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.

Soundtrack for Carney’s House Party by Maud Hart Lovelace

Oct18

I’ve just been reading the newly published edition of Maud Hart Lovlace’s Deep Valley, Minnesota novel, Carney’s House Party in which a group of college girlfriends, old and new, come together in the midwestern epitome of style and fashion for a house party, a month long sleepover with lots of picnics and teas and parties and dances and sight-seeing and good wholesome fun. Of course there’s romance, and lots of singing.

The house party sing and dance to this lovely tribute to the “flying machine.”

And these are two more songs that the orchestra plays at the “dance party” that the Crowd enjoys.

Sam, one of Carney’s two love interests, plays this song on his saxophone.

More information on the Music of Deep Valley can be found in this presentation put together by Barbara Carter, co-president of the Maud Hart Lovelace Society.

Besides the music, the other things I noticed while reading this book:

Carney is appalled and embarrassed that a boy that likes her dares to kiss her BEFORE they have an understanding or an engagement:

When they reached an elm tree so large and thickly leaved that its shadows defeated even Japanese lanterns, he stopped and kissed her.
Carney broke away from him. She was really angry now. It was possible to forgive what had happened the night before . . . they had both been wrought up. But this was different. It was inexcusable.

Wow! We’ve come a long way, baby, since 1912, and not in the right direction. Nowadays if the guy doesn’t make a pass at a girl, she might have a suspicion that he’s gay, or at last uninterested.

Carney’s House Party ends with Carney engaged to be married to the love of her life, but also returning to Vassar to finish her college degree before getting married. Back then, it seemed as if women definitely could “have it all.” And why not? Education, career (?), family, marriage. Just because it’s difficult to juggle everything doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying.

I am so fond of these new editions of Maud Hart Lovelace’s Deep Valley books that I’m planning to save them to give to a special daughter as Christmas presents. I may even buy some more copies so that I can give each of my lovely daughters their own set. (It’s OK. I don’t think they read the blog very thoroughly, if at all.)

Sunday Salon: Miscellaneous Fascinations

Oct17

The Sunday Salon.com

Thanks to Travis at 100 Scope Notes I now have the first entry on my Christmas wishlist, the T-shirt with this picture on the front from Unshelved:

National Book Award Finalists in the Young People’s Literature category are:

Paolo Bacigalupi, Ship Breaker
Kathryn Erskine, Mockingbird
Laura McNeal, Dark Water
Walter Dean Myers, Lockdown
Rita Williams-Garcia, One Crazy Summer

I’ve not read any of these, but two of them, Mockingbird and One Crazy Summer, are nominated in the Middle Grade Fiction category for the Cybils, so I’ll be reading them soon. I’ll let you know what I think. All the nominees for the National Book Awards are here. I’ve read exactly one book on any of the finalist lists, So Much For That by Lionel Shriver, so I can’t say much about what I would choose as a winner in any of the categories. The winners will be announced on November 17th.

Amy needs prayer for the orphanage in Zambia that she and her husband run.

Betsy-Bee: “Pink spines and pink covers always attract me.” (They tend to repel me. I’m anti-pink.)

Drama Daughter is studying theater at the local junior college these days. I have reservations about her being able to reconcile her commitment to Christ with the demands of a career in theater, but if anyone can do it, she’s the one. Determined is that girl. Anyway, here’s an article about actress Patricia Heaton who faces the same tension.

Saturday Review of Books: October 16, 2010

Oct15

“I love to lose myself in other men’s minds. Books think for me.”~Charles Lamb

If you’re not familiar with and linking to and perusing the Saturday Review of Books here at Semicolon, you’re missing out. Here’s how it usually works. Find a review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week of a book you were reading or a book you’ve read. The review doesn’t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can just write your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.

Then on Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where you’ve written your book review. Don’t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after you’ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book you’re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews they’re most interested in reading.

After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read. That’s how my own TBR list has become completely unmanageable and the reason I can’t join any reading challenges. I have my own personal challenge that never ends.

