The Summer of Broken Things by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Aug13

I can’t really talk about this book without spoilers, so be warned. This review will reveal at least some of the secrets that the book itself reveals slowly and carefully.

I also don’t believe in surrogacy, which is what the book is about in the final analysis. Surrogate mothers, hired wombs, remind me of Hagar, Abraham’s concubine, and of Rachel’s and Leah’s maidservants having children for Rachel and Leah and Jacob. It was a bad idea then, and it remains a procedure fraught with pitfalls and possible physical and psychological harm to both the surrogate mother and to the “recipients’ of the fruit of her womb. I think The Summer of Broken Things is meant to paint a sympathetic picture of both the woman who chooses to become a surrogate and the parents, father and mother, who benefit from or take advantage of the surrogate mother’s ability to carry a pregnancy to term. However, coming from my own place of conviction about this practice, I found myself reading the book as a cautionary tale. Finding out about one’s birth story as a teenager and finding that that birth story includes surrogacy is a difficult and perhaps mind-shattering discovery.

So, to return to the beginning of the book, Avery’s father is taking her to Spain for the summer. Many things about this trip of a lifetime seem a little off: Avery doesn’t want to go. She would rather spend the summer at soccer camp. Avery’s mother is acting strangely about the trip. Avery’s dad hires a paid companion for Avery, a girl named Kayla whom Avery knows, but not well. Kayla and Avery have very little in common. Avery is rich; Kayla is poor. Avery is a city girl and well-traveled; Kayla is from a small town, and she’s never travelled. Avery is spoiled and entitled; Kayla is altruistic and self-effacing.

Margaret Peterson Haddix’s books are a bit hit or miss with me. I read her Shadow Children series several years ago, and although it became somewhat repetitious around about the third or fourth book in the series, I liked the premise very much. I enjoyed The Shadow Children series, The Missing series, and her stand alone novels such as Leaving Fishers or Double Identity. However, her Under Their Skin series about robots and artificial intelligence was poorly written, unbelievable, and ridiculous. Even in the books that I liked, her characters tend to edge towards the borders of stock and predictable. Avery and Kayla are interesting characters, and there is some growth in each of them as they confront the secrets from their shared past.

I would recommend the book for teens who like to think about current ethical issues and family dynamics. It’s a decent story, but not great or enduring.

Hardscrabble by Sandra Dallas

Aug11

Hardscrabble takes place in 1910 in Colorado, and it would be an excellent book for Colorado/New Mexico/Kansas children to read when they are learning about their state’s history. This story of a family who leave their home in Iowa to prove up a homestead in Colorado has a Little House on the Prairie feel to it, but it’s about dry land farming and the “hardscrabble” of making a home in the barren but beautiful western prairie.

The Martin family move to Mingo, Colorado after losing their farm in Iowa. Since the only thing that twelve year old Belle’s father know how to do is farm, their options are limited. Belle’s mother wants her to get an education, and Belle’s sister, Carrie, is determined to finish her education and become a teacher someday. Belle herself isn’t much interested in school, but she does like to tell, write, and listen to stories. In the book, Belle tells the story of what happened to her large family as they came to Colorado and tried to tame the land and make a go of farming.

For those who are sensitive to such things, there are themes of death and courtship in the book. Both are handled tastefully but honestly. Death was a reality on the frontier, and there were not so many ways to avoid and paper over the subject as there are nowadays. Remarriage and the difficulty of finding a mate in a sparsely settled territory were also real issues. I especially liked the idea of a single woman homesteader who is a major character in the book. I hope this really happened as much as the book indicates that it did.

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This book may be nominated for a Cybils Award, but the views expressed here are strictly my own and do not reflect or determine the judging panel’s opinions.

Walking to Listen by Andrew Forsthoefel

Aug10

Walking to Listen: 4000 Miles Across America, One Story at a Time by Andrew Forsthoefel.

I’m a sucker for books like this one: reading projects, walking projects, Humans of New York, year-long projects. In fact, I once wrote a post about projects and “project books” that I have read and would like to read. It seems to me as if a BIG PROJECT like Mr. Forsthoefel’s must bring with it wisdom and clarity in some way.

