Book Reviews

In “The Weight of Water” (Bloomsbury 2012), Sarah Crossan tells us only what we need to know in her spare verse. We can fill in the rest ourselves. She must think her readers are intelligent, which makes us feel good.

Kasienka and Mama come from Poland to Coventry, England in search of Tata (Kasienka’s father). Because Kasienka speaks English and her mother does not, Cassie (as she is called in school) must go from door to door in the town searching for her father. Her desperate mother insists that she endure this humiliating exercise every evening after school.

Mother and daughter live in one room, sleep on one bed together, in a crumbling building surrounded by “nasty” people. In her new school, the Queen Bee of seventh grade, Clair, bullies Kasienka mercilessly—simply because she’s the new girl. Kasienka doesn’t wear the right clothes or make up or carry the right backpack. Kasienka starts by playing this game, trying to live up to what is expected, but realizes it’s a no-win game. Why should she have to please this popular girl?

When Kasienka swims in the neighborhood pool, an eighth grade boy notices her, admires her, suggests she try out for the swim team. Her mother forbids this because Kasienka must spend her evenings looking for Tata.

In the poem “Prize Night Envy,” author Crossan has Kasienka viewing middle school from an eye-opening perspective— “It takes two hours to honor those smarter than us/And watch them parade across the polished stage/To receive award/after award.”

This is how Crossan/Kasienka shows the politics of bullying. “Clair…surrounded by a thick circle of girls…It is a dance for popularity…Knowing that tomorrow/Any one of them could be out.”

At home Mama and Kasienka befriend their next-door neighbor, Kanora, who had been a physician in Kenya, but here in Coventry he’s a janitor. He tells mother and daughter that there is honor in every job.

Kasienka does eventually find Tata and for a period of time, she keeps him to herself. When she does tell her mother, Mama is furious. And blames Kasienka for all the pain she feels.

In “Split” Kasienka describes how she is pleasing everyone but herself. “There are many Kasienkas now./ She has split into pieces and/Scattered herself about like fallen fruit/ Beneath a leafless tree./ One Kasienka is Mama’s girl…” She describes her muted self, with Tata she is moody, with her new boyfriend she is “shy eyed,” and with her nemesis Cassie, Kasienka “smells of cabbage and fear.”

Thank heavens for the swimming where she shoots forward through the water, free. And for William the eighth grader. Thank heavens for first love.

            I love the novel-in-verse form when it’s done this well.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s book Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker (Chronicle 2014) has been released to high acclaim. www.talesforallages.com

The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was averted—just barely. But in Todd Strasser’s “Fallout” (Candlewick 2013) the attack takes place.

The story opens before dawn with Scott’s family climbing down into their bomb shelter. There’s a struggle when desperate neighbors try to push their way in. Scott’s mother falls to the concrete floor, is knocked unconscious and is bleeding.

Brief chapters alternate between life in the bunker and Scott’s friendship with fellow seventh grader Ronnie—before the attack. Scott and Ronnie steal a Sara Lee cheesecake from classmate Paula’s garage freezer. Terrified by his father’s wrath, and humiliated, Scott must apologize to the offended family in front of Paula.

The neighbors had ridiculed Scott’s dad for building the shelter, but Ronnie and his parents, as well as Paula and her father have muscled their way in. The fathers manage to bolt the iron door shut against all other neighbors. Along with the maid, Janet, and Scott’s family, there are a total of ten people living in a small bunker with supplies for four. They’re scared and angry and due to the early morning hour, still in their pajamas.

In the pre-attack chapters, Scott thinks he has problems, but oh how trivial they’ve become. The juxtaposition of the two worlds—before the missile attack and after—is intentionally jarring.

The survivors must remain in the bunker for two weeks before radiation levels will be acceptable “up above.” They have a flashlight and batteries, but no watch. No one knows how much time has passed. The water tank should have been filled in preparation but it wasn’t. Scott’s dad is criticized by the adults. Food is extremely rationed. Tempers are short.

Janet bandages Scott’s mother’s head with torn sheets. She is rolled frequently to protect against bedsores, but she remains unconscious. The other nine take turns sleeping on the three beds. They’re tearing off and using up their pajamas for washcloths and rags, once the toilet paper runs out. The adults argue about everything—including what they will find “up above,” if they survive. This is new to Scott—seeing adults (other than his parents) bicker.

Through the alternating chapters of backstory we get to know each of the characters and see how a normal-life characteristic becomes intensified and manifested in a survival bunker with nine other people. Once they solve the water issue, hunger might be the most immediate problem as they get weaker and weaker. Some members feel they should get rid of the maimed. As shocking as this is, it seems real. Survival of the fittest isn’t pretty.

