Archives

Almost Zero by Nikki Grimes

Nov9

Almost Zero: A Dyamonde Daniel Book by Nikki Grimes. Cybils nominee: Early Chapter Books.

I’ve now read three books by prolific author Nikki Grimes, and I’m becoming a fan. In Almost Zero, Ms. Grimes creates a character who’s lovable, fallible, and redeemable. Dyamonde wants a pair of red (her favorite color), high-top sneakers, and she wants them NOW! Acting on bad advice from a schoolmate, Dyamonde tells her mother, “I need red ones, and you have to get them for me.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re my mother, and mothers have to take care of their children, and you have to get them for me. It’s your job!”

Dyamonde’s mother responds with an interesting ploy, and the lesson begins. Yes, there is a lesson in this book, but the moral never overwhelms the story. Dyamonde is an engaging character with a basically compassionate nature, but it takes a reasoned response from mom and a tragedy with a classmate to get Dyamonde to see what’s really more important in life than red high-topped sneakers.

Among Nikki Grimes award-winning books, I have read The Road to Paris and A Girl Called Mister, both for older middle grade and young adult readers, and now this third book in the Dyamonde Daniel series. Ms. Grimes has also written a biography, Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope, multiple picture books, verse novels, and books of poetry.

Other books in this series:
Make Way for Dyamonde Daniel.
Rich: A Dyamonde Daniel Book.

*This book is nominated for a Cybils Award, and I am a judge for the first round thereof. However, no one paid me any money, and nobody knows which books will get to be finalists or which ones will get the awards. In other words, this review reflects my opinion and Z-baby’s and nothing else.

Small Acts of Amazing Courage by Gloria Whelan

Nov4

Cybils nominee: Middle Grade Fiction. Nominated by Rebecca Herman.

Small Acts of Amazing Courage takes place in a river town in southeastern India. It is 1919 and World War I has been over for six months. During the war, more than a million Indian men fought alongside the British. Rosalind’s father led a battalion of Indian soldiers, the Gurkha Rifles. Now that the war is over, the British in India have returned to their comfortable lives of servants and clubs. ~Author’s Note by Gloria Whelan

Rosalind is a well-written character. She’s fifteen years old and just independent enough to get into trouble, which of course is necessary for a good story, and yet she still respects her parents and wants to please them. Rosalind has ideas and adventures and, well, spunk.

The setting of the book, India, is almost another character in the story. India is portrayed as the anti-Britain: colorful, messy, dangerous, and full of life, while England is drab, gray, safe, and lifeless. Rosalind’s older brother died in England when he was sent there to go to school, but India is the place where Rosalind’s aunt begins to come alive for the first time in her repressed and circumscribed life.

From my reading of history, Ms. Whelan over-simplifies the politics and cultural encounters of the time period. Gandhi and his followers are, of course, the good guys, and anyone who questions the wisdom of Indian independence is a patronizing colonialist, overbearing and/or willfully ignorant. Rosalind’s father falls into this category, as do most of the British residents of the Raj, the British mandate in India.

And Hinduism is, as a matter of course, presented as an interesting and colorful set of stories and beliefs that enrich the lives of the Indian people and of those British people who are open-minded enough to listen. Multicultural PC aboundeth. Christianity is not mentioned, but it is implied that India is the best place, has the longest and wisest history, and worships the best gods of all. If only we could all just get along as they do in India! The only differences between Hindus and Muslims that are mentioned are related to dietary practice, and surely what we eat can’t be a huge obstacle to peace in an independent India.

But I nitpick, probably because I’ve been reading a lot about the time period. The book tells a good story in which personal freedom and national freedom are paralleled. If the narrative features political changes that are taking place in India at the time without including some of the problems that were inherent in those political changes, well, the book isn’t about the conflict between Hindus and Muslims. Nor is it about the poverty in India that is a direct result of some of the religious practices and beliefs of Hinduism. The story does include an episode that demonstrates the evils of the caste system and its effect on the Dalits of the time. And that little episode is left, without preaching, to speak for itself.

So, I leave the book to speak for itself. I enjoyed the story, but I also knew that there was more to be known and written about India and its culture and its independence movement than could be contained in this small book.