And I guess Andrew Forsthoefel felt the same way. After graduating from Middlebury College, he didn’t know what to do with the rest of his life. So he sought counsel by walking across the country, carrying a sign that said “Walking to Listen.”

“Life is fast, and I’ve found it’s easy to confuse the miraculous for the mundane, so I’m slowing down, way down, in order to give my full presence to the extraordinary that infuses each moment and resides in every one of us.”

Mr. Forsthoefel’s literary gurus were Walt Whitman and Rainer Maria Rilke, not the ones I would have chosen, but not all bad either. His counselors along the way across the country include a cattle farmer, a family of Navaho women, artists, and lots of just regular people. He thinks a lot about death and life, mostly death, and he never does come to any kind of unifying theory of life that ties his journey together. I guess I wanted some kind of epiphany or conversion or eureka! moment, and that never happened.

My favorite walk-across-america books are Peter Jenkins’ A Walk Across America and The Walk West. I’ve never read William Least Heat-Moon’s best-selling Blue Highways, partly because I thought the New Age-y-ness of it would annoy me. The meandering existentialism of Walking to Listen was sometimes a little too much for me, too, but I would recommend this book for anyone who enjoys the project story genre. It’s as much about pushing through, endurance, and completing the project as it is about the people he meets along the way, which is to say it’s a lot more about the author than it is about the people he supposedly listens to. A Walk Across America is a much better story.

Eloquent Crusader: Ernestine Rose by Yuri Suhl

Jul31

I’ve heard of Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cody Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and even Reverend Antoinette Brown, but Ernestine Rose, Polish Jewish American crusader for women’s rights and for the abolition of slavery, was a new name in my personal pantheon of suffragettes and women’s rights pioneers. The story of her life is amazing, but rather sad in the end, because she died alone, without God, without her beloved husband of many years, and without many friends or followers about her.

“One after the other her friends were passing away—Garrison, Lucretia Mott, Wendell Phillips, editor Horace Seaver. And in her saddened state she would say to her friends, ‘It is no longer necessary for me to live. I can do nothing now. But I have lived,’ she would add thoughtfully, ‘I have lived.'”

At age sixteen, Ernestine Potowska went to a Polish court to secure the return of her inheritance money. The money had been given as dowry to a suitor to whom her rabbi father promised Ernestine’s hand in marriage. When Ernestine refused to marry the man, he refused to return her property. So Ernestine went to court, acted as her own lawyer, and won the case. It was the first time in the history of the Polish court that a sixteen year old Jewish girl brought suit before Polish judges.

Then, in 1827, when she was seventeen, Ernestine left her village and home in Poland to go to Germany. She spent a couple of years in Berlin, then to Holland, to Belgium, to Paris, and to London. She supported herself by giving language lessons and by selling “perfumed papers” (a kind of air freshener, Ernestine’s own invention). All of this traveling and supporting oneself while doing so sounds almost unbelievable; the nineteenth century was not a time when independent, self-supporting women were a commonplace thing.

In England, Ernestine met her husband, William Rose, she also became a disciple of social reformer and philanthropist, Robert Owen. The Owenites were what came to be called utopian socialists; they believed that man’s environment was to blame for all the social ills in the world and that evil could be defeated by social reforms and good education. Robert Owen was a deist who broke with orthodox Christianity and developed a belief system of his own. At some point in her journeying and her intellectual pilgrimage, Ernestine, too, became a “free thinker” and remained so until her death, as far as anyone knows. Others called her an atheist and an infidel, and she never denied, but rather appropriated, the appellations.

Ernestine and William Rose were married in England and then emigrated to New York. As an American citizen, abolitionist, and women’s rights crusader, she did do many other courageous and outrageous things:

She made an anti-slavery speech in Charleston, West Virginia and almost didn’t make it out of town safely.

In support of a bill in the New York legislature, she produced the first petition ever introduced in favor of rights for women. The petition had only five signatures on it, in spite of many weeks of hard work by Ernestine, and the bill to secure the property rights of married women failed.

