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Leaving Gee’s Bend by Irene Latham

Nov4

1932. Ludelphia Bennett is ten years old, and she’s never set foot outside of Gee’s Bend, her small town tucked into a bend in the Alabama RIver. Ludelphia is blind in one eye, the result of a childhood accident, and she can’t swim. She’s never been on the ferry that crosses the river over into the village of Camden. No one in her family has ever seen a real doctor.

So when Ludelphia’s mama gets very sick after the birth of new baby sister, Rose, and Ludelphia’s friend, Etta Mae, recommends that Ludelphia fetch the doctor from Camden, the town across the river, it takes all the determination and bravery and quilting that Ludelphia can summon up to sustain her in her journey. That’s right, quilting. Stitching. Ludelphia sews on her patchwork quilt to tell her story, to calm her nerves, and to hold her world together.

The dialog in the book has just enough dialect to catch the flavor of the south in the 1930’s. And crazy Mrs. Cobb is a villain just scary enough for a middle grade book, and still not absolutely horrifying. The story itself twist and turns, but resolves in satisfying way as Ludelphia learns something about the world outside of Gee’s Bend and returns with not only help for her mama, but help for the whole town. And the ending is not an unrealistic solution to everything, just a way through for Ludelphia and her family to go on with their lives.

I started again with the needle. Mama always said you should live a life the same way you piece a quilt. That you was in charge of where you put the pieces. You was the one to decide how your story turns out.
Well, it seemed to me some of them pieces had a mind of their own.

I reckon when you grow up in one place you just naturally think every other place is the same as your home. I reckon it takes leaving to appreciate all the things about that place that make it special.
Dear Lord, I did want to go home.

Other takes:
Maw’s Books: “I enjoyed learning more about this real town of Gee’s Bend which is steeped in quilting history and was the inspiration for this novel. The book felt a bit slow near the beginning of the book but once Ludelphia began her journey, everything began to move along and I was fully invested in her story.”

Megan at Leafing Through Life: “Lu will meet both good and evil people and hopefully emerge on the other side with a better story for her quilt than she could have ever imagined. Drawing inspiration from the real Gee’s Bend’s rich quilting history, Irene Latham has crafted a beautiful story of her own. Leaving Gee’s Bend is a coming of age story set in a vividly drawn 1930s sharecropping community.”

Hope is the Word: “Irene Latham is not only a master at using dialect very unobtrusively, she also has a talent for figurative language. Again, Ludelphia’s voice is unforgettable.”

An interview with Irene Latham at Cynsations.

Leaving Gee’s Bend has been nominated for the 2010 Cybils Awards in the Middle Grade Fiction category.

The Other Half of My Heart by Sundee Frazier

Nov3

Mama was always pointing out that of the millions of genes that made them all human, only seven or eight told their skin what color to be. A minuscule amount, she said. A very small difference.
So that was what Minni chose to believe, even though somewhere deep inside her brain, in a little drawer she rarely let herself open, lived the concern that the difference she’d been assured didn’t matter actually mattered a lot. That what she’d been told was small might be enormous. Not here, with her family in the sky. Never here. But somewhere. Maybe even everywhere except here.

Minna, actually Minerva Lunette, is the light-skinned twin, and her sister Keira Sol got the dark-skinned genes of her African American mother. Hardly anyone can believe that red-headed, fair-complexioned, blue-eyed Minna and kinky-haired, brown-skinned, brown-eyed Keira are twins, born in an airplane on the same day from the same mama.

This middle grade novel is a beautifully written exploration of race, racism, biracial identity, and what it means to be black in particular. “There are many ways to be black,” says Minna’s mama, and yet Minna wonders if she can really be black in her soul if her skin is pale and freckled. And Keira wonders if her twin sister secretly, deep down inside thinks she’s better because her skin color is lighter.

Lots of wondering and identity searching and hidden emotional undercurrents and minefields fill this book. It’s not easy being biracial in a society that places so much importance and emphasis on skin color. And it’s especially not easy when everyone around you —black, white, even your own grandmother–judges people and responds to situations in terms of race rather than inner character.

Sundee Frazier, the author of The Other Half of My Heart, is biracial herself, so she knows whereof she writes. The story is told from the point of view of Minna, the light-skinned twin, partly because it’s Minna who experiences the most confusion about her racial identity as the twins visit their black grandmother in North Carolina. Maybe also we get Minna’s thoughts because Ms. Frazier is also fair-skinned, although with curly dark hair, she reflects the racial heritage of both of her parent, white and black.

