Book Reviews

In Pat Schmatz’s “Bluefish” (Candlewick 2011), Travis, 13, has to move into town and live with Grandpa. Travis’ heart is broken over his lost hound, Roscoe. And school is painful.

Grandpa has stopped drinking, but Travis knows it won’t last.

The only bright spark in his life is classmate, Velveeta, who is the liveliest, flirtiest girl, who wears old lady scarves—different colors every day—with her hoody.

Velveeta inherited the scarves from Calvin, the old man who lived in the next trailer, the one who bought her school supplies each year, who helped her build confidence, but now he’s died. Actually, the scarves belonged to Calvin’s wife, but she’s been gone for years.

Travis and Velveeta’s stories alternate. Taciturn Travis is voiced in the third person, which is perfect for his strong silent character. Vivacious Velveeta, in the first person, writes to Calvin. So we get to see what Travis is feeling and Velveeta shows her feelings. Perfect.

Travis and Velveeta like each other—really like each other—but relationship is complicated between two eighth graders, especially when each has a big secret. Can they trust each other? Help each other? You want it for them. They are both so likeable. And believable.

If Velveeta goes home to her own trailer, she must suffer her selfish alcoholic mother, so she moves into Calvin’s empty trailer. Until she gets kicked out by Calvin’s grown daughter.

Travis cuts class and sets out on foot to the country to find his dog. When the trip goes wrong, Travis acts like a kicked dog. Back at school he snaps at Velveeta.

Velveeta, clever girl, figures out Travis’ big secret just as you, the reader, will. She tries to help him, but she’s just a kid and maybe a little awkward in helping. Travis snaps again.

Now Velveeta is no longer Travis’ friend and his dog Roscoe hasn’t been found. School gets worse. He longs for some bully to start a fight with him so he could “blow loose all over them” and it wouldn’t be his fault. But the bully won’t start and Travis won’t start it.

Thank heavens for McQueen the reading teacher. With his help and Velveeta’s smarts, maybe Travis will break out of his self-made prison of anger and loneliness.

I loved these characters and the writing. I bet Schmatz follows through on Velveeta’s story in her next book.

 

 

 

 

Patricia Hruby Powell is a nationally touring speaker, dancer, storyteller, occasional librarian, and children’s book author. She has new books coming out with Chronicle Books.

“The Dogs of Winter” by Bobbie Pyron (Arthur A. Levine 2012) is based on a true story from 1990’s Russia. After the fall of the Soviet Union and its infrastructure was in shambles, gone were government-controlled health care, pension plans, and rent control. The poor were so poor they often couldn’t care for their children. The number of orphans and homeless on the streets were in the millions. Children formed packs as did the wandering dogs.

When winter approaches, Ivan’s mother disappears from their home and village. Five year old Ivan finds his way to the City (Moscow) where he seeks refuge near the heat vents in the subway system. So do many homeless children and adults, many of whom sniff glue, are alcoholics, or are desperately violent. It’s a version of Oliver, without the music, where children beg, steal, and worse. So, yes, it’s like Charles Dickens’ London—but in the present.

Ivan is part of a band of orphans who must steal to pay fourteen-year-old Rudy, in turn for his protection. It’s a relief when Ivan is adopted by a pack of feral dogs. It’s a point of pride that rather than steal, he begs for money to buy food for himself and the dogs. The dogs protect him from gangs of children and police who want to kick the unsightly homeless out of the subway tunnels. Ivan sleeps in a “nest of dogs,” names them, and they become a tight knit family.

Smoke leads the pack onto a train which carries them to new shelter when the frigid Russian winter sets in. Ivan smashes and wets sausage and bread to make gruel for the nearly toothless Grandmother dog. When rambunctious Rip and Lucky lunge for the gruel, the boy growls till they back off. He has asserted his authority and becomes the human leader.

Ivan tells the dogs fairytales that his mother had read, which allows him to keep a tenuous hold on his humanity. All the time, his yelping, staring, whimpering with the dogs, deepens his communication with them.

