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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

Clara Lemlich works in the garment district of New York City at the turn of the twentieth century, with other teenage girls from the old country—various “old” countries. Clara and her family came from a Russian shtetl—Jewish village—where girls were not allowed an education. Against her father’s orders Clara barters for books—Tolstoy and herbals. She helps cure people of their illnesses. She would like to be a doctor one day.

Her father does not want her speaking—and definitely not reading the oppressor’s language—Russian. When he finds her books, he burns them. It’s too late. She has already learned Russian.

So begins “Audacity” (Philomel 2015) by Melanie Crowder, a beautifully written novel in verse based on the story of union organizer Clara Lemlich.

When the pogram comes, the five Lemlich children are sent fleeing into the woods. Crowder writes, “Tonight/ we will sleep/ in the woods/ with the night crawlers/ and the wolves/ and the soft-throated owls.” Jewish people are murdered, their houses burned. The Lemlich family saves their kopecks and flees, starting the long journey to America, in 1904.

After jostling in carts and trains they’re sequestered in an English poorhouse, then travel steerage to New York City. Clara’s little brother is detained at Ellis Island with a fever. Weeks of anxiety ensue before the family is reunited.

Clara’s orthodox father and her brothers spend their days praying while the women work. Her mother sews piecework at home, scrubs floors, and cooks cabbage. Clara works in a sweatshop to support the family. And goes to English classes at night.

Clara speaks out against being locked into the workroom, not being allowed to use the lavatory, speaks out against the filth, fifteen hour days, seven day each week. She’s fired. She finds a new job at another sweatshop, worse than the first. At school she is singled out as the one immigrant who might earn a scholarship to go to college.

She works fifteen-hour days, then attends night school. A fellow worker sickens but is not allowed a trip to the lavatory. Clara speaks up and is fired again. She finds the union house and listens. As her English improves she goes into the streets, stands on a soap box and asks well-to-do women if they know where there shirtwaists—their tailored blouses—come from? Clara gets another job and starts organizing. Strikebreakers or “gorillas” beat her up repeatedly. She is fired again.

Men workers want to strike, but will not include the women workers. Clara fights for women’s rights within the union. Workers begin striking—but too few. Shop owners call the striking women whores. Newspapers report it. Husbands and fathers forbid their wives and daughters from striking. Clara speaks at a union meeting and calls for a general strike. Thousands walk out of work. Finally some changes are made.

As a reader your blood will boil against the injustice. You’ll cheer for the courage of this small bold reformer.

 

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

Thousands of paper flyers were dropped from German planes over Norway and Denmark in April 1940, announcing the Nazi arrival and offering wartime “protection.” Norway fought back against Germany and suffered massive losses. Denmark cooperated, such that Winston Churchill would eventually call Denmark “Hitler’s tame canary.”

That is the history behind the remarkable “The Boys Who Challenged Hitler” (Farrar Strauss Giroux 2015) by Phillip Hoose. The author visited the Museum of Danish Resistance in Copenhagen and learned that the Resistance for Denmark evolved only late in the war—except for a group of ninth grade boys headed by Knud Pedersen, who was humiliated by Denmark’s acceptance of Nazi occupation. Knud was still alive in 2010. Hoose contacted him.

The book is comprised of Knud’s first hand account detailing his patriotic activities with a handful of classmates, interspersed with historical context, partly derived from other first hand accounts. Knud and his older brother Jens founded the “RAF” (named after the heroic British Royal Air Force) in the southern town of Odense.

The Germans marched into Odense and posted directions so that their forces could find their way around town. In broad daylight, riding bicycles, the boys of the “RAF” twisted signs so their arrows pointed in wrong directions or tore them down altogether and sped away. Next they cut telephone wires leading to German headquarters. The boys knew they could be arrested or shot if they were caught.

Their parents knew nothing of the boys’ activities, nor did the rest of their classmates. That same year, the Pedersens moved north to Aalborg where the Germans installed an important airstrip for sending bombers off to Norway. The “RAF” continued in Odense and the Pedersen brothers started “The Churchill Club” in honor of another of their heroes.

The Pedersens’ father was a pastor and the family of seven were housed at Holy Ghost Monastery. The boys attended Cathedral School where Danish children of the town leaders were educated. Knud and Jens carefully recruited a few boys at a time. Their headquarters was Jens’ bedroom on the second floor of the large medieval monastery.

The boys trained themselves to calm their nerves around the ever-present German soldiers. Breathe slowly, don’t laugh, don’t talk—unless you’re the decoy engaging the guard in a distraction. Eventually the boys would progress to arson and theft of Nazi weapons, which they hid in the monastery cellar, in preparation for battle.

Eventually the boys were discovered and arrested. Who would try them—the Danes or the Germans? Where would they be imprisoned—in Denmark or a German work camp? Even if the Danes set the punishment, the Third Reich would lean on them to ensure the sentence showed that the Germans meant business.

The teenage prisoners became stars to many Danish people, helping Denmark wake up and enact an efficient resistance against the brutal Nazis. What a great well-researched story of real teenage heroism!

