Here in the Real World by Sara Pennypacker

Jul4

The best Middle Grade fiction book I’ve read that was published in 2020. Sara Pennypacker, author of Pax and the beloved Clementine books and an adult novel set in Germany during WWII that I liked very much, has hit a home run with this story. “What does it take to be a hero?” says the cover teaser. But I’m not sure that heroics are more than a minor theme in the book. I got a much different message or set of messages and inspirations.

Ware is happy spending the summer at his grandmother’s senior living apartment complex where he can mostly be left alone to dream of knights and castles and whatever else he wants to think about. Other people think he’s “zoned out” and in need of “Meaningful Social Interaction”, but Grandma, called Big Deal by the family, is good at letting Ware be Ware, not expecting him to be “normal” like his parents do. Unfortunately for Ware, his summer of dreams gets cut short, and his parents sign him up for another summer at the REC. When Ware skips out on the summer program at the REC and meets a tough and fierce gardener named Jolene in the vacant lot next door, the two children begin as enemies but soon make a truce so that they can try to work together to save Jolene’s garden and the old shell of a church that has become Ware’s castle.

I like misfit, dreamy kids. I like misfit, tough, realist kids. I like secret hideouts and hidden gardens and the growth that happens in them. I liked the pitting of a dreamer against a hardheaded realist and how neither is completely right or completely wrong about the world and the ending of the story. Jolene accuses Ware over and over again of living in “Magic Fairness Land” whereas she’s sure that the real world isn’t fair and it’s no use expecting it to be so. Ware thinks maybe Jolene is a little too much of a realist while he doubts his own tendency to be always “off in his own world” and oblivious to present circumstances. Maybe, he thinks, he should be more normal as his parent seem to want him to be, or maybe he’s right to have a a little more hope and imagination than the normal, average kid.

Jolene knew how the world worked. She was usually right. Still, he hoped she was wrong this time.

“The real world is also all the things we do about the bad stuff. We’re the real world, too.” ~Ware

“It’s like this: artists see something that moves us, we need to take it in, make it part of ourselves. And then give it back to the world, translated, in a way the world can see it, too.” ~Ware’s Uncle Cy

“Don’t ask to be normal. You’re already better than that.” ~Jolene

There’s just so much to talk about in this book and so much to think about. The story reminded me a little bit of Bridge to Terebithia by Katharine Paterson, because of the friendship and the secret spaces, but (SPOILER!) no one dies! And even if things don’t turn out exactly how Ware imagines and hopes they might, Jolene worst predictions don’t come true completely either. With the marked absence of cell phones and computers and social media and tech in general, except for a simple movie camera that Ware learns to wield, Here in the Real World gives readers a time out from that particular technology-driven real world and time to explore the world of creativity and art and imagination that the child in all of us longs for.

We Dream of Space by Erin Entrada Kelly

Jun27

Erin Entrada Kelly won the Newbery Award for her middle grade novel, Hello, Universe in 2018. Unfortunately, I haven’t read Ms. Kelly’s award-winning book, but I did get a copy of her latest book, We Dream of Space. I thought it might be particularly interesting because it’s set in 1985-86, as a class and their space-loving teacher prepare for the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Engineer Husband just started working at NASA in the fall of 1985, and of course, we remember the Challenger disaster quite vividly.

So, We Dream of Space features a dysfunctional family: mom and dad, and three children, Cash, Fitch, and Bird. All three siblings are in the seventh grade because Fitch and Brid are twins, and Cash is doing seventh grade for a second year after failing his classes the previous year. As the story progresses, showcasing each of the three kids in alternating chapters, the writing is good, and the characters are very real and growing. Cash is trying to find out if there’s anything that he’s actually good at doing, since basketball and schoolwork are both out. Fitch is obsessed with playing games at the video arcade and trying to hold his temper. Bird wants to become the first female space shuttle commander as well as being the one person who attempts to hold the family together as they spin out in their separate orbits.

Wow, was this book a downer! It started out with a dysfunctional family, parents that call each other (expletive deleted) names all through the book and siblings that mainly ignore one another as much as possible, and it ended with the Cash, Fitch and Bird coming through their various difficulties with a small glimmer of hope in spite of the story’s climax in which the space shuttle Challenger explodes.

When I say “small glimmer of hope” I mean small. The hope is barely there, and I’m not sure young readers will see it at all. Maybe this story would be encouraging, something of a mirror, for those children who live in dysfunctional families like the one in the book, but I tend to think escapist literature is more appealing for many children (and adults) who live in hard situations. At least, Bird has her astronaut fantasies, Fitch his video games, and Cash his Philadelphia 76ers basketball games. The reader of this sad but true to life novel won’t get much more than a glimpse of a beginning of family growth, maybe. Is Ms. Entrada’s Newbery winner as sad and discouraging as this one is? If so, maybe I’ll just skip it.

