Crunch by Leslie Connor

Nov2

crunch: n. a crucial point or situation, typically one at which a decision with important consequences must be made.
a severe shortage of credit or money.

Or energy. A fuel shortage has stranded Dewey’s parents far away from home up north “almost in Canada” with their “eighteen foot box truck with a roll-up rear door.” No fuel available even for truckers with ration cards. Eighteen year old Lil is in charge of the family and the house, and fourteen year old Dewey is running The Bike Barn, a low-key bicycle repair shop that has become a hopping joint since the fuel crunch has put all the cars and trucks out of commission. Dewey has the help of his thirteen year old brother, Vince, who is an expert bike repairman, but the three older Marriss children also have responsibility for the twins, five year olds Angus and Eva.

Will they be able to keep up with all the business that’s coming their way since everybody needs a bicycle in good working condition?

When will Mom and Dad be able to come home?

Will The Bike Barn be next in the rash of thefts that has hit their small town, especially thefts of bicycles?

And what should they do about The Spive, Mr. Spivey next door who openly borrows (takes) their eggs, their grapes, the tools, and who knows what else?

The premise here was a little weak, but I didn’t care. In the book there’s absolutely no gasoline available, all over the country, but electricity still flows freely. Don’t they need fuel to produce electricity? Maybe it’s just down here in Texas that we use a lot of petroleum and natural gas to produce the electricity. I think that if there were no fuel at all for the trucks and cars, there would also be an electricity shortage. But you can correct me if I’m wrong.

Anyway, there’s no electricity shortage in Crunchworld. And the trains are still running. But the freeways are full of cyclists. And Dewey’s father’s bicycle repair shop is, as I said, doing a lot of business. One of the most interesting parts of this story was that it showed what’s involved in running a business. Like in the book Rocky Road, the young teen protagonist ends up running the family business, and Dewey, like Tess, is quite a capable business person. There are difficulties, but the difficulties are overcome with a combination of determination, hard work, and ingenuity. And they get by with a little help from friends.

Crunch follows what I think is a good formula for middle grade fiction (maybe for any fiction): put your characters in a crunch, a hard place. Squeeze them a little, and make it even harder. Then, let them figure out how to solve/resolve their own problems and live happily ever after. I definitely recommend Crunch, especially since it’s both boy and girl-friendly.

Other takes:
Welcome to My Tweendom: “Leslie Connor has written a mystery that has an interestingly timeless feel to it. Dewey and his brothers and sisters are all memorable characters, and having the parents stranded far away made for adventures with a more important feel. There is equal boy and girl appeal with mechanics of bicycles given as much room as character interactions.”

Angela Leeper at Book Page: “The Mariss family’s teamwork and quirky lifestyle make readers want to join along as they play, laugh and dine on clam chowder after a busy yet rewarding day on the farm.”

Ms. Yingling Reads: “This was fun in the way that The Boxcar Children was fun– there seems to be more scope for adventure when parents are not in the picture.”

Crunch has been nominated for the 2010 Cybils Awards in the Middle Grade Fiction category.

Rocky Road by Rose Kent

Nov2

“Ice cream warms the heart, no matter what the weather.” That’s the Dobson family motto. So it should make perfect sense for the Dobsons—Ma Delilah, craft-loving twelve year old Tess, and turtle-loving Jordan–to open an ice cream shop in Schenectady, New York. Except they live in San Antonio. And they have no money, other than an emergency fund that’s only for, well, emergencies. And their old broken down car has no heater. And Delilah, who has wonderful, stupendous, fantastic ideas also deals with something that Tess calls “Shooting Stars.” Delilah goes full bore with boundless energy and endless schemes until she crashes so hard that she can’t even get out of bed. And Tess is left to pick up the pieces.

I enjoyed the characters in this story:

Tess, who loves her mom but is tired of get-rich-quick schemes and spending sprees that only end in disaster. Tess also loves her little brother Jordan, sewing and decorating and all sorts of crafts, and Rocky Road ice cream.