She spoke at the First National Convention of Infidels, and she was a frequent attendee at the annual Thomas Paine birthday celebration, a gathering for freethinkers and atheists and social reformers.

She also gave public lectures all over New England, New York, and the rest of the Eastern seacoast on the subjects of the abolition of slavery, women’s rights, women’s suffrage, and any other subject that grabbed her attention. She spoke without notes.

She said, “It is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are atheists and were religion not inculcated into their minds, they would remain so.”

And, “Do you tell me that the Bible is against our rights? Then I say that our claims do not rest upon a book written no one knows when, or by whom. Do you tell me what Paul or Peter says on the subject? Then again I reply that our claims do not rest on the opinions of any one, not even on those of Paul and Peter, . . . Books and opinions, no matter from whom they came, if they are in opposition to human rights, are nothing but dead letters.”

In short, she was eloquent, outspoken, persevering, unbelieving, and highly influential in the women’s suffrage movement, and I enjoyed reading and marveling at the story of her life, written by fellow Jewish Pole Yuri Suhl for the series of biographies for young people published by Julian Messner publishers.

The Dragon of Lonely Island by Rebecca Rupp

Jul30

Hannah, Zachary, and Sarah Emily are spending the summer at Great-Aunt Mehitabel’s house on Lonely Island. Only Great-Aunt Mehitabel is not home. She does send a note, however, encouraging the children to enjoy their stay and to explore Drake’s Hill when they have the opportunity. She also sends them a key to the mysterious Tower Room. Where is the Tower Room, and why is it locked? What will the children find when they hike to Drake’s Hill? And what could they learn by seeing the world’s through someone else’s eyes and someone else’s stories?

So the eponymous dragon is a three-headed dragon, one body with three separate personalities. And all three dragons have a story to tell, one for each of the children that suits his or her need for growth and wisdom for the summer. It’s not overtly preachy, but it is well-written with suitable lessons in character development for each of the children. The book reminded me of Grace Lin’s Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and Starry River of the Sky, except that I liked Rupp’s dragons-that-tell-stories better than I did Lin’s folklorish stories interspersed with a realistic narrative. I found Lin’s books confusing, even though they are award-winning and favorites with many readers. Maybe Rupp’s book appeals to a younger audience, say third and fourth grades, and maybe my mind is stuck there, too.

Anyway, there’s a sequel, The Return of the Dragon, and I’m looking forward to reading it as soon as I can get my hands on a copy. I looked up the author, Rebecca Rupp, and she has a PhD in cell biology. How does a person with a doctorate in cell biology end up writing children’s fantasy? Now, that would be an interesting story. Oh, she’s also a homeschooler and has written some books about homeschooling. From a National Geographic contributors bio:

Rebecca Rupp: “I prefer Mac to PC, fountain pens to ballpoints, vanilla to chocolate, and almost anything to lima beans. When not writing, I garden, bicycle, kayak, volunteer at the library, and sit on the back porch of our house in far northern Vermont and gaze longingly at Canada, particularly after listening to the evening news.”

The Six by K.B. Hoyle

Jul26

This first book in the Gateway Chronicles, a fantasy adventure series by author K.B. Hoyle, The Six definitely contains echoes of Narnia and Tolkien: a gateway to another world, gnomes, fairies, elves, talking animals (sort of), and war against The Shadow, to name just a few. But it’s a good story in its own right, not overly derivative and full of world-building detail and creativity that make the novel a delight to read.

Some of the more creative aspects and characters of the land of Alitheia:

A god-like being, Pateros, who incarnates as a huge bear or sometimes an eagle or sometimes a stag.

Narks, creatures with double personalities, one person in the daytime and another during the night.

A magical teacher whose cottage stays in one place while the door is able to be moved about to provide access wherever the bearer might go.

Silent, telepathic communication with animals.

Gifts of discernment, camouflage, and musical finding of lost things for the teenagers who travel to Alitheia. Oh, and a quill that prophesies.

