Book Reviews

Kingston’s brother Khalid, an 18-year-old soccer star, inexplicably dies on the field. Twelve-year-old Kingston (King) James lives in rural Louisiana and thinks Khalid has returned to this world as a dragonfly. King searches for that one dragonfly—his brother—in the bayou in Kacen Callender’s “King and the Dragonflies” (Scholastic 2020), winner of the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature as well as the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Fiction and Poetry.

Schoolmate Mikey Sanders, who is rumored to have killed a man, plants a T-shirt tied in a noose in King’s locker. King is black. Mikey is white and his grandfather is known to have been a KKK member. Mikey’s father is also the sheriff. But King had been good friends with Mikey’s younger brother, Sandy Sanders.

Shortly before Khalid died, he’d overheard Sandy telling King that he was gay. He also heard King tell Sandy that he might be gay—he didn’t know for sure. Khalid had told his little brother, King, not to hang with Sandy or people would think he was gay. Twelve-year-old King tells Sandy (also twelve) that he can’t be his friend any longer. No explanation.

Khalid had also told his little brother he shouldn’t help his mother with dinner. Men didn’t do that. But King liked to help his mom, who comes home from work every evening so tired. But King complies with his brother’s orders.

King loves his brother, misses his brother, and is carrying those confusing rules his brother made. He can’t talk to his parents about it. They wouldn’t understand any of it—except maybe the grief. His mother keeps a false smile on her face in hopes of cheering her family. King’s father—well who knows what his father is thinking? The family is falling apart with grief for Khalid.

And then what do you do when your friend comes to school bruised? Sandy says it’s nothing, but King is pretty sure his dad—the sheriff—is beating his son. And maybe it’s because he’s gay.

King has no one to talk to—not his brother and not Sandy. Then Sandy disappears.

The entire small town is searching for him. Everyone is scared for Sandy. The next day Sandy shows up in King’s back yard tent. King agrees to keep him hidden and feed him. Their relationship reignites and the two boys tell each other their secrets. King knows of an abandoned fisherman’s shack deep in the bayou close to where the dragonflies swarm. They build a paradise for themselves, in between King going to school and staying home under his parents’ watchful eyes. Sandy is pretty good at fending for himself, fishing and trapping animals to eat. King subsidizes that with cereal and snacks.

King must figure out what is the right thing to do. Callender’s beautiful writing perfectly conveys King’s innocent mind. This is a powerful and satisfying read.

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning Lift As You Climb: The Story of Ella Baker, Struttin’ With Some Barbecue: Lil Hardin Armstrong Becomes the First Lady of Jazz, Loving vs. Virginia, and Josephine. She teaches community classes in writing at Parkland College.

High school senior, Laura Dean, is dumping Freddie for the third time. And she’s doing it by text. I bet that’s pretty usual these days. Seems pretty rough. Freddie, the narrator says, “being dumped feels like food poisoning.” The experience is prolonged. And toxic.

“Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me” (First Second 2019) by Mariko Tamaki and illustrated by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell is such a pretty graphic novel. The illustrations are made exclusively in black and white. And pink. It’s stunning—the emotions invoked by those illustrations.

The plot is simple. High school student, Freddie Riley, is in love with the most popular girl in school, Laura Dean. Laura drops Freddie, picks the relationship back up, drops her over and over. Freddie can’t seem to help herself. She keeps taking Laura back.

What’s different about this story is, the players are two girls. It’s not difficult for them—that part. They live in Berkeley, California, the capitol of radical acceptance. As you go through the book, you figure out gradually that Laura, the lover, is a girl. Hey, Laura looks kind of boyish. And cute. And maybe one of the points is: girls do exactly what adolescent boys do. They use girls. Yeah, girls use boys too. And other girls. But I think most teens—those in smaller towns and rural areas—would be amazed by the degree of acceptance of lesbian relationships.

Freddie’s best friend, Doodle, supports her over and over. But Freddie mistreats Doodle—choosing her unscrupulous girlfriend Laura instead of her constant friend Doodle. Is that an indication of low self-esteem? Who hasn’t been on the other side of this in middle or high school? Freddie feels bad about her behavior and eventually makes it right, realizing that Doodle offers true friendship. So healthy friendships ultimately prevail over the unhealthy ones.

