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“One Big Open Sky” by Lesa Cline-Ransome

June 16, 2025 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

From 1879 Mississippi, Lettie and her impoverished Black family set out for Nebraska in a covered wagon, part of the westward migration in “One Big Open Sky” (Holiday House 2024) by Lesa Cline-Ransome. Her father made the decision to go, as was so often the norm for homesteaders, but Lettie’s mother Sylvia must decide on and prepare the provisions and care for the family of five along the way, even if she doesn’t want to take the journey.

Throughout the story, we see what’s different for Black migrants and what is probably the same for white folk. The men are in charge, but are they really? Where does the strength truly lie?

The story is told in the voices of three women starting with preteen Lettie. Lettie says, “There was the story before we left/ and the story after/ but the story in between/ is the part that’s the hardest.” The family suffers heart breaking hardships on their trip, as almost every family in the age of Manifest Destiny did.

There is discrimination against their all-Black group. They wait, with their covered wagons, for a scheduled ship to take them part of the distance up the Mississippi River, which will relieve them of having to walk every single step of the way.

Sylvia, says, “…to see/ the hurt/ of folks standing on the banks/ holding all they had/ hopes/ and dreams/ only to have them/ left behind/ when the ships came again/ and didn’t stop”. The ships never stop so they set out on foot. White men try to steal their mules and oxen, so they have to fight them off to save their families.

The third voice is Philomena’s. She is a strong young woman and an orphan, who is traveling alone to take a position as a teacher in Nebraska. Lettie writes an account of the journey and keeps track of what has been spent. Philomena, not that much older than Lettie, and a teacher, can look over her shoulder and help her school-learning. Philomena does the work of a man and becomes essential to the family, and they to her.

The story is not without sweet romance. A member of the group, Beau, fancies Philomena who is oblivious, until Sylvia sets her straight.

Lettie’s young brothers go out with the father, Thomas, and the men to hunt and fish but usually come back having gathered berries and plants, and only occasionally a rabbit. There are places along the way where supplies can be bought, but Lettie’s family has run very low on funds. Thomas, we realize, wants to be a leader, but makes irresponsible decisions which endanger everyone. And still the womenfolk must back him up.

Lettie loves her father deeply but is beginning to see his flaws. Lettie also notes that women cannot vote, but clearly the women in this story are towers of strength and intelligence.

Of course, there are the raging rivers that all pioneers had to cross and those are alarmingly dangerous.

This wonderful book won the Coretta Scott King Award as well as a Newbery Honor this last year, is a fast, fascinating, and insightful read.

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning books: Josephine; Lift As You Climb; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue all signed and for sale at Jane Addams bookstore. Her forthcoming books are about women’s suffrage, Martha Graham, and Ella Fitzgerald, as well as waterfowl. talesforallages.com

“When the Mapou Sings” by Nadine Pinede.

April 20, 2025 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

In exquisite yet accessible poetry, Nadine Pinede tells the story of Lucille’s coming of age in “When the Mapou Sings” (Candlewick 2024). The story is set in 1935 Haiti, when the nation is just emerging from the USA occupation that has lasted from 1915 to 1934. Haiti was first inhabited by the Taino people, then was occupied by Spain in 1496. The eastern half of the island of Hispaniola was ceded to the French in 1697. In 1791 African-born slaves and their descendants revolted against the French and in 1804, Haiti became an independent country ruled by itrs own citizens. But Haiti’s problems weren’t over.

Teenaged Lucille claims traces of all these cultures mentioned above.

On Lucille’s first day at the Mission School, she befriends beautiful Fifina, who is “drawing a bird/ in red earth with a twig/ from Mapou.” Mapou is the kapok tree, and Lucile is delighted to have befriended Fifina. “We walked back to the classroom/ inside me/ a sunrise.” The two girls soon make plans to start their own school: “We’ll teach girls how to carve, sew, draw, climb trees./ We’ll teach girls the songs of trees, flowers, birds, butterflies, the sun, moon, mountains, clouds.”

