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Every Single Second by Tricia Springstubb

Sep20

“Twelve year old Nella Sabatini’s life is changing too soon, too fast.” Nella, who lives in an Italian American neighborhood with her very Italian American parents and her four “snot-nosed” little brothers, has one best friend, Clem, and one former best friend, Angela. When Angela’s troubled family brings trouble to the entire neighborhood, what will Nella do about Angela, Clem, Angela’s older brother, Anthony, and her own very mixed-up feelings and allegiances?

I liked this book. Really. The girls talk about important things—war, guns, God, time, change, and friendship—in a very natural and twelve year old way. And Nella’s life and relationships with her family and friends and great-grandmother and her friends’ families were also well-drawn and believable. I was drawn into the story, and I really wanted to know what would happen to these girls and their changing neighborhood.

However, there were two problems that got in the way of my enjoyment of this middle grade novel. First, one of the minor characters uses God’s name in vain (OMG). Why is this necessary in a middle grade novel, especially for a minor character who doesn’t get much character development anyway? It’s offensive to some people, and unnecessary, so leave it out.

Second, there were these little short interlude chapters in which a statue, named Jeptha A. Stone, tells what it would say if it could speak. A bird makes its nest in the statue’s lap. I have no idea how these interludes related to the main story. I’m a bit dense, I suppose, but I think the book would have been better with the statue thoughts edited out completely.

Then, there is the part that wasn’t problematic for me, but might be for others. The main crisis of the novel deals with an accidental shooting of a black man by a white (Italian) man, Angela’s older brother, Anthony. Anthony goes to jail, and everybody is appalled at his shooting of this young black man, implying or stating that the shooting was racially motivated. However, as far as Anthony and his family and Nella are concerned, the shooting was an accident. So, some people might be offended that the shooter is “innocent”, since many, at least some, shootings of young black men are racially motivated. Others might be concerned because Anthony is not totally exonerated, although he is a sympathetic character. Like all the news these days related to police and people of color and guns and shooting, it’s complicated. It makes the book itself timely, but subject to controversy and misunderstanding.

I recommend Every Single Second. Skip the sort of talking statue.

2016 Middle Grade Fiction: Short Takes

Sep16

Lizzie and the Lost Baby, by Cheryl Blackford. (realistic fiction)I thought this one was a good little story. The themes of truth-telling and treating others with respect and forbearance were well integrated into the story. A family of gypsies accidentally lose their baby girl, left alone and immediately rescued in a pasture, and the nearby community (in England) treat them with disdain and prejudice. One child, Lizzie, stands up for what is right against all the adults who are perpetuating an injustice.

Mrs. Bixby’s Last Day by John David Anderson. (realistic fiction) Topher, Brand and Steve’s favorite teacher, Mrs. Bixby, announces she’s leaving school to go into treatment for cancer; the three boys make a plan to provide Mrs. Bixby with a day she will never forget. I wish Mr. Anderson had kept the language above board, and the boy humor toned down a little (or a lot). As it was, I loved the story but can’t really recommend it. If your tolerance for mild swearing and boogers and such is higher than mine, you should check it out.

Pax by Sara Pennypacker. (talking to each other animals) If you love foxes and nature and if you think people are the bad guys, spoiling the foxes’ natural habitat . . .

Ramie Nightingale by Kate diCamillo. (unbelievable supposedly realistic fiction?) If Ramie Clarke can just win the Little Miss Central Florida Tire competition, then her father, who left town two days ago with a dental hygienist, will see Raymie’s picture in the paper and (maybe) come home. Maybe it was my mood, but I found this one, by one of my favorite contemporary authors, entirely too precious, something I don’t often have a problem with. I’m all for kitsch and cuteness usually, but in this one the girls and the peripheral characters were just not believable.

The Seventh Wish by Kate Messner. (fantasy) This book about a ten year old girl and her drug-addicted older sister would be great bibliotherapy for middle graders with a family member who is drug abuser, but I’m not sure whether issue-driven fiction is appealing to the general reader or not. On the one hand drug abuse is rampant, and many kids might encounter it in themselves or in family members. On the other hand, well, the whole protecting kids while they are young and not scaring them about horrible stuff is a good thing, too. I’m also not sure what exactly the message is about magic/wishes/prayer. Pray and hope and wish, but don’t expect too much? Prayers and magical wishes are similar ways of coping, but be careful what you ask for?

