I Must Betray You by Ruth Sepetys

Apr21

First of all, Ruth Sepetys is an excellent writer. I read three of her books, Between Shades of Grey, Out of the Easy, and Salt to the Sea, and her ability to place vivid fictional characters within an historical event and context was impressive. The first book, Between Shades of Grey, came out of Sepetys’ own Lithuanian American background and is set in Stalin’s Lithuania and Siberia. The other books, including this latest one set in Ceausescu’s Romania, show evidence of extensive historical research and an ability to create an atmosphere in reading the book that mirrors the cultural ambience of the times.

The place and time of this book are not a good place to be immersed in. In reading about a high school boy, seventeen year old Cristian Florescu, who is attempting to understand how to live in 1989 Romania, I felt a small part of what the people of Romania must have felt: claustrophobia, fear, entrapment, and suspicion. Ceausescu, his family, and his Securitate (secret police) control everything and everyone. And alongside the official apparatus, there are the civilian informers. In her Author’s Note at the end of the book Sepetys says, “It’s estimated that one in every ten citizens provided information.” All of these spies and informers generated thousands and thousands of pages of reports on the daily activities of every citizen, and each page added to “Romania’s perpetual sense of surveillance.”

This story is one that needs to be told, needs to be repeated. I see and hear people in the United States and in Europe flirting with communism, calling themselves “Marxists” or “socialists.” They think that such ideas are “just a better economic system”, that they won’t lead to tyranny or to a cult of charismatic leadership or to poverty and slavery. But everywhere—Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Vietnam, East Germany, and Romania—that’s exactly what communism has produced, has been used to produce. And the stories needs to be told again and again, both as cautionary tales and as a monument to the very real people who suffered under the horror and brutality of life in what was meant to be “just a better economic system.”

Cristian and his friend Luca and his girlfriend Liliana live through the fall of Ceausescu and his regime, but the story doesn’t really have a happy ending. Communism didn’t end in Romania until fifteen years after the death of the Ceausescu’s. And there are still many unanswered questions about what exactly happened in Romania during the rule of communism: who killed whom, and who gave the orders, and who benefitted and how it all came to be. All of the answers to these questions are perhaps buried in tons of records and files and reports, or perhaps just buried, destroyed. I Must Betray You is one attempt to illuminate through story what it felt like and what it required to live in a certain time and place, Bucharest, Romania, 1989 under the communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu.

Life the Day After

Apr18

So, yesterday we celebrated 

Resurrection Day, 

Easter Sunday, 

Jesus is Risen, 

He is Risen indeed.

And today is Monday, the Day After. 

What comes after resurrection? Well, LIFE.

It’s time for LIFE: 

work and family,  
breakfast, lunch and dinner, 
diapers and school books and college visits, 
disussions and sometimes arguments, 
births and graduations, 
taxes and poetry, 
blue jeans and swim suits, 
bad news from Ukraine,  
good news from a friend, 
more bad news from another, 
hospitalizations and healing, 
books to read, places to go, people to see. 

And it's all somewhat overwhelming.

LIFE is every day that we LIVE in the aftermath, in the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have LIFE and have it abundantly.”

John 10:10

Don’t let anyone steal your resurrection life and joy. Hold onto the promises of life and love and resurrection as you live your (everyday) life. Persevere in filling your life with the goodness of God and His Word and with the reflections of God and His creation found in nature and in poetry and in story and in music and in art.

Lost in the Barrens by Farley Mowat

Apr15

I realized that I have in my library three books written by Canadian environmentalist and author Farley Mowat—Lost in the Barrens, Owls in the Family, and Never Cry Wolf—but I had not until now read any of them. Mowat’s writing is somewhat controversial; he was accused of fabricating some of the events and the science in his nonfiction books. His response that he “never let the facts get in the way of the truth” did nothing to refute or placate his critics.

However, Lost in the Barrens is fiction, a survival story about two teen boys who are lost and forced to survive during winter in northern Canada. So, if the boys, Jamie and Awasin, are a bit too lucky and plucky and skilled to be believed, and they are, it makes a good story, nonetheless. The book, published in 1956, calls Awasin a Cree Indian rather than Native American or First Nations, and his people’s traditional enemies are called Eskimos. Both groups and the individuals in them are presented in a way that is respectful and admiring of their culture and traditions. Jamie is non-native, of Scottish Canadian extraction, and he is the more impulsive and foolhardy of the two boys. It is Jamie’s fault that the boys are lost, and it is mostly Awasin’s skill and strength and courage that saves them, although Jamie is said to contribute “inventiveness” and “persistence” to the partnership that the boys form.