The mapou tree sings to Lucille, whose mother has died. The girl says, “A mother whose face/ I can’t remember/ and whose songs/ I can’t forget.

Their teacher, Sister Gilberte, shows the girls a map of her home—Belgium. She became a nun when her fiancé was killed in World War I. The nun says, “The trouble with love/ is the cracks in your heart/ never mend.”

The girls are the same age, but Fifina has matured into a woman sooner than Lucille and one day she disappears. In a dream the mapou tree tells Lucille to go to the village section chief. Something horrible has happened to Fifina at the section chief’s hand, and whereas Lucille doesn’t know exactly what happened, she knows the chief is corrupt and tells him so. This puts her in grave danger.

Lucille must leave her home and village. She’s hired as a servant for a wealthy Port-au-Prince woman. Foolishly she falls in love with the woman’s son. The educated young man helps raise Lucille’s consciousness concerning the corruption occurring in Haiti. Having become an activist in the reform movement, Lucille must move again to save herself. All the time she searches for Fifina.

Now she works for an America scholar who is doing fieldwork and studying Haitian voodoo and writing a novel. This turns out to be Zora Neal Hurston who is writing Their Eyes Were Watching God. Because of Hurston’s research and their activism, the two women find themselves fighting for their lives and the country of Haiti, all the time Lucille searches for her childhood friend and the man she loves.

This story, set in a time and place of important but little-known history, is not only poetry, but it’s a page-turner.

“The Ballerina of Auschwitz” by Dr. Edith Eva Eger

March 2, 2025 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

Dr. Edith Eva Eger, in her insightful memoir, “The Ballerina of Auschwitz” (Atheneum 2024) tells us about her Jewish family and her need for love in 1943 Hungary. She says, “I’m the runt of the family, the unwanted child.” Her eldest sister, Klara is a violin prodigy and away in Budapest at the conservatory of music. Magda, next eldest, is the prettiest, and a pianist. Their mother always tells Magda to watch what she eats. But her mother just throws up her hands at the lively Edith.

Edith likes her own thirteen-year-old lean and muscular body, suited to dancing and gymnastics although she envies Magda’s curves. Her father, a tailor, tells Edith she’s built for couture and will be the best dressed girl in town. She likes the attention her father bestows on her, but “Like my mother’s it is precious…and precarious. As though my worthiness of their love has less to do with me and more to do with their loneliness.”

Edith says of her parents’ love and admiration in general, “Magda and I have to work at getting something we are certain there will never be enough of; Klara has to worry that at any moment she might make a fatal mistake and lose it all.” Edith loves her dance classes and her personal dance improvisations. Dancing is her fantasy world where she can reinvent, enact, and sweeten her parents’ love relationship.

One day on the way to class, she loses her school tuition money and fears her father’s anger. “I’m scared, but the fear is more personal. It’s more about something I feel I’ve done wrong.” Soon the gestapo will take the family away and end her relatively simple life.

Edith falls in love with gentle Eric. “Our bond isn’t a casual crush, a puppy love. This is love in the face of war.” You are so happy for the young people, but you fear for the young Jewish pair as their love grows deeper and you know what lies ahead. Edith must stop attending her dance classes, because she’s Jewish. These are the laws.

Their normal family life, with regular growing pains, ends abruptly when the family is taken away. Klara is away at the conservatory and might be spared the camps, if she can convince the authorities that she’s not Jewish. But the rest of the family arrives at Auschwitz, not understanding what is happening. Edith is asked if her mother is her sister. Not understanding the gravity of the question and how to answer it, she tells the truth. “Mother.” And her mother is sent to the death showers.

Edith must live with her hideous, but innocent, betrayal. Eger does not spare us the horrific details of the camp, but we know she survives to write this memoir. And (spoiler) so does Magda. The year after their liberation is almost as traumatic as being in the camp and it is information that is not as densely covered in other books and movies, so especially interesting.

This young adult edition of the author’s memoir “The Choice” earned a Young Adult Notable Book from the Association of Jewish Libraries.