When a rich girl helps him you think, now, he will be cared for, but it’s only a small episode in a two year pilgrimage on the fringes of society.

When help finally comes, can he give up his life with the dogs and accept it? What a terrific page-turner! The whole family could read this together.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell is a nationally touring speaker, dancer, storyteller, occasional librarian, and children’s book author. Visit her at www.talesforallages.com/

“Outside Your Window: A First Book of Nature” by Nicola Davies and illustrated by Mark Hearld (Candlewick 2012) is a stunning work.

The 110 page picture book progresses through the seasons, starting with spring. The poems are simple and straightforward for the most part. Which makes the author’s occasional metaphors and similes light up her poems.

The spectacular art, which we’re told is mixed media, draws you into the author’s observations of each poem. By the look, I’d say the artwork is a collage of watercolor, gouache, and ink on paper.

In “Bulbs” Davies writes, “something tells the bulb it’s time to grow./Inside its brown coat and layers like an onion,/ a tiny pulse beats…” The author has watched nature and passes her acute observations to us through a child-like eye, making us experience nature afresh.

In “Nesting” artist Hearld uses actual strands of straw in the bird’s beak and in the nest she’s building. It makes you feel like you’re helping to construct the nest.

In “Flowers,” Davies writes, “Without a sound the flowers call out./ They shout to insects with their colors—” What we normally see, the author has made us hear. Let’s listen to our gardens.

In “Tide Pooling,” Hearld uses mono-printed fish or crayfish in the larger spread. That is, he’s made a woodcut or linoleum cut or maybe a potato cut of one fish, and printed it in various colors across his larger composition. The artwork makes you want to try some of his child-friendly techniques.

In “Starlings,” she says of the flying starlings, “hundreds, thousands maybe…They look like smoke, or a curtain rippling in the breeze…as if their flying is a dance that they all know by heart.” Nice image, but the clincher is the heartfelt dance.

Perhaps my favorite of the poems is “Snow Song” in which Davies speaks of falling snow. “Listen, and you can hear the quiet,/ as if every sound had been wrapped up and put away.” And “snow kept a diary” of animal and bird footprints.

Read this book and look outside your window. Go outside and see nature. Observe her acutely. This is a great book for studying and writing poetry in the classroom. The free verse poems invite you to make your own observations.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell is a nationally touring speaker, dancer, storyteller, occasional librarian, and children’s book author.

“A Dog’s Way Home” by Bobbie Pyron (Katherine Tegen 2010) alternates the stories of spunky 6th grader, Abby, and Shetland Sheepdog, Tam, an agility champion.

Both the fact that this is a middle grade novel and by its name, you can be pretty much assured that things are going to turn out okay—that the lost Tam will find his way home. Otherwise I couldn’t bear to read it. Gone is the era of “Old Yeller” and Bambi’s mother being shot by a hunter. I appreciate the fact that nowadays we protect our young from…well…devastating outcomes.

That said, plenty goes wrong for both girl and dog. In fact, I can barely believe that the dog, always in pursuit of food, could survive attacks from the claws of a raccoon, then a bear, the quills of a porcupine, not to mention his traveling hundreds of miles through snowy mountains, but he does. I’m passionately rooting for him, turning those 324 pages fast as I’m able.

There’s plenty of sorrow—more than I anticipated—but it makes the story stronger. Throughout the day I read the book, one or both our dogs slept at my side. When the eagle swoops down on Tam, gouging him with her talons, to steal his rabbit dinner, my little hound twitched in her sleep. I might have been reading her the story. When the man hurls a bottle at Tam, my Lil groaned in her dream.

Abby’s belief in her dog, her instinct that he’s coming home to her moves us almost as strongly as Tam’s adventure. Her family must move from the North Carolina hills to follow her struggling country-singing father when he gets a contract to record in Nashville.

