Nowhere Boy by Katherine Marsh

Dec12

Fourteen year old Ahmed Nasser, a Syrian refugee, is stranded in Brussels, Belgium, separated from his family, no papers, no money, and no plan. Thirteen year old Max Howard, an American diplomat’s son, is stranded, too, in a way. His parents have transported him to Brussels and enrolled him in a French-speaking school, all because they want to give him a “new start” after an unfortunate sixth grade school year back in Washington, D.C. Now, Max feels like a failure and a stranger, and his parents just want him to repeat sixth grade and learn French and get his act together.

It’s an unlikely story of how two misfit boys meet and find a way to help each other. The story itself is very pro-refugee and sympathetic to the plight of Syrian refugees in particular. And the boys do break the law in their attempts to safeguard and legitimize Ahmed. The lone spokesperson for law and order, Police Inspector Fontaine, is not very effective in his argument that “the law is important. Society cannot function without it.” (He reminds one a bit of Inspector Javert.)

Although it’s quite obvious where the author’s sympathies lie, I would not say that the book is didactic. The story is exciting and intriguing enough to keep the pages flipping, and the characters, even the ones who disagree with what Max and Ahmed are trying to do, are well-drawn and interesting, experiencing growth and development to some extent. Max’s parents seem a bit oblivious to the obvious, but they are likable and present and engaged in Max’s life.

Near the end of the book, in a clear reference to our current American president, someone tells Ahmed, “America is only accepting ten thousand Syrians. There is even a candidate for president who wants to ban all Muslim immigrants.” In the first ten months of 2018, the United States admitted only fifty-six Syrian refugees.

Strange Star by Emma Carroll

Dec11

This book features the Shelleys, Percy Byshe and Mary Godwin, and Mary’s half-sister Claire, and Lord Byron, and as soon as I realized that little fact, I knew that I would be somewhat ambivalent about the book. The Shelleys and their coterie, especially Percy and Byron, but really all of them, were not very good people. In fact, Percy Shelley was a predator who took advantage of at least two teenage girls and drove one of them to suicide. And Byron was even worse in the womanizing department. The tale of these two poets and their harem/community/obsessive fanbase is a sordid one.

And yet . . . The story, especially the famous story of the Villa Diodati and how the group challenged each other to write a ghost or horror story, and how Mary Godwin Shelley produced the tale of Frankenstein’s monster as a result of that challenge, has a particular and peculiar fascination. Just as the book Frankenstein is repellant and yet strangely fascinating at the same time, its origin story has inspired many an author to embroider and fill in the gaps in the Shelleys’ journey to Romantic fame.

“Yet I’ve also tried to make my story echo Mary Shelley’s in certain ways. Felix, Agatha, Elizabeth (Lizzie), Mr. Walton, and Moritz are all names taken from Frankenstein. Strange Star is about scientific ambition: Miss Stine experiments with electricity regardless of the consequences, just as Victor Frankenstein does in Shelley’s original. There is a blind character in Frankenstein who doesn’t judge people by their appearance. Many of the characters in Strange Star face prejudice because of how they look or who they are.
For me, Frankenstein is a great story, and Mary Shelley an inspirational woman. I really hope reading Strange Star will make you want to discover more about both for yourself.”

Well, not really. I think I know enough already. However, I did find that Strange Star, while rather a strange story itself, neither appeals to prurient interest by emphasizing the nasty details of the Shelleys lives not does it whitewash them and make them into kind, honorable people. The Shelleys, Claire Clairmont, and Lord Byron in this book are portrayed as just the selfish, careless people that they most likely were without the author’s giving too much information for a middle grade or young adult audience.

Strange Star itself is a little dark, but it ends on a good note. As another author with a bad reputation once wrote, “The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.” I daresay I like my Romantic poets fictionalized to some extent to take away the rough edges.

A Dastardly Plot by Christopher Healy

Dec10

A Perilous Journey of Danger and Mayhem: A Dastardly Plot by Christopher Healy.