Ruby Lu, Star of the Show by Lenore Look

Nov4

Cybils nominee: Early chapter books. Nominated by Jeff Barger at NC Teacher Stuff.

I always think of Ramona and Her Father by Beverly Cleary when I think of a dad-loses-his-job kind of book for primary age children. Ruby Lu, Star of the Show is a new entry in that particular category, for 21st century hard times, and it lives up to the high standard set by Ms. Cleary’s books of the 1970’s variety.

Ruby Lu is in third grade, and she’s a pistol. Whether she’s writing haiku (about her dog, Elvis) or worrying about Elvis being lonely at home or helping her dad in his job-hunting efforts, Ruby Lu is a star—a Chinese American, Spanish-learning, Haiku Heroine, dog training, hair cutting, hard working, list making, washing machine wearing, self-sacrificing center of attention and activity. Lenore Look has another (Alvin Ho is my hero!) winning character in Ruby Lu.

Here’s a Ruby Lu exclusive list on How to Survive Hard Times:

    How to Survive Hard Times

1. Go to the library.
2. Check out books on dog training.
3. Do it yourself.
4. Start a business.
5. Sell something!
6. Make some money.
7. Scan some twenty-dollar bills.
8. Cut carefully.
9. Think positively.
10. Look alive.
11. Keep your head up.
12. Eat chocolate cake.
13. Listen to happy music.

I think #12 in particular is a great piece of advice for any times, although I take my chocolate straight, no chaser.

I tried to find some other parent unemployed books to recommend along with this one, but Ramona and Her Father plus books set during the Great Depression (Meet Kit An American Girl by Valerie Tripp, Blue Willow by Doris Gates, Nothing to Fear by Jackie French Koller) were all that I could come up with. Suggestions, anyone?

No Room for Dessert by Hallie Durand

Oct17

Cybils nominee: Early Chapter Books. Nominated by Jama Rattigan. And here’s Jama’s interview with author Hallie Durand about her Dessert trilogy.

Dessert Schneider, the most important and firstborn child in the Schneider family, feels as if she’s been forgotten as her younger sister and two younger brothers get the lion’s share of the attention. But if Dessert can win the Thomas Edison Contest in her class at school for the invention that will improve people’s lives the most, she’s sure to get the attention that she craves.

Dessert is self-centered, attention-seeking, and highly competitive. She’s also funny, inventive, and real. Typical eight year old. I liked Dessert, even when I cringed a little at her grandiose plans and thoughts and her cockiness about winning the contest. Lack of self-confidence is NOT Dessert’s problem, until . . .

Z-baby’s going to love this one, and after she reads it, I’m planning to have her make a notebook of her own inventions. After all, as Mrs. Howdy Doody, Dessert’s teacher, says, “Thomas Edison filled three thousand five hundred notebooks with his ideas! Let your minds dance! Let your minds go crazy! Let your minds fly to the moon and back!”

*This book is nominated for a Cybils Award, and I am a judge for the first round thereof. However, no one paid me any money, and nobody knows which books will get to be finalists or which ones will get the awards. In other words, this review reflects my opinion and Z-baby’s and nothing else.

What’s New in Books about Peculiar Children?

Jun19

A young teen boy finds that rather than being like his mundane and commonplace family, he is really one of the magical people, many of whom live in a sort of home for special children where they are free to practice their special magical talents. The world is divided between the commoners and the magically gifted, and the magical people are further divided into two groups: the good ones and the evil ones who, in an attempt to gain power, are about to destroy the world as we know it. Could it be Harry Potter?

Find out in my review on the new Youth Reads page at the The Point (Chuck Colson’s Breakpoint).

The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic by Jennifer Trafton

Jun15

Cybils nominee: Middle Grade Fantasy and Science Fiction. Nominated by Amy at Hope Is the Word, because she beat me to it.

Read the first chapter of The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic.

The rest of it is just as good as the first chapter. End of review.

O.K. I do have more to say about this book. But I think mostly what I want to say is:

1. Read this book.

2. If G.K. Chesterton were living now and writing fantasy for middle grade readers, he would be accused of being Jennifer Trafton. Or she would be him. Or something.

