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The Reinvention of Edison Thomas by Jacqueline Houtman

Sep28

According to the author blurb, author Jacqueline Houtman “most enjoys writing sciency fiction for kids, where real science is integral to the story.” The Reinvention of Edison Thomas is certainly “sciency” in lots of ways. If you have kid who likes inventions and inventors, who is maybe a little geeky (in a good way, of course), who would enjoy reading about taking things apart and doing science to solve practical problems, Edison Thomas is the book.

Brief summary: Edison Thomas, Eddy, can understand lasers and eddy coils, but he doesn’t understand the actions and emotions of his fellow classmates in middle school. Eddy’s thought patterns and his limited abilities in social interaction are sometimes difficult and disconcerting to read about, but even when he is being bullied by the guy he thinks is his best friend, Eddy never loses sight of what is really important. He finds ways to make real friends and ways to use his talents in science and organization to help the community and to improve himself in the areas where he’s challenged.

I am somewhat fascinated by books that feature characters who are on the autism spectrum, but the real key to this book is the science. Eddy uses a lot of science principles to solve problems and help people. He’s quite an inventor, but reading people is hard for him. I was trying to think of other middle grade fiction books that feature science (not science fiction), but I’m coming up nearly blank.

There are the Einstein Anderson books by Seymour Simon, but all of those books are about ten or fifteen years old and probably dated.

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly from last year was full of biology and nature study.

Every Soul a Star by Wendy Mass had a lot of astronomy.

Lots of other books feature kids who like science, but there’s not much real science included as an integral part of the story.

What am I forgetting?

Saving Maddie by Varian Johnson

Sep24

Talk about mixed feelings—and mixed messages. Seventeen year old Joshua Wynn, the narrator of Saving Maddie, is a PK (preacher’s kid). He sings in the church choir, visits old folks in the nursing home, and presides over the church youth group. But he doesn’t really know what he believes or why he believes it. He knows the he shouldn’t use foul language, and he doesn’t, but why not? Joshua couldn’t tell you. He knows he should go to church and obey his parents. But he can’t say anything to support those beliefs, except quote you a Bible verse. He knows that premarital sex is wrong, but why? Joshua hasn’t a clue.

It’s not surprising, then, that when Joshua sets out to help his old friend Maddie “see the light” and come back to the faith, Joshua is the one who is most influenced and changed and pulled away from the shell of a moral code that he had at the beginning of the story. Joshua says at several points in the story that he thinks he can save Maddie. So his first mistake is that he thinks he is capable of “saving” someone; salvation in the Christian sense of the word is strictly God’s province. I don’t recall Joshua praying at all in the course of the story, although bad girl Maddie does pray before meals and say that she’s “spiritual but not religious.” Joshua is obviously a mixed up Pharisee with no moral core to his churchiness and no real relationship with Jesus Christ. He’s a good kid with no real reason to stay good. He and Maddie need authentic Christianity modeled for them, Christ made flesh in the lives of Christians, but all they get are platitudes, goodness for the sake of appearances, judgment, and confusing theology from their parents and other adults in their lives. And of course, all the kids they know are either “doing it” or at the very least see no reason why any sane person would remain sexually abstinent until marriage. So nowhere in the entire book does anyone give any coherent rationale for sexual purity.

That said, Joshua is a pretty good example of what our churches and Christian homes are turning out. I’m not sure my own teenagers could give a reasoned Biblical argument for sexual purity or articulate their own Christian beliefs in a way that would make sense to others with differing beliefs. (I’m not talking about converting others, but rather just knowing what you believe.) Sadly enough, I’m finding that you can lead a horse to water . . . Perhaps author Varian Johnson made his protagonist, Joshua, so clueless and ignorant because he saw that many if not most Christian young people from strong, faith-filled homes are in the same place as Joshua. If anyone is talking to them about not only what the Bible teaches but also why they should obey its strictures, they’re not buying. And many, many who have professed faith in Christ have never come to an intimate relationship with Jesus that makes them eager to please him and reluctant to disobey His words in Scripture. That relationship and faith walk are the only things that are sufficient to enable a young person (or an old person) to resist sexual temptation or any other kind of temptation.

