Book Reviews

Franny, eleven, is enduring, not fire drills, but duck-and-cover drills at school, in the event of an atomic bomb attack. I remember no such drills from my childhood, but Franny lives outside Andrews Air Force Base, Washington DC, which would be a prime target and we’re in the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962, when the U.S.S.R. is threatening to strike the U.S.A.

The novel “Countdown” by Deborah Wiles (Scholastic 2010) begins with “documentary footage” of 1962 America. Handsome charismatic John F. Kennedy is quoted as saying, “We have enough missiles to blow you up thirty times over.” Nikita Khrushchev, Head of the U.S.S.R., on the facing page says, “We have enough to blow you up only once, but that will be enough for us.” The world is in the midst of cold war. Who remembers Khrushchev with a witty comeback?

Franny’s big sister is attending college in DC and involved in mysterious endeavors to “change the world.” What she’s actually doing remains mysterious. Interspersed throughout the book are more “documentary” pages that give the reader the context of the times. And so much was happening. The Civil Rights Movement was in full swing, for instance.

Franny’s little brother Drew is a “saintly” child, but Franny manages to get him to tell a lie, to the extreme grief of her strict, cigarette-smoking, smart mother. I’m delighted to find a formidable mother in a middle grade novel. Franny’s father is a major in the Air Force with the task to “keep America safe.”

Crazy Uncle Otts tries to build a fallout shelter in the front yard. The nation is frozen in the grips of fear while Franny’s fears are those of a fifth grader—her best friend has chosen another, her adored sister is absent, an odd embarrassing uncle, plus the realization of her world in great change.

The documentary pages include advertisements for fallout shelters, lyrics to songs, young Bob Dylan, TV celebrities, the glorious first lady Jackie Kennedy, maps, political cartoons headlines, Havana. This is a very cool format that both kids and adults will appreciate. It gives the context of the times, deepening our understanding of the story. We’re getting the top internet hits delivered just as we need them.

This semi-autobiographical documentary novel is the first in Wiles’ trilogy of the 60’s.

 

 

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

 

Summer is here. Yahoo. Time to play. Time to read. You don’t HAVE to read, you GET to read. These two 150 page novels, liberally sprinkled with black and white illustrations can keep younger middle grade readers reading this summer.

In “Letters to Leo” by Amy Hest (Candlewick 2012), 4^th grader, Annie Rossi writes a diary to her dog, Leo. Annie is an opinionated, loveable 4^th grader. She feels the injustice of the world in a high-spirited and entertaining manner. All those rules—no eating in the library, no drinking, no loud talking, no dancing, no dogs in the library. (She should come to my library (the Urbana Free Library) where we eat (in some areas) and on occasion entertain dogs by reading to them). On top of that Annie’s best friend is moving away.

At times, Annie is angry and no wonder. Her mom died in a prequel, “Remembering Mrs. Rossi” (Candlewick 2007), but it’s not necessary to read the earlier book to appreciate this light lovely romp. Usually, Annie’s exuberance trumps her low spirits and even her old professor dad (he’s 40) is cheered.

Julia Denos’ zippy child-like illustrations add to the fun of this book.

“Bless This Mouse” by (Newbery winner) Lois Lowry (Houghton 2011) and illustrated by (Caldecott winner) Eric Rohmann is written in a slightly old-fashioned style and could be a classic-in-the making.

Hildegarde, Mouse Mistress of St. Bartholomew church, must keep the church mice safe. They know the Great X is coming. The adept reader will discover on his own that the X is the Exterminator—Pest Control—No-More-Rodents. Not only is the Great X on the way, so is the Blessing of Animals and that will surely mean cats right inside the church. Alas, dangers abound.

Clever Hildegarde has a master plan. She also has a nemesis, Lucretia, who wants Hildegarde’s job and high status. In the end Lucretia gets her come-uppance, but Hildegarde will be more-than fair. Ignatius, an erudite and worldly mouse, advises Hildegarde, as does Roderick, who has a crush on Hildegarde. The plot includes brave rescues from a mouse’s point of view, keeping it fun and light hearted and gently Christian.

An audio version is melodramatically but nicely read by Bernadette Dunne.

Read read read. And parents, read to your children even if they can already read themselves. They’ll remember it forever.

AND FURTHERMORE: (This is the part that’s not in the Champaign Urbana News Gazette) My mom used to read to my sister and me after dinner, when we were in elementary school–books like Charlotte’s Web and  Hitty, Her First Hundred Years, (Monica, what else?) and my brother, a good deal older and in high school would come out of his lair (his bedroom where he studied physics and did chemistry experiments), come downstairs and stand in the doorway and listen to my mom read. She was a great reader. Reading great books.