The Great Shelby Holmes by Elizabeth Eulberg. Eleven year old John Watson moves to New York City, and his first (and only) friend is the great detective Shelby Holmes, who is a bit eccentric and difficult to understand, to say the least. Shelby, a nine year old wonder at solving mysteries, is definitely lacking in the area of people skills. Can she and John become friend and colleagues in spite of Shelby’s off-putting manner? Can they solve the mystery of the missing show dog—together? Good introduction to the Sherlock Holmes genre and to the idea of difficult personalities and grace extended for personal quirks.

Guile by Constance Cooper. (probably YA fantasy) “Sixteen-year-old orphan Yonie Watereye scrapes a living posing as someone who can sense the presence of guile (magic), though in fact she has no such power–it’s her talking cat, LaRue, who secretly performs the work.” (Goodreads) Creepy, but good, with themes that are probably a little too mature for middle grades.

The Worst Night Ever by Dave Barry. I love Dave Barry’s newspaper columns, but I’m not sure he has the best style for middle grade fiction. I meant to read the first book in this series, The Worst Class Trip Ever, but I never got around to it. In this one, which is about a kidnapped ferret and a ring of illegal rare animal importers, there’s a lot of repetition of jokes that aren’t very funny to start with: “My best friend Matt is an idiot”, repeated over and over. “It’s a komodo dragon, not a kimono dragon”, repeated at least three times by three different characters. Stupid dad. Crazy mom. That sort of thing. Maybe some kids would like the humor, but I was bored.

Booked by Kwame Alexander

Aug15

Whether I like to admit it or not, awards and public acclaim do influence my interest and enjoyment of a book. I read and wrote about Mr. Alexander’s first book, The Crossover in 2015, before it won the 2015 Newbery Award (and many other awards). My review, as anyone can see, was lukewarm: “if you do like stories in verse form, or if you don’t, but you really, really like basketball, you might want to check out Kwame Alexander’s basketball slam/rap/verse novel.”

Fast forward to 2016 and Kwame Alexander and verse novels are all the rage. Booked, his second verse novel for middle graders/young adults, at least has a title I can get behind, and I’m inclined to give it a fair shake partly because of all the acclaim for The Crossover. Booked is about books and words and family brokenness and well, soccer. I must confess that the soccer stuff I skimmed, hard to do in a novel written in tightly woven poetry, but easy for me because the few soccer-centric poems interspersed throughout the novel did not give me a picture in my mind. Because I’m soccer ignorant.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed Booked. The drama in Nick Hall the protagonist’s family, Mac the rapping librarian, Nick’s dad and his book full of words, Nick’s crush on April, Nick’s mom and her easy way of relating to her teenage son—all of these aspects of the book were fun and good to read about in creative, poetic forms and types. The parts I didn’t like were the tired, old excuses and platitudes about divorce, the disrespect Nick showed for his parents, especially his dad, and the unresolved ending, which you will have to read for yourself.

I did like wading through the poems this time to capture the plot and the images and the feelings of being Nick Hall, a thirteen year old with a lot of hard stuff going on in his life. It was sort of like a game—find the plot thread. I’ve seen verse novels capture the interest of a reluctant reader in my own family this year, and I’m more sold on the genre than I was before. And I must admit that Mr. Alexander has a way with words, and poetry.

So, boys and soccer fans and just plain old readers should give it a try. Or try one of the other, mostly verse, novels that Alexander not-so-subtly recommends by way of his character Nick in this book:

All the Broken Pieces by Ann E. Burg.
Rhyme Schemer by K.A. Holt
Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse.
Peace Locomotion by Jacqueline Woodson.
May B. by Caroline Starr Rose.
How Lamar’s Bad Prank Won a Bubba-sized Trophy by Crystal Allen.
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbit.

By the way, Nick is emphatically NOT a reader as the book begins, but by the end of the story he’s looking for his next read. Librarians and teachers and parents might want to read this one just to watch the transformation, which is realistic, fits and starts, with the added attractions of a persistent librarian, a pretty girl, and some parental discipline.

The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow by Katherine Woodfine

Aug9

The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow by Katherine Woodfine. (2016)
The Mystery of the Jeweled Moth by Katherine Woodfine. (2016)
The Mystery of the Painted Dragon by Katherine Woodfine. (February, 2017)

Around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, Sophie Taylor-Cavendish is the recently orphaned fifteen year old daughter of a military man and world traveler, her beloved “Papa.” However, since Papa died in an accident way out in South Africa, Sophie must make her own way in the world. And a job as a shopgirl in the millinery department at the fabulous new Sinclair’s Department store in Piccadilly, London, is just the place for a young girl with sense of adventure and a need for a regular source of income.