So Saving Maddie is a picture of how the world is, without any pointers to how it could be or why it should be better. Maddie is a tragic figure who does need saving. So is Joshua. But by the end of the book they’re both still drowning. One could call this story of teenage confusion authentic, or perhaps it’s just sad.

Sidenote: I don’t want to start another cover controversy, but I really couldn’t figure out whether the characters in this novel were black or or not. Mr. Johnson is black. Certain things—the pastor’s name, the name of Joshua’s church, other minor details—led me to believe that the characters in the book were black. And Joshua mentioned Maddie’s “brown skin” at least a couple of times in the book. However, the girl on the cover of the book doesn’t look black or brown to me; she looks like a white model with some shadow on her skin. However, I found this interview where author Varian Johnson discusses this very issue, and as he says, I don’t suppose it really matters what skin color the characters have.

Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm

Sep24

Readalikes: Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, Soup by Robert Newton Peck, The Great Brain by John D. Fitzgerald, Flush by Carl Hiaassen.

Related Movies: The Goonies, Little Rascals, Annie, (NOT Shirley Temple).

Song: Mississippi Squirrel Revival

Key West, Florida, June, 1935.

Take one eleven year girl named Turtle with eyes as “gray as soot” who sees things exactly as they are. Plunk her down in Key West, Florida with her Aunt Minnie the Diaper Gang and a bunch of Conch (adj. native or resident of the Florida Keys) relatives and Conch cousins with nicknames like Pork Chop and Too Bad and Slow Poke. Leave her starry-eyed mama back in New Jersey keeping house for Mrs. Budnick who doesn’t like children and dreaming of being married to Archie, the encyclopedia salesman. Add in an ornery grandmother that Turtle didn’t know she had and a cat named Smokey and a dog named Termite.

All of that put together by author Jennifer L. Holm makes a story that reminded me of the above movies and and books and song but at the same time had its own feel and flavor. Turtle is a great little anti-Pollyanna who hates Shirley Temple and knows that “kids are rotten,” especially boys. The Diaper Gang is the Conch version of Our Gang with a wagon for babysitting bad babies and a secret formula for curing diaper rash. And if you’re a fan of the movie The Goonies, you should enjoy Turtle in Paradise, and vice-versa.

I leave you with a recipe from the book that gives you yet another comparative flavor and indication of the appeal of this story:

“After we finish swimming, we have a cut-up. A cut-up is something these Conch kids do every chance they get. Each kid brings whatever they can find lying around or hanging on a tree–sugar apple, banana, mango, pineapple, alligator pear, guava, cooed potatoes, and even raw onions. They cut it all up and season it with Old Sour which is made from key lime juice, salt and hot peppers. Then they pass it around with a fork, and everyone takes a bite. It’s the strangest fruit salad I’ve ever had, but it’s tasty.”

1776 and Forge: Serendipitous Reading

Sep21

1776 by David McCullough.

Forge by Laurie Halse Anderson. Sequel to Chains by the same author. Nominated for 2011 Cybil Awards, Young Adult Fiction category. Nominated by Amy at Hope Is the Word.

I really didn’t plan it this way, but what a fortuitous sequence of reading events.

1. I am teaching U.S. History at our homeschool co-op. We’ve been reading about Jamestown, the Pilgrims and colonial life in general. We’ll be studying the American Revolution in about a week, or maybe two.

2. I finally read David McCullough’s 1776 about the beginning of the Revolution and all of the characters and events of the year 1776. I really fell for Nathaniel Greene, General Washington’s young Quaker-born protege, and Henry Knox, the stout young former bookseller turned artillery expert. McCullough writes vivid, informative history, and he makes the people of history especially full of life and approachable. I wanted to meet General Green and Colonel Knox. I cheered for them when things went well and felt sorry for them when they made mistakes which ended in tragedy. I did copy a few passages into my notebook as I read:

Washington to the army defending New York, August 23 1776: “Remember officers and soldiers that you are free men, fighting for the blessings of liberty—that slavery will be your portion and that of your posterity, if you do not acquit yourselves like men.”