I must admit that I found myself skimming the many passages in this book that describe exactly how Jamie and Awasin hunt and preserve their food, build their cabin, manage their fuel supply, and do all of the other multitude of things required for survival in a Canadian winter wilderness. I couldn’t tell you if the solutions and inventions that the boys come up with to keep themselves from freezing or starving to death are actually workable and believable or not, and I couldn’t tell even if I had read about them ever so carefully. It all seemed possible, and it made for a good story.

Fans of survival stories such as Hatchet by Gary Paulsen or My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George would probably enjoy Lost in the Barrens. Lost in the Barrens is a little more challenging in terms of vocabulary and detail than either of those two books, but there are no content considerations other than vivid descriptions of hunting and killing animals for food and of the steps involved in curing and preserving the parts of the animals that were killed. I would recommend the book to children ages twelve and up, younger if the child has an interest or experience in outdoor life and hunting in particular.

Mr. Mowat is a good storyteller, factual or not. (Oh, and there’s a movie version of this story. Anybody seen it? Recommended or not?)

Two New Middle Grade Fiction Books: 2022

Apr14

In Honor of Broken Things by Paul Acampora.

A Song Called Home by Sara Zarr.

Both of these recently published middle grade realistic fiction books, set in the present day, are about children dealing with broken families and tragic circumstances and about forming new friendships in difficult times. In the book In Honor of Broken Things, Oscar, Ellie, and Noah become “accidental” friends when they end up in the same eighth grade pottery class together in the middle of the school year. Noah, a near genius, has been homeschooled all his life, but since his mom is no longer a dependable teacher, he’s ready for a change–public school. Ellie and her single mom just moved to the small Pennsylvania coal town of West Beacon from Philadelphia, and Ellie can’t get used to living in such a small place. Oscar is returning to school after a family tragedy, his sister’s death, and he’s expected to carry the school football team to victory in spite of his grief and confusion and loss.

A couple of unnecessarily didactic moments were intrusive enough to take me out of the story momentarily in In Honor of Broken Things. ( Apparently, the word “lunatic” is now considered “unkind, hurtful, and meaningless”, and therefore inappropriate even if applied to oneself. And not all Hispanic cultures and countries celebrate the same holidays (duh), so saying that Dia de los Muertos represents Spanish-speaking culture is grounds for an apology since the holiday isn’t really celebrated in the Dominican Republic.) But overall the story was readable and relatable. The author uses the technique of switching point of view from one chapter to the next, so we get to see the events of the story from three different points of view. I didn’t think the voices of the three main characters were different enough for me to distinguish, and I often had to look back to the beginning of the chapter to figure out who was speaking in this particular chapter. Nevertheless, I liked the metaphor of the delicate and sometimes broken and repaired pottery as it resembles relationships and friendships and even life itself. We are all a little broken, and we do need to help each other pick up the pieces when we fall and try again.

A Song Called Home was more problematic. I’ve read several of Sara Zarr’s young adult novels, and although I enjoyed some better than others, I thought overall that she was a pretty good writer. I believe that A Song Called Home is Ms. Zarr’s first middle grade novel, and it just didn’t work–for several reasons. Lou/Louisa/Belle/Lulu/Lu/El (yes, she goes through that many names, maybe a few more) is the main character in this book about a family dealing with change. Lou’s mom is getting remarried to Steve, and Lou and her older sister Casey are not happy. The family is moving from the city to Steve’s house in the suburbs, and Lou’s alcoholic dad who left them two years ago is also not happy about the new marriage, the move, and all the other changes that ensue.

I get it that all of the names are a picture of Lou trying to figure out who she is and who she is in relation to all of the people in her life. I just thought it was excessive. And there was a lot of crying, and talking about crying, and thinking about not crying, and almost crying, and hidden tears, and open tears—almost every other page someone is crying or trying not to cry. Again, I get it. They’re a family who has learned, especially Lou, to hide their emotions, to tread carefully, because of living with an explosive and unpredictable alcoholic dad. But really, edit it down a bit.

I thought it was lovely to read a book about a family that goes to church and prays. Lou spends time trying to figure out how to pray for her dad and how to understand her faith, and those parts of the book are natural and well written, obviously by someone who is familiar with evangelical Christian culture and thought. But suddenly about halfway through the book, a minor character, one of Lou’s new classmates, shows up with “their” own pronouns, “they” and “them”. And Lou is asked to choose her pronouns when she starts out in a new fifth grade classroom. Really? Do ten and eleven year olds have to choose genders and pronouns now? Is this a California thing? (The story takes place in and near San Francisco.)