 

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s book Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker has recently been awarded a Sibert Honor for Nonfiction as well as a Coretta Scott King Honor for illustration. talesforallages.com

“Drowned City: Hurricane Katrina & New Orleans” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2015), written and illustrated by Don Brown, is a powerful nonfiction graphic “novel”—that is, written as a comic.

In early August 2005 an “unremarkable wind” from Africa crosses the Atlantic, becomes a category one hurricane, is named Katrina, and sweeps across Florida to kill six people. It augments to a category five, the “most catastrophic,” and everyone waits for it to batter New Orleans with its 155 mph winds.

New Orleans in the lowlands is vulnerable with its aging levees and inadequate pumping system. Pictures show the eye of the whirling blue storm “lifting the ocean surface into a kind of massive bubble.” The water level will be raised 25 feet above normal. The National Weather Service announces that Katrina will hit New Orleans in twenty-four hours on Monday, August 27th.

Cut to the 80% of New Orleans people who evacuate. En route, they’re stuck in deadlocked traffic. 200,000 people remain in the city, due to poverty (no car, no bus fare) or stubbornness. Trains offer to take people out of the city. The government declines.

Katrina diminishes to a category three, slips east and hits Buras, wiping out the entire town. Fortunately, everyone has evacuated.

Water overflows the levees of New Orleans. A million gallons of water per minute flood Lake Pontchartrain. The pumps can’t keep up. “Water rolls down the street” floating cars and loose barges down the avenues. People are forced into their attics by rising water. If they can’t cut their way out, they drown. A refiner tank bursts and crude oil is added to the mix.

People cling to floating cars, houses, chests—anything—as the rain pours down on them.

People seek shelter in the Superdome, but it is under-stocked with food, water, bedding. Plus, it is compromised and leaking. Police are rendered helpless by the magnitude, and some flee.

Once the rain stops, Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries, Coast Guard, and individuals rescue people using small boats, but the onslaught of insects and snakes is horrifying. There is no electricity, no lights, no ac. The weather is stifling. Stores or looted of SUVs, computers, TVs. People in sweltering darkened hospitals die.

No aid from the government—state or federal—is forthcoming. Leaders are arguing among themselves. Communication is abysmal.

Families are divided, stranded on bits of high ground, scared and starving. Five thousand children are missing.

Promised buses don’t arrive at the superdome. Finally government rescue efforts take hold. Helicopters circle, searching for survivors.

The catastrophe is beyond reckoning.

Almost all the references that Brown used are contemporary news programs—PBS, CBS, ABC—and newspapers. The drawings add much to the tragic episode in the nation’s history, in this slim volume—a fast read. A stamp on the front cover promises that a portion of the profits goes to New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity.

 

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s book Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker has recently been awarded a Sibert Honor for Nonfiction as well as a Coretta Scott King Honor for illustration. talesforallages.com

Finn O’Sullivan lives in Bone Gap, Illinois with his older brother Sean, at the edge of town among the cornstalks, in the young adult book “Bone Gap” (Balzer & Bray 2015) by Laura Ruby. Finn is called Moonface, Sidetrack, and Spaceman by his friends—in fact by the whole town.

Sean is a paramedic who has put off medical school until Finn finishes high school since their mother has run off to Oregon with a dentist. A young woman, Roza, shows up dirty and bruised, in their barn. As she recovers she cooks Polish food, gardens, and the boys begin to recover from the hurt of their missing mother.

But then Roza goes missing. Finn witnesses the man in the black SUV carry her off while the two are at the fair together, but he can’t describe the abductor except to say he moved like a “cornstalk in the wind.” The police detective is disgruntled by Finn’s inability to describe the man. Both the detective and Sean who has fallen in love with the beautiful Roza, blame Finn for letting Roza be taken.

All is real, if creepy, until a black Arabian horse arrives in the barn from nowhere—and things get strange. Or magical. Finn rides the horse to Petey’s, who everyone thinks is an ugly girl, except Finn. Finn and Petey ride the horse and leap through the air and sail for what feels like forever. This magic happens without a hitch—smoothly, believably.

Roza’s garden wilts and dies. And then you get it. It has something to do with Greek mythology. Roza is Demeter? Whose daughter Persephone has been taken to the underworld. Or is Roza Persephone? Abducted to the underworld? Demeter might be Roza’s grandmother back in Poland.

Ruby writes chapters from Roza’s viewpoint as well as Finn’s. The man who took her is mysterious and cruel and clearly he is the Hades character.

Can someone pass from Finn’s world to the underworld somewhere in the endless cornfields surrounding their house? If so, how do you find the way in? Bone Gap is indeed the name of a small town in southern Illinois, but does it also suggest a passage to the underworld? Why can’t Finn describe the man who took Roza?

To say more would give away the reason you should read this book.

I was lost in the pages of this remarkable story of magical realism, largely because there is so much realism. Laura Ruby writes fantasy books for middle school readers and realistic high school stories for young adults. She has brought these genres—fantasy and realism—together in a tour de force.

 

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s book Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker has recently been awarded a Sibert Honor for Nonfiction as well as a Coretta Scott King Honor for illustration. talesforallages.com