New York, August 1776, on the lack of uniforms in the Continental Army: “In the absence of uniforms, every man was to put a sprig of green in his hat as identification.” I thought this brief sentence was so evocative of the David and Goliath nature of the fight, backwoods, country Americans, in their worn, homespun work clothes going up against the best-trained, best-equipped army in the world in their scarlet uniforms. And only a spring of greenery to identify friend from foe.

British General Grant after a British victory in the same battle of New York: “If a good bleeding can bring those Bible-faced Yankees to their senses, the fever of independency should soon abate.” It didn’t bring them to their senses, and the fever did not abate.

McCullough on General George Washington: “He was not a brilliant strategist or tactician, not a gifted orator, not an intellectual. At several crucial moments, he had shown marked indecisiveness. He had made serious mistakes in judgment. But experience had been his great teacher, and in this his greatest test, he learned steadily from experience. Above all, Washington never forgot what was at stake, and he never gave up.”

3. Immediately after I finished 1776, I started Laurie Halse Anderson’s Forge, a sequel to the award-winning Chains. These books are set during the American Revolution, a fact I knew since I read Chains last year, but I had forgotten that Chains ends in 1776 with the British in control of New York and our two protagonists, Isabel and Curzon, escaping from slavery and from a British prison into the wilderness of upstate(?) New York. Forge covers the time period of the winter and subsequent spring at Valley Forge 1777-78 where General Washington and his ragtag army spent a miserable time trying to survive and recover from their defeats and victories at the hands of the British army.

There are a few flashbacks that tell the reader what happened to Isabel and Curzon between their escape from New York and October, 1777 when the book actually picks up the story. Suffice it to say the two friends have not remained together, and Curzon is now on his own with no idea where Isabel is. This book evokes and enumerates all of the hardships experienced by the common soldiers at Valley Forge from the viewpoint of the lowest of the low, an escaped slave and enlisted man in the Continental Army. Curzon experiences prejudice, misunderstanding, persecution, deprivation, and near starvation, sometimes because of his skin color and also as a result of the deficiency of supplies and organization in the army as a whole.

My friend General Nathaniel Greene reappears in fictional form in this book. and the men are glad to see him! It seems, according to Halse Anderson’s telling of the story, that General Greene saved the day at Valley Forge and finally got the men there some food and clothing and arms. Greene’s wife, Caty doesn’t come off too well in the book, but I didn’t have a crush on her anyway.

So, friends, I would suggest that if you’re interested in the American Revolution and historical fiction set in that time period that you read the following books in the following order, by plan rather than by happenstance:

Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes. This classic Newbery award-winning novel set in pre-revolutionary Boston gives a fantastic picture of the causes of the warand its effect on the people of Boston.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Volume 1, The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson. Semicolon review here.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Volume 2, Kingdom on the Waves by M.T. Anderson.

1776 by David McCullough.

Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson. Semicolon review here.

Forge by Laurie Halse Anderson.

Only one word of warning: Anderson’s story still isn’t complete. I read an ARC of Forge, and it won’t be out according to Amazon until mid-October. If you want the entire story you’ll have to wait and read all three volumes together when the third book comes out, whenever that is. By the way, I see that Laurie Halse Anderson will be at the Texas Book Festival in Austin in October. That would be fun to attend, but I don’t think I’ll be able to make it this year.

Two Novels of Twelfth Night

Sep7

As I have said in another post, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is not my favorite of his comedies, although it has its moments. The sword fight between Sir Andre Aguecheek and an inexperienced Viola disguised as a boy is quite hilarious. However, I always feel sorry for Malvolio, a character who is not really malevolent as much as he is misguided and inadequate. SInce I often feel misguided and inadequate myself, and since I don’t like practical jokes that take advantage of my or others’ weaknesses, Twelfth Night generally leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I’m laughing at Malvolio, and even poor Sir Andrew, in spite of my better instincts.