A new series beginner by the author of The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom is something to look forward to with anticipation, and A Dastardly Plot lives up to my expectations. The book is set in 1883, the Age of Invention, and features appearances by great inventors such as Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Nikola Tesla, and George Eastman, to name a few of the many men who made the age of invention, inventive.

But where were all the women? Well, according to this fantastical version of history, the women were shut out of the Inventor’s Guild and out of the World’s Fair, disregarded, patronized, and ignored. It’s definitely a feminist take on madcap inventors who are out to save the world, but it never gets didactic or overbearing. Molly Pepper, daughter of the not-so-famous inventor, Cassandra Pepper, lives with her mother behind their pickle shop and helps with the inventing. However, Molly doesn’t really have the inventing bug, not does she want to be an inventor when she grows up. And right now, at age twelve, Molly is too busy trying to keep her mother alive, solvent, and following her dream of exhibiting her inventions at the World’s Fair, to worry too much about growing up or about what she will do if and when she does. It’s Molly’s new friend Emmett Lee who has the gift for new ideas and inventions, but it’s Molly who must save the day with her practicality and persistence when villains want to destroy the Worlds Fair and take over the government of the entire country.

A Dastardly Plot is a detective adventure fantasy with lots of chases and explosions and hairbreadth escapes and and mysterious disguises and twists and turns as well as a growing friendship between Molly Pepper and Emmett Lee and a mother/daughter relationship that is characterized by dysfunction and growth, too. Readers of all ages can enjoy this story with its humor and heart, and I predict that most of those readers will be looking forward to the next installment in the story of the Peppers and Emmett Lee and the inventors of New York.

By the way, there is an afterword in which Mr. Healy tells his readers “what’s real and what’s not in A Dastardly Plot.” Such information is definitely needed, since most of the book falls in the “not” category. Still it may inspire young readers to research for themselves and find out more about Edison, Bell, Tesla, Eastman, Nellie Bly, Sarah Goode, Hertha Marks, Josephine Cochrane, Margaret Knight, Mary Walton, and other inventors and luminaries of the late nineteenth century. Also featured in the story are the Brooklyn Bridge, President Chester Arthur, Ulysses S. Grant, Menlo Park, and the National Geographic Society. Lots of jumping-off places for more learning and adventure. (I want to read more about all those female inventors for myself.)

The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle by Christina Uss

Dec6

Bicycle, a foundling who has grown up at the Mostly Silent monastery in Washington, D.C., is now twelve years old, a lover of cycling, and in need of a good friend. But she’s not likely to find a real friend either at the monastery where the monks are limited in their speech to only eight sacred words, used infrequently and only when necessary, or at the Friendship Factory, a camp where she is guaranteed to make three friends or else. So, Bicycle sets off on her own, with her trusty bicycle, to make her own friends in her own way.

This story of a girl and her cross-country bicycle trip from Washington, D.C. to California is enlivened by the appearance of unexpected characters along the way: a Civil War ghost who decides to haunt Bicycle’s bicycle (named Clunk), a bike-loving horse named Cannibal, a frustrated restauranteur, Estrella and her bike-crushing herd of pigs, The Cookie Lady, and Jeremiah, the Fried Pie seller—and that’s just in the first half of the trip before Bicycle reaches the Continental Divide. Bicycle is a determined and honest girl with a mission: she wants to make friends with her cycling hero, Zbigniew Sienkiewicz, aka Zbig (for obvious “pronouncibility” reasons), who is coming to San Francisco for The Blessing of the Bicycles. The only way she can get to meet Zbig is be there for the event, and Bicycle is going to make it by bicycling all the way across the United States.

The story does require some suspension of disbelief, and a certain appreciation or at least tolerance for the quirky and off-beat. However, the author, Christina Uss, “has ridden her own beloved bicycle across the United States, once widthwise and once lengthwise.” That familiarity with cross-country bicycling and U.S. geography shows up in the details of the story as Bicycle pedals through miles and miles of Kansas sunflowers or through more miles and miles of Nevada desert. Just as Bicycle has people and events that cross her path and help get her through those long miles, the book never slows down too much without a new place to see a friend to meet, or without something happening to enliven Bicycle’s journey and keep the pages/pedals turning.