Light From Distant Stars by Shawn Smucker

Jun26

Someone from one of the Facebook groups I follow was asking for recommendations for really high quality Christian fiction, especially science fiction, and this book by author Shawn Smucker was mentioned. In fact someone said that all of Mr. Smucker’s work was worth checking out. So I did.

This story is sort of a murder mystery/detective story with a horror/supernatural twist, and it was engaging. I liked the suspense and the slow unfolding of all the plot threads to come together in the end —almost seamlessly. But without giving away any of the story, I must say that there’s a Chekhov’s gun problem. Remember Chekhov’s gun?

“Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”

Something significant happens at the beginning of this book, and it turns out to be irrelevant. Not a red herring, but just not nearly as significant as it should be or as it’s made out to be at first. The main character does something, something dangerous and stupid and just plain wrong, but it never comes back to bite him. I guess that happens in real life just as unused guns hang on the wall in real life sometimes, but in fiction it is somewhat disconcerting. (Not everyone believes in the Chekhov’s gun rule. Ernest Hemingway “valued inconsequential details” in a story, according to Wikipedia.)

Other than that niggling little detail, Light From Distant Stars was a good read. I thought I might be interested in checking out something else by Shawn Smucker someday. However, as I look at descriptions of his titles they all sound like borderline horror, a genre I’m not too fond of. So maybe not. If you like weird, paranormal, ghostly kinds of stories with a Christian subtext (not overt, not preachy), then you might like Mr. Smucker’s books.

The Camel Who Took a Walk by Jack Tworkov

Jun25

You’ve probably made many lists of what you planned to do on a given day or what you did accomplish at the end of the day, but have you ever made a list of what didn’t happen that day? The Camel Who Took a Walk is a story about what didn’t happen when the beautiful camel went for a walk at dawn in the forest.

I just love this story. It’s so simple and yet clever, and it makes me chuckle. (I’ve been needing to laugh.) The language is rich and yet also simple, even though the author was not a native English speaker. Some examples:

  • “All the while, the beautiful camel walked gracefully down the road turning her pretty head this way and that, while the sky grew brighter and brighter.”
  • “Her nose smelled the early morning sweetness, and her eyes took in all the blue and pink colors of the sky.”
  • “Then the little bird burst into a peal of laughter that pierced the forest.”

Although Tworkov was an artist himself, someone had the good sense to ask illustrator Roger Duvoisin to illustrate the story. The mostly black and white pictures, with a hint of dawn color on some of the pages, complement the story perfectly and add to the suspense. Will the tiger pounce on the camel? Will the money drop the cocoanut? What will the squirrel and the bird do? Will someone warn the camel of her impending doom?

Jus the right amount of suspense for a preschool audience and a great ending. I read this book many times aloud to school children and to my own, and they were captivated every time.

The Forgotten Door by Alexander Key

Jun24

The Forgotten Door by Alexander Key is another older science fiction title, published in 1965, and it reads like a vintage episode of The Twilight Zone. The boy, Jon, has lost his memory and does not know who he is or where he came from. He only knows that he has fallen through the forgotten door to this strange planet, Earth, and that he is in great danger.

Jon first meets up with some unfriendly, even hostile, people who chase him and are frightened by his exceptional abilities. Then, the Bean family—Thomas and Mary Bean and their children Brooks and Sally—befriend Jon and try to help him remember and return to his own home. But this story takes place back in the hills of the Carolinas, and not everyone is as welcoming as the Beans are to strangers, especially a strange boy who can run like a deer and who can possibly read minds.

As I said, this short 140 page juvenile novel reminded me of a TV episode from the 1960’s. I could picture the story played out on the small screen. The Beans come to realize that Jon is from an “advanced civilization” where things are simpler and more honest than they are on Earth. Jon doesn’t understand money or airplanes or killing animals for meat, but he does seem to understand some things quite well and learn things exceptionally quickly. The question is, how can Jon return to his own planet before his presence gets the Beans into serious trouble?

The science fiction of that time was more hopeful, much less dystopian than nowadays, and may even sound a little hokey to an adult reader of the 21st century. Nevertheless, I would be happy to recommend this book to children who are less jaded and more optimistic about the possibility of human perfectibility—or at least human improvement. Mr. Key also wrote Escape to Witch Mountain, a book with many of the same themes as this one. Escape to Witch Mountain was made into a Disney movie back in the seventies, and I remember reading it and seeing the movie back then, although I don’t remember much about it.

Read this one for a gentle introduction to science fiction and paranormal fiction (with no occult undertones). It’s a precursor to E.T.