Nevertheless, this month and last seem to be the appointed time for me to gain a better appreciation of Shakespeare’s play. First I saw a production of Twelfth Night at Winedale in August. Then, I came home to find a copy of The Fool’s Girl by Celia Rees waiting on my TBR shelf. Of course, I had to read it as a follow-up to the play. And in fact, Ms. Rees’s novel is a sort of sequel to Twelfth Night. The main character, Violetta, is the daughter of Count Orsino and the Lady Viola, and as our story opens, Violetta is a refugee from her native country, Illyria. Her city has been conquered and sacked by the Venetians, and Feste, the jester, is Violetta’s only friend and protector as she wanders the streets of Elizabethan London. Violetta and Feste happen to meet Master Shakespeare and ask for his help in reclaiming Violetta’s rightful inheritance and righting old wrongs, and the story continues from there.

In an afterword, Celia Rees says that Twelfth Night is her favorite Shakespearean comedy. “While I was watching, I began to wonder: What happens next? What happens after the end of the play? The play walks a knife’s edge between tragedy and comedy. It is perfectly balanced, but one false move and it could all go horribly wrong.” In Rees’s sequel, it does all go horribly wrong. People go insane and betray one another. Sir Toby and Maria become flawed but sympathetic characters, while the wronged Malvolio becomes perfectly evil and completely unsympathetic. The world of Illyria is turned upside down, and it’s up to Violetta, Feste, and Master Shakespeare to set things right.

I enjoyed Ms. Rees’s sequel even though it did partake of the darkness and the equivocal nature of Shakepeare’s play. Ms. Rees writes, “The Fool’s Girl wasn’t always called that. For a long time it was called Illyria.” The idea of a mystical (and rather dark) place named Illyria captured the imagination of more than one Young Adult novelist this year. In Elizabeth Hand’s brief novel, Illyria, cousins Rogan and Madeline inhabit a mystical world of the mind with a physical location in the attic of Rogan’s home. They also participate in a high school production of Twelfth Night, Madeline starring as Viola and Rogan as the wise fool Feste. Rogan and Madeline are fascinating characters, but the book as a whole was not as successful in making me feel things or think thoughts as either Shakespeare’s play or Celia Rees’s historical fiction. Mostly, Illyria made me uncomfortable, not because Rogan and Madeline are “incestuous” first cousins, but rather because they have a strange and unfathomable relationship that seems based on physical attraction but also attempts to transcend the physical without ever quite being able to do so. It was weird and creepy, and the fact that the two cousins are engaging in an illicit sexual relationship only makes the story more awkward and fraught with tension. Rogan is talented but self-destructive, and Madeline ends up a thwarted and unloved second tier actress. The characters and their actions are realistic, but I failed to understand what their lives meant or what I felt about their choices, except that as I said before, I felt uncomfortable. That feeling may have been the author’s main intent.

Bottom line: I would recommend Rees’s The Fool’s Girl to anyone interested in Twelfth Night and Shakespearean fiction and ideas. The book is somewhat dark and dances along the edges of dismal and black magic, but the ending is bittersweet with an emphasis on the sweet and comedic. Illyria by Elizabeth Hand is a bit more problematic, and I didn’t enjoy it very much although I did try. Maybe Colleen’s thoughts on Illyria at Chasing Ray would be more helpful if you are trying to decide whether to read this one or not. She loved it; I’d give it a pass if I were choosing again.

Cate of the Lost Colony by Lisa Klein

Sep2

I just finished reading this YA historical romance about a fictional lady in the court of Queen Elizabeth I who ends up being banished to Sir Walter Raleigh’s doomed colony on Roanoke Island, and today we read about the Roanoke Colony in our history book (Hakim’s History of the U.S, which I am finding to be quite readable and informative, by the way). I was planning a post in my mind about Cate of the Lost Colony and intending to incorporate some suggested fiction and nonfiction titles concerning the mystery of what happened to the Roanoke settlers.