“Enter a world of bonbons, hats, perfumes, and mysteries around every corner! Wonder at the daring theft of the priceless clockwork sparrow! Tremble as the most dastardly criminals in London enact their wicked plans! Gasp as our bold heroines Miss Sophie Taylor and Miss Lillian Rose break codes, devour iced buns, and vow to bring the villains to justice.”

I think those two paragraphs pretty much capture the general atmosphere of this series of middle grade/YA mysteries. I read the first two books, and I hope to read the third book in the series when it comes out next year. These are not profound, literary, or even particularly well-plotted. There are few glitches in the mechanism, and suspension of disbelief is required. However, the setting and characters are just so enchanting and delicious that a few creaky or inconsistent plot details can and should be overlooked. I’m not sure the London of these books ever really existed, but it’s a delightful place for a mystery romp, nevertheless.

The books are appropriate for middle grade readers; the romance parts of the story are tame and miss-ish, as would be appropriate for the time period. However, there is a murder that takes place in each of the first two volumes in this series, and if a sensitivity to plain but not-gory descriptions of violence and crime are an issue, then younger readers may not be ready for these books. It’s not Agatha Christie, but it’s a good introduction to the genre that Dame Agatha owned.

There’s an ongoing mystery in these books concerning Sophie’s family and background, and I’m looking forward to reading the third book in the series to see if there’s a resolution.

Some Kind of Happiness by Claire LeGrand

Aug1

“Reality and fantasy collide in this powerful, heartfelt novel about family, depression, and the power of imagination.” Yes. Collide is the operative word. I wasn’t a fan of the way the story transitions from the real world of a precocious eleven year old named Finley to the fantasy world that Finley has created for herself, Everwood. All the characters in Finley’s extended family seemed like just that, characters, not real people. And Finley herself repeats her introspective and twisted thinking to the point of being annoying.

The secrets in the story that add to the tension are sort of arbitrary; why Finley’s aunts and grandparents and parents couldn’t come up with better answers to at least some of her questions was never clear to me. It’s about the three D’s: depression, divorce, and delusional thinking—and about adults with guilty secrets. I get why the adults are keeping their Big Guilty Secret, but I don’t understand why they keep all the little secrets. For instance, Finley and her cousins become friends with some neighbor boys whose father is an alcoholic and who also is a part of the Big Guilty Secret. So, the adults don’t want Finley and the cousins to associate with the Bailey boys. Why can’t they just say that dad is unstable, and they don’t want Finley to go to the Bailey house? Why can’t the kids still be friends at Finley’s grandparents’ home? Why is there so much “Just do it because I say so!” And why does Finley keep asking questions in her head but refuse to ask them out loud?

This story frustrated me because I felt the potential. Finley could still have struggled with her parents’ impending divorce if the parents had been honest and told her that they were having marital issues. And the grandparents and aunts could have been at least partially honest, and much more believable and sympathetic, had they told at least part of the truth. And would any responsible parents leave their eleven year old daughter for the entire summer with grandparents she had never met, grandparents who were just about completely estranged from their only son (Finley’s father) for the past eleven or twelve years, and for good reasons?

I wanted to like this one, but I just didn’t believe it. Your mileage, and opinion, may vary from mine.

The Wild Robot by Peter Brown

Jun29

I was really enjoying this “chapter book” by picture book author and illustrator Peter Brown.It’s rather odd in a way, and maybe pitched a little young for a middle grade novel. I’d say grades 2-4, and maybe fifth graders who want “short books”. But I liked the writing style, short sentences with somewhat robotic dialog, and the oddball storyline.

ROZZUM unit 7134, Rez for short, is stranded on an island when a hurricane sinks the cargo ship she is on. Accidentally activated by a group of inquisitive otters, Roz is designed to “move, communicate, and learn.” Over time, she will “find better ways of completing [her] tasks. [She] will become a better robot.” However, Roz is shipwrecked in an unexpected environment. She finds herself on an uninhabited island with only wild animals for company and instruction. So Roz learns to be wild and to live with nature. In fact, in an author’s note at the end of the story Mr. Brown calls this book “a robot nature story.”

