Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom: My Story of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March by Linda Blackmon Lowery, as told to Elspeth Leacock and Susan Buckley.

Young Linda Blackmon was jailed nine times before her fifteenth birthday. She was beaten and tear gassed on Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965, as she participated in a civil rights demonstration in Selma, Alabama. Then, she became the youngest person to join the historic 1965 voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, and she celebrated her fifteenth birthday while on that march.

Her story is presented in this book in brief, stark, simple prose spread out over 120 pages. Multiple photographs and color illustrations, interspersed throughout, enhance the text and make the events seem real and immediate. Linda Blackmon Lowery is honest about her fears and about her determination to overcome those fears. She says:

“I couldn’t let George Wallace or my fear from having been beaten take control of me. If I did that, I would never become the person I wanted to be. And the person I wanted to be was a person who would stand up against what was wrong. I wanted not only to protect myself, but to protect others; not only to fight for myself, but to be out there fighting for others.”

I was quite impressed with Ms. Blackmon’s courage and honesty, and I think teens would be, too. Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom would be a great read, not only for those studying the history of the civil rights movement, but also for teens who are looking for heroes to emulate. This book will make my list of books to recommend to my fourteen year old for her American history studies later this year. I especially liked the simple, direct style of the writing, and I know that Z-baby would, too.

If you’re interested in learning more about the book or about Linda Blackmon Lowery, here’s a link to an interview with her at NPR.

Setting: Hollywood, 1918, the silent motion picture era of Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, the Keystone Cops, and director D.W. Griffith, all of whom make at least a cameo appearance in this rollicking tale of movie-making and adventure.

Characters: 12 year old Isobel Ransom of Seattle, whose surgeon father, Robert Ransom, is faraway in Europe at war and whose mother, Matilda Ransom, decides to take the remainder of the family to Los Angeles to soak up some summer sunshine.
6 year old Sylvie Ransom, Isobel’s little sister and mischievous menace.
Aunt Buzzy Bell, Mother’s sister, who married Mr. Titus Bell when she came to tutor his son from his first marriage, 13 year old Ranger Bell. Ranger’s beautiful Indian mother is dead, and Ranger himself is a what my mama would call a ring-tailed tooter: movie lot lizard and would-be film director.
Samuel Patrick Service, Ranger’s secret and secretive partner in the movie-making business, seemingly a partner because he mysteriously has access to a camera and other film-making equipment and know-how.

Plot: Well, a plot summary, or scenario as it’s called in the movie world, might divulge
“how the story ends”, and we wouldn’t want to do that, now would we?

Suffice it to say, that it was the setting and the characters and their madcap adventures that drew me into this cinematic narrative, and wouldn’t let me go until, well, I found out how the story would end.

Will Ranger and Sam make their movie? Will director D.W. Griffith see the completed film and give Ranger his big break in the movie business?

Will Isobel get the ending she wants—in her life and in the movie?

Will Isobel’s and Sylvie’s father come home safely from the battlefields of World War I? Will he be the same jovial and kind dad who left them to volunteer in a war that he didn’t have to fight?

Will Sylvie survive Hollywood, movie-making, and her own penchant for accidental near-death experiences?

Will Mother agree to appear in one of the romantic Charlie Chaplin’s movies?

Will Ranger be forced to return to the school he hates before he finishes his movie?

All will be revealed in I Don’t Know How the Story Ends by J.B. Cheney, available today, October 6, 2015, from your favorite book retailer.

I found the book to be fun and thoughtful at the same time, a combination which suits me just fine. Isobel is a proper, early twentieth century young lady, and at the same time she is intelligent and quite able to articulate her thoughts and desires. Ranger is a pill. And Sylvie is another. Sam is the strong, silent type, a young John Wayne or Gary Cooper. And because it’s set in 1918 Hollywood, the kids are able to run around all over the small town of Hollywood without the author having to get rid of the parents completely. In fact, the two sets of parents in the story have integral roles in the plot and the denouement, as Isobel in particular gets a glimpse of her parents as people with their own problems to solve and growing to do.

I’d recommend the book to anyone interested in early silent films, the history of Hollywood and the movies, the World War I era, or even just adventures and happy endings.

Chocolate: Sweet Science & Dark Secrets of the World’s Favorite Treat by Kay Frydenborg

This book, marketed to a young adult audience, is a quite exhaustive (272 pages) history of chocolate, cocoa, cacao, and the growing and marketing thereof. Ms. Frydenborg covers the origins of chocolate and cacao beans, the uses of chocolate as medicine, food, and candy, the growing of various species of cacao, the history of slavery in connection with the chocolate industry, and recent efforts to map the genomes of and preserve various types of cacao plants. And I love the cover. It’s delectable.

I wanted to recommend this book to a friend of mine who is working on developing mixed-use and sustainable farming in a mountainous part of the world that is suited for growing coffee, not chocolate. I think he would find quite a few parallels between the kind of farming he is trying to promote and the type of cacao farming that the scientists in the book are helping farmers to implement.

The book has great information and adequate writing and organization. There is some repetitious material that could have been left out or edited down. But the main problem is horrible copyediting. I did NOT read an ARC of this book; it was a final published copy that I borrowed from the library. I found multiple typographical and syntax errors. Dozens of them. Do publishers hire copyeditors nowadays? Or do they just depend on a computer program to copyedit the book? If it’s the former, someone should have gotten a better copyeditor, and if it’s the latter, shame on them.

I can’t recommend this book to anyone because of the shoddy copyediting. And that’s too bad because it would have been a nice addition to the library of anyone interested in the history of chocolate or in modern agricultural practices and innovations in relation to cash crops such as cacao and coffee.

Some people are not going to be happy with this book because the children (seventh grade, so about twelve years old) are dealing with rather teenage issues: boyfriends, girlfriends, body changes, peer pressure, divorce, feminism, bullying, gossip, sexting, etc. My thought is that these issues are going to confront children at a younger and younger age in our wired and sex-crazed society, and I’d much rather they read about such things and tried to grapple with them that way than be surprised and not know what to think or do later. And the book keeps things in the seventh/eighth grade realm, nothing too heavy or tragic, but still taking these kids seriously as thinking, growing, decision-making (good and bad) people. It’s a middle grade book for middle grade readers who find themselves changing into adults in surprising ways and at surprising times.

Newbery award winning author Rebecca Stead pulls the multiple narrative strands of this novel together quite skillfully, and I enjoyed the suspense of not knowing and trying to guess whom the chapters written in second person were about. I’m not sure why they were written in second person (you), and I found it disconcerting at first. But I got used to the device and tried to ignore it as the story pulled me in. Maybe the author was trying to say, “This could easily be you. You might find yourself in similar situation?” Or she just wanted to heighten the suspense and mystery?

Anyway, I recommend Goodbye Stranger to older middle grade readers and high school readers who don’t mind some mature themes (nothing graphic) and a bit of tension in not knowing what’s going on or to whom the things are happening at first. Trust the author, and all will be revealed.

Oh, I thought the little epilogue at the end could have been omitted. Too much information.