And, lo and behold, Margo at The Fourth Musketeer has already written my post and done it better than I could have written it anyway. Don’t you just love/hate it when that happens? I agree with just about everything she says. It was a great book. It’s got better romance and better adventure than Twilight. (No vampires were imagined in the writing of this book, an advantage as far as I’m concerned. I think we reached the vampire saturation point in YA literature approximately October 31, 2008.)

The Native American characters and cultural aspects of the story are handled with respect, and the character Manteo, Roanoke’s native leader, is a fully realized character and an attractive man. Sir Walter Ralegh is also a character in the book, and I must say he comes across just about the way I imagine he would have in real life. I have a much better feel for the history of the time period (late 1500’s) after having read this book.

And Margo suggests lots of books I have heard of and others I have not. Did you know that the third book in Margaret Peterson Haddix’s Missing series, Sabotaged, has a major character who is a missing child from the Roanoke Colony? I’ve only read the first book in that series, and I need to get on the stick and read the rest.

I first read about the lost colony of Roanoke when I checked out Virginia Dare, Mystery Girl by Augusta Stevenson (Childhood of Famous Americans) from the library when I was about ten years old. I loved that book although (maybe “because”) it was fiction pretending to be biography. Virginia Dare was the first European baby to be born on North American soil (as far as we know), and no one knows for sure what happened to her and to the rest of the Roanoke colonists. And I think that’s fascinating.

I read an ARC of Cate of the Lost Colony. The actual book is due out on October 12, 2010.

Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper

Aug5

Melody is eleven years old, and she’s just about the most intelligent kid in her elementary school. However, no one knows how smart Melody really is because she can’t speak. And she can’t walk. And she can’t write or hold a book or feed herself. Melody has CP, cerebral palsy.

The entire story is told in first person from Melody’s point of view, and being trapped inside Melody’s mind is fascinating, but also a bit claustrophobic. Melody, at the beginning of the book, cannot communicate even the most basic needs and messages. In fact, a couple of scenes in the book are hard to understand in that respect. Melody, who is quite intelligent as I’ve indicated, has a lap board with some basic pictures and words for her to point to in order to communicate. I thought the board also had an alphabet. But Melody becomes frustrated with her father one evening because she wants a milkshake and a Big Mac, a desire she cannot communicate to her dad. I didn’t understand why Melody couldn’t spell with her lap board a couple of simple words like “burger” and “shake”.

Melody also says that she’s never told her mother, “I love you.” Why not? Couldn’t she spell it? Or get a picture or something put on her lap board? Push her word cards into a sentence that says, “I love you, Mom”? I don’t know anyone as intelligent as Melody who has CP. I do have a friend, Brandy, who has CP and the maturity of a five year old. And Brandy can communicate lots of feelings—love, excitement, anger, sadness, boredom–even though she can’t talk either. It seems me to that Melody, with all of her intellectual ability, could have done a little better job of communicating with her family than the book indicates her doing.

Still, I would recommend this book to middle school and elementary school age kids who are trying to understand another child with disabilities. The message of the book is that we should never underestimate others and never, never disrespect those who with disabilities or those who are different from ourselves. Good messages embedded in a good story.

For the Win by Cory Doctorow

Jun7

Book #3 for Mother Reader’s 48 Hour Book Challenge
Reading TIme: 5 hours
Pages: 475

Workers of the World Unite! Let the Games Begin! It’s The Sting (Robert Redford, Paul Newman) on steroids and inside/outside a computer game!

Mr. Doctorow knows a lot about economics and about computers and computer games. I don’t know much about either.

Mr. Doctorow also has a gift for telling a good story. And he ties up the loose ends a lot better than the writers on LOST did.

I enjoyed this techno-thriller by author of Little Brother even though unions and computer games are not my thing. I learned a lot about economics and banking and derivatives and hedge funds currency and inflation and deflation, but I still don’t understand any of them.

The characters made the book:

Mala is a brilliant fifteen year old gameplayer from the Mumbai slum of Dharavi. Her nickname is General Robotwallah, and she leads an army of gamers in battle over the internet each day.