As I said, I was enjoying the fairly simple sentence structure and the robot-in-the-wilderness plot right up until the final few chapters, in which the story takes a rather violent and disturbing turn. After Roz has been on the island for an entire year (spoiler alert!), her manufacturers send three RECO robots to find Roz and bring her back to the factory to be reconditioned and reassigned to a new work place. But Roz has become wild and made friends with the animals, and she doesn’t want to go anywhere. So Roz’s animal friends fight against the RECO robots (who are armed with silver-colored rifles) in a battle royal. Robots are killed; animals are injured. And Roz herself is damaged beyond the ability of the island animals to repair.

I wish Mr. Brown had been able to come up with a better ending for his robot story. After having anthropomorphized Roz by making her a friend to the animals, the slaughter of the RECO robots feels kind of ruthless and unnecessary because Roz ends up doing exactly what they wanted her to do before all the fighting started. I was getting ready to recommend this one to nature lovers and technology geeks among the younger set until the ending gave me pause.

I may have to wait a long time to find another robot nature story with as much initial promise. Sci-fi nature lovers, it’s a niche that’s waiting to be filled.

Outlaws of Time: The Legend of Sam Miracle by N.D. Wilson

May24

I’m honestly not sure what I think about N.D. Wilson’s newest book, the beginning of a series called Outlaws of Time. The story is really dark and violent, and as with some of Wilson’s other books it moves too fast for me with too many layers of meaning. I feel as if I’m missing something when I read Wilson’s fantasy, in particular. Actually, I feel dumb. On the other hand, I loved Boys of Blur and Leepike Ridge, especially, and this one has some of the elements that I liked from those: a very American setting, brave kids, adventure, lots of good writing with good metaphors and similes. I just feel as if I have whiplash from trying to follow all the symbolism and hidden meanings and the time travel.

For example, Sam Miracle (his real name) begins the story as a resident (inmate?) of Saint Anthony of the Desert Destitute Youth Ranch, SADDYR. And it’s a sad place, governed by your typical fictional orphanage parents, Mr. and Mrs. Spalding. There are twelve boys at SADDYR, including Sam, and the others are Pete, Drew, Jude, Barto, brothers Jimmy Z and Johnny Z, Flip the Lip, Matt Cat and Sir T(homas), Tiago Lopez, and Simon Zeal. They’re all juvenile delinquents, but they have the names of the twelve apostles in the Bible, minus Judas Iscariot. Yes, I noticed that little naming trick immediately, and it’s kind of cool. But why? Why do Sam’s friends and cohorts have the same names as Jesus’ twelve disciples? What does it mean? Sam isn’t Jesus or a Christ figure, or is he? The priest, Father Tiempo, that Sam meets in the desert is kind of a Christ figure who gives up his life/lives to save Sam and the rest of the world through Sam, but then the priest turns out to be someone else, not Jesus at all. Sam is the one sent to save the world from the evil Vulture, El Buitre, but he’s a violent and at the same time, vulnerable, savior, sent to use his deadly snake arms to kill The Vulture. Even though he’s mangled and wounded by the bad guys in the story, and handicapped by his unreliable memory and his lack of confidence in his own abilities, Sam is a survivor, redeemed and resurrected multiple times. I suppose I’m trying to make the story too simplistic, the characters too allegorical. But allegory is implied in the names and actions of the characters. (I am reminded of C.S. Lewis’s professed hatred of allegory in all its forms while at least parts of his Narnia stories are clearly allegorical in nature.)

Then there’s the time travel, enough time travel to make Hurley’s head hurt a lot (LOST reference, there). This book reminded me of LOST–way too much to figure out, and maybe half of it doesn’t mean anything, just the author playing around. Sam and his friend Glory travel though time, around time, behind time, on the edges of time, and through the cracks between times. I’m a straight-forward, A-Z kind of gal, and although I can handle one time jump, or maybe two, the ramifications of all the time travel in this book make me feel as if I’ve lost my grip on reality. Sam Miracle certainly loses his mind and memory and his sense of what’s real and what’s a dream quite often throughout the course of the story. And since Sam is the main viewpoint character, so did I.

PC critics are going to hate all the guns and all the bullets flying. Even though one of Sam’s snake arms, Speck, is a little bit goofy and doesn’t want to hurt anyone, the other one, Cindy, is “a killer, a nightmare.” Speck shoots the weapons out of the bad guys’ hands, but Cindy shoots to kill. Again, I’m tempted to draw allegorical parallels or symbolical confusion from the contrast between Sam’s left arm, vicious sidewinder Cindy, and his right arm, distractible pet snake Speck, but I will refrain.