Patricia Hruby Powell (www.talesforallages.com) is a nationally touring speaker, dancer, storyteller, librarian and children’s book author. Check out her website at: https://talesforallages.com/

And if you really want to humor her, you can follow her tweets @hrubypowell

Have you ever wondered about the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings? Kimberly Brubaker Bradley’s book of historic fiction, “Jefferson’s Sons: A Founding Father’s Secret Children” (Dial 2011) is the most insightful account of slavery and life at “Master” Jefferson’s estate, Monticello, that I’ve yet to encounter.

The story is told in the voice of the first son, Beverly, changes to the second son Madison and then moves to another slave, Peter. It tells the story of Master Jefferson living in the big house and Mama (Sally Hemings) and their children who live in the choice slave quarter, Mulberry Row.

Sally Hemings gets the best for her children and she assures them (and us, the reader) that this is not altogether slavery. Slavery is a runaway slave being whipped once he’s caught. Mama makes her young children watch such a whipping so they understand the privilege under which they live.

Are the children recognized as the Master’s children? In ways. Jefferson gives the oldest son, Beverly, a violin to play and each of the boys learns to play it. Two of them are good players, and in time there will be another violin. But for the most part, the children are an embarrassing secret—a secret that everyone on the plantation knows, yet it is unspoken. These are Jefferson’s invisible children.

Mama is promised freedom for her children when they each turn 21. Three are so fair-skinned, they plan to “pass” or enter into white society. What does one have to do in order to pass? Give up one’s past entirely. Keep the secret of who they are and absolutely never tell a soul, never look back, and never visit their people who are black slaves.

Mama pushes her children who can “pass” to observe, learn, and enact the manners of white society. It’s essential for their future lives and for keeping their secret.

What does it mean that Thomas Jefferson famously wrote, in the Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal.” Yet he keeps slaves. Every night Mama beds with the master, yet she is his slave.

If the 360-page book is daunting, listen to Adenrele Ojo’s exquisite reading [Listening Library]. http://www.randomhouse.com/book/213798/jeffersons-sons-by-kimberly-brubaker-bradley

Find out more at http://www.monticello.org/ where the author did a good deal of her research. At the end she describes how she used this resource, what is fact, what is her speculation.

 

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

 

Do you have warts? Moles? Hot flashes? Cold sweats? Do you twitch? If so, you’re rather lucky not to be living in colonial America—specifically, Salem, Massachusetts, 1692—because those maladies could have marked you as a witch. Or have been perpetrated by demons.

“Witches: The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem” by Rosalyn Schanzer (National Geographic 2011) is the non-fiction story of the witch-hunt that began with the mysterious illness of two cousins, Betty Parris, eight, and Abigail Williams, twelve.

American Puritans of the 17^th century believed the natural world was subject to forces from the “Invisible” world. Books had been written by “respectable men” about the terrifying effects of witchcraft. The fears generated by this belief moved the colonial government to create laws that made practicing witchcraft punishable by death.

So when two girls began having twitching “fits” that became so violent their bodies contorted into grotesque postures, the doctors diagnosed them as being bewitched. So, the girls began accusing neighbors of being the witches who tormented them.

Midwives and the homeless—the vulnerable of the community because they were without family—were first to be accused of casting spells. Officials of the church and community tried, accused, and hung a few “witches”. Crowds gathered to witness these grisly town-center affairs.

More become afflicted with the twitching fits, which meant more accusations of witchcraft were made. People pointed their fingers at others to save themselves from accusation, until twenty “witches” were executed and in their wake hundreds of lives were ruined.

If you were accused as a witch, you were required to pay your prison fees. If you were found guilty, your family was shunned and their property confiscated. So even years after the hysteria had died down, the families of the accused were without homes and livelihoods.

The compact volume with its black and white scratch-board illustrations accented in red, rendered by the author is attractive. We’ll be seeing more books in this trim size.

Whereas “Witches” is an older middle grade book, “Wicked Girls: a Novel of the Salem Witch Trials” by Stephanie Hemphill (Balzer & Bray 2010) is teen fiction written in free verse. Hemphill’s characters are the actual historic people. She is able to speculate as to why the girls sought attention, bringing another fascinating element to this seductive, dark, topic.