Jiandi is the host of The Factory Girl Show, broadcast over the net to twelve million Chinese factory workers every evening.She listens to their questions, give answers, and encourages the factory girl to fight for justice.

Leonard, aka Wei-Dong, is a seventeen year old game-obsessed high school student from Los Angeles who somehow ends up helping the Webblies, a new union of workers from all over the world, who are uniting to fight for better pay and conditions for illegal gameplayers and for other oppressed workers.

Connor Prikkel works in Coca Cola Games Command Central, hunting down illegal gold farmers and monitoring and adjusting the games to work as perfectly balanced economies. Connor is a gamerunner, and he hates “third-world rip-off artists” who cheat and mine the games for virtual gold and other assets.

Matthew Fong lives in Shenzhen in Southern China, and he’s determined to build his own successful gold-farming operation despite threats from the bosses and harassment from the police.

Big Sister Nor is the mastermind behind the Webblies, a union struggling to organize gamers from all over the world and get them just rewards for their labor and safe workplaces.

It’s a good book, even if I’m not so sure about the politics involved. By the way, you can download and read Doctorow’s book for free. Mr. Doctorow believes that he’ll make more money and everyone will be happier if he makes a name for himself by giving away his his books on the internet. My copy came from the library.

The Long Way Home by Andrew Klavan

Jun5

Book #2 for Mother Reader’s 48 Hour Book Challenge
Reading TIme: 2.25 hours
Pages: 345

Andrew Klavan takes a subtle dig at his own book in a paragraph near the middle of The Long Way Home, the second book in the Homelanders series of YA thrillers.

“I missed Rick and Miler and Josh. I missed having someone to kid around with and talk to. I missed long conversations about girls and sports and arguments about whether Medal of Honor was cooler than Prince of Persia and why part 2 of any trilogy was never as good as parts 1 and 3. I missed being with the guys who knew me best and liked me just the way I was. I missed my friends.”

Yeah. What he said. This book was fun, but not quite as suspenseful as Book 1 of the series, The Last Thing I Remember*, and probably not as satisfying as the last book in the trilogy that comes out in November 2010, to be titled The Truth of the Matter. In fact, I would suggest waiting until November and then grabbing the the set of three books for any pre-teen/teen guys on your Christmas list —and another set for yourself.

Here’s why:
1. The books are suspenseful. Maybe I’m just dumb, but I haven’t figured out yet why Charlie has amnesia and is missing a whole year of his life or why the bad guys in the story think he was on their side and has betrayed them. Nor have I figured out how Charlie West is going to get out of the mess he’s in.

2. The bad guys are bad, and the good guys are good. Not a lot of nuance here. I think that’s a good thing. I think all of us, teenage guys especially, need heroes and a way of seeing the world as a place where they can tell the difference between good and evil and align themselves/ourselves with the good.

3. Lots of action. Several scenes are really violent, bad guys get beat up, and karate is used freely. Also there are car chases and motorcycle chases and on-foot chases, lots of movement. KarateKid, age 13, would like this aspect of the books.

4. In this series, boys are boys, and girls are girls. The protagonist, Charlie, is a boy, and he and his friends tease and mock each other mercilessly. Charlie’s girlfriend, observing all this male bonding, says (more than once), “You guys are so mean.” Also, the girlfriend, Beth, is a girl. When she’s in danger she doesn’t wimp out, but she also doesn’t take over and become the heroine of the story. Charlie is the hero, and Beth is his helper and inspiration.

5. No sex and no foul language. There is some chaste romance; Charlie and Beth eventually kiss. But these are good kids with their priorities in place, and they respect each other. Not all teen guys are thinking of one thing only all the time, and they don’t need to be told endlessly that every other teen guy is thinking of that one thing all the time.

6. Author Andrew Klavan also has his priorities in place, and I can trust him to deliver a good, fast-paced, satisfying ending to this series. That’s why I feel comfortable recommending the third book in the series before having read it. Thirteen or fourteen is about the median age for this series, and guys will like it better than girls, mostly because of Reason #3.