Because this is a young adult novel, I know there must be hope at the end, but I’m having a hard time imagining how the author will carry this out. But he does. At the end you feel relief, even a sense of joy.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker (Chronicle 2014) is now available at bookstores. talesforallages.com

Josephine
By Patricia Hruby Powell
Illustrated by Christian Robinson

School Library Journal
March 2014

“Captivating… a fun, enriching, and holistic reading experience.”—School Library Journal, starred review

This charming biography invites readers to step inside the vibrant and spirited world of performer and civil rights advocate, Josephine Baker. Robinson’s paintings are as colorful and rich as Josephine Baker’s story, offering page after page of captivating and animated illustrations and rhythmic text, which is written in blank verse. In a few short and well-organized parts, readers learn the story of one of the world’s most well known female performers who danced and sang her way from the poor and segregated streets of St. Louis to the dazzling stages of Paris all the way to Carnegie Hall. Text and illustrations work in tandem to accurately document Josephine’s extraordinary life and the era in which she lived. Clear and lively descriptions of Josephine’s story play out creatively in the text, introducing readers to basic principles of poetic structure in storytelling and offering an accurate portrait of a woman who fought for racial equality and civil rights through her life’s passion: performance. Reluctant readers of nonfiction and poetry lovers alike will be drawn to this book’s musical, theatrical nature, making for a fun, enriching, and holistic reading experience. This unique and creative work is a first purchase.

Patricia Hruby Powell (Blossom Tales) begins this biography of the larger-than-life Josephine Baker (1906-1975) with her 1927 quote, “I shall dance all my life…. I would like to die, breathless, spent, at the end of a dance.” Rhythmic language provides the beat to this life well lived, and chronicles how Baker fulfilled her wish, dying after a triumphant opening at the Bobino theater in Paris, at age 69.

Shelf Awareness for Readers
January 17, 2014

“Powell and Robinson create a biography of a woman whose life and art are inseparable.”—Shelf Awareness for Readers, starred review

The pleasingly flat-planed folk-art style of Christian Robinson (Harlem’s Little Blackbird) works to dramatic effect. Drab background colors as Josephine’s mother scrubs floors to support the family give way to a bright white backdrop of vaudeville dancers on the next page, the manifestation of the woman’s own dreams of dancing. He follows Tumpy, the childhood incarnation of Josephine, as she transforms into a dancer whose “knees squeeze, now fly/ heels flap and chop/ arms scissor and splay/ eyes swivel and pop.” A teenage Josephine, suspended above the stage as Cupid, seems to swing off the page, her arms and legs pumping as if with a child’s joy on a playground swing. Powell suggests that Baker’s witness of the East Saint Louis riots seeded “the core of a volcano” that she’d later channel into her dances. Although Baker never felt fully at home in the U.S., she found one in France, and worked in the French Resistance.

Powell and Robinson create a biography of a woman whose life and art are inseparable. Josephine Baker did exactly what she set out to do: she danced all her life

“March” (Top Shelf 2013) by John Lewis is an important book by an important person about an important event. But more importantly, it’s a great read.

Lewis collaborates with congressional aide and writer Andrew Aydin and illustrator Nate Powell in Book One of the graphic novel trilogy, following Lewis’ life in the civil rights movement. It begins with Lewis leading 600 peaceful demonstrators across of Edmund Pettus Bridge, marching from Selma to Montgomery in March 1965—demonstrating in order to vote. Alabama state troopers crack down and one of the ugliest days of U.S. history takes place—“Bloody Sunday.”

We then cut to 2009—inauguration day for President Barack Obama. Lewis is now a long time U.S. congressman representing Georgia’s District 5. Two African American kids are coming to visit him in his office. Lewis tells his story of growing up the son of a tenant farmer, his raising chickens in Alabama, the “Jim Crow” deep south.

In college Lewis meets Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders and he’s inspired to work alongside them. The “colored” populations of southern cities like Montgomery and Memphis boycotted the downtown stores for leverage to have their rights instated. How was this organized? In churches, preachers from the pulpit called out, Everyone who did not spend money downtown this week please stand.

It’s always a matter of economy. The white businesses needed the patronage of black customers. This is how African Americans wielded power. John remembers that the older “colored” generation would make concessions to the white people. This felt like a betrayal to the younger idealistic generation. In the end it was the youth—college, high school, even junior high students—who held out and won the real battles for black rights.

In order to test the new desegregation laws, John and other students sat at Nashville Woolworth lunch counters. Instead of being served, they would be arrested. As chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) at age 23, he was the youngest of the “Big Six” leaders of the civil rights movement. He was a planner and keynote speaker at the famous March on Washington, August 1963.

The creators of “March” liken their comic to the 1957 publication entitled “Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story,” the one that first educated John Lewis and his teenage generation. You can Google that and download it as a PDF.

The “March” artwork delivers details, vistas, and emotions of the times, with brush and pen with such sophistication you forget it’s in black and white. After reading Book One we can all look forward to Books Two and Three.

Patricia Hruby Powell is a nationally touring speaker, dancer, storyteller, occasional librarian, and children’s book author. Her biography Josephine: The Dazzling LIfe of Josephine Baker will be released January 14.