The book could be classified in the “magical realism” genre, with a bit of science fiction thrown in. However, it’s mostly a story about a girl who learns to persevere and make friends, who has a little luck and a lot of pluck, and who loves bicycling. If any of those themes and ideas pique your interest, you should check it out.

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

Christmas in South Africa, c. 2001

Dec5

Niki Daly’s series of picture books about a little girl named Jamela are a perfect introduction to South African culture, and they are just good stories.

What’s Cooking, Jamela? deals with the advent of Christmas, South African style as Jamela helps Mama fatten up a chicken for Christmas dinner.

“When Gogo left, Mama said, ‘Come, Jamela, let’s go to Mrs. Zibi and buy one of her young chickens. If we feed it well, it will be nice and fat for Christmas.’

Mama let Jamela choose the chicken–a beautiful red one. Mrs. Zibi gave them a bag of mielies.

‘We can call her Christmas,’ said Jamela. Mama laughed. ‘That’s a good name for a Christmas chicken, Jamela.'”

Other Jamela books:

Jamela’s Dress
Happy Birthday, Jamela!
Where’s Jamela?
A Song for Jamela

Several of these are also available in Spanish.

Christmas in Philadelphia, PA, c.1962

Dec4

Carolyn Haywood’s Betsy books and her other books about Little Eddie and other children growing up in mid-twentieth century America are a breath of fresh air and a lovely look at the kind of childhood that I actually experienced back in the 1960’s.

In this excerpt from Snowbound with Betsy, Betsy and her friends decide to make a Christmas tree for feeding the birds:

“This is a good place for it,’ said Susan, “because we’ll be able to see it from the window.”

“Yes,” said Betsy. “We’ll be able to see the birds eating the peanut butter.”

“Lucky birds!” said Neddie. “They all get the peanut butter.”

“I love peanut butter,” said Star, longingly.

Susan and Betsy hung the orange cups on the branches of the tree. Neddie helped to hang the apple parings. Finally Betsy and Susan draped several garlands of popcorn from branch to branch, all the way from the top to the bottom of the tree.When they were finished, the children were pleased with the birds’ Christmas tree. They stood and admired it. The bright orange cups against the dark green branches made the tree very gay.

“It looks like a real Christmas tree,” said Susan.

Christmas at Notre Dame, France, c.1300

Dec3

The Little Juggler, adapted from an old French Legend and illustrated by Barbara Cooney.

From the same source story as yesterday’s selection, The Clown of God by Tomie dePaola, The Little Juggler is a bit longer and more detailed, set in France this time, and with a different, somewhat happier, ending. The juggler in this story is named Barnaby, and he is said in the end to “continue to ply his craft for the Christ Child and His Mother. Cheerfully did he tumble and cheerfully did he serve.”

I love Barbara Cooney’s three color illustrations–red, white, and black. And the story in the introduction to her version of this tale of how she named her son after the little juggler and then later dedicated her book to “Barnaby and his son” adds an extra fillip of joy to the telling. Ms. Cooney says that this book, published in 1961, is her “contribution to the Christmas season.”

“The next night, on Christmas Eve, the monks came to the little chapel with the beautiful gifts for the Christ Child and His Mother. Barnaby, with a sad heart, watched as each of the brothers laid his offering at the feet of the statue.

‘Ah, sweet Lady,’ he sighed, ‘if only I could match the splendor of their gifts. Alas, I cannot.'”

Compare Ms. Cooney’s version of the story with Mr. dePaola’s retelling, and then, perhaps look up the short story by French author Anatole France, Our Lady’s Juggler.

Christmas in Sorrento, Italy, c. 1300

Dec2

“Whatever you do, work at it with your whole being, for the Lord and not for men, because you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as your reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”

The French legend of the little juggler is transplanted to Italy and set in the early Renaissance time period, told and illustrated by the talented Tomie dePaola in The Clown of God. This book is one of those suggested as a part of the Five in a Row picture book curriculum, volume 1. It is also included in the list of Biblioguides’ 25 Picture Books to Read this Christmas.