I almost put the book down when the gender pronoun-choosing began, but I decided to finish. And the story does end well. But sneaking gender confusion propaganda into a middle grade fiction book is not O.K. And it all felt way too preachy and mostly sad to me. Lou says her favorite books are “sad books” (example: Where the Red Fern Grows). But there’s a difference between sad books and books that are preaching about how it’s OK to be sad. I prefer the former.

I Can’t Said the Ant by Polly Cameron

Apr11

This ridiculous rhyming story by Polly Cameron is a lark. Originally published in 1961, it’s the story of how the ant tries to help Miss Teapot who has fallen off the counter. The ant calls on everyone to help–all the kitchen foods and implements, and each one answers with a rhyme and and some helpful advice. With teamwork, they manage to rescue Miss Teapot, and “can’t” turns to “can”.

I Can’t Said the Ant is, alas, no longer in print. However, it’s fairly easy to find a copy of this book in a paperback edition. I’m not sure a hardcover edition was ever published, despite the fact that one hardcover copy is available on Amazon for an exorbitant price. Just get the paperback and enjoy the rhyming game that begins in your home when you read it.

The book is subtitled “A Second Book of Nonsense.” That subtitle made me wonder, of course, about the first book of nonsense by this author, and I found it with a little search online: A Child’s Book of Nonsense: 3 copycats, 3 batty birds, 3 crazy camels, a quail, and a snail by Polly Cameron, published in 1960. I’m not about to pay over $50 for a copy of the first book, which I’ve never seen, but I did find a couple of other books by Ms. Cameron on vimeo that I might check out:

The Dog Who Grew Too Much

The Cat Who Thought He Was a Tiger

"Thank you," said Miss Teapot, 
"You've been good to me. 
Polly, put the kettle on. 
We'll all have tea."

I Can’t Said the Ant is one of the books listed in my Picture Book Preschool book. 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 as well as a character trait to introduce, a memory verse, and activities, all tied to the theme for the week. You can purchase a downloadable version (pdf file) of Picture Book Preschool by Sherry Early at Biblioguides.

Operation Do-Over by Gordon Korman

Apr7

The entire plot of this middle grade fiction book hinges on a twelve year old kiss, that is, a kiss between two twelve year olds. I don’t usually like romantic relationships and crushes in middle grade fiction, but for this book I’ll make an exception. It’s a chaste, almost accidental, kiss, and the rest of the book is squeaky clean—and fun, and even thought-provoking.

Two boys, Mason and Ty, have been best friends practically since birth, at least as far back as they can remember. They are both nerds, and proud of it, interested in science projects and video games and time travel, not girls —until Ava, the new girl from New York, comes to town and gets the attention of both boys. Can their friendship survive crushing on the same girl at the same time?

SPOILER: The friendship doesn’t survive, and when both boys (and Ava) are in high school, senior year, things get much, much worse for Mason, all because of the kissing incident that broke up Mason’s friendship with Ty in seventh grade. I guess the central question of the book is: if you could pinpoint one decision that made your life go in the wrong direction and if you had a chance to go back in time and correct that bad decision, would you and could you?

Time travel done well is always fun, and this book does it well. (Although I didn’t really know what Madame Zeynab was supposed to be doing to add to the story . . .) I read somewhere that this is Gordon Korman’s 99th published book, and he has certainly hit his stride and then some. Mr. Korman entertains readers with mid-list middle grade fiction that might just make a few kids think about the impact of seemingly simple decisions and the value of an enduring friendship. 99 books published, he’s got to be doing something right.

Rembrandt Is in the Wind by Russ Ramsey

Apr6

Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art Through the Eyes of Faith by Russ Ramsey.

Wow! I’ve heard Mr. Ramsey speak about art and artists and the way to look at art through a Christian lens, so I’ve heard some of the material in this book before. Nevertheless, I was riveted as I listened to this new book, written by a Presbyterian pastor from Nashville. I’m hoping to order several copies–one for my church library, one for my own library, and one for my artist daughter. Maybe I’ll think of even more people who need a copy of this book.

The book features chapters about Rembrandt, of course, but also Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Van Gogh, Edward Hopper, Johannes Vermeer, and Lilias Trotter. (You’ve probably heard of all of those except the last one, but her story may be the most intriguing of them all.) If you want a book that will help you to appreciate fine art in a whole new way, whether you’re an art connoisseur or an art amateur or a just a wannabe, like me, this is the book. Ramsey writes about the artists’ lives as their lives relate to the paintings they made. He also writes about technique, but again only as it relates to the art each artist produced. And he places each artist and his or her art in historical context and in spiritual context as well.