 

Ryan Dean—or Winger—is a fourteen year old junior who plays wing on the rugby team in Andrew Smith’s “Winger” (Simon & Schuster 2013). That’s right. He’s precocious. Thank heavens his horniness is charmingly creative. That’s because he’s so vulnerable and at the mercy of his teenage hormones. And the author is very funny.

For instance, “What a cruel deal it is to have been born with testicles, and to have to carry them around along with me on my miserable path through life. They may just as well have been the size of Volkswagens for the burden they had become.”

Annie is Ryan Dean’s best friend—a sixteen year old junior—at their prep school in Oregon. He’s in love with her, but she calls him “Little Boy.” Ryan Dean has been sentenced to live in the dismal Opportunity Hall due to a cell phone hacking infraction and therefore cannot go to the Halloween Dance. When rugby teammate and close friend JP announces he’s taking Annie to the dance, Winger starts a fight with him during a practice skirmish.

Few fights or skirmishes are so riveting. What Ryan Dean does to JP, step-by-step, I could visualize and almost admire for its cleverness. Coach M, who’s a Brit, and cares for these boys, is not only a ref for the team but acts as such to the reader. As long as Coach condones the rough play, it’s not TOO rough—not too aggressive. At least for awhile.

Ryan Dean is never a wimp. He makes up for his lack of size and strength in speed, wiriness, craftiness. He’s the trickster.

Camaraderie among teammates—one of whom is openly gay (Joey) and seems to be accepted regardless–is sweet and funny. They do taunt Joey, but with good nature. Even after being beaten up on the field and sometimes off, there’s camaraderie among teammates afterwards. There’s a boy-code of honor in athletics. Until there isn’t.

The violence augments to a point that is trying. His horniness does too, and I’m just thankful the author is so funny.

When a nurse is cleaning his wounds with a warm towel Ryan Dean says, “If I was a cat, I would have purred. If I was an alligator, I would have been hypnotized. But since I was only me, all I could do was lie there and contemplate everything perverted I had ever dreamed about since I was, like, seven years old.”

My one gripe is the role of the girls. They’re smart and athletic, but they’re just girlfriends in this story. Okay, so it’s a boy book (that girls will like, too). If you don’t already know this stuff, you learn a lot about boys on sports teams. “Winger” is well written—the tragic ending seems real. And along the way you’ll laugh. Until you don’t.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s book, JOSEPHINE: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker will be released January 14, 2014. Find out more at  www.talesforallages.com

 

The Bayou Tourterelle is sanctuary for a pair of adolescent raccoons, various endangered birds including the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, rattle snakes, a boy named Chap, his mother, and the Sugar Man–all in Kathi Appelt’s “The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp” (Atheneum 2013).

Well, the Ivory Billed Woodpecker hasn’t been seen in years, but Chap’s recently- deceased granddaddy Audie saw it some years back and says he took a Polaroid shot of it. But even that has been lost. He also took a Polaroid shot of the huge furry Sugar Man (cousin to Bigfoot), but Sugar Man hasn’t been seen in a generation or two. Who is to believe that either exists?

Chap and his mama fry sugar pies at the Paradise Café, but that’s subject to change when villain Sonny Boy Beaucoup and his alligator-wrestling sidekick Jaeger Stitch enter. They want to raze the bayou and build a Gator World Wrestling Arena and Theme Park. Oh, that just can’t happen.

The raccoons J’Miah and Bingo live in a rusted out ’48 DeSoto hidden in the swamp. Their parents gone, they fend for themselves climbing trees and foraging for crayfish until they discover those fried sugar pies cooling at the Paradise Café—pies made from the muscovado swamp sugar cane. Dee-licious.

The swamp-side stand of sugarcane is guarded by a mass of slithering rattlesnakes, but Chap knows that to harvest it he has to lull those rattlers to sleep with a particular lullaby.

Not only are Sonny Boy and Stitch ready to break ground for the theme park in the swamp (unless Chap and his mama can come up with a “boatload of cash”), but a herd of feral hogs is headed to the bayou and surely they’ll destroy all the swampy flora—not to mention the fauna—to get that sugar cane.

As true blue swamp scouts, J’Miah and Bingo must find and wake the Sugar Man, who has been sleeping for 60 years. Only he can save the swamp.

Kathi Appelt writes with droll wit and sly humor. Her warm and gentle Texas drawl especially shines through when she ‘breaks down the fourth wall’ with such pleas as “Say it sisters and brothers—lives were at stake” or “Is there anything worse than…[the horrible thing going on in the story]? We think not.”

Her cast of characters drives a great eco-yarn. You’re pretty sure who is going to win out, but the journey is a whole whopping lot of fun. Boy, would I love to read this aloud to a class of third graders.

Patricia Hruby Powell will be begin reviewing young adult books December 15.