“Giovanni became very famous, and it wasn’t long before he said good-bye to the traveling troupe and set off on his own.

Up and down Italy he traveled, and although his costumes became more beautiful, he always kept the face of a clown.

Once he juggled for a duke.

Once for a prince!

And it was always the same. First the sticks, then plates, then the clubs, rings and burning torches.

Finally the rainbow of colored balls.

‘And now for the Sun in the Heavens,’ he would shout, and the golden ball would fly higher and higher and crowds would laugh and clap and cheer.”

Tomie DePaola writes beautiful books and illustrates them. Several of his books are about Catholic saints and stories: The Legend of the Poinsettia, The Clown of God, Patrick: Patron Saint of Ireland, Francis: The Poor Man of Assisi, The Lady of Guadalupe, and Mary: The Mother of Jesus. He also has written and published Bible story books including The Miracles of Jesus, and The Parables of Jesus.

Stay tuned tomorrow for another favorite and lovely version of this story.

Christmas on board the Susan Constant, Thames River, England, 1607

Dec1

Young David Warren, an orphan, is sailing before the mast on His Majesty’s Ship, the Susan Constant, bound for Virginia to start a new colony, Jamestown:

“Christmas Eve, they were still wind-bound in the Thames, but David had found his sea-legs. When the cook asked for his help, he swaggered to the galley.
‘Hungry, lad?’ the cook asked.
‘Yes!’ David declared. ‘And I can eat anything that holds still!’
The cook was roasting a pig for the gentlemen aft. Even the fo’c’s’le would have baked hash and steamed pudding with raisins.
From some hiding place the crews brought out holly and evergreens to decorate the ships. That night battle lanterns flared in the riggings and fiddlers played. The men on the Discovery began to sing ‘God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen.’ David heard Jem’s voice rise, high and clear. The others stopped singing, and Jem finished the song alone.
Captain Newport lifted his trumpet and hailed the pinnace. ‘Have that man sing again!’
Jem’s voice, with a more piercing sweetness than David had ever heard before, began ‘The Coventry Carol.’
‘Lul-lay, Thou little tiny Child . . .’
Blindly, David turned and edged his way aft to a place of hiding in the shadow of the high poop. He crouched there, shuddering. All the Christmas Eves he had ever known, all his memories of his father, tore at his throat. He heard footsteps, and fought to stifle his sobs. He bit his hand until he tasted blood.”

from This Dear-Bought Land by Jean Latham.

Christmas in Repulse Bay, Canada, 1955

Nov29

Baseball Bats for Christmas by Michael Arvaarluk Kusugak, illustrated by Vladyana Krykorka.

Arvaarluk, the narrator of this story, is a seven year old Inuit boy who lived in 1955 in the far north, “way up at the north end of Hudson Bay—smack dab on the Arctic Circle,” where there are no “standing-ups”, commonly known as trees. And then one day the supply helicopter brought something rather strange just in time for Christmas.

“But there were the things he had brought, sitting on the snowbank in front of Arvaaluk’s hut. They were green and had spindly branches all over.
‘What are they?’ Jack asked.
‘Standing-ups,’ Peter said, confidently. ‘I have seen them in books at the church. Father Didier showed them to us.’
‘What are they for?’ Yvo asked.
Peter shrugged his shoulders and replied, ‘I don’t know.’
They did not have too long to wonder about them, of course. Christmas was coming. There were things to be done.There was church to go to at midnight.”

I love this true (?) story from author Michael Arvaarluk Kusugak’s Canadian childhood memories of Christmas in the north of Canada. It gives children a way to see that not everyone celebrates Christmas in exactly the same way and that not everyone sees even the simple things we use and enjoy every day in exactly the same way. Creativity and thinking outside the box are valuable aspects of what we get from the stories we read. In fact, this one reminds me of the family stories of Patricia Polacco and Cynthia Rylant, except this one is set in a place that is entirely foreign to most American and even Canadian children.