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Walking Home by Eric Walters

Apr8

This middle grade novel, published in Canada and set in Kenya, has wonderful themes about forgiveness and responsibility and family loyalty and trust and the power of imagination. I don’t know how popular stories set in foreign countries are among the target audience, but this one is a great read.

Thirteen year old Muchoki and his younger sister, Jata, can hardly believe what has become of their lives. Only weeks ago, they lived in a bustling Kenyan village, going to school, playing soccer with friends, and helping at their parents’ store. But sudden political violence has killed their father and destroyed their home. Now Muchoki, Jata and their malaria-stricken mother live in a refugee camp. Will Muchoki be able to care for Jata when tragedy strikes the little family yet again?

The book tells a “journey story”. Muchoki and Jata walk across Kenya, through the great city of Nairobi, and to their grandparents’ home in Kambaland. But the book is about much more than cross-country hiking. As they travel, Muchoki in particular, who has seen and experienced terrible things when the family was forced out of their village, learns to trust people again, even people from the tribes that were his enemies and who killed his father and burned the family’s village. This trust, and even the beginning embers of forgiveness, do not come easily. Muchoki is often torn between his responsibility to protect his sister Jata, and his desire, even need, to ask for help and depend on adults around him to assist him in reaching his grandfather’s home. Muchoki is right to be careful and right to trust, and the book does an excellent job of showing how this young man, wise beyond his years, manages to balance the two. The book even hints at Muchoki’s loss of faith in the God who allowed such terrible things to happen to him and to others and his steps toward forgiveness and reconciliation.

In light of the terrible events in Kenya this past week and the other atrocities that keep filling our news feeds, this story is a good one to help children and adults begin their own journey of processing, trusting, caring, and forgiving.

Middle Grade Middling

Apr7

All Four Stars by Tara Daiman is cute middle grade fiction about a budding restaurant critic and gourmet cook whose parents only know fast food and microwave cooking. The protagonist, eleven year old Gladys Gatsby, is rather deceitful and dangerously inventive, but she has parents who are unbelievably misguided. Not only will they not allow her to cook in their kitchen at all after an unfortunate accident with a blowtorch (understandable), they won’t allow her to read cookbooks, watch cooking shows, or eat anything other than the fast food and poorly cooked meals that they put together.
story is funny, a bit Wodehousian, and filled with great appreciation for excellent food. However, Gladys is something of a snob, and her parents are myopic in their adherence to poorly prepared junk food. Gladys doesn’t set a good example for middle grade readers when she disobeys her parents to sneak in a few cooking sessions and some reading of recipes, much less when she ditches a Broadway play to go by herself to the gourmet dessert restaurant down the street. But it’s all in good fun, and who’s looking for a role model in a humorous entertainment novel?

The Question of Miracles by Elana Arnold is an interesting story about the death of a friend and the possibility of miracles and an afterlife. Iris has lost her best friend in a car accident, and her parents have moved her to a new town to get her away from the trauma of the tragedy. But Iris hates Oregon where it rains all the time, and she still thinks about and misses her friend Sarah a lot. In fact, Iris is convinced that Sarah could be still there somehow, as a ghost or something, wanting to communicate with Iris if Iris could just figure out how to get a miracle.
All answers to the question of whether miracles are possible and whether Iris’s friend who died could possibly communicate with her after death are left open —except the Christian answers to those question which are never entertained seriously and (when a Catholic priest tries to explain that God answers different prayers in different ways) given short shrift. Also a few casual misuses of God’s name are disconcerting and unnecessary.

Listen, Slowly by Thanha Lai is a middle grade novel set in Vietnam, and I generally like seeing how children in other cultures are both like and unlike American children. However, Mai, the young lady who is the main character in the story, is a California girl through and through, even though she’s forced by her (Vietnamese immigrant) parents to go to Vietnam for the summer to help her grandmother navigate the search for what really happened to Mai’s grandfather during the Vietnam War.
Twelve year old Mai is spoiled, precocious, worldly, and obnoxious. Although she predictably improves by the end of the story, some of the shenanigans she pulls are too much for my “delicate” sensibilities. Example: she tells all the girls in the Vietnamese village where she is visiting that all American girls wear thong underwear and then helps them to turn their underwear into uncomfortable thongs. I just didn’t like Mai, and I had trouble sympathizing with her predicament of being stuck in Vietnam for the summer when she really wanted to be chasing boys on the beach.

More 2015 Titles I’d Like to Read

Jan15

From these lists (Thanks, Phil) and other sources:

All Fall Down by Ally Carter. YA fiction. Grace has come back home to Embassy Row in order to solve the mystery of her mother’s death. In the process, she uncovers an international conspiracy of unsettling proportions, and must choose her friends and watch her foes carefully if she and the world are to be saved. (January)

Echo by Pam Munoz Ryan. “Lost and alone a forbidden forest, Otto meets three mysterious sisters and suddenly finds himself entwined in a puzzling quest involving a prophecy, a promise, and a harmonica.” ~Goodreads. (February)

Beastkeeper by Cat Hellisen. Beaty and the Beast, except the Beast is a girl. (February)

Mark of the Thief by Jennifer A. Nielsen. First book in a new series, set in ancient Rome, by the author of The Ascendance Trilogy. (February)

Epitaph by Mary Doria Russell. Subtitled “a novel of the O.K. Corral,” continuing the story she began in Doc. (March)

The Drop Box: How 500 Abandoned Babies, an Act of Compassion, and a Movie Changed My Life by Brian Ivie with Ted Kluck. (March)

The Island of Dr. Libris by Chris Grabenstein. (March) MG fantasy by the author of Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library.