Actually, there’s rather a motif of camouflage and hiding and keeping secrets and how that “gift” can be used for good or for evil. Also, the importance of honesty and trust and how trust can be broken is another theme that runs through the story. The Six are a group of six thirteen year olds who find themselves thrown together at a family summer camp. Their difficulties and successes in initiating and maintaining friendships among the group are another theme that weaves through the action in the novel.

Don’t be worried, however, that this book is all heavy philosophical themes and sermons. The action and plot elements are certainly adequate and intriguing enough to carry the reader along to the end. And I wanted more by the time I came to that end, so I’m looking forward to reading Ms. HOyle’s second book in the Gateway Chronicles series, The Oracle.

The Penderwicks at Last by Jeanne Birdsall

Jul5

This final installment in the Penderwick saga ends with a wedding, another wedding, and a hint at future wedding possibilities. The Penderwick clan gather back where it all started at Arundell from far and wide, Skye flying in from California, the others driving in from closer points east, west, north, and south. Jeffery is coming from Germany to manage the music for the wedding, and Cagney and his wife live on the premises at Arundell as caretakers. So all the old crew is back for this last hoorah—as well as some new characters.

Ten year old Lydia Penderwick, in the Penderwick tradition of the first four books about this family, is both innocent and precocious at the same time. Lydia, who loves to dance and who almost likes everybody she meets (with only a few exceptions), is a joy and a delight as she dances through the chaos of wedding preparations and a new friendship with Cagney’s daughter, Alice. The girls encounter spiders, ghosts, and the fearsome Mrs. Tifton—all with the same courage and adventurous spirit that made the other Penderwick children so much fun to read about in the other books in the series.

I must say that there were a couple of jarring notes to the whole book, which is mostly a paean to love and marriage and and family and friendship. Lydia’s friend, Alice, has a brother who spends most of the book in Canada, visiting relatives. Alice, however, is jealous of her brother’s trip to Canada and spends a great deal of time texting him competitive photos and challenges as to who is having the best summer vacation. I guess it’s realistic, but not as much fun as the feisty but good-natured family teasing and joking and encouraging that goes on between the Penderwick siblings. Then, Skye’s and Jane’s attitudes about marriage are aired, and I just wanted to tell them to grow up. Skye insists that “marriage is an outmoded social contract,” but her actions seem to belie her words. And Jane says she’s too busy becoming a novelist to think about marriage or boyfriends, as if one precludes the other. It all feels so twenty-first century and so-so feminist and liberated and pretentious. In a book that’s celebrating marriage, it’s out of place.

However, those are minor false notes in a book that’s mostly a lovely finale to the Penderwick symphony. If you haven’t read the first four books in the series, I would suggest that you begin at the beginning. You’ll appreciate it more that way. And if you enjoy the first book, do read through to the end of The Penderwicks at Last.

The other Penderwick books:
The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
The Penderwicks on Gardam Street
The Penderwicks at Point Mouette
The Penderwicks in Spring

Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book cover here to go to Amazon and buy something, I receive a very small percentage of the purchase price.
This book may be nominated for a Cybils Award, but the views expressed here are strictly my own and do not reflect or determine the judging panel’s opinions.

The Man Without a Country by Edward Everett Hale

Jul4

Despite the trite and oft-repeated slogan of “Make America Great Again” and the hoopla that attends our national political life every four years or so, it seems to me that there is a distinct lack of true patriotism (as opposed to jingoism) among a great Americans today. In fact, I find that many people in my generation and especially in my children’s generation are disdainful of and cynical about the United States of America. Love of one’s native country is something to be ashamed of, something to suppress if it is present in oneself, and something to criticize if it is found in others.

I wonder how many people have ever read Edward Everett Hale’s short story, The Man Without a Country. The version I re-read recently, a “first book edition” with illustrations by Leonard Fisher, is a reminder to those who are open to its message that love of country does not have to manifest as rabid nationalism, but rather, rightly ordered, a a deep but subordinate love of home, community, and family.