I can’t give you any quotes from the book since I “read” it as an audiobook, but I’m sure that there is much here that is eminently quotable. And I’m also sure that I will reread this book in print as soon as I get my hands on the print copy (copies) that I’m going to order. I suggest you do the same. Oh, and the narrator for the audible version was fine, but he mispronounced a couple of words (Wen-DELL Berry?), Russ Ramsey himself as narrator/reader would have been better. If you need more encouragement to get you to read Rembrandt Is in the Wind, check out this lecture by Russ Ramsey about Michelangelo and his famous statue, David. (Yes, this material is in the book. You can skip the lecture and just get the book.)

A String in the Harp by Nancy Bond

Apr5

A String in the Harp was a Newbery Honor book in 1977. (Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry was the Newbery Award winner in 1977.) A String in the Harp is a long book, with lots of descriptive passages that evoke a sense of setting in the Welsh countryside. Mrs. Bond, an American, wrote her novel after spending two years going to library school in Wales. In fact, Wales itself, its scenery and its history, is almost the central character in the book. One critic said, “Without the traditional Welsh materials, A String in the Harp would be just another adolescent problem novel.” Well, without the entire setting in Wales, there would actually be no novel at all. It made me want to visit Wales, in spite of the cold and the incessant rain that are emphasized in the book.

The story is about the Morgan family: an American professor and his three children, Jennifer, Peter, and Becky. The story is written in third person, but mostly told from the point of view of Jennifer, age 15, and Peter, age 12. The Morgan family has moved to Aberstwyth, Wales for a year for Professor Morgan to teach and pursue research at a university there, leaving Jennifer behind with her aunt so that she can continue high school. As the story opens, Jennifer is coming to join her family in Wales for the winter/Christmas holidays.

There are, of course, problems to be overcome. Peter hates Wales and everything about it. Becky, age 10, just wants the family to be happy. Professor Morgan is distant and impatient with Peter’s inability to adjust to living in Wales. Jennifer is unsure of what her new role in the family is since they are all trying desperately to learn to be a family without their mother who died in a car accident just before the Morgans moved to Wales. All of the problems in the novel have a lot to do with the grief process that each of the Morgans is going through, but the mother is only mentioned a few times in the course of this long novel. We never get to know her, really, and you get the sense that grief is about forgetting and moving on somehow.

Into all of this rather chaotic family emotion and misunderstanding comes a magic artifact, a harp key. Peter finds the key and becomes attached to it, wearing it around his neck on a string as a sort of talisman. He believes that the key is showing him, even taking him into, the past and the life of the sixth century bard and poet, Taliesin. The novel borrows from C.S. Lewis’s with the children, especially Peter, moving into and out of another time and place. At one point a Welsh professor friend is talking to Jen and Becky about whether or not Peter has imagined all of his stories about Taliesin, and he says to them, “What do they teach in your American schools?” The entire conversation is quite reminiscent of the Professor and the children, Peter, Susan, and Edmund, when the professor asks, “Why don’t they teach logic at these schools?” and later, “I wonder what they do teach them in these schools.” Only the Welsh professor is asking more, “Why don’t they teach wonder or magic at these (American) schools?”

There are a couple of minor elements to the story that didn’t bother me, but someone else may find them problematic. The characters curse sometimes, even the children, mild curses, mostly damn and hell. I wouldn’t have expected to find cursing in a children’s book published in 1976, but there it is. And Jen at about the halfway point in the novel offers to stay on in Wales and take charge of the household, cooking and cleaning and mothering her siblings. It’s taken for granted that someone (some female?) has to be at least a parttime caretaker and homemaker for the Morgans, and for the first semester of the school year they’ve had a local woman paid to clean house and cook meals for them. One critic called this minor plot element “sexist.”

There’s usually a place in any good book where I “fall into” the story, so to speak. I am immersed and intrigued to find out how the story will play out and how it will end and what truths and affinities I will find along the way. For A String in the Harp, it took a while for me to fall in, but eventually, I did. I suppose it’s a matter of wanting to know how the story and the relationships of the various characters will finally be resolved. I think this story of family disorder turning to order, and coming of age, and magical occurrences without clear boundaries or explanations, would be a hard sell to twenty-first century readers who are used to more action and less atmosphere. But anyone who loves Narnia or Tolkien or Welsh mythology or Arthurian legend might really appreciate this small gem of a book.