 

 

 

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

 

“Wonderstruck” (Scholastic 2011) is a novel by Brian Selznick, told half in writing, half in drawings. It opens with wolves running at the reader. They’re so close you see only their eyes, then so close, one eye and then closer yet. Are the wolves a dream?

Ben wakes up. So it was a dream? The written story begins in Gunflint Lake, Minnesota in 1977. Through the wall, Ben, who is deaf in one ear, hears his aunt and uncle talk about selling his Mom’s house at the other end of the property. After all, his mom had died. But sell his house? What about his stuff? All he has with him is a box of bird skeletons and found odds and ends.

Even though a storm is brewing Ben runs to the house where he lived with his mom.

Turn the page and we’re back to exquisitely rendered drawings of a young girl in New Jersey, 1927. She’s making a scrapbook of the actress Lillian Mayhew. The girl runs outside into an urban setting.

Turn another page and we return to the written story—Ben’s story, which parallels the story of the girl—Rose, who we realize is deaf. It’s storming in both stories, which heightens the mystery. Where are Rose’s parents? Who is Ben’s father? At the moment that Ben finds a clue in his mother’s closet, he blacks out.

Ben wakes up in a hospital bed, now completely deaf. Was the house struck by lightning? He dreams of wolves again. This time they’re running down the streets of New York City.

In both stories—the pictorial and the written—each child, separated by fifty years, is running away to New York. Ben enters the American Museum of Natural History. Is it the same place that’s depicted on Rose’s post card? Is Rose seeing the same dinosaur skeleton that Ben just passed?

The two stories converge in a surprising manner, leaving the reader feeling rather ebullient. Rose and Ben’s realistic connection is more than satisfying. This is no fantasy. And the wolves were more than a dream.

“Wonderstruck” is not a graphic novel with multiple frames per page, but it is sequential art. And wow—what art. The excellent movie, “Hugo,” is taken from Selznick’s first such book, “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” (Scholastic 2007), a Caldecott Medal winner. Both books and movie are “must-sees.”

See the trailer and listen to the author speak of the creating process. http://www.amazon.com/Wonderstruck-Brian-Selznick/dp/0545027896

 

A Book for middle graders as well as everyone else: “Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart,” by Candace Fleming (Schwartz & Wade 2011) begins with Amelia being lost somewhere on the Pacific Ocean on the last leg of her historic round-the-world flight–1937. Chapter two begins with Amelia’s birth, then being raised by her ladylike grandmother—1897.

The book alternates between the harrowing days at the end of her life with the story of how she became Amelia Earhart, America’s darling and the renowned female pilot in the new aviation age. We discover how Amelia was a phenomenon of publicity—the result of George Putnam’s skill at publicizing her charm, enthusiasm and determination, then marrying her.

Amelia was neither careful nor the most skilled woman aviator. On her first Atlantic flight, for which she gained much publicity, Amelia made decisions but did not actually pilot the plane. In a woman’s aviation cross-country race, Amelia in the fastest plane, finished third. An airplane manufacturer would not even sell her the aircraft she most wanted because she was not skilled enough to pilot it.

We discover that Amelia’s character was, in part, built on her father’s decline into severe alcoholism. That she was a combination of tomboy and fashion maverick. That she was fiercely independent and publishing magnate George Putnam courted her for years before she agreed to marry him.

As you read about the early years of aviation, you’re amazed at how frequently the equipment fails, fuel leaks or fires start on the wings. Early flight is not an activity for the faint hearted. Amelia was courageous to the point of being fool-hearty. For her final ill-fated flight, she was still learning to fly her Electra and hadn’t learned to use her radio equipment, which was her undoing.

It is heartbreaking to discover that amateur short wave radio operators heard Amelia’s pleas for help as she was apparently downed in the Pacific, probably floating on the sea. A housewife from Texas never reported to the authorities her radio-contact with Amelia, figuring the authorities had it under control. A teenager in Florida could not convince the authorities of her hearing Amelia calling for help. A teenager in Wyoming rushed to the authorities to report his findings, which were reported to the scout ship Itasca—to no avail.

This well-researched and suspenseful story is one reason we continue to care about the charming daring Amelia Earhart.

“Amelia Lost” just won the Golden Kite Award for non fiction books. The prestigious Golden Kite, awarded by the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), is judged by peers in the field of children’s literature. Congratulations, Candy!

 

Patricia Hruby Powell (www.talesforallages.com) is a nationally touring speaker, dancer, storyteller, librarian and children’s book author. Her picture book in verse, Joséphine, about Josephine Baker and published by Chronicle Books will be released in fall 2013.