“The Bletchley Riddle” by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin

January 26, 2025 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

In the summer of 1940, just as the World War II blitz is about to begin, Jacob Novis, 19, and his sister Lizzie, 14, are living in London in “The Bletchley Riddle” (Viking 2024) by two literary masters, Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin. Both teens love puzzles and riddles and there are many to solve in this page-turning historical fiction.

The first of two narrators, Jacob, a brainy mathematics student, has been recruited by the British code-breaking center, tasked with breaking the Nazi Enigma cipher.

We first see the indomitable Lizzie, setting out to her wealthy grandmother’s house in Cleveland, Ohio, where she’ll be safe. But she slips her chaperone, Mr. Fleetwood, and finds her way to Bletchley Park, north of London, and to her brother Jacob. Once Lizzie arrives at the mysterious Bletchley Park, she is sworn to secrecy by a high-ranking government official—but secrecy of what? She doesn’t even know what Jacob is doing.

Lizzie aims to solve the mystery of her missing mother, an American widow, once married to a British code-breaker of WWI, who had been working at London’s American Embassy. Their mum disappeared during a German bombing raid, while helping to disassemble the American Embassy in Poland. The children are told their mother, Willa, was killed. Jacob believes it. The Germans are closing in on Britain and tension is rising. Some members of the British government suspect that Willa was an enemy spy. Lizzie feels that Mum is alive and of course could never be an enemy spy.

Against rules and orders, Lizzie, visits their London flat. The descriptions of war-torn London are vivid. “Military lorries rumble through the streets in a fog of exhaust.” First-aid supplies and water hoses are poised at the ready. “Fish-like blimps, each the size of a bus” hover above the city. Shops and houses are boarded up, sandbags lean against doors all along the streets of London. “Fire buckets are poised at the ready.” Newsboys are hawking newspapers. Directions to the nearest bomb shelters abound, but street signs are missing or disguised to deter the enemy if he should arrive on foot. London is poised to hide in the dark.

And Lizzie is in the city, in part, to get some clothes and boots from their flat. While searching the wardrobe, she stumbles across loose boards and finds a small notebook belonging to their mother. Certainly, there are clues in it. Tension mounts, both in the story and in London.

Real life figures are sprinkled throughout. The real mastermind, Alan Turing, who devised techniques to help break the German ciphers. He’s also known to have converted his wages into silver bars and buried them to uncover after the war. Dilly Knox is in Cottage Three making breakthroughs with the Polish bomba system. Lizzie has entry to the American Embassy, due to her parents’ connections, and there she finds Ambassador Joseph Kennedy.

For a fascinated reader, this book could be paired with Candace Fleming’s remarkable nonfiction The Enigma Girls, (reviewed June 16). What a fascinating era of history!

“Wild Dreamers” by Margarita Engle

December 8, 2024 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

In Margarita Engle’s stunning novel-in-verse, “Wild Dreamers” (Atheneum 2024), Leandro speaks first: “My family fled Cuba/on a lashed-together jumble/of inner tubes, balsa wood, and fear/exactly ten years ago, when I had just learned/ how to read, and all I craved were tales/ of adventure.” But his father drowns on their way to Florida. Now Leandro is frightened of water and struggles with panic attacks.

The other main voice, Ana, also seventeen, is unhoused, living with her mother out of their car, and hiding from her father who is wanted by the FBI. The two teens meet at a California wilderness park, not far from where they live, and spot a pregnant puma. The teens share an immediate magical connection in part because they’re both drawn to both animals and science.

The third voice is Cielo, a blue merle puppy who was a stowaway on Leandro’s raft ten years prior. Cielo says: “I hum a song/ into his hand/ until he understands…” Cielo is telling Leandro to be still before he faints and avoid the worst of a panic attack. Cielo knows that Leandro and Ana are “scent mates,” and the “singing” dog acts as their matchmaker, delivering a thread of wisdom to the new lovers and to the reader, throughout the book.