By the way, Doodle, who is straight, is going through some very rough stuff, but Freddie, wrapped up in her own misery, is oblivious. I’d like to see Doodle’s story told.

Here’s something useful about breakups as told by the narrator. “The truth is, breakups are usually messy, the way people are messy, the way life is often messy. I’s okay for a breakup to feel like a disaster. It doesn’t feel okay, but I assure you it is okay. It’s also true that you can breakup with someone you still love. Because those two things are not distinct territories: love and not loving anymore.”

This is an easy and fun book to read and could help teens who are experiencing toxic relationships. Maybe it could push them to see the light. Do you settle for the love you can get? Or do you find the love that you deserve? These are good questions for adults as well.

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue among others.  She teaches community classes at Parkland.         talesforallages.com

https://talesforallages.com/3167-2/

In Betty Culley’s novel in verse, “Three Things I Know Are True” (HarperTeen 2020) teenage Liv will not give up on her older brother Jonah, who accidentally shot himself in the head with a gun belonging to his best friend’s father.

Now Jonah requires round-the-clock care to stay alive, at home, in their Maine mill town. Liv’s mother works a minimum wage job.

Last year when her father was alive, he’d lost his job when the mill closed. “He’d watch Clay’s father pull out of the driveway of Number 24 in his “Bugz Away” van and say, Now there’s a smart man—he’s his own boss, and as long as there’s bugs around, he’s got himself a job.” Now her mom is suing Clay’s family because his dad left a loaded gun in their attic. Liv isn’t supposed cross their street to Clay’s house, but she does. And she might be falling in love with Clay.

Clay has dropped out of high school and is working for his dad. Liv worries about Clay inhaling all that insecticide.

Liv senses her brother inside his wracked body, but their mother cannot. Liv understands that “Jonah has faces and sounds that mean different things. If you’re watching and listening, he will tell you what he wants, what he doesn’t want.” Mom, on the other hand, is retreating, working more hours: “I think the Schedule is Mom’s way of caring for Jonah without watching or listening.”

With the mill closed, the town depressed, townspeople are taking sides between Clay’s and Liv’s families. Liv messes up in school and is punished with service at the soup kitchen where she meets Hunter who is homeschooled. Hunter’s mom, a hippy who’s in touch with the earth and feelings tells Liv, “Trust your hands and they’ll lead you where you need to go.” Liv discovers she has good hands, hands that can massage Jonah such that he can stop thrashing, calm and fall sleep.

Thank heavens for the fabulous team of nurses who care for Jonah around the clock. Liv feels jealous that the nurses and Jonah have an intimate rapport that doesn’t involve her. She likens that jealousy to “the little animal inside me gets throw-something mad.” She says, “I know it’s wrong to feel this way about my brother, but the animal is hurt and won’t listen to reason.”

Liv’s friend Rainie is a compulsive shop-lifter—carrying that propensity inside people’s homes. Liv sees Rainie’s stealing as her wild little animal—her big flaw.

Author Betty Culley lives in a small river town in central Maine. She has worked as a pediatric home hospice nurse. She surely has the authority, voice, and wisdom to tell this insightful well-written story.

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue and the new Lift As You Climb.  She teaches community classes in writing at Parkland College.         talesforallages.com

“Dancing at the Pity Party: a dead mom graphic memoir” (Dial 2020) is Tyler Feder’s graphic novel about her mom dying of cancer. The subtitle tells you plenty about this tragic, funny, insightful story which is sort of a map for processing major grief.

Tyler’s illustrations augment the text rather than replicate it. On the first page she lists small and large teachings—one is: “She taught me to speak my mind.” Her picture is a mother bird feeding her fledgling a worm—just one example of how far she takes us with deep simplicity. The next page shows the fledgling alone in a nest. The words: “In 2008, the summer after my first year of college, she was diagnosed with cancer. By spring break my sophomore year, she was dead. Not to be melodramatic, but it was THE WOOORST.”

