death is “The final thing, a gate, closed on the way out.” Or “Death is death.” Sora would like to accept his fate—like a Samurai poet. But he’s afraid. And alone.

He lurks online in a chat room as SamuraiMan. He bolsters his nerves and begins “chatting.” The other teens discuss love, studies, and balancing their parents’ wishes with their own. Sora envies them. He meets MonkEC, a charming young artist, whose parents want her to study medicine at Harvard. She wants to be an anime artist.

Instead of revealing his ALS online, Sora tries to fit in.

In a moment of frustration he screams (“AAAAAAA”) in the chat room then logs off. He assumes this is social suicide. But when he eventually re-enters the chat room, NoFaceBoy asks how he is doing. His virtual friends are concerned. They understand that life can be frustrating, but they don’t know why SamuraiMan is frustrated.

Sora’s mother asks him to invite his online friends over. He does. They know nothing about his ALS or his wheelchair until they arrive at his house. At first they’re shocked, but they come around. The three go out together. Sora experiences teenage existence and the three forge a strong bond.

The title surely refers to O. Henry’s story, “The Last Leaf,” where the young woman with pneumonia says she will die when the last leaf falls from the vine outside her window. During a storm her neighbor paints a leaf on the brick wall. The young woman sees the leaf, recovers, but the artist-neighbor contracts pneumonia and dies. The two stories do not parallel each other, but share themes—friendship, death, artistry—and the image of the last leaf.

Benwell writes sensitively and realistically about Sora’s fear of inevitable death, in contemporary society—but it is Japanese culture so that new worlds might be opened to the reader. An adult reader might develop a deeper understanding of chat rooms, as I did. Besides being well-written and suspenseful, it’s also a fast read due to some pages resembling a chat room format with plenty of white space on the page.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s book Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker was awarded a Sibert Honor for Nonfiction, Boston Globe Horn Book Nonfiction Honor, and a Coretta Scott King Honor for illustration. talesforallages.com