Tana Hoban’s Concept Books

Jun23

For the smallest book lovers of all, the three and under crowd, I love books with real photographs. My baby grandchildren, 13 months old and 8 months, are still enjoying the Global Babies books with lots of pictures of babies from around the world. There are Global Babies, Global Baby Boys, Global Baby Girls, American Babies, and Global Baby Bedtimes—all published by The Global Fund for Children. Babies love pictures of other babies, and parents can enjoy talking about the babies and showing the pictures of babies in these board books to their own babies.

What comes next? I recommend Tana Hoban’s concept books with photographs of al sort of objects and scenes that will spark conversation and questioning with your youngest pre-readers. Learn about colors, numbers, shapes, sizes, things that go, machines, position, signs, and symbols—and much more—in these lovely books illustrated with Ms. Hoban’s award-winning photographs. Most of Hoban’s books are wordless, and the ones that do have a few words are understated and leave much room for the imagination and speaking skills of a child who is looking at the books to grow and develop. You can go through these books of photographs over and over again and see something new every time.

Tana Hoban was so prolific that I can’t list all of her many, many titles for young children, but here are a few of my favorites:

  • Is It Red? Is It Yellow? Is It Blue?
  • Count and See
  • Dig, Drill, Dump, Fill
  • Over, Under, & Through
  • Push, Pull, Empty, Full; A Book of Opposites
  • I Read Signs
  •  I Read Symbols
  • Is It Rough? Is It Smooth? Is It Shiny?
  • Take Another Look
  • Look Again!
  • Cubes, Cones, Cylinders & Spheres
  • 26 Letters and 99 Cents

Any of these, and others by Tana Hoban, will enrich your preschooler’s learning experiences and will make going for a walk even more exciting and discussion-filled than it was before you encountered these concept books. I love words, but having these books of just (mostly) photographs on hand for preschool learning is a great encouragement to building that vocabulary that leads to the enjoyment of entire stories. In fact, Hoban’s books encourage you and your preschooler to tell your own stories, and that’s definitely educational and just plain fun.

And by the way, I just read that Tana Hoban was Russell Hoban’s (the Frances books and others) older sister. Talent and a love for children and children’s books runs in the family, I guess.

Tana Hoban’s books are listed in my book, Picture Book Preschool. Picture Book Preschool is a preschool/kindergarten curriculum which consists of a list of picture books to read aloud for each week of the year and a character trait, a memory verse, and activities, all tied to the theme for the week. You can purchase an updated, downloadable version (pdf file) of Picture Book Preschool by Sherry Early at Biblioguides.

Clean Getaway by Nic Stone

Jun22

WARNING: There will be spoilers in this review.

This book begins with a quote from Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy: “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” And author Nic Stone gives us a story that is an exploration of that idea as well as the accompanying truisms that “there’s sometimes more to people than meets the eye” and “people have a way of surprising you.” While the story is certainly timely with its depiction of racial tensions and the history of discrimination based on race in the past that sometimes continues into the present, some cursing and a flawed ending that buries the past instead of making it right make it unacceptable, IMHO.

In this middle grade novel, Scoob, who is black, and his G’ma, who is white, go on a road trip, following the route that G’ma and Scoob’s African American grandfather took through the South from Atlanta, Georgia headed to Juarez, Mexico more than forty years ago. The trip begins in a bid for freedom as Scoob joins G’ma, his favorite person in the world, in her new RV. When G’ma invites Scoob to “go on a little adventure”, little does he know that that adventure will take him halfway across the country as well as deep into his family’s past. And he accidentally, on purpose, leaves his cell phone behind so that Dad can’t spoil the adventure by reminding Scoob that he’s supposed to be grounded at home.

So the set-up for the story is pretty good, although it stretches credulity to swallow that Scoob doesn’t really notice at first that a brand new Winnebago has replaced G’ma’s MINI Cooper. Still, I was ready to go with it just as Scoob goes with the whole notion of a surprise road trip with G’ma. And the entire trip is full of surprises, with G’ma acting just like the grandmother Scoob has always known and loved, except when she doesn’t act like G’ma at all.

It was the ending that threw me. Of course, Scoob’s and G’ma’s adventure must come to an end, and it’s not exactly a good ending. That sad ending was not entirely unexpected. But my question is (spoiler alert): if I find a cache of jewels that my recently deceased grandmother stole, maybe recently, maybe forty years ago, what is my responsibility in regard to those jewels? Don’t I need to at least think about trying to return those jewels to their rightful owners? Or to the police? The fact that Scoob never even considers this idea, except in the case of one small set of earrings, is problematic, especially in a book written for middle grade readers.

This book is Nic Stone’s first middle grade novel, and it’s promising. The author works into the story a lot of information about racial injustice and civil right era history without being too preachy or teachy. Scoob and his G’ma are engaging characters, and I’m always up for a good road trip story. But I can’t quite bring myself to make peace with the ending. Maybe that’s because an ending where you bury the past instead of bringing it out into the light in all of its messiness and difficulty is just an unresolved ending, and a bad one.