The final chapters alternate faster and faster, getting shorter and shorter—Abby, Tam, Abby, Tam, hurrying you along. You don’t care that it’s late at night and you should turn out the light. You read to the end and for days after you remember both Tam’s plight and Abby’s dedication to her dog. At the end I didn’t cry politely, but blubbered out of control. In gratitude and relief.

Tam is never anthropomorphized, but remains a dog through and through. Having just read “Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know” by Alexandra Horowitz (Scribner 2009), I’m privy to the latest, abundant research on dogs. Author, Pyron, clearly is, too.

Patricia Hruby Powell (www.talesforallages.com) is a children’s book author, nationally touring speaker, dancer, storyteller, and librarian.

“No Shelter Here: Making the World a Kinder Place for Dogs ” by biologist Rob Laidlaw (2012) is not your average dog book. It is more an inspiration to help dogs that need you, by becoming what Laidlaw aptly calls a “dog champion.”

Dogs have super senses, starting with their amazing sense of smell, from which dogs attain so much information. Who passed this corner? When? Our various dogs sniff their way along the sidewalk to the park, totally engrossed in their research.

Laidlaw tells us, dogs are highly social and should not be kept alone for any length of time. They’re wonderful companions and family members. They need playtime and a comfortable home. They should not live chained outside. They need good food and fresh water.

It’s best to get your dog from a shelter or from a rescue operation because when you adopt a dog you’re saving a life. If you buy your dog from a pet store, the chances are the dog came from a puppy mill.

Puppy mills are money-making ventures that produce as many puppies as cheaply as possible at the expense of the animals’ comfort. Dogs live isolated, in crates, might not be fed the best food, or kept clean or get proper medical attention. They don’t get loving attention.

Even if you can’t have a dog, you can still hang out with them.

Mobile Mutts is a fantastic locally based dog rescue operation. That’s where I got one of our two rescue dogs. Volunteers transport dogs from southern states where there tends to be less municipal money and more high-kill shelters to the far north where there are no-kill shelters. Our Tree Walker Hound, Lil, was found in a field in Kentucky, put in a shelter and scheduled for euthanasia when she was put on the Underdog Railroad. I mean, Mobile Mutts. And, yep, we got her.

Many dogs need adopting—dogs who live on the streets, retired greyhound racers, beagles used in science experiments, dogs in shelters.

As a “dog champion” you might inform classmates about puppy mill conditions, write letters to congressmen about the plight of puppy mill dogs, volunteer at the Humane Society, overnight dogs for Mobile Mutts, make a documentary film.

As Laidlaw says, “Anyone can be a dog champion. Just make a commitment to help and then get going.” Dogs everywhere are counting on you.

—

Here’s the link to Mobile Mutts–a great starting place to become a “dog champion.”

http://mobile-mutts.org/Upcoming_Transports.html

So here’s Lil, who came up on Mobile Mutt’s transport, June 2, 2012. I over-nighted her and fell totally head-over-heels in love. She looked like a xylophone, all ribs showing, weighing in at 40 pounds. She was meek, glued to my side, not in need of a leash when outside. She wasn’t going anywhere.

Besides her dog food, I fed her while I was cutting veggies for dinner. She ate cauliflower, broccoli,  tomatoes, carrot, everything I offered her.

So it was about then that I called my traveling husband, Morgan, to say I’d fallen in love, and had–HAD–to adopt this Tree Walker Hound. What could he say?

I asked Marion Stevens who is the fantastic base camp operator for Mobile Mutts in Champaign, if I could adopt my xylophone girl. She said I’d have to put my girl back on the transport, that is send her up  to Redemption Rescue in Minnesota. They OWNED her, and she might already be spoken for. Clearly

this was the Underdog Railroad. Follow the northern star and all that.

So, I sent my girl off to the next leg of her journey, to Kankakee, weeping. But that’s not unusual. We “over-nighters” all seem to fall for our overnight charges. Marion said she was working on my plea, trying to get in touch with the people at Redemption Rescue in Minnesota. I went back to bed, still crying, with my phone tucked under my pillow.