You love this polite subdued mom, who she describes as having a “sneaky” sense of humor—this mom who does “a blink-and-you’d-miss-it bunny hop” walking down the grocery store aisle, with a straight face like nothing happened. Feder says: “The treatments and doctors’ appointments were wildly time-consuming, like a part-time job with awful pay.” Yep, many of us have been there with a loved one—or for ourselves. And “Chemotherapy was totally different from what I’d always pictured . . . what chemo is actually like: basically a nail salon with IV drips instead of pedicures.”

On a page headed “Preparations” she says “If you can’t cry in front of the rabbi who’s officiating your mom’s funeral at a meeting discussing said funeral, when can you, though, you know?”

On the receiving line: “There were the people who grabbed my arms tightly and gave me such powerful eye contact that I felt their eyes burning a hole in my brain. . . hugs from near-strangers (with varying amounts of force, wetness, and odor).”

Maybe I’m telling you the funny bits so you’ll read it. But every page gives insights into grieving.

The service: “By that point, I was in full denial. It was almost an out-of-body experience. I felt like I was watching a movie of myself, totally devoid of the emotion the situation demanded.”

Her family writes her mother’s obituary. That hit home. So did the Kubler-Ross stages of dying which she also applies to grieving. And because she’s Jewish you get a bird’s eye view of the wonderful cultural benefits of sitting shiva, which includes: “… we took a series of the CHEERIEST PHOTOS EVER . . . The group photo, especially, could be in a museum exhibit about the surreality of death (or just denial, depending on how you look at it).” When the week is up: “We slowly lumbered through the neighborhood, a mass of salt-stained parkas and flushed cheeks. Somehow, there was no thoughtful piano score accompanying us, even though it would have been very appropriate.”

Ten years later the author is still recovering. And writing and illustrating this book helped that recovery. It will help a lot of us.

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue and the new Lift As You Climb.  She teaches community classes in writing at Parkland College.         talesforallages.com

“Everything Sad is Untrue” (Levine Querido 2020) is Daniel Nayeri’s childhood story of fleeing Iran with his mother and sister. By a series of minor miracles the little family manages to evade Iran’s secret police and get to Italy where they stop at a refugee camp for a couple of years before landing in Oklahoma. Born as Khosrou, he is now Daniel.

As the book cover suggests, the story swirls in time like an Oklahoma cyclone with bits of Persian artifacts caught in the swirl. Starting at eight-years-old, he stands before his American classmates and tells wild stories that are structured like a French braid. Choose your metaphor.

He takes strands from the rich Persian culture of myths, pulls in strands of his ancestors who he knows through stories, all vividly pulled from his own immigrant child life. You hear about evil uncles who betrayed his grandmother—another strong Persian woman who had to flee Iran. Speaking of those uncles, Nayeri dispenses universal wisdom, such as, “One is the kind of villain who wants more for himself. The other is the kind who wants less for others.” He admits that he doesn’t have all the details so details of his story are speculated. He walks us through the steps of how he chooses those speculated details, and along the way teaches us how to write.

Scheherazade wove stories to entertain the king to keep herself alive. Daniel tells stories in an attempt to enter a new culture and be known for who he is. “I am ugly and I speak funny. I am poor. My clothes are used and my food smells bad. I pick my nose. I don’t know the jokes and stories you like, or the rules to the games. I don’t know what anybody wants from me…Like you, I want a friend.” See how gracefully he invokes “you,” the second person point of view? And we feel completely involved in his world including the tarofing­­—where you compete with your neighbors in lies so polite you can’t find the truth. This is Persian etiquette. Nayeri shows so much—such as the cruelty of other children who dismiss him, but never does it feel like he’s whining. On the contrary, he’s insisting on being known.

Food plays a big part. “Soon the dinner carpet was full with trays of kebab, grilled onions and tomatoes, platters of fresh chives, green and purple basil, cilantro, radishes and dill…A stew of chickpea, lamb, crispy shallots and fried mint was the khan’s favorite.”

As he advances to middle school and loving Kelly, he says, “I don’t want to stop just because she laughs at me. I want to stay in love with her until she realizes I am a person.”

This books is like no other. This new publisher Levine Querido is like no other. Check both of them out. Please.

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue and the new Lift As You Climb.  She teaches community classes in writing at Parkland College.         talesforallages.com