*I read The Last Thing I Remember during my Lenten blog break, and I wrote in my journal at that time: “Yeah! A middle school boy book! A book that celebrates faith, karate, self-defense, and American values without being didactic or cheesy!”

Countdown by Deborah Wiles

Jun5

Book #1 for Mother Reader’s 48 Hour Book Challenge
Reading TIme: 2.5 hours
Pages: 378

So Countdown is a “documentary novel” taking place in the fall of 1962 near Andrews Air Force Base. Franny Chapman is in fifth grade, and she has a lot going on in her life. Her best friend Margie is suddenly not a friend anymore. Franny’s sister Jo Ellen is hiding something and spending way too much time at college when she should be at home helping Franny. Chris Cavas has just moved back into the house next door, and he’s somehow grown up to resemble Del Shannon instead of Beaver Cleaver. Uncle Otts is trying to build a bomb shelter in the backyard, and everyone is worried about the Russians. What if the air raid siren goes off for real, and the Communists drop the Bomb and end the world as Franny knows it? Will “duck and cover” really be enough to save Franny and her friends and family?

I was born in 1957. In the fall of 1962, I was five years old. Our schools didn’t have kindergarten, so I wasn’t in school yet. I wondered as I was reading if that was why I didn’t remember anything about civil defense shelters or air raid drills or Bert the Turtle or “duck and cover.” So I asked Engineer Husband who’s a few years older than me and would have been about Franny’s age in 1962. He remembers civl defense shelters with the yellow triangle, but he didn’t really know their purpose. And, like me, the only drills he remembers were fire drills and tornado drills (in which you did find an inside wall away from glass and duck and cover your head). I suppose the the powers-that-be in West Texas where we grew up were a lot more worried about fires and tornadoes than atomic bombs. (Engineer Husband does remember being scared silly because his older brother told him that if Kennedy were elected in 1960, he and all his friends would be forced to go to Catholic school.)

Still, even though I don’t remember any bomb scares, I did find a lot of the cultural references in the book familiar. Ms. WIles writes about 45rpm records; I remember those. And I recognized all the songs: Runaway, Moon RIver, Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, and Monster Mash. (I wondered where the Beatles were, but apparently they didn’t “invade” until 1964.) It was fun for me to read about all of the brands and fads and events of my childhood, even if the book does take place a little before my time.

Interspersed between chapters of the fictional story about Franny and her search for peace in a chaotic world are photographs, news reports, excerpts from speeches, documentary-style reports on famous people like Truman and Kennedy and Pete Seeger. Coming from the conservative side of the aisle, I thought the reports were a little biased toward the left, especially making Kennedy into a King Arthur of Camelot. For instance, the Kennedy bio says that Kennedy “had to deal with a problem he inherited from Eisenhower: the Bay of Pigs invasion.” Yes, training for the Bay of Pigs began under Eisenhower, but Kennedy knew all about it and allowed, if not ordered, the invasion to happen under his watch. The biographical piece on Kennedy generally presents an idyllic picture of him and his presidency, saying that he “made hard decisions” and “dreamed of peace” and served for “three glittering years.” It’s not blatantly biased, though, and as an introduction to President Kennedy and the early 1960’s, it will do.

I liked the characters and the story as much I did the newsy informative sections that were sprinkled throughout the book. The fiction and nonfiction portions of the book complemented each other well. I’m planning a twentieth century study for my homeschool students and for me sometime in the next few years in which we study through the twentieth century year by year. I think Countdown would be a great introduction to the year 1962 and to the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War. After reading the book, we could take a look, and a listen, at the primary sources that Ms. Wiles used to inform her fiction. And then it should still be possible to interview some people who lived during 1962 and remember those times. I’m getting excited, and nostalgic, thinking about it.

Countdown website.
Deborah Wiles’ website.
Scroll down to the previous post for a link to the a book trailer and an excerpt form chapter 1 of Countdown.