I give the book lots of points for frankly discussing many of the ins and outs and complications of growing up as a person of mixed race. Is it OK to “pass” for white without saying anything when others are being discriminated against for their darker skin color? Do all light skinned people secretly think they are somehow better than darker skinned people? Can a person be black in her soul if she’s white on the outside? Can anyone ever understand what it’s like to be someone else or live inside someone else’s skin? If your mama’s black and your daddy’s white, what are you? Is there a place in our society, or can there be, where skin color truly doesn’t matter?

Examples of mixed race twins:
Two sets of black and white twins–in one family
Amazing twins.

Other takes on The Other Half of My Heart:
Great Kid Books: “In The Other Half of My Heart, Frazier raises questions about race, identity and inner strength, in a way that helps children think about these issues without giving them the answers.”

Sandra Stiles at The Musings of a Book Addict: “This is a story that shows the struggle of being accepted for who you are no matter what your color. It also show how strong the bonds between sisters and especially twins are.”

An interview with Sundee Frazier at Angelina Hansen’s blog.

The Other Half of My Heart has been nominated for the 2010 Cybils Awards in the Middle Grade Fiction category.

Crunch by Leslie Connor

Nov2

crunch: n. a crucial point or situation, typically one at which a decision with important consequences must be made.
a severe shortage of credit or money.

Or energy. A fuel shortage has stranded Dewey’s parents far away from home up north “almost in Canada” with their “eighteen foot box truck with a roll-up rear door.” No fuel available even for truckers with ration cards. Eighteen year old Lil is in charge of the family and the house, and fourteen year old Dewey is running The Bike Barn, a low-key bicycle repair shop that has become a hopping joint since the fuel crunch has put all the cars and trucks out of commission. Dewey has the help of his thirteen year old brother, Vince, who is an expert bike repairman, but the three older Marriss children also have responsibility for the twins, five year olds Angus and Eva.

Will they be able to keep up with all the business that’s coming their way since everybody needs a bicycle in good working condition?

When will Mom and Dad be able to come home?

Will The Bike Barn be next in the rash of thefts that has hit their small town, especially thefts of bicycles?

And what should they do about The Spive, Mr. Spivey next door who openly borrows (takes) their eggs, their grapes, the tools, and who knows what else?

The premise here was a little weak, but I didn’t care. In the book there’s absolutely no gasoline available, all over the country, but electricity still flows freely. Don’t they need fuel to produce electricity? Maybe it’s just down here in Texas that we use a lot of petroleum and natural gas to produce the electricity. I think that if there were no fuel at all for the trucks and cars, there would also be an electricity shortage. But you can correct me if I’m wrong.

Anyway, there’s no electricity shortage in Crunchworld. And the trains are still running. But the freeways are full of cyclists. And Dewey’s father’s bicycle repair shop is, as I said, doing a lot of business. One of the most interesting parts of this story was that it showed what’s involved in running a business. Like in the book Rocky Road, the young teen protagonist ends up running the family business, and Dewey, like Tess, is quite a capable business person. There are difficulties, but the difficulties are overcome with a combination of determination, hard work, and ingenuity. And they get by with a little help from friends.

Crunch follows what I think is a good formula for middle grade fiction (maybe for any fiction): put your characters in a crunch, a hard place. Squeeze them a little, and make it even harder. Then, let them figure out how to solve/resolve their own problems and live happily ever after. I definitely recommend Crunch, especially since it’s both boy and girl-friendly.

Other takes:
Welcome to My Tweendom: “Leslie Connor has written a mystery that has an interestingly timeless feel to it. Dewey and his brothers and sisters are all memorable characters, and having the parents stranded far away made for adventures with a more important feel. There is equal boy and girl appeal with mechanics of bicycles given as much room as character interactions.”

Angela Leeper at Book Page: “The Mariss family’s teamwork and quirky lifestyle make readers want to join along as they play, laugh and dine on clam chowder after a busy yet rewarding day on the farm.”

Ms. Yingling Reads: “This was fun in the way that The Boxcar Children was fun– there seems to be more scope for adventure when parents are not in the picture.”

Crunch has been nominated for the 2010 Cybils Awards in the Middle Grade Fiction category.