Jack: The True Story of Jack & The Beanstalk by Liesl Shurliff. (April) MG fantasy.

The Water and the Wild by K.E. Ormsbee. (April) MG fantasy.

It’s A Long Story by Willie Nelson. Memoir. (May) Willie’s memoir.

The Huntress of Thornbeck Forest by Melanie Dickerson. Robin Hood-character is a really a girl named Odette, daughter of a wealthy merchant by day, huntress by night. (May)

The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings by Philip and Carol Zaleski. The husband-and-wife team chronicle the writers’ group The Inklings, whose members featured J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. (June)

Valiant by Sarah McGuire. Fairy tale reworking with a girl heroine. (June)

Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not The Enemy Of Faith by Barnabas Piper. (July)

The Hollow Boy (Lockwood & Co. #3) by Jonathan Stroud. (September)

Huh? Moments in Middle Grade Speculative Fiction

Jan8

These are actual quotations from finished copies of books (not ARC’s) that I’ve read recently. In some cases the book was good, but the editors need to step it up:

Officer, who is arresting a man who has been carving on another family’s grave monument: “Looks like defamation of personal property to me.”
Desecration? Defacement? Vandalizing? Can you defame a rock?

**************

“He leaned over and for one endless moment, [she] thought he might kiss her. . . She leaned toward him and pressed her forehead against his, felt his warmth soak into her skin, let wisps of his cool hair brush against her cheeks. . . . They pulled apart slowly, as if they were fighting the tide.”
I am trying to imagine this scene. Forehead to forehead. Slow motion parting. I can’t.

**************

“The commotion even attracted the local seagulls. About fifty flocked to the site. Their loud high-pitched squawking and a barrage of bird poop bombs added to the growing chaos. . . . Onlookers at the aquarium’s shark pool were now jumping up and down, wiping the stinky gray-green seagull poop from their heads, and covering their eyes.”
One of these actions is not like the others. One of these things doesn’t belong. I’m not about to be covering my eyes with the same hands that have been wiping off poop, while also jumping up and down?

**************

One character tells another, “You’re knees are backward.”
Really? You are Prince Knees-Are-Backward.

No, I’m not going to tell you what the books were. Each one is from a different middle grade speculative fiction book published in the past year.

12 2015 Books I’m Looking Forward to Reading

Jan1

As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust: A Flavia de Luce Novel by Alan Bradley. Flavia just gets better and better. Publication date: January 6, 2015.

Own Your Life: Living with Deep Intention, Bold Faith, and Generous Love by Sally Clarkson. Publication date: January 8, 2015.

The War That Saved my Life by Kimberley Brubaker Bradley. Middle grade historical fiction about child evacuees from London during World War II by an author I’ve enjoyed in the past. Gotta try it out. Publication date: January 8, 2015.

The Allure of Gentleness: Defending the Faith in the Manner of Jesus by Dallas Willard. Publication date: February 10, 2015.

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. The author’s first novel in nearly ten years, and I’m game to check it out. Publication date: March 3, 2015.

Completely Clementine by Sara Pennypacker. Publication date: Also March 3, 2015.

The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and the Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom by Blaine Harden. I’m particularly interested in North Korea ever since the Sony hack, actually even before that. I just read Escape from Camp 14 by this same author. Publication date: March 17, 2015.

The Penderwicks In Spring by Jeanne Birdsall. Oh, the Penderwicks, almost as good as the Marches or the Melendys! Publication date: March 24, 2015.

Black Dove, White Raven by Elizabeth Wein. Ms. Wein wrote Code Name Verity and Rose. I’m looking forward to reading her next book, which involves women pilots and World War II—but it’s set in Ethiopia! How could it not be good? Publication date: March 31, 2015.

The Revelation of Louisa May by Michaela MacColl. I enjoyed Ms. MacColl’s other lady author mystery stories: Always Emily and Nobody’s Secret. I like Louisa May Alcott. So I would imagine this novel featuring Ms. Alcott as the protagonist will be a treat. Publication date: April 14, 2015.

The Worst Class Trip Ever by Dave Barry. It’s Dave Barry. If any adult humor writer could pull off the move to middle grade fiction, it’s Dave Barry, right? Publication date: May 5, 2015.

Lion Heart (Scarlet, Book Three) by AC Gaughen. Conclusion to these books about a lady thief named Scarlet who captures the heart of Robin Hood in medieval England. Publication date: May 19, 2015.

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