The Red Umbrella by Christina Diaz Gonzalez

Oct15

“From 1960 to 1962, the parents of over fourteen thousand Cuban children made the heart-wrenching decision to send their sons and daughters to the United States . . . alone. . . . They would save their children by sending them to the United States. And so, in 1960, a plan was hatched to help Cuban children escape the Communist island. The plan required the secret transport of documents, an underground network, and the courageous actions of people in the United States and Cuba. For the next two years, Cuban children arrived in Miami, Florida, by the planeload in what would eventually be called Operation Pedro Pan.”

From this actual historic event comes the fictional story of Lucia and Francisco Alvarez, Cuban children whose parents send them to the United States to escape from Castro’s revolucion. This book was nominated for the Cybil Awards in both the the MIddle Grade Fiction category and the Young Adult fiction category. Because of the age of the main character, Lucia, who is a 14 year old teenager with teen concerns as the book opens, and because of a couple of (non-graphic) mentions of aggressive sexual behavior, I would say that the book is most appropriate for teens ages 13 and up. However, don’t let that scare you off even if you have strict standards for that sort of behavior in young adult fiction. The Red Umbrella is anything but salacious, and the picture presented of the evils of Castor’s “Communist paradise” is on target and carries a needed message.

It’s easy for adults to forget and for young people to never be told how very repressive and cruel the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and Cuba were. In Cuba’s case, of course, the repression and tyranny continue to this day. This story, which never descends into political didacticism, will make at least some young people curious enough to find out for themselves how Castro’s Cuba came to be. And that’s a good thing. I love history contained in good historical fiction, and The Red Umbrella is great historical fiction.

Ms. Gonzalez says that this story is based partially on the experiences of her parents and her mother-in-law who were all three as children involved in Operation Pedro Pan. By the third chapter of the book, I was rooting for the children to escape indoctrination by the Cuban Communist regime, and I was soon trying to figure out how it might be possible for the children’s parents to join them in the U.S. Of course, not all of the experiences the children have in the U.S. are positive, but for the most the United States becomes for them The Land of Freedom, even though they miss Cuba and their own Cuban culture and customs.

Other children’s and young adult books about Cuba and Cuban-Americans:
Martina the Beautiful Cockroach: A Cuban Folktale by Carmen Agra Deedy.
The Bossy Gallito: A Traditional Cuban Folktale by Lucia M. Gonzalez.
The Road to Santiago by D.H. Figueredo.
Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba by Margarita Engle. Semicolon review here.
The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom by Margarita Engle.
90 Miles to Havana by Enrique Flores-Galbis.
Flight to Freedom by Ana Veciana Suarez.
Heat by Mike Lupica. Semicolon review here.
Jumping Off to Freedom by Anilu Bernardo.
Where the Flame Trees Bloom by Alma Flor Ada.
Under the Royal Palms: A Childhood in Cuba by Alma Flor Ada.

My Hands Came Away Red by Lisa McKay

Oct14

Immediately after finishing My Hands Came Away Red, I searched the internet to see what other books Ms. McKay had written. That should tell you something about the quality of this compelling story of a Christian youth missions team in Indonesia. Eighteen year old Cori decides to spend her summer in Indonesia, building a church, out of mixed motives. Yes, Cori is a Christian, and she wants to do something meaningful in God’s service. She also wants to get away from her confusing relationship with her boyfriend, Scott, and she just wants to experience her own adventure. Since the book runs to 386 pages, Cori obviously gets a lot more meaning and distance and adventure than she expected.

And I got a lot more than I expected out of reading this novel. The story represents really sophisticated and deeply significant Christian fiction. Ms. McKay is not afraid to tackle the hard questions: why does God allow suffering? Why do bad things happen to good people? How do Christians pray when it seems as if God isn’t listening? How is Romans 8:28 (“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”) true? Is it true? Really?
Not only does the book deal with these and other hard questions, the writing is also courageous enough not to give simple, easy answers. There’s no ending, or at least no ending that ties up all the loose doubts and uncertainties and issues and presents them to the reader in a neat little package.

But at the same time it’s not a hopeless diatribe on the stupidity of simple faith. Cori and her team of five more teens from the U.S. have a horrible encounter with evil and with danger, and they react in all the myriad of ways that a group of young, somewhat immature Christian young people would react. They cry, and they get angry. They are scared, and they sometimes manage to be incredibly brave. They do and say stupid things. They argue, and they support one another. They doubt and become angry with God, and sometimes they experience something that renews their faith in Him. Looking at faith in the face of atrocity and making fun of that faith is easy, but the reality is not that simple. In My Hands Came Away Red, the characters are not allowed to give up on life or on God, even when they do.