Do I think kids will like Outlaws of Time: The Legend of Sam Miracle? Yes, I think so, but I’m not sure what exactly they will get out of it. Maybe that’s good. Maybe that makes me a little uneasy as a parent who’s tempted to give them a neat little book in which I know the “moral of the story”. Maybe one moral of this particular story is that life isn’t neat or predictable, and neither should the stories that we share with each other and with our children be unsurprising and tidily understood. Or maybe, like the authors of LOST, Mr. Wilson is just playing around, having fun with the names and the nicknames and the numbers and the times and the snakes and the guns and all the things that make me want to read the next book in the series.

However, I would warn the author that playing with guns can be quite dangerous.

“You know,” Glory said, watching. “There’s a difference between real life and books. Don’t act like they’re the same.”

“Sure,” Sam said. “Getting life right is a lot harder.”

Giraffe Meets Bird by Rebecca Bender

Apr7

An indeterminate but colorful species of bird meets a a large, mostly peaceful giraffe. Bird and Giraffe learn to share, live and let live, and eventually they face and conquer danger together.

This Canadian picture book opens with Bird flying, or perhaps dancing, off the edge of the front endpaper into the beginning of his growing friendship with Giraffe. However, the title page shows Bird’s egg beginning to crack open, and the real story begins at hatching. Giraffe and Bird are in turns surprised, amazed, fascinated, tickled, cross, angry, pleasant and polite as their unusual friendship moves through its successive phases. Then, danger unites the two friends, and they share in their escape together. On the final endpaper illustration, Giraffe gets his own picture, upside down and munching on a leaf.

I looked for “giraffe books” a few months ago when a teacher I know was doing a giraffe day in her ongoing series of animal mini-units. The only good giraffe-themed picture books I found in my library were Jaffa by Hugh Lewin, about an African boy who pretends to be different animals, and Giraffes Can’t Dance by Giles Andrede, about courage to fail and self-expression. I may never be asked again for a set of books featuring giraffe characters, but if I am, Giraffe Meets Bird would be a nice addition to the other two.

It’s cute and light-hearted, and the illustrations, also by Rebecca Bender, are adorable, especially the expressive eyes, faces, and bodies of the two main characters. The story is a little illogical in a couple of places: at the end Bird and Giraffe say a tearful goodbye (to each other?) and then set off together. And they hide from danger together in a rather peculiar position. Nevertheless, I can overlook and suspend disbelief since the pictures and the story are just cute and engaging.

As it turns out, when I look on Amazon I see that Giraffe and Bird have been featured in two previous picture books written and illustrated by Ms. Bender, Giraffe and Bird and Don’t Laugh at Giraffe. Those two look delightful, too.

A Year of Borrowed Men by Michelle Barker

Mar31

1944. Not all World War 2 stories, even those about prisoners, are about concentration camps and horror and death. Even those stories that exist in the shadow of death and destruction can be human and hopeful. A Year of Borrowed Men is one such hopeful war story about kindness and friendship.

Seven yer old Gerda’s father and brother have been “borrowed” by the German military to fight in the war. But the farm where Gerda and her mother and her four brothers and sisters live is necessary to the war effort, too. So the Nazi government sends three French prisoners of war to Gerda’s farm to help with the farm work.

The German families who were hosting the French prisoners were under strict orders not to treat them as family members or even as valued workers, but rather the prisoners were to be used as slave labor to support the German war effort and the feed the populace. However, Gerda’s mother tells her that the French men are only borrowed, that someday they will return to France, and in the meantime they are to be respected and well-treated. The growing friendship between little Gerda and the French prisoners demonstrates the possibility that even in a time of oppression, humanity can bloom.

The illustrations in this Canadian import are beautifully evocative of a rural island of peace in the midst of war. Renne Benoit, the illustrator, lives in Ontario, Canada, and the pictures remind me a little of photographs I have seen of the Canadian prairies, although the book is set in Germany. The watercolor and colored pencil illustrations are also quite similar in style to Renee Graef’s illustrations for the Little House picture books. If you like those pictures of cozy farm life, you’ll probably appreciate those found in The Year of Borrowed Men.

The story is based on the World War 2 experiences of the author’s mother. An afterword at the end of the book informs the reader that little Gerda, Ms. Barker’s mother, never saw her father and brother return from the war. She also never again saw the three Frenchmen who worked the farm after war was over, but she did remember the French “borrowed men” with fondness as “fruende” or “amis”.

I am pleased to add this picture book to the World War 2 section of my library as it gives a different perspective on the war and its many stories.