Angus and the Cat by Marjorie Flack

Apr4

Marjorie Flack, author of many classic picture books including Boats on the River, Ask Mr. Bear, William and His Kitten, and The Story About Ping, also wrote a series of four books about Angus, a small, inquisitive, and adventurous black Scottish terrier. The four books are: Angus Lost, Angus and the Ducks, Angus and the Cat, and Angus and Wag-Tail Bess. The first two of those are listed in my Picture Book Preschool guide, and I now own the first three Angus books. Angus and the Cat is NOT listed in Picture Book Preschool, but only because I hadn’t read it until now and I didn’t have room for any more Angus books in the curriculum guide.

Nevertheless, I can now say that Angus and the Cat is just as delightful as the other Angus books, and you should definitely add it to your list of books to read aloud with your preschooler. In this simple story, Angus, who is very curious about cats but has never actually met one up close, finds a new pet, a cat, lying on the sofa in his own home. Angus and the cat become adversaries as the cat boxes Angus’ ears and sits in his favorite patch of sunshine. Angus, of course, chases the cat. But then, something happens to turn enmity to at least mutual respect and toleration, maybe even a near-friendship.

The story is “told and pictured by Marjorie Flack.” The illustrations in the book alternate pages of black and white pen and ink with simple two or three color drawings, and Ms. Flack’s pictures are vivid and engaging. One of the illustrations shows the cat behind a wall where Angus can’t see him, but preschoolers who are listening to the book read aloud will be happy to point out where the cat is hiding.

The first three Angus books, and probably the one I haven’t seen yet, Angus and Wag-tail Bess, are all worth pursuing from the library or the bookstore (used or new) or online at Internet Archive. Fortunately, copies of all of the Angus books are not too difficult to find, which makes for a winning read aloud series for a new generation of preschoolers who love to read about curious little dogs and their adventures.

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 a downloadable version (pdf file) of Picture Book Preschool by Sherry Early at Biblioguides.

When the Sky Falls by Phil Earle

Mar31

2022 Middle Grade Fiction: When the Sky Falls by Phil Earle.

I received a review copy of this book, originally published in Great Britain in 2021, and scheduled for publication in April of 2022 in the U.S. The tagline on the front of my ARC says, “Friendship can come from unexpected places,” and that line does summarize at least one of the themes of this story. In 1940, with his parents unavailable and his grandmother unable to control him, twelve year old Joseph Palmer isn’t to London (instead of being evacuated out of the city) to live with his grandmother’s old friend, Mrs. F.

Joseph is filled with anger, rebellious and quick to take offense from the hurts he has sustained in his short life. When he finds out that Mrs. F. is the sole proprietor of a run-down, war torn zoo in the heart of the city, with most of the animals either sent away or barely surviving, Joseph is even more confused and angry with his grandmother for sending him away, with his father for leaving to go to war, with Mrs. F. for her unyielding personality, with the whole world and the war and “Herr Hitler” and just about everything else, including the silver back gorilla called Adonis.

Joseph continues throughout most of the book to be a prickly and rage-filled character, although we do learn some of the underlying reasons for Joseph’s anger and inability to trust. And just as Adonis is not a tame gorilla (there is no such thing), Joseph is not so much tamed as educated, learning that his impulsive anger and rage do not really serve him well as he navigates the city and the zoo during a war that takes and takes and takes away all that is good and hopeful. Mrs. F. says, at one point in the story, “I hate this war. All of it. All it does is take.”

The story is good. Joseph does grow and learn over the course of the book, in a believable story arc that ultimately ends in both tragedy and hope. But . . . the writing and the details felt a little off in some way. Rough. There’s some language, using God’s name in vain and a few curses sprinkled through, but that wasn’t the real problem. Joseph nurses his rage and anger over and over, and I just couldn’t see where it went, what it really was that redeemed him or relieved him of his fear and hatred. Mrs. F. says more than once that there’s something good deep down inside Joseph. Joseph and Adonis do form a connection, or perhaps even a friendship. And the friendship and loyalty of Mrs. F. and others with whom Joseph lives and works become important to him.

Nevertheless, even with a “four years later” epilogue chapter at the end, the story felt unresolved. I think it would be absolutely traumatizing for animal lovers in the younger end of the middle grades. Joseph’s age, twelve, is a good minimum age for reading this harrowing, but somewhat hopeful, tale. It is a war story, and maybe it would be helpful for middle grade and young adult readers who are having to deal with the horrors of war, at least in the news, again, in Ukraine and elsewhere.

I’m ambivalent. It’s certainly not James Herriot and All Creatures Great and Small, but it might resonate with readers who need something a bit more grim and gritty, but still with a glimmer of hope.