Lisa McKay has a degree in psychology, and that background shows in the novel’s vivid descriptions of the psychological trauma that the young people in the story experience. The author has also served on a missions team in the Philippines, and that firsthand knowledge of how Christians really do behave and talk and act like normal young adults also makes the book’s character portrayals authentic and engaging. As I judge in the young adult fiction category for this year’s INSPY Awards for “the best in literature that grapples with the Christian faith,” I will use use this book and a couple of other faith-driven books as the standard by which I judge the entries on the shortlist for this year. It’s that good.

The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger

Oct13

The Strange Case of Origami Yoda is soooooo sixth grade/middle school. I felt as if I were transported back in time to my sixth grade year. Yes, there were guys like Dwight who did weird stuff. Dwight carries a talking origami Yoda around on his finger, and Origami Yoda answers questions and gives advice—in strange Yoda-like syntax. “New one must you make.” “Rush in fools do.”

Yes, there were guys (and girls) in my sixth grade like Tommy and Harvey who argued about silly things and became totally involved in investigating ridiculous phenomena. The book is actually Tommy’s “case file” in which he attempts to gather all the evidence to decide whether Origami Yoda is real or just Dwight pretending. When I was in sixth grade, we spent a lot of time trying to figure out whether our sixth grade teacher left in the middle of the year because we drove her insane and sent her to a mental institution.

And yes, sixth grade was full of embarrassing situations, strange obsessions, and awkward situations. In fact, I can admit it here for the first time: I was a little weird when I was in sixth grade. I think, if I remember correctly, I carried a large doll to the sixth grade skating party and dared anyone to laugh or call me a baby.

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand the idea of a bunch of middle school kids putting their faith in the oracles of an origami finger puppet is so ridiculous and superstitious and sort of sad. On the other hand, when I was a kid, a good church kid, my friends and I did many things just as ridiculous. We used “cootie catchers” to answer questions about life and love. We tried out a Ouija board. We sort of, kind of, believed that if you took off the Vietnam POW (prisoner of war) bracelet that you agreed to wear until the POW came home that he never would be released.

It’s kind of like Halloween. As a Christian parent, I don’t think there’s anything harmful or wrong about dressing up in costumes and going trick or treating around the neighborhood. Harmless fun. But I wouldn’t want my urchins to get caught up in the more occult aspects of the Halloween holiday, playing witches and chanting spells and believing that Satan has some kind of extra power on Halloween. Reading about and even playing around with or making your own Origami Yoda is similar. Harmless fun, unless my kids actually started believing that Origami Yoda could give them guidance for their lives. That’s where I’d draw the line.

Bottom line: good book, guy book, funny book with a lighthearted moral: sometimes you’ve got to believe and go for it. Ignore the naysayers.

Just don’t take the whole “believe in Yoda and the Force” thing too seriously. Oh, by the way, there are instructions for making your own Origami Yoda in the back of the book. I think Karate Kid’s going to make me one.

The Strange Case of Origami Yoda has been nominated for the 2010 Cybils Award in the category of Middle Grade Fiction.

The Fences Between Us by Kirby Larson

Oct12

true-blue, in a dither, mind your own beeswax, old battle-ax, can it, the hoosegow, a good egg, bushed, conniption fit, scuttlebutt, shut-eye, cock-eyed, tough cookie, chitchat, discombobulated, peaked, dreamboat, triple whammy, in a funk, hit the jackpot, jazzed, kitty-corner, don’t take any wooden nickels.

Reading Kirby Larson’s entry into the Dear America series, set in 1941-42, was like revisiting my childhood. Not that I was alive during World War II. But the slang terms and the idioms above that I took from The Fences Between Us were words and phrases that I heard my mother and father use as I was growing up. And they were children during World War II. The language Ms. Larson used in her pretend diary of a 13 year old girl growing up in Seattle was perfect, not overdone as I’ve read in some books that attempt to portray a certain time period, but just enough to make it feel real.