Rocky Road by Rose Kent

Nov2

“Ice cream warms the heart, no matter what the weather.” That’s the Dobson family motto. So it should make perfect sense for the Dobsons—Ma Delilah, craft-loving twelve year old Tess, and turtle-loving Jordan–to open an ice cream shop in Schenectady, New York. Except they live in San Antonio. And they have no money, other than an emergency fund that’s only for, well, emergencies. And their old broken down car has no heater. And Delilah, who has wonderful, stupendous, fantastic ideas also deals with something that Tess calls “Shooting Stars.” Delilah goes full bore with boundless energy and endless schemes until she crashes so hard that she can’t even get out of bed. And Tess is left to pick up the pieces.

I enjoyed the characters in this story:

Tess, who loves her mom but is tired of get-rich-quick schemes and spending sprees that only end in disaster. Tess also loves her little brother Jordan, sewing and decorating and all sorts of crafts, and Rocky Road ice cream.

Delilah, whose “Bible” is The Inside Scoop, a manual on how to open a successful ice cream shop. Delilah knows she has mood swings, but she won’t go to a doctor because she doesn’t want those people trying to get inside her head and she can’t afford medical treatment anyway.

Senior Chief Petty Officer Fred Morrow, retired U.S. Navy who has a crusty exterior, an artificial leg, and a heart of gold.

Jordan, who’s hearing-impaired and loves turtles and sometimes throws tantrums when he has a hard time communicating.

Winnie, a loving senior citizen and retired nurse who sings with a group called THe Salty Old Dogs.

Gabby, Tess’s new friend who’s into peer mediation and vegetarianism and peaceful resolution to conflict and Chinese astrology.

So, the characters were fun, and the details on how to start and publicize and run a business were good to read. But the parts about Mom’s bipolar woes felt just a little forced, like an ABC Afterschool Special with a theme. Rocky Road, although it was a cute story, sometimes felt like a lesson in how to deal with a deaf little brother and a bipolar mom who’s running your family into poverty. Maybe it wouldn’t read that way to you at all.

By the way, every one of my children who saw the book lying on my bed pointed out to me, separately and without being asked, that Rocky Road ice cream is NOT pink. Why, they asked, is it called Rocky Road with strawberry ice cream pictured on the front? Children are very literal.

Other takes:
A Year of Reading: “I love the way that Rose Kent combines something as fun as ice cream with difficult life issues. A great combination that works well.”

Melissa at Book Nut: “The conflict is all with Tess and her mother; Tess feels so much older than her twelve years, mostly because her mother — due to an eventual diagnosis of bipolar disorder — is so unreliable. And the whole crazy mother thing is often so overdone. But in this case it worked . . .”

Rocky Road has been nominated for the 2010 Cybils Awards in the Middle Grade Fiction category.

Briefly Noted: Cybils Nominees

Oct27

Max Cassidy: Escape from Shadow Island by Paul Adam. Set in England and in the fictional Central American nation of Santo Domingo, this thriller/detective story features fourteen year old escapologist Max Cassidy. Max is a typical fourteen year old, except that he performs Houdini-like feats of escape and magic and he’s determined to effect his mother’s release from prison where she is being held for the murder of his father. Is Max’s father really dead? Can Max prove that his mother is innocent? Will ma be able to escape from notorious Shadow Island? This one skews older; maybe 12-15 year olds will enjoy it. The book starts off with a murder, and although it’s not very scary, it would make a good introduction to the crime fiction genre. Unfortunately, this book is one of those beginning-of-a-series books, and I can’t tell when the second book will be published.
The Max Cassidy Fact File.

Grease Town by Ann Towell. O Canada! This entry from our neighbors to the north confused me at first. Because of the photo on the cover, I thought the narrator, Titus Sullivan and his brother Lemuel, were black. But it turns out that Titus and Lemuel are white Canadians living at the time of the U.S. Civil War, and when they go to Oil Springs, Ontario to work in the oil fields, Titus meets a black boy named Moses. The two become friends, but not everyone in Oil Springs is pleased about living and working side by side with black people, most of whom are former slaves from the United States. Titus is a talkative young man and a brave one, but when tragedy strikes, it takes Titus’s voice away and threatens to take his courage and his reason, too. This one would pair well with Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis, also about escaped slaves living in Canada. (Semicolon review here)

My Life as a Book by Janet Tashjan. Kind of a Wimpy Kid wannabe. Derek is looking forward to a summer with no school and lots of fun, but his teacher is forcing him to do summer reading! I give the book points for not having Derek predictably and magically turn into a book lover as he struggles to complete his summer reading assignment, and the mystery subplot is interesting, even if the solution is somewhat unsurprising. Reluctant readers who have read all of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series might find this one an acceptable follow-up.