And in about an hour or so, Marion called to say, the Tree Walker Hound was mine, and to meet her at the drop off point (St. Thomas Moore H.S. parking lot)  in about another two hours. So Marion brought her back to me from Kankakee. My xylophone doggy and I lay in the grass together, just loving each other.

It so happened that my husband Morgan was on his way home from Texas with Shanti, who had been part of a family of three adults and three dogs and now everyone was dispersing. A week prior, we’d agreed to take Shanti. So now we had two rescued dogs–an unplanned Parenthood– life was about to change.

That first night we were all together, we named xylophone girl, Lil–after Lil Hardin Armstrong–Louis Armstrong’s wife and jazz pianist. The second day, Lil gained some confidence, the third day, more. And not on a leash, she chased the ducks through and around the lake. Next day, she bolted again, so now we use a leash.

The first three weeks were a bit stressful, but also magnificent. And now it’s all magnificent. We’re a family of four. We go to the dog park twice each day–sometimes three times–and take walks in the neighborhood at night. Lil has gained 6 pounds, looks terrific. Shanti has lost 4 pounds, which has improved her health and svelte beauty. And as a matter of fact, we’ve lost weight, too. All those walks.

No way will Lil eat cauliflower or broccoli now. Clearly she’d been eating anything and everything when she was on her own and I realized that on that first night together, if I thought carrots were worth eating, then so did she. But Lil has a mind of her own now. Both Lil and Shanti are the most affectionate girls I know.

Let me recommend that you become a “dog champion.”

Patricia Hruby Powell (www.talesforallages.com) is a nationally touring speaker, dancer, storyteller, librarian and children’s book author. Her book, Joséphine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker (Chronicle Books) will come out January 2014. Her book about Lil Hardin Armstrong, Struttin’ With Some Barbecue, is still seeking a publisher.

 

It’s not easy for sixth grader, Jordan, who is an average violin player, not terribly pretty, not a great student, can’t play chess worth a darn—when there are people in her class who are terrific at all those things. Besides, it’s sweltering hot at the end of the year and her central Illinois school has no a/c in “About Average” by Andrew Clements (2012).

“Average” Jordan has mistakenly discarded a list of what she’s great at (not much). Marlea reads it aloud in the girl’s restroom to humiliate our heroine. Babysitting is at the top of the list. The other girls laugh, Jordan is bereft, but we, the readers, are afforded a look inside Jordan’s exquisite thought process—what she’d like to see happen and how she arrives at those wishes.

The author writes, “Jordan’s memory was a powerful force. A moment from the past would sneak up and kidnap her and then force her to think about it until she discovered something she didn’t know she knew.”

Her thought process seems so familiar, so real. It takes a fine author like Clements to uncover the inner workings of this realistic, flawed and loveable heroine. When she’s accused of cheating at chess, we’re told “she sure wouldn’t have wasted any criminal talent on something as pointless as winning a game of chess.”

She has a crush on Jonathan and she has to admit that it’s because he’s so cute. Which make her just as shallow as Jonathan, who likes pretty girls—prettier girls than Jordan. Still she’s sure Jonathan is a good person. Anyway, she would like him even if “he enjoyed ripping the arms off of teddy bears.” Which is something Jordan did once as revenge when her big sister pulled the head off her Barbie doll.

Jordan decides to experiment with forgiveness. In answer to Marlea’s ongoing meanness, she decides to respond with “…industrial-strength niceness. Awesome niceness. Award-winning niceness.”

It’s not easy, but she answers each of Marlea’s quips with just that—awesome niceness. It stops Marlea’s attacks and sets us up for the grand ending when some full blown central Illinois weather whips into town. As a result of her actions, Jordan wins some industrial strength respect.

Besides the pleasure of being inside Jordan’s head, the reader will get a taste of central Illinois, its weather (oh boy), and glimpses of the local blue and orange. Yes, Clements lives in Massachusetts, but he once lived in Illinois.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell (www.talesforallages.com) is a nationally touring speaker, dancer, storyteller, librarian and children’s book author.