Delilah, whose “Bible” is The Inside Scoop, a manual on how to open a successful ice cream shop. Delilah knows she has mood swings, but she won’t go to a doctor because she doesn’t want those people trying to get inside her head and she can’t afford medical treatment anyway.

Senior Chief Petty Officer Fred Morrow, retired U.S. Navy who has a crusty exterior, an artificial leg, and a heart of gold.

Jordan, who’s hearing-impaired and loves turtles and sometimes throws tantrums when he has a hard time communicating.

Winnie, a loving senior citizen and retired nurse who sings with a group called THe Salty Old Dogs.

Gabby, Tess’s new friend who’s into peer mediation and vegetarianism and peaceful resolution to conflict and Chinese astrology.

So, the characters were fun, and the details on how to start and publicize and run a business were good to read. But the parts about Mom’s bipolar woes felt just a little forced, like an ABC Afterschool Special with a theme. Rocky Road, although it was a cute story, sometimes felt like a lesson in how to deal with a deaf little brother and a bipolar mom who’s running your family into poverty. Maybe it wouldn’t read that way to you at all.

By the way, every one of my children who saw the book lying on my bed pointed out to me, separately and without being asked, that Rocky Road ice cream is NOT pink. Why, they asked, is it called Rocky Road with strawberry ice cream pictured on the front? Children are very literal.

Other takes:
A Year of Reading: “I love the way that Rose Kent combines something as fun as ice cream with difficult life issues. A great combination that works well.”

Melissa at Book Nut: “The conflict is all with Tess and her mother; Tess feels so much older than her twelve years, mostly because her mother — due to an eventual diagnosis of bipolar disorder — is so unreliable. And the whole crazy mother thing is often so overdone. But in this case it worked . . .”

Rocky Road has been nominated for the 2010 Cybils Awards in the Middle Grade Fiction category.

Vote Early, Vote Often

Nov2

Ha! Not really. You just get to vote once, but please do vote today if you haven’t already done so.

Encouragement from some of my friends:

“Remember everyone, today is the day to vote! Don’t let a little rain get in your way! Vote make a difference, your voice does count!” ~Suzanne

“Lots of people have already voted. If you haven’t, please do. In reading Romans 13 some time ago, I realized that “being in subjection to the governing authorities” in our nation at least partially involves voting since that’s the way our system is run.” ~Marge

“Vote! May God’s grace be with us today and may he guide each hand that votes. Pray before you go!” ~Joanne

“Put not your trust in princes, nor in mortal man, in whom there is no help. His spirit departs, he returns to the earth; in that very day his thoughts perish. Happy is he whose hope is in the Lord his God which made heaven and earth, which keepeth truth forever, which executes justice for the oppressed.” – Excerpts from Psalm 146:3-7 ~Hannah

Let the Christians Vote as Though They Were Not Voting. ~John Piper

Sunday Salon: More Fascinations (Quite Random)

Oct31

First of all, Happy Halloween to all the saints, both those on earth and those who have preceded us into heaven. I believe that Christians can celebrate Halloween in good conscience and while giving glory to God in all we do. Here are some resources to read about this perspective on the celebration of Halloween:
Debunking Halloween Myths at The Flying Inn.
On Halloween by James Jordan.

I’m fascinated by young people who do hard things, like this 23 year old who has started an orphanage in Nepal.

Shakespeare really sounded like . . . a Scotsman?

Donate old cellphones to Hopeline to help women in crisis.

John Grisham’s latest thriller (yes, I admit to taking a guilty pleasure in reading the novels of Grisham) features a Lutheran pastor. I usually eschew popular, best-selling literature, unless I can say I discovered it before it became popular, in a sort of reverse, inside-out snobbery. But I make an exception for Grisham. I am tired of Grisham’s anti-death penalty agenda getting in the way of his story-telling, and from what I can tell by reading the review this latest book harps on that topic. I’ll probably read it anyway.

Jamie Langston Turner, who writes generally wonderful but quiet little stories, has another book or two that I haven’t read: No Dark Valley (reviewed at Hope Is the Word) and maybe a couple of older books: Suncatchers and By the Light of a Thousand Stars. I have read her latest book, Sometimes a Light Surprises, and I reviewed it here, although it wasn’t my favorite of her books.