3. Since my lovely Z-baby likes maps, here’s a link to a map of The Island at the Center of Everything.

4. How did she or her publisher manage to get Brett Helquist to illustrate? Mr. Helquist is the guy who did the illustrations for Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events and for Blue Balliet’s Chasing Vermeer and its sequels. Perfectly wonderful pictures.

5. Persimmony Smudge wants to be a heroine. How is this ambition different from what I wrote about yesterday, wanting to be famous? Is it different? I think so, but I’m not sure how to articulate the difference.

“The truth was that King Lucas the Loftier had never gone down from the mountain in his entire life It meant no longer being On Top of Majestic, no longer being Lofty. It meant descending into the world of Everybody Else. He would have no idea what to do, where to go, how to behave. He wouldn’t know who he was anymore.”

6. Persimmony Smudge is a wonderful name for a character. So are the following names in the book: Guafnoggle the Rumblebump, Worvil the Worrier, Jim-Jo Pumpernickel, King Lucas the Loftier, Rheuben Rhinkle, Barnbas Quill, and Dustin Dexterhoof. (I’ve always liked the word “pumpernickel”, but I never thought of using it as a name.)

7. Insanitorious. Ludiculous. Ridiposterous. Flibbertigibbeted. Discumbersomebubblated. The presence of these words and others like them in this book compels the logophile to read and enjoy. Word play galoric.

8. You can buy a copy of the book at the Rabbit Room Store online, if you want. Or Amazon.

“You said might!” Worvil covered his face with his hands. “Of all the words that have ever been invented, that is the worst. All of the terror in the world hangs on the word might. The Leafeaters might kidnap me and keep me locked up underground forever. They might tie me to a tree and leave me to be eaten by poison-tongued jumping tortoises. A hurricane might flood the Willow Woods and both of us drown . . .”
Persimmony stared at Worvil and discovered that she liked him. He was a coward, certainly, but he had Imagination. She liked people with Imagination.

9. Have you read the first chapter yet?

10. Oh, just buy the book already. (No, you cynical people, I don’t know Ms. Trafton personally, and I don’t get a commission from recommending her book. I do get a few cents if you go straight from here to Amazon and buy the book there.)

“For the last time, I am not the one who puts gifts in the pots!”
“Well, if you don’t, who does?”
“I have no idea,” said the potter. “Who puts words of truth into the strings of a Lyre? Perhaps there some things that we are not meant to understand. Without a few mysteries and a few giants, life would be a very small thing, after all.”

Taking Off by Jenny Moss

May4

Nominated for 2011 Cybil Awards, Young Adult Fiction category. Nominated by Kelly Jensen at Stacked.

Houston author, Jenny Moss, has written about my hometown setting, Clear Lake City, a suburb of Houston, and Johnson Space Center, the NASA facility where Engineer Husband works. Of course, when I saw such a local interest YA novel on the shelf at the library, I had to read it. And the time for a review, with the last shuttle Endeavor flight scheduled for this month, seems appropriate.

Annie Porter lives in Clear Lake, but she’s never been interested in the space program until her best friend invites her to a dinner where she’ll be able to meet Christa McAuliffe, NASA’s first Teacher-in-Space. Inspired by Christa’s zest for life, Annie, a senior in high school, decides to go to Florida to see the launch of the space shuttle Challenger.

Knowing how the story of Christa McAuliffe ends made this novel of a Texas girl torn between staying at home and venturing forth, well, a bit dark and foreboding. When the launch finally happens in the novel, even though I knew it would happen, the explosion of the Challenger was traumatic and terribly sad. Of course, Annie, who has placed almost all of her hopes and dreams for the future in her admiration for Christa McAuliffe, is devastated.

But Annie recovers and goes on to make a decision about whether she will be a “keeper or a dreamer.” I got those two labels from this post at Rabbit Room by Sarah Clarkson. As I commented there, I think all of us have some of the dreamer and some of the keeper inside us. The key is deciding when it’s time to “take off” and when it’s time to hold fast and make a nest and a community. Taking Off by Jenny Moss offers both a good story and some wisdom about choosing between the two modes of living intentionally.