The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet by Erin Dionne. Hamlet Kennedy’s family loves Shakespeare. Her parents teach Shakespeare at the local college, dress up like Elizabethans, live Shakespeare, breathe Shakespeare. Hamlet, despite her name, is not so passionate about Shakespeare. Then, when her little sister Desdemona the seven year old genius, joins Hamlet in middle school, Hamlet realizes that her life is about to become a total tragedy.
I would have expected to love this one since I’m something of a Shakespeare geek myself, but I just liked it. Hamlet’s woes fall fall short of tragedy, but her reaction to the embarrassment of having a family that’s far from average seems typically middle school-ish. Maybe that’s what left me a little cold; I’d prefer a character who’s not afraid to be different.

The Death-Defying Pepper Roux by Geraldine McCaughrean

Oct27

One of the oddest children’s books I’ve ever read. The story isn’t a fantasy, but it is fantastical. Pepper Roux, age fourteen, isn’t exactly a hero or an anti-hero, but some Gilbert and Sullivan-esque admixture of Don Quixote, The Great Imposter, and Tom Jones.

On the morning of his fourteenth birthday, Pepper had been awake for fully two minutes before realizing it was the day he must die. His heart cannoned like a billiard ball off some soft green wall of his innards This had to be the day everyone had been waiting for–and he was terrified he would disappoint them, make a poor showing, let people down.
************
It was all Aunt Mireille’s fault. Unmarried Aunt Mireille lodged with her married sister. So when Madame Roux gave birth to a lovely little boy, Aunt Mireille was first to be introduced. Leaning over the cot, she sucked on her big yellow teeth and said, with a tremor in her voice, “To think he’ll be dead by fourteen, le pauvre. . . Saint Constance told me so in a dream last night.”

When Pepper runs away and evades his predicted demise, he never questions Auntie Mireille’s prophecy, just assumes that he’s managed to outrun and trick Death for a while. Pepper “dies” many times and resurrects himself in a a series of new identities, everything from meat cutter to telegraph boy to horse tamer (not to mention ship’s captain and newspaper reporter). And still Aunt Mireille and Saint Constance hover over his lives like Nemesis, and Pepper involves himself in more and more misadventures until his time finally runs out in the belfry of the Constance Tower.

The Death-Defying Pepper Roux is a picaresque novel of an over-protected, innocent, yet fear-filled boy who somehow manages to navigate the world and defy death and despair. It’s strange enough, even bizarre, that I don’t what children will make of it. Will they be delighted by Pepper’s outlandish death-defying adventures or just confused? Ms. McCaughrean does bring all the threads of the story together at the end in a masterful way, tying up the loose threads, and making some sense of the seemingly unconnected plot lines in a satisfying way.

But it’s still an eccentric, weird, oddball, wacky, offbeat story. If you’re up for the peculiar and the picaresque, you may enjoy the ride. (Yes, I must credit my trusty thesaurus for the adjectives in that penultimate sentence. Thank goodness for thesauruses.)

The Death-Defying Pepper Roux has been nominated for the 2010 Cybils Awards in the Middle Grade Fiction category.

A Million Shades of Gray by Cynthia Kadohata

Oct25

It’s 1975, and Y’Tin Eban, a thirteen year old Rhade boy living in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam, is the youngest elephant keeper ever in his village. He plans someday to open the first elephant-training school in Vietnam. He has promised his elephant, Lady, that he will care for her all her life and mash up bananas for her when she’s old and has lost her teeth. Y’Tin has lots of ideas, lots of plans.

But when the North Vietnamese soldiers come to Y’Tin’s village, everything changes. The villagers run to the jungle. Some don’t make it. The North Vietnamese soldiers capture Y’Tin and some others; they burn the long houses in the village. Lady and the other two elephants that belong to Y’Tin’s village go off into the jungle, too. Everything is chaotic, and perhaps as the village shaman said, the story of the Rhade people is coming to an end. At least it’s obvious that the Americans who left in 1973 will not be coming back to keep their promises to protect their allies, the Rhade.

The story of Y’Tin reminded me of Mitali Perkins’s Bamboo People, also published in 2010. Bamboo People takes place in Burma, not Vietnam, and its protagonist, Tu Reh, is member of the Karen tribe who is living in a Thai refugee camp because of the government vendetta against his people. However, both books take place in Southeast Asia, and in both stories boys must confront the realities of war and death and enemy soldiers who are determined to destroy their families and friends. Both Tu Reh and Y’Tin must decide whether to harbor bitterness and hatred or to try to forgive. Each boy must also determine what his place will be in this war that is his world, unchosen but also unavoidable.