In the story Philip Nolan, a callow young army officer, is seduced into traitorous activities by none other than Alexander Hamilton’s famous nemesis, Aaron Burr. Burr comes to an Army post out west where young Philip is stationed and dazzles Nolan with his fascinating talk of a western Empire. Hale calls Burr a “gay deceiver” and his plans “the grand catastrophe.” Philip Nolan is caught up in the aftermath of that catastrophe and tried for treason. When asked at the end of his trial whether he wishes to say anything to show his loyalty to the United States, Philip Nolan makes the rash and fateful statement: “D–n the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again!”

The premise of the entire story is that the judge then sentences Philip Nolan to have his wish fulfilled. Nolan is made a prisoner to travel the world on U.S. Navy vessels, in comfort, but never to see or hear of the United States again. He becomes “The Man Without a Country.”

Of course, Nolan comes to regret his rash and thoughtless disavowal of his native land. And over the many years that Nolan spends on one ship after another, forgotten by his own country, but held in a sort of ongoing limbo, his caretakers come to pity Philip Nolan. He is treated kindly, lives a comfortable life, but the sentence of never having a home, never even hearing news of his former country, is a cruel and unusual punishment.

Surely our love of country is an intimation of the joy prepared for us in heaven someday. And as such, that love is to be cherished while never made into an idol. Philip Nolan on his deathbed tells a friend that he has a prayer marked in the Presbyterian prayer book, a prayer that he has prayed every day for the fifty-five years that he served his country-less sentence:

“For ourselves and our country, O gracious God, we thank Thee, that notwithstanding our manifest transgressions of Thy holy laws, Thous hast continued to us Thy marvelous kindness. . . Most heartily we beseech Thee with Thy favor to behold and bless Thy servant, the President of the United States, and all others in authority.”

And may God give us all a proper and appropriate love for our nation and for our community, and may we remember to pray a similar prayer to that of the fictional Man Without a Country, on this Independence Day and every day.

7 Joyful Tidings; or, Stuff to Be Glad About

Jun20

“[I]f God took the trouble to tell us eight hundred times to be glad and rejoice, He must want us to do it—–SOME.” ~Pollyanna by Eleanor Porter.

1) How Sunday School Sparked Revival in Egypt’s Oldest Church, from Christianity Today.

“We have been blown away by their care for the next generation. It takes two years of training to even teach a kindergartener.”

2) Even the writer of Ecclesiastes knew that not everything is meaningless:

3) The Things That Count by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Now, dear, it isn’t the bold things,
Great deeds of valour and might,
That count the most in the summing up of life at the end of the day.
But it is the doing of old things,
Small acts that are just and right;
And doing them over and over again, no matter what others say;
In smiling at fate, when you want to cry, and in keeping at work when you want to play—
Dear, those are the things that count.
And, dear, it isn’t the new ways
Where the wonder-seekers crowd
That lead us into the land of content, or help us to find our own.
But it is keeping to true ways,
Though the music is not so loud,
And there may be many a shadowed spot where we journey along alone;
In flinging a prayer at the face of fear, and in changing into a song a groan—
Dear, these are the things that count.
My dear, it isn’t the loud part
Of creeds that are pleasing to God,
Not the chant of a prayer, or the hum of a hymn, or a jubilant shout or song.
But it is the beautiful proud part
Of walking with feet faith-shod;
And in loving, loving, loving through all, no matter how things go wrong;
In trusting ever, though dark the day, and in keeping your hope when the way seems long—
Dear, these are the things that count.

4) Texas Builder Dan Phillips Turns Trash into Treasure

5) Some lovely old (new-to-me) books in my library:

6) Some relatively new books look as if they might be good news:

The Penderwicks at Last by Jeanne Birdsall (Knopf, May 2018) is said to be the fifth and final book in the Penderwicks series, and I have it in my reading queue. I’ve read good things about the finale, and I’m looking forward to reuniting with the Penderwicks and friends.