Then, too, I grew up in a Southern Baptist church where we read and studied about “home missionaries” who worked with ethnic churches, and I knew that Ms. Larson’s story of a Caucasian pastor of a Japanese Baptist Church and his daughter, Piper the sometimes reluctant PK, was something that really could have happened. In fact, the afterword to the book says that the story is based on the WW2 experiences of Pastor Emory “Andy” Andrews who “moved from Seattle to Twin Falls, Idaho to be near his congregation, all of whom had been incarcerated in Minidoka“, a Japanese internment camp.

Like all of the books in the Dear America series, the story is written in the form of a diary. Piper’s diary is a gift from one of the members of her church, grandmotherly Mrs Harada, who’s trying to make Piper feel a little better about her brother Hank’s enlistment in the U.S. Navy. Hank enlists in what he thinks is a “peacetime Navy” in November 1941, and he’s soon shipped to Hawaii, a seeming plum of an assignment. December 7, a day that will live in infamy, changes everything for Hank, for Piper, for Piper’s sister Margie, for Piper’s pastor dad, and especially for the members of the Seattle Japanese Baptist Church.

The book isn’t all history. Piper experiences her first romance, and she tries to work out her own feelings about being patriotic while at the same time supporting her friends who are Japanese American and being persecuted and mistreated for no good reason. There are other books for young people about the same time period and about the Japanese “relocation camps”, but I thought this one was a good addition to the category.

Other children’s books about the Japanese American experience during World War II:
Picture Books
Baseball Saved Us by Ken Mochizuki.
The Bracelet by Yoshiko Uchida.
So Far From the Sea by Eve Bunting.
Flowers from Mariko by Rick Noguchi and Deneen Jenks.
Fiction
Weedflower by Cynthia Kadohata.
Eyes of the Emperor by Graham Salibury.
The Moon Bridge by Marcia Savin.
Journey Home by Yoshiko Uchida.
Nonfiction
Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment by Jean Wakatsuki Houston and James Houston.
The Children of Topaz: The Story of the Japanese-American Internment Camp by Michael Tunnell and George Chilcoat.
The Invisible Thread: An Autobiography by Yoshiko Uchida.

The Fences Between Us has been nominated for the 2010 Cybils Awards in the category of Middle Grade Fiction.

I, Emma Freke by Elizabeth Atkinson

Oct12

I, Emma Freke pushes some of my buttons: homeschooling, family reunions, community. So let’s take them one at a time.

Homeschooling: Emma Freke, age twelve, has a mom, Donatella, who acts about fourteen. When Donatella decides to give Emma the birthday present of being homeschooled, the result is not pretty. Homeschooling is not a choice between child neglect and authoritarian scheduling in a school-like environment. It really is possible to have children who are free to learn at their own pace and even choose many of their own areas of study and who are also required to to be responsible and work at their education. And most people like Donatella don’t last long at homeschooling, which is what happens in the book. I also didn’t like the implication that people tend to homeschool in order to use their children as free labor as Donatella does when she leaves Emma to tend the bead shop. I know lots of homeschooling families, and none of them have their children at home in order to enslave them to the family’s business.

Family reunions: Emma attends a family reunion in Wisconsin in order to get away from her negligent, selfish mother and to meet the extended family of the father she’s never met. The entire Freke family is about as dysfunctional in the direction of controlling and domineering as Emma’s mom is in the opposite direction. In fact, The Freke family is so uptight and scheduled that they’re borderline unbelievable. Again, family is not usually a choice between a mother who’s so permissive that she should be hauled in for child neglect and a father’s family that’s so authoritarian that rebellion is the only option for anyone with a sense of self at all.

Community: The theme of the book is finding home, finding the place where you can fit in and feel accepted and loved for yourself. Emma, with her strange name and her height (six feet tall at age 12) and her advanced intellectual abilities and her odd family, doesn’t fit in anywhere. She’s not only a Freke, but she feels like a freak. And don’t we all sometimes? Especially young teens? This aspect of the story really communicated to me, and I felt as if the target audience, middle school readers, would identify, too.

