Archive | October 2008

Children’s Fiction of 2008: Thank You, Lucky Stars by Beverly Donofrio

Oct30

I’ve noticed for a long time that girls and boys, at least in upper elementary/middle school, do friendship differently. Like all generalizations, this one is subject to exceptions, but generally girls rank their friends. They have a best friend, maybe several lesser friends, and some acquaintances that are OK for a casual conversation. Boys may have a best buddy, but they’ll pal around with almost anyone. Karate Kid has at least a dozen “best friends” depending on who’s available to play at any given time. It’s an odd phenomenon, but one of the things that makes this book a girl’s book rather than a boy-friendly title.

In Thank You, Lucky Stars, Ally Theresa Miller is looking forward to the first day of fifth grade —until the first day also becomes the day she loses her best friend, Becky. Somehow over the summer, Becky has become friends with Mona, their erstwhile worst enemy. For a guy a brush-off from a best buddy would be a signal to go find another friend, but for Ally Becky’s betrayal of their friendship is the beginning of a very bad school year.

The rest of the story tells how Ally recovers, does find a new friend, deals with said new friend’s imperfections and assets, and basically grows up over the course of the school year. It’s a decent enough story, but one thing bothered me. It took me a third of the book to figure out what time period it’s set in. It starts out with all sorts of seventies references: Star Wars, the Beatles, Bridge Over Troubled Water, Jolly Ranchers, smoking allowed in high school, the TV show Mission Impossible. Then there are also twenty-first century references: the slang term “chill” (isn’t that recent?), kitchen islands, malls, and middle schools. Finally on page 68, I learned that the sixties and the seventies were Ally’s parents’ day and that she learned about rock and roll and disco from them. So the setting is now, but it’s still very retro: go-go dancing and disco alongside CD’s, rappers, and Natalie Portman in People magazine.

Other than that fairly minor complaint, I would recommend this book for upper elementary school girls (not boys because of the puberty-for-girls talk) who enjoy realistic fiction about friendship issues and growing up.

Della Donna interview with Beverly Donofrio.

Young Adult Fiction of 2008: The Boy Who Dared by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

Oct28

Susan Campbell Bartoletti’s nonfiction study, Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow, won a Newbery Honor medal in 2006 for its compilation of accounts of what it was like to grow up in Hitler’s youth organization, Hitler Youth. In The Boy Who Dared Bartoletti returns to the Third Reich to tell the story of a boy who joined the Hitler Youth, but secretly and courageously resisted the Nazi regime until he was caught by the police.

The subtitle to this book is “A Novel Based on the True Story of a Hitler Youth.” The book reads like a novel in some ways. We get to hear the thoughts and fears of and imprisoned seventeen year old, Helmuth, as he reminisces about his growing up years under the growing shadow of Nazism. However, it’s obvious that the novel is constrained by the facts of the case, so to speak. From the beginning of the story, when the omniscient narrator tells us from Helmuth’s prison cell that “the executioner works on Tuesdays,” we know that that there is no happy ending in store for Helmuth Hubener, the protagonist of the novel.

Then there are various facts that lend interest to the story but that probably wouldn’t have occurred to a novelist writing a story not based on true events. For instance, Helmuth’s family is Mormon. In the author notes at the end of the book, Ms. Bartoletti says that the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints had about one thousand members living in Hamburg during the war. Another set of unlikely facts: Helmuth’s mother marries a Rottenfuhrer in Hitler’s SS, a dedicated Nazi who nevertheless adopts Helmuth and writes a letter in his support after his arrest for espionage.

I have a particular fascination with World War II stories, especially those that take place inside Nazi Germany or in Nazi-occupied territory. I think we’re all still, almost seventy years later, trying to figure out how the Holocaust and the other evils of Nazism could have happened in a “civilized” country. So I look for clues in stories of the times. The clues here are the ones you’ve heard before: the people were economically devastated. They believed Hitler would lead them to prosperity and to dignity for Germany after the ignominious defeat of World War I. When the Jews were persecuted, the bullies joined in the bullying and the good people looked away. When freedoms were taken away one by one, people said it was temporary, that these were emergency measures, that everything would be O.K. eventually.

