“My favorite books when I was younger were by Carolyn Haywood– B Is for Betsy and Eddie and His Big Deals. The stories took place in school, in Betsy’s home, and in Eddie’s neighborhood. They had families and ate dinner and waited for the bus. . . When I read those books, it was as if I was wrapped in a warm hug. I saw all the things that I loved and lived— my neighborhood, my friends, and my school. The only thing I didn’t see was me.” —Author Grace Lin

So Grace Lin has written the Chinese American equivalent of B Is for Betsy. Except of course, no two authors are alike, and no good book is simply a copy of another with different characters. The Year of the Dog is a good book, in a comforting, Betsy-ish sort of way. Grace, however, instead of going Christmas caroling on Christmas morning, celebrates Chinese New Year with her family and extended family and lots and lots of food. The story begins with the new year, The Year of the Dog, and ends with another New Year’s celebration, beginning The Year of the Pig. The book is cozy and each story is somewhat self-contained, with little stories about Grace’s parents and grandparents interspersed throughout. The thread that ties all the stories together is Grace’s quest, during The Year of the Dog, to find out who she is and who she wants to become. The Year of the Dog is supposed to be good for thinking about that sort of thing.

It’s the stories themselves that are fun and revealing of Taiwanese-American culture. First of all, Grace can’t decide if she’s Taiwanese-Amercan or Chinese-American. The real Grace Lin says that this distinction was something that bothered her as a child, and I can see how it would be a puzzlement. The cultural differences in growing up Chinese in America are woven through the stories, but not intrusively so. What we’re left with is a year in the life of a little girl who is enjoying her school, her friends, and her family.

The reading level is fairly simple, so I’ve got Betsy-Bee (age 7) reading it now. Betsy-Bee’s favorite book is, yes, B Is For Betsy.

Two more things to note about this book: The cover looks better in reality than the Amazon-derived picture makes it look, and this book is one of the many good books nominated for the Cybil Award for Middle Grade Fiction.

This present tense fad is starting to become annoying. Victory, an historical fiction/fantasy/mystery, is set in two time periods with two main characters. Sam lives in England in the early 1800’s and sails on HMS Victory with Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson. Molly is also British, but unhappily transplanted to the United States as a result of her mother’s marriage to an American. The salinet feature of Molly’s character is that she’s homesick for England. And how do you think the parts of the book that concern Molly’s story are written? That’s right, in third person present tense. I guess it’s supposed to give Molly’s story a sense of present-day immediacy, but I found it distracting.

Aside from the gimmicky present-tense-for-the-present and past-tense-for-the-past, I thought the Molly parts of the story were mostly unnecessary. Molly’s story and her interest in Lord Nelson did add bit of mystery to the book that would not have been there without the present day tie-in. However, I found the story of Sam Robbins, a ship’s boy on Nelson’s Victory, sufficiently interesting and adventurous. Ms. Cooper weaves the historical details of life on a ship in Her Majesty’s navy in 1803 into the story in a way that gives the facts life. And Sam is a sympathetic character who lives a hard but fascinating life. He makes twenty-first century Molly seem whiny and spoiled.

From the Author’s Note by Susan Cooper: “Sam Robbins’s encounters with Admiral Nelson are not historical; they came out of my imagination, and I loved writing them. Perhaps I wrote this whole book only for the chance of meeting one of my greatest heroes.”

That love of Lord Nelson and the time period in which he lived shines through in the book. The Molly parts just don’t have the same feeling of life and enthusiasm. So I give you permission to skip the chapters that are headed “Molly” and just read about Sam Robbins and the Battle of Trafalgar, if you want. By the way, I really like the cover of the book with the picture of the scrap of a flag. If I were in a bookstore or library, I might pick up the book just because of the cover-appeal.

Victory by Susan Cooper is one of the many books nominated for the Cybil Award for Middle Grade Fiction.

These two books are both among the many books nominated for the Cybil Award for Middle Grade Fiction. Brown Bear Daughter is helping me as I read through as many of them as I can.

Rules by Cynthia Lord.
This is a great book. It has all the essential ingredients of a good story. A story needs an intriguing plot, an interesting main character, and most important of all, (I value this in all the books I read) it needs to make me feel sympathetic towards the characters, or it needs to make me laugh. In this case, it was both.

The story is about an autistic child. Autism is: “A mental condition, present from early childhood, characterized by great difficulty in communicating and forming relationships with other people.” Catherine, the narrator and the sister of the autistic boy, after thinking about her brother’s situation for a long time, decides, “David (can’t) learn from watching other people, so (I’ll) have to teach him everything.” And this is where the “rules” come in.

Catherine has lists of rules for David. A few of these are, “If you want to get out of answering something, pretend you didn’t hear,” “If someone is holding something you want, ask if you can have a turn,” and, “No toys in the fish tank.”

Taking her brother to Occupational Therapy one day with her mother, Catherine talks to a boy who can’t talk back; he’s there for Speech Therapy. And this is when the real story begins.

I’ll have to restrain myself from blabbing on and on about this wonderful book; I don’t want to give away the entire story. I want anyone who decides to read this book to find out the ending for themselves. Believe me, it’s quite a story.

Julia’s Kitchen by Brenda A. Ferber.
This book, by Brenda A. Ferber, almost made me cry. Unfortunately, I was at the dentist office when I came closest to being teary, and I kept from letting the tears trickle down my cheeks because of where I was. Had I been at home, however, I would have sobbed over this sad book, because I love to cry over books and movies, though it happens rarely. It’s a great book, despite that fact that it is very pathetic. I absolutely loved it.

Cara Segal, who narrates the story, chose the name for her mother’s catering business. “Julia’s Kitchen” it was called; Julia was her mother’s name. A favorite pastime of the two (Cara and her mother) was to bake. Then Mrs. Segal dies in a fire, along with Cara’s younger sister, Jane. Cara’s father no longer seems like the man he was before the fire, and is seemingly always preoccupied and gloomy.

Cara, having not been at the fire that burned her house down and killed her mother and sister, tries desperately to piece together the story of her mother’s death, because others will not tell her, but she has little success. I really enjoyed the surprising adventure that led to the conclusion of this wonderful story.

This book includes one of the most important ingredients of a great book . . . sadness. This, in my opinion, made it an amazing story.