I’m not sure about the portrayal of homeschooling as an alternate lifestyle for neglectful parents nor about the family reunion that’s too structured to be true, but the story transcends these lapses. The supporting cast in the book, Donatella, Aunt Pat Freke, Nonno, Emma’s grandfather, and others, all tend toward caricature. However, Emma Freke is a great character, and she deserves the happy ending that she gets at the end of the story.

I, Emma Freke is nominated for the 2010 Cybil Awards in the the Middle Grade Fiction category.

Tortilla Sun by Jennifer Cervantes

Oct11

This is a cuento, a story about magic, love, hope, and treasure. If you read this under the glow of the moo or by the light of the summer sun, listen for whispers in any breeze that passes by. Then close your eyes and let the cuento take you to where magic still exists and spells of fear and hope are told through the heart of the storyteller.

Jennifer Cervantes’ Tortilla Sun certainly captures the atmosphere of a small village in New Mexico. The plot didn’t really grab me, but I did like the setting and the many, many vivid descriptions of the Southwest.

“I followed her past the long tables and into the sky-blue kitchen. Dried flowers and plants hung in tied bunches from the ceiling, making the kitchen smell like a freshly lit cranberry candle.”

“Two French doors opened to a walled courtyard with a brightly painted yellow and purple fountain.”

“The whole yard smelled of Mexican spices and roses.”

“We made our way through a small courtyard, where pink geraniums hung over the sides of terracotta pots lining the walkway. Above the bright turquoise door was a small painted tile that read Mi casa es su casa.”

“Beyond the village, the Albuquerque lights flickered like a thousand tiny twinkling stars. A distant howl flew on the edge of an approaching wind; withn seconds it had found us on the mesa. It whipped around, loosening Nana’s bun and then descended into the village below, gliding like a ghost.”

Can’t you just imagine yourself in a New Mexico village with the adobe houses and the flowers and the wind whistling through the trees and the smells of chili powder and comino (cumin) and candles burning?

I grew up in West Texas, and I had Hispanic friends who lived in houses like those in this book and whose mothers and grandmothers made tortillas and empanadas and other comidas muy deliciosas. Reading Tortilla Sun took me back. The story of a girl trying to reconnect with her dead father and New Mexico, Hispanic roots was OK, but somewhat predictable; however, if you have ties to New Mexico or to Hispanic culture or just want to read a story evocative of those ties and that cultural experience, Tortilla Sun is worth finding and reading and savoring.

And there’s a recipe in the back of the book for homemade tortillas that I may try. I won’t give you the long version of the story of the last and and only time I tried to make tortillas, twenty-five years ago, but I called the experience The Great Tortilla Battle. Maybe Ms. Cervantes’ recipe would, like her prose, cause something magical to happen and transform my tortillas into something edible.

More good books for children and young adults set in New Mexico:
The King’s Fifth by Scott O’Dell. Esteban is accused of withholding the fifth of the treasure that by law belongs to the King of Spain in this adventure set during the time of of the Spanish conquistadors and the search for gold and for the city of Cibola. YA

Josefina books by Valerie Tripp. Set in 1824, these six books in the American Girl series tell about Josefina, a Hispanic girl growing up on a ranch in New Mexico.

The Girl Who Chased Away Sorrow: The Diary of Sarah Nita, a Navajo Girl, New Mexico, 1864 (Dear America) by Ann Warren Turner

And Now Miguel by Joseph Krumgold. Miguel is the son of a sheep rancher who longs to join the men as they take the sheep to summer camp in the Sangre de Cristo mountains. Krumgold’s book won a Newbery Medal in 1954, and it is deserving of that recognition. However, you’ll have to slow down and savor the descriptions and the details to enjoy the story.

The Staircase by Ann Rinaldi. 13 year old Methodist Lizzie, left by her father in a convent school in Santa Fe, is confused by the Catholic teachings and the culture of the all-girls school. But she is able to help the nuns and the girls find a carpenter to build a much-needed staircase for the convent’s new chapel. YA

The Last Summer of the Death Warriors by Francisco X. Stork. Semicolon review here. Definitely YA or adult.

More books set in New Mexico at Wrapped in Foil, a website which lists children’s books by state setting.

Tortilla Sun is one of the books nominated for the 2010 Cybil Awards in the category of Middle Grade Fiction.