I actually liked Bamboo People better; it seemed that the thoughts and decisions of Tu Reh and his friend/enemy Chiko were a little less foreign to me. Y’Tin’s elephant-love is way beyond my experience, and his worries about whether the spirits have cursed his village or not are strange and hard to identify with. Still, both books give insight into the difficult decisions associated with the ongoing conflicts in Southeast Asia, and both books vividly portray what it can be like for a boy to grow up and become a man in a war zone.

I would place A Million Shades of Gray in the Young Adult fiction section because of the stark and unnerving violence (massacre) that is a necessary part of the story, but the book has been nominated for a 2010 Cybils Award in the Middle Grade Fiction category.

Wishing for Tomorrow by Hilary McKay

Oct24

Ah, Ms. McKay! How many ways do I love thee and thy books?

I love the Cassons: Cadmium, Saffron, Indigo, and Permanent Rose and their strange but lovable parents Bill and Eve. And now you’ve given me a new/old set of characters to love: the young ladies left behind at Miss Minchin’s Select Seminary for Young Ladies. Left behind? Yes, back when Frances Hodgson Burnett first wrote Sara Crew, or The Little Princess, at the end of the book Sara took her friend Becky, the scullery maid with her when she went on to fame and fortune, but she left several other young ladies, her friends, under Miss Minchin’s dubious care. Hilary Mckay in Wishing for Tomorrow gives readers the story of plain, plodding Ermengarde, mischief-making Lottie, scholarly Lavinia, sister Amelia, and poor Miss Minchin herself.

Poor Miss Minchin? Yes, Hilary McKay is such a capable author that she manages to make us even feel some sympathy for Miss Minchin, the erstwhile villain of the piece. You see, Miss Minchin was a misunderstood Victorian girl who really wanted to learn and go to university as her brothers did, but her ambitions were thwarted by Victorian standards for female behavior and education. So she became the Miss Maria Minchin who made Sara Crewe into a maid and practically starved her when Miss Minchin realized that Sara had no money.

Well, I almost felt sorry for Miss Minchin. After all, Maria Minchin loves Shakespeare! How could she be all bad? And Miss Amelai Minchin just wants to marry the curate. And Ermengarde St. John just wants Sara to come back and be her best friend. And Lavinia just wants to learn, well, everything. And lovely Jessie just wants to do girl stuff like shopping for dresses and curling her hair and making eyes at the boy next door. And Lottie just wants to have fun and have someone else do her sums for her.

Oh, my, I learn from her website that Ms. McKay has other series of books that I’ve never even seen! Has anyone read any books by Hilary McKay besides the Casson family series? Are her other books as good as these? Ooooh, there’s also a new (and final) Casson family book due out next year called Caddy’s World. Thank you, thank you, Hilary McKay. (What’s this? It may not be published in the U.S.? Not good.)

Wishing for Tomorrow lives up to the McKay/Burnett brand name. If you’re a fan of Sara Crewe reading this sequel is a must. If you’ve never read A Little Princess, you should do so immediately so that you can enjoy Wishing for Tomorrow to the fullest.

Wishing for Tomorrow has been nominated for the 2010 Cybils Awards in the Middle Grade Fiction category.

The Private Thoughts of Ameila E. Rye by Bonnie Shimko

Oct21

If I don’t much like spending time with the characters in a novel, especially the narrator, it’s hard to summon up enough interest in the plot and the writing to finish the book. Ms. Amelia warns her readers at the beginning of her “personal memoir” that the book is private and that she’s not a goody two-shoes, but rather a liar and a user of bad language. So enter at your own risk.

Actually, the lying and the cursing were mild and not nearly as off-putting as the title of the first chapter: “My mother tried to kill me before I was born. Even then I disappointed her.” The author proceeds to spend the first nine tenths of the book making us hate Amelia’s mother who is racist, hypocritical, cruel, neglectful, and cold-hearted. Then at the very end we’re supposed to have a change of heart, along with Amelia, and understand that Mrs. Rye “really did love [Amelia]. She just didn’t know how to show it.”

Sorry, I’m not buying. Amelia isn’t the most lovable child I’ve ever met between the pages of a book, but at least I could make excuses for her. Her father deserted her, and her mother “took a flying leap out the window” when she found out she was pregnant with Amelia. So it’s a wonder Amelia turned out as well as she did.