Leandro’s uncle is a champion athlete who surfed from Cuba to Florida and who now owns Dulce’s Cuban Bakery, where Leandro works, as well as a plant nursery. Ana’s mother gets a job at the plant nursery which includes quarters for Mother and daughter.

The pregnant puma shows up one night at the plant nursery, which is both frightening and invigorating. Should Ana feed the hungry puma or alert the scientists? She knows she’s not supposed to feed wild animals. It’s ultimately dangerous for the puma, but she’s emaciated. And still pregnant.

The two teens start a rewilding club at their school, working with scientists. They pledge to build wildlife crossings so wild pumas and other animals will be able to cross the highway more safely, increase their areas of habitat, and be able to search for each other. Both teens become immersed in wildlife biology and work.

This National Book Award long listed offers wisdom about immigration, wildlife, homelessness, and romance. If you know a reader who is interested in even one of these topics, get this book into their hands.

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning books: Lift As You Climb; Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue all signed and for sale at Jane Addams bookstore. Her forthcoming books are about women’s suffrage, Martha Graham, and Ella Fitzgerald, as well as waterfowl. talesforallages.com

“Buffalo Dreamer” by Violet Duncan

November 17, 2024 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

Twelve-year-old Summer is on her way, driving, from Arizona to Canada, with her mother and little brother to visit her mother’s people on the Cree Reservation in “Buffalo Dreamer” (Nancy Paulsen 2024) by Violet Duncan. They do this every summer, and her Apache father will join them soon.

Before they arrive at her grandparents’ home on the Northern Alberta Cree Rez, Summer falls asleep. The next short chapter sounds like a different voice, an historic voice, another twelve- year-old girl who is running away when a blizzard starts up. She doesn’t want to be punished and thrown in the isolation bin, but someone named Ann has disappeared. The girl knows that Ann never would have left without her. We’ll eventually discover that this is Summer’s dream.

We return to contemporary times. Summer is hugging her cousin Autumn, and all her aunties and her grandparents are crowding around the newly arrived family. Soon, Summer will ride her horse Luna, a gift from her grandfather, Mosom. But first, this warm supportive family will eat a meal together outside.

Together the family witness trucks headed for the old deserted residential school. Summer doesn’t know much, but she knows that Mosom was kidnapped and forced to attend that residential school, starting at the age of five. He had a sister, but she was in the girl’s quarters, and he never saw her again once they’d arrived at the school.

Because Autumn wants to become a detective, the girls eavesdrop outside the kitchen where the aunties are talking. The women are discussing the graves of girls found at the old residential school. Summer and Autumn are aware that graves of children are being discovered at old residential schools throughout Canada and the northern United States, and it’s disturbing to them. The aunties discover the listening girls and instead of punishing them, draw them into the conversation, having decided they’re old enough to know about their Indian history.

Auntie Crystal says, “You know those schools were created to make kids forget about their own culture so that they could be assimilated into the dominant white culture, right?” Summer and Autumn want to talk to Mosom about his experience, but he never talks about it, so they must be sensitive and wait for the right moment.

The girls ride their horses out to where Summer’s mother and brother are picking sweetgrass. Uncle has given Summer a tuft of tobacco to give back to the Earth in exchange. The women and children braid the sweetgrass so they can give these as offerings to the Earth or light them to smudge their homes thereby cleansing them of bad energy.

When Summer has more dreams, her mother hears her speaking a Cree phrase in her sleep, but Summer doesn’t speak Cree. Then she dreams about a Buffalo.

The girls dance at a powwow, and we learn the history of the jingle dance. The community creates a commemorative event at the gravesite of the residential school and we learn why Summer is dreaming about the Buffalo Dreamer. And it is beautiful. Grandfather Mosom calls his former classmates, “fellow survivors” and he tells the girls stories from his life.

I wanted a book like this when I was twelve but nothing like it existed. I love learning the history—and even more, the culture—of Native Peoples in books such as this, which is on the long list of the National Book Award for Young People. It’s a great quick read, at only 100 pages. Put it in the hands of a young reader.