Finally, the books I’ve read this month (October) have been mostly Cybils nominees and INSPY nominees, with a few exceptions thrown in for variety:

CYBILS MIddle Grade Fiction nominees:
Shooting Kabul by N.H. Senzai. Semicolon review here.
The Red Umbrella by Christina Diaz Gonzalez. Semicolon review here.
The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger. Semicolon review here.
The Fences Between Us by Kirby Larson. Semicolon review here.
I, Emma Freke by Elizabeth Atkinson. Semicolon review here.
Tortilla Sun by Jennifer Cervantes. Semicolon review here.
The Private Thoughts of Amelia E. Rye by Bonnie Shimko. Semicolon review here.
Wishing for Tomorrow by Hilary McKay. Semicolon review here.
A Million Shades of Gray by Cynthia Kadohata. Semicolon review here.
This Means War! by Ellen Wittlinger. Semicolon review here.
The Death-Defying Pepper Roux by Geraldine McCaughrean. Semicolon review here.
The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet by Erin Dionne. Semicolon review here.
My Life as a Book by Janet Tashjian. Semicolon review here.
Grease Town by Ann Towell. Semicolon review here.
Max Cassidy: Escape from Shadow Island by Paul Adam. Semicolon review here.
Rocky Road by Rose Kent.
Crunch by Leslie Connor.
Leaving Gee’s Bend by Irene Latham.
Betti on the High Wire by Lisa Railsback.
Mamba Point by Kurtis Scaletta.

INSPYs Young Adult Fiction nominees:
This Gorgeous Game by Donna Freitas.
Once Was Lost by Sara Zarr.
(I’m not allowed to post a review of these until the judging is over in December.)

Others:
The Cardturner by Louis Sachar. Semicolon review here.
No and Me by Delphine de Vigan. Semicolon review here.
Keep Sweet by Michele Dominguez Greene.
Carney’s House Party by Maud Hart Lovelace. Semicolon thoughts (and music) here.
My Hands Came Away Red by Lisa McKay. Semicolon review here.
8th Grade Superzero by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich. Semicolon review here.

Saturday Review Button Thingy

Oct30

I never did learn how to make all those lovely buttons that you see on everyone’s meme or challenge or ad or whatever. I never even learned the technical name for them: button thingy, I guess. Anyway, I always wanted one, and thanks to Cindy of Notes in the Key of Life and Cindy’s Book Club, I now have one! You can grab it here or over in the sidebar, and put a button thingy for the Saturday Review of Books in your sidebar or on your post or wherever you want.

You can change the height and width by changing the numbers in the html.

Saturday Review of Books: October 30, 2010

Oct29

“Resolve to edge in a little reading every day,
if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year.”~Horace Mann

If you’re not familiar with and linking to and perusing the Saturday Review of Books here at Semicolon, you’re missing out. Hereâ€™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 youâ€™ve read. The review doesnâ€™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 youâ€™ve written your book review. Donâ€™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 youâ€™ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book youâ€™re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews theyâ€™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.

Briefly Noted: Cybils Nominees

Oct27

Max Cassidy: Escape from Shadow Island by Paul Adam. Set in England and in the fictional Central American nation of Santo Domingo, this thriller/detective story features fourteen year old escapologist Max Cassidy. Max is a typical fourteen year old, except that he performs Houdini-like feats of escape and magic and he’s determined to effect his mother’s release from prison where she is being held for the murder of his father. Is Max’s father really dead? Can Max prove that his mother is innocent? Will ma be able to escape from notorious Shadow Island? This one skews older; maybe 12-15 year olds will enjoy it. The book starts off with a murder, and although it’s not very scary, it would make a good introduction to the crime fiction genre. Unfortunately, this book is one of those beginning-of-a-series books, and I can’t tell when the second book will be published.
The Max Cassidy Fact File.