The chapters in this book are somewhat episodic. The first gives some family history, and the others tell stories of how Amelia’s mother mistreats her daughter or how Amelia makes a friend or how Amelia’s jailbird brother returns home. If there’s an overarching theme it comes in the form of a platitude given to Amelia by her grandfather (before he has a stroke that makes him unable to communicate): “All a person needs in life is one true friend.”

True enough. However, the nice people in this book are not very interesting, and the mean people are just too mean for me to want to spend time understanding them. If a child had good parents and read this book, it might make him thankful for what he’s got. If a child had bad or absent parents and read this book, it might make her want to burn the book for suggesting that a mother as cruel as Amelia’s had redeeming features–even if she does.

Not my cup of tea.

The Private Thoughts of Amelia E. Rye has been nominated for the 2010 Cybils Awards in the Middle Grade Fiction category.

8th Grade Super Zero by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich

Oct18

Wow! Talk about Christian faith-driven, faith-drenched young adult fiction, this book is full of God-talk and Biblical references and church and kids trying to work out their beliefs and suit their actions to those beliefs. And it’s published by Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic. Go Scholastic!

Faith and Christianity and church shouldn’t be the last taboo subjects in young adult literature. More than half of all Americans, including teenagers, are members of a religious body, mostly Christian churches of some kind, and about forty percent of all Americans say they attend religious services regularly. Why should this fact not be regularly portrayed and discussed in young adult fiction and nonfiction? 8th Grade Super Zero, with its African-American protagonist who goes to church and struggles with the application of his faith to daily life, should not be the exception to the rule, but it is. I can name the YA books from mainstream publishers that I’ve read this year that discuss or at least mention faith, and especially those that portray such faith in God sympathetically:

Saving Maddie by Varian Johnson.
Somebody to Listen To by Suzanne Supplee. Semicolon review here.
Finding My Place by Traci L. Jones. Semicolon review here.
Hush by Eishes Chayill. Semicolon review here.
Bamboo People by Mitali Perkins. Semicolon review here.
The Long Way Home by Andrew Klavan. Semicolon review here
The Last Summer of the Death Warriors by Francisco X. Stork. Semicolon review here.
This Gorgeous Game by Donna Freitas.

That’s about a third of the YA novels I’ve read this year, and as a percentage of YA novels that discuss faith respectfully it’s probably way high since I tend to seek out and review these types of novels. So, 8th Grade Super Zero is a welcome addition to the corpus of faith-driven literature for young adults published by mainstream publishers.

Reggie McKnight sees himself as a loser. His nickname is Pukey because he embarrassed himself on the first day of eighth grade by, well, puking on stage in front of the entire student body at Clarke Junior School. Clarke Junior is a “smart kids’ school that supposed to have high standards.” As the year progresses, Reggie’s youth group at church becomes involved in ministry at a homeless shelter in their neighborhood, and Reggie finds himself “accidentally” running for class president. The story is about getting past the cliches of community service and Christian living to find a way to really help the homeless people in the shelter and really lead his Reggie’s peers to make a difference in the community and in the way they treat each other at school.

In the Acknowledgements section at the back of the book, Ms. Rhuday-Perkovich names several people who helped her write this book. Among others, she thanks “my dear friend, Pauls, whose boundless love and generosity of spirit is everlasting, and Madeleine for the perfect writing advice.” That would be Paula Danziger and Madeleine L’Engle, two writers with whom Ms. Rhuday-Perkovich “studied writing as an adult.” I am green with envy, and I’m not even a (novel) writer, so what would I have studied if I had had a chance to meet Madeleine L’Engle before she died? Anyway, now I know one reason Reggie’s faith in God is treated so respectfully and is so thoroughly explored.

Not that Reggie has it all figured out. In fact, he’s not sure why God allows suffering and war and homelessness, and he’s not sure how to trust a God who does allow those things to happen. And he says he has “questions all the time.” Reggie’s youth group leader, Dave encourages him to continue to ask questions and act on the things he does understand and do what he can to help make the world better in small ways. Good advice for all of us, and it doesn’t come across in the book as preachy or patronizing. In fact, the entire book is full of faith lessons that don’t read like lessons. The story just reads like life.

And that’s a pretty good compliment to a well written story.

8th Grade Super Zero has been nominated for the 2010 Cybils Awards in the Young Adult Fiction category.