Apricot ABC by Miska Miles

Jun20

I really like this little alphabet book because, unlike many ABC books that are just collections of objects or words, it’s a rhyming poem that also tells a story. With frequent alliteration showcasing the letter that is featured on each page, author Miska Miles tells the story of an apricot that falls to the ground and is the subject of much talk and investigation by the varied inhabitants of the meadow where the apricot lands.

Then, comes the conflict of the story when a monstrous hen comes along, threatening to trample or even devour all of the insects and other small creatures in the meadow. Can the creatures hide themselves quickly enough to escape the hen? What will happen when the hen finds the apricot? How will the story of the little apricot end, only to begin again in the cycle of nature?

Young tree will flower, fruit will grow,

While crickets click and roosters crow

And sparrows cheep

And locusts leap.

Young fruit will ripen in the sun

And busy creatures, one by one,

Will hop or jump or creep to see

Yellow-ripe apricots fall from the tree.

The pictures by illustrator Peter Parnall hide a capital letter in each page of the double page spreads, and children will have fun finding the hidden letters as they view each page. The colors are mostly natural greens, browns, and oranges with little splashes of color now and again for the sake of interest—and flowers.

I highly recommend Apricot ABC for your alphabet book or poetry picture book collection. Author Miska Miles, aka Patricia Miles Martin, also wrote Annie and the Old One, a Newbery Honor book in 1972, and several other lovely picture books. Peter Parnall’s illustrations can also be found in Year on Muskrat Marsh by Berniece Freschet and The Moon of the Wild Pigs by Jean Craighead George as well as in several picture books that Mr. Parnall wrote and illustrated himself.

Norman the Doorman by Don Freeman

Jun19

Don Freeman wrote many picture books, but he is probably best known for his books about Corduroy, the stuffed bear that belongs to a girl named Lisa. My children enjoyed the Corduroy stories, but perhaps their favorite book by Don Freeman was this one, Norman the Doorman.

Norman is a mouse who lives in the basement of the Majestic Museum of Art. He stands daily in front of a “small, well-hidden hole” and welcomes all of the art-loving mice visitors who come to the museum to see the treasures kept in the basement. Norman also acts as a guide, pointing out and explaining the artwork to cousins and strangers alike. And finally, Norman protects his art patrons from the sharp-eyed upstairs guard (human) by preemptively springing all of the traps and by keeping a sharp eye out himself for the guard and his flashlight.

The story goes on to tell of Norman’s artistic aspirations and of how he manages to enter a sculpture competition even though he’s much tinier than all of the other entrants. Norman is just an endearing and humble little mouse with a good lesson to teach the rest of us. “Each night after work he tried to create something pleasing or beautiful—perhaps a painting of Swiss cheese and crackers, or a statue.” Now, what if we all tried to create something pleasing or beautiful each day?

Don Freeman’s illustrations for his story are pleasing and beautiful themselves. Watercolor pencil drawings make Norman and his adventures as well as scenes from the museum itself a lovely sight to behold. In addition, since one of Norman’s art pieces is a sculpture made of wire, this book might be a good introduction for younger children to the idea of sculpture and mobiles. You might even want to have some wires or or pipe cleaners or other sculpting materials on hand to work with after reading Norman the Doorman. (Another book about making things out of wire is Galimoto by Karen Lynn Williams.)

Katy No-Pocket by Emmy Payne

Jun18

Katy No-Pocket is a simple book about a kangaroo with no pocket who tries to find a way to carry her baby by observing all the other animals and how they solve this perennial problem. In the end, Katy meets a kind man who generously helps her to solve her problem.

I say, simple, but it’s sort of deceptively simple since the themes of kindness and ingenuity and persistence in solving problems are themes that could be discussed and taken to heart by everyone from preschoolers to grown-ups. Katy is a really a disabled kangaroo, with no pocket, but she finds a way to replace her missing pocket with something that works even better. In the same way, isn’t it possible for all of us to work around our limitations, in many instances with the help of a kind friend or two, and perhaps learn to do what we thought we couldn’t? I like this story for many reasons, but especially for its message of hope and kindness.

The illustrations for Katy No-Pocket are by H.A. Rey, of Curious George fame. The cover of the book is yellow, and the pictures look a lot like the pictures of George the monkey and The Man with the Yellow Hat. Emmy Payne, aka Emily Govan West, is a good storyteller, and I can remember, in my youth, enjoying all the many Lookout Club mystery novels for middle grade readers that she and her mother Christine Noble Govan wrote and published.

Katy No-Pocket is a stand alone picture book, but it could be a good addition to the collection of Curious George lovers. You might want to have an apron or another garment with multiple pockets available for play after reading this book so that young readers can enjoy putting things in their own pockets. A Pocket for Corduroy by Don Freeman and The Big Green Pocketbook by Candice Ransome would be a good followup reads for this one.