Grease Town by Ann Towell. O Canada! This entry from our neighbors to the north confused me at first. Because of the photo on the cover, I thought the narrator, Titus Sullivan and his brother Lemuel, were black. But it turns out that Titus and Lemuel are white Canadians living at the time of the U.S. Civil War, and when they go to Oil Springs, Ontario to work in the oil fields, Titus meets a black boy named Moses. The two become friends, but not everyone in Oil Springs is pleased about living and working side by side with black people, most of whom are former slaves from the United States. Titus is a talkative young man and a brave one, but when tragedy strikes, it takes Titus’s voice away and threatens to take his courage and his reason, too. This one would pair well with Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis, also about escaped slaves living in Canada. (Semicolon review here)

My Life as a Book by Janet Tashjan. Kind of a Wimpy Kid wannabe. Derek is looking forward to a summer with no school and lots of fun, but his teacher is forcing him to do summer reading! I give the book points for not having Derek predictably and magically turn into a book lover as he struggles to complete his summer reading assignment, and the mystery subplot is interesting, even if the solution is somewhat unsurprising. Reluctant readers who have read all of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series might find this one an acceptable follow-up.

The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet by Erin Dionne. Hamlet Kennedy’s family loves Shakespeare. Her parents teach Shakespeare at the local college, dress up like Elizabethans, live Shakespeare, breathe Shakespeare. Hamlet, despite her name, is not so passionate about Shakespeare. Then, when her little sister Desdemona the seven year old genius, joins Hamlet in middle school, Hamlet realizes that her life is about to become a total tragedy.
I would have expected to love this one since I’m something of a Shakespeare geek myself, but I just liked it. Hamlet’s woes fall fall short of tragedy, but her reaction to the embarrassment of having a family that’s far from average seems typically middle school-ish. Maybe that’s what left me a little cold; I’d prefer a character who’s not afraid to be different.

The Death-Defying Pepper Roux by Geraldine McCaughrean

Oct27

One of the oddest children’s books I’ve ever read. The story isn’t a fantasy, but it is fantastical. Pepper Roux, age fourteen, isn’t exactly a hero or an anti-hero, but some Gilbert and Sullivan-esque admixture of Don Quixote, The Great Imposter, and Tom Jones.

On the morning of his fourteenth birthday, Pepper had been awake for fully two minutes before realizing it was the day he must die. His heart cannoned like a billiard ball off some soft green wall of his innards This had to be the day everyone had been waiting for–and he was terrified he would disappoint them, make a poor showing, let people down.
************
It was all Aunt Mireille’s fault. Unmarried Aunt Mireille lodged with her married sister. So when Madame Roux gave birth to a lovely little boy, Aunt Mireille was first to be introduced. Leaning over the cot, she sucked on her big yellow teeth and said, with a tremor in her voice, “To think he’ll be dead by fourteen, le pauvre. . . Saint Constance told me so in a dream last night.”

When Pepper runs away and evades his predicted demise, he never questions Auntie Mireille’s prophecy, just assumes that he’s managed to outrun and trick Death for a while. Pepper “dies” many times and resurrects himself in a a series of new identities, everything from meat cutter to telegraph boy to horse tamer (not to mention ship’s captain and newspaper reporter). And still Aunt Mireille and Saint Constance hover over his lives like Nemesis, and Pepper involves himself in more and more misadventures until his time finally runs out in the belfry of the Constance Tower.

The Death-Defying Pepper Roux is a picaresque novel of an over-protected, innocent, yet fear-filled boy who somehow manages to navigate the world and defy death and despair. It’s strange enough, even bizarre, that I don’t what children will make of it. Will they be delighted by Pepper’s outlandish death-defying adventures or just confused? Ms. McCaughrean does bring all the threads of the story together at the end in a masterful way, tying up the loose threads, and making some sense of the seemingly unconnected plot lines in a satisfying way.

But it’s still an eccentric, weird, oddball, wacky, offbeat story. If you’re up for the peculiar and the picaresque, you may enjoy the ride. (Yes, I must credit my trusty thesaurus for the adjectives in that penultimate sentence. Thank goodness for thesauruses.)

The Death-Defying Pepper Roux has been nominated for the 2010 Cybils Awards in the Middle Grade Fiction category.