“Golden Hill by Francis Spufford (Scribner, 2017) is set in 1746 New York, pop. 7,000. When a young, handsome man hops off a boat from London with a promissory note for 1,000 pounds—a fortune in those days—locals whisper and conspire: Who’s he? A spy? Royalty? Con man? What results is a well-researched, comical, lyrical, action-packed story of wit-sparring lovers, local politics, Shakespeare, and mysteries.” —World magazine reporter Sophia Lee

The Lola Quartet by Emily St. John Mandel. Recommended by Ann Bogel at Modern Mrs. Darcy.

The Black Widow (Gabriel Allon Series Book 16) by Daniel Silva is recommended by both Marvin Olasky and Ann Bogel, so maybe I should read the first fifteen books in this series of spy novels, or should I just jump into this latest and greatest one?

7) Today I want to tell those that I love: be careful what stories you tell yourself. Be kind to yourself. Expect kindness from others. Give other people the benefit of the doubt. Don’t assume evil motives or hidden hostility.
Above all, TRUST in God’s love and concern for the person He created and sustains in you. You truly are His, redeemed, bought with a price, forgiven, renewed, the apple of His eye.

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

The Journey of Little Charlie by Christopher Paul Curtis

Jun19

This new historical fiction novel by Newbery Award-winning writer Christopher Paul Curtis started out to be another story about the lives of the fugitives who settled in Buxton, Canada, a haven for people who had escaped slavery in the southern United States just before the Civil War. As Mr. Curtis tells it, the genesis of the story was a newspaper cutting about the attempted kidnapping of a young African American boy from his home in Canada. The book was supposed to be about this boy and about a poor white boy named Charlie Bobo. Curtis writes: “I’d hoped to explore how much each was a product of his own environment and times, as well as try and analyze what goes into making a human being do something courageous.”

“But once I started pinning Little Charlie to the page, once I got to know his voice and personality, I knew this was his book. Sylvanus was going to have to wait.”

First of all, the negatives about this middle grade fiction book:

~The book is written in Little Charlie’s voice, and Charlie speaks Southern cracker: “Cap’n” instead of Captain, “com-fitting” instead of comfort, “scairt” instead of scared. The dialect helps give Charlie a personality and a distinctive point of view, but it could be distracting and difficult for younger readers. It was a bit distracting for me, until I got used to it.

~There is some mild cursing (he– and da–, mostly). It’s entirely in character for the people who do so to curse, and in fact there are very few curse words in the book, probably much fewer than would realistically be called for in these characters. However, they are there.

~The slave-catcher, Cap’n Buck, is an evil and violent man. And some of that evil and violence makes it into the book in fairly graphic descriptions of gun violence, mob violence, something called “cat-hauling”, and just general violent capture and mistreatment of people who have escaped from enslavement. It’s not gratuitous, nor is it described as graphically as it could have been, but it’s ugly.

The positives:

~The plot moves along well, and the story kept me absorbed. Although I rather expected everything to turn out well in the end, I wasn’t entirely sure if or how that would happen. The events in the story were believable to me, and Charlie was a

~Mr. Curtis is a good writer, and I did manage to get used to the dialect and the misspelled words used to indicate that dialect (turrible and chirren and rep-a-tation). It all sounded authentic in my head, and eventually it helped me to stay in the story and understand the characters.

~The evolution of Charlie’s character and attitudes was realistic as well as hopeful. Charlie doesn’t become a raging abolitionist, but he does begin to see that black people are people, too, just like him—or at least kind of like him. The book portrays the evils and the violence of the slave economy, but it also shows the “points of light” that eventually shone out to eradicate that evil.

Read this novel along with Curtis’s other Buxton novels, Elijah of Buxton and The Madman of Piney Woods, to get a rounded picture of the lives of ante-bellum African Americans, both enslaved and escaped from slavery. And in this third book about Buxton, get a snapshot of where the prejudiced and hateful attitudes and actions that sustained slavery for so long may have originated and how they were perpetuated.

Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book cover here to go to Amazon and buy something, I receive a very small percentage of the purchase price.
This book may be nominated for a Cybils Award, but the views expressed here are strictly my own and do not reflect or determine the judging panel’s opinions.