This Means War! by Ellen Wittlinger

Oct26

It’s 1962 again, just as in Deborah Wiles’ Countdown (Semicolon review here), and while JFK and Khrushchev play chicken in the Cuban Missle Crisis, Juliet Klostermeyer and her friends are competing with the boys in a series of “challenges” to see who’s best, the boys or the girls. Starting with a simple foot race, the challenges escalate until it’s obvious that somebody’s bound to get hurt. Juliet just wants the wars to be over, both of them, but her friend Patsy is determined that the girls will win, no matter what it takes.

As in Countdown, This Means War! was a book filled with duck and cover drills, bomb shelters, and people living in fear. And again, I thought the fear factor was overdone. Maybe we were just too dumb to be afraid in West Texas where I grew up. I remember worrying about tornados, about fires, about drug-crazed hippies like Charles Manson, but not about atomic bombs.

What I liked about This Means War! was the mirror effect of having the children involved in their own escalating war while the Communists and the U.S. were busy daring one another be the first to back down in a nuclear confrontation. The children’s war does get out of hand, and it’s obvious that the lesson that they learn about how easily a game can turn dangerous is the same lesson that countries need to learn about their own disputes. However, the lesson is never stated outright, and the author trusts her readers to get it by themselves. A wise decision.

I liked this book just as much as I did Countdown, and if I were to teach this era in history in a middle grade classroom, I’d be tempted to use both books. Let half the class read one and half the class read the other, and then have a discussion of the two books and what the students learned from each one. The Red Umbrella would be another good book to include in a unit on this time period. Even though it takes place a bit before 1962, and even though it’s more appropriate for a little bit older audience, The Red Umbrella does look at Castro’s Cuba from a Cuban (American) point of view.

So, what other books, fiction or nonfiction, would you include in a unit on the 1960’s for middle grade children?

A Million Shades of Gray by Cynthia Kadohata

Oct25

It’s 1975, and Y’Tin Eban, a thirteen year old Rhade boy living in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam, is the youngest elephant keeper ever in his village. He plans someday to open the first elephant-training school in Vietnam. He has promised his elephant, Lady, that he will care for her all her life and mash up bananas for her when she’s old and has lost her teeth. Y’Tin has lots of ideas, lots of plans.

But when the North Vietnamese soldiers come to Y’Tin’s village, everything changes. The villagers run to the jungle. Some don’t make it. The North Vietnamese soldiers capture Y’Tin and some others; they burn the long houses in the village. Lady and the other two elephants that belong to Y’Tin’s village go off into the jungle, too. Everything is chaotic, and perhaps as the village shaman said, the story of the Rhade people is coming to an end. At least it’s obvious that the Americans who left in 1973 will not be coming back to keep their promises to protect their allies, the Rhade.

The story of Y’Tin reminded me of Mitali Perkins’s Bamboo People, also published in 2010. Bamboo People takes place in Burma, not Vietnam, and its protagonist, Tu Reh, is member of the Karen tribe who is living in a Thai refugee camp because of the government vendetta against his people. However, both books take place in Southeast Asia, and in both stories boys must confront the realities of war and death and enemy soldiers who are determined to destroy their families and friends. Both Tu Reh and Y’Tin must decide whether to harbor bitterness and hatred or to try to forgive. Each boy must also determine what his place will be in this war that is his world, unchosen but also unavoidable.

I actually liked Bamboo People better; it seemed that the thoughts and decisions of Tu Reh and his friend/enemy Chiko were a little less foreign to me. Y’Tin’s elephant-love is way beyond my experience, and his worries about whether the spirits have cursed his village or not are strange and hard to identify with. Still, both books give insight into the difficult decisions associated with the ongoing conflicts in Southeast Asia, and both books vividly portray what it can be like for a boy to grow up and become a man in a war zone.

I would place A Million Shades of Gray in the Young Adult fiction section because of the stark and unnerving violence (massacre) that is a necessary part of the story, but the book has been nominated for a 2010 Cybils Award in the Middle Grade Fiction category.