The problem is that I look at Nazi Germany, and I see ideas and attitudes that are very much alive here and now. No, we in the United States in 2008 are not Nazis. History does not really repeat itself; it echoes. And the echoes I hear now are disturbing. People in a time of economic crisis are looking for a saviour. Innocents are killed daily by abortion, and good people look the other way. Candidates talk about taking away freedom of speech in the name of fairness, and we are oblivious.

I didn’t mean for this to turn into a politicized review, but oh, God, remove our blind spots and have mercy on us.

The Boy Who Dared is a good reminder of what we have to lose and what can happen in a country that loses its moral compass.

Monday’s List: Obama in His Own Words

Oct27

The words in parentheses are my own editorial comments:

To Charlie Gibson: “Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”

To Joe the Plumber: “It’s not that I want to punish your success, I just want to make sure that everybody that is behind you, that they have a chance for success too. I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” (huh?)

Homosexual “marriage”: “I opposed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. It should be repealed and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor. I will also oppose any proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying.”

Grandchild as a punishment: “I’ve got two daughters. 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”

In response to Rick Warren’s question about when a baby gets human rights: “Well, I think that whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade.”

“No one is pro-abortion.” (But an unwanted child is a punishment, and Obama doesn’t know when life begins or even when a citizen deserves the full protection of the law. See this post.)

You Bitter Frustrated People: “It’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

“We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old – and that’s the criterion by which I’ll be selecting my judges.” (Not adherence to the law?)

“I had learned not to care. I blew a few smoke rings, remembering those years. Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though. …” (Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barak Obama)

On the episodes described in his book: “I was a confused kid and was making a bunch of negative choices based on stereotypes of what I thought a tough young man should be. Those choices were misguided, a serious mistake.”

“I can no more disown (Jeremiah Wright) than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”

“The point I was making was not that Grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn’t. But she is a typical white person…” (All white people are racist, even if they harbor no “racial animosity.”)

“To the extent that we’ve got a fiscal crisis right now, part of it is prompted by a bullheaded insistence on the part of the president, for example, that we should extend all of his tax cuts, make all of them permanent.” (Stupid tax cuts!)

“First, I’ll stop spending $9-billion a month in Iraq. I’m the only major candidate who opposed this war from the beginning, and as president, I will end it.” (Who cares what happens to the Iraqis or whether the terrorists are emboldened by our quick exit?)

“Second, I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems, and I will institute an independent defense priorities board to ensure that the quadrennial defense review is not used to justify unnecessary spending.” (No missile defense.)

“Third, I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons. To seek that goal, I will not develop new nuclear weapons. I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material, and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals.”
Politfact, St. Petersburg TImes

“my individual salvation is not going to come about without a collective salvation for the country. Unfotunately, I think that recognition requires that we make sacrifices and this country is not always willing to make the sacrifices to bring about a new day and a new age.” More on the meaning of this quotation at Spunky Homeschool.

“I would not have nominated Clarence Thomas. I don’t think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation, setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretations of a lot of the Constitution. I would not nominate Justice Scalia, although I don’t think there’s any doubt about his intellectual brilliance, because he and I just disagree. You know, he taught at the University of Chicago, as did I, in the law school.”

From a 2001 radio interview: “But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendancy to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change.” (Redistributive change=economic justice=breaking free from the essential constraints that the founding fathers placed in the Constitution?)

If the man who said these things is the man you want for president of the United States, vote for Obama. If not, vote for someone else. It’s that simple.

Children’s Fiction of 2008: The Calder Game by Blue Balliett

Oct27

Yes, this book tells a story with characters and a plot, a beginning and an ending: three friends work together to solve the mystery of a missing Alexander Calder sculpture. But I’m not sure it’s about all that traditional mystery genre stuff; it’s more about mobiles, and games, and the free play of ideas.

“A mobile, one might say, is a little private celebration, an object defined by its movement and having no other existence. It is a flower that fades when it ceases to move, a pure play of movement in the sense that we speak of a pure play of light. . . . There is more of the unpredictable about them than in any other human creation. No human brain, not even their creator’s, could possibly foresee all the complex combinations of which they are capable.” ~Jean-Paul Sartre

A reader will get out of this book what he puts into it. If you’re not willing to work at it a bit, take the dead ends with a playful attitude, make lemonade from the lemons, then find another book. I almost did because I’m really a rather prosaic kind of gal. But I’m glad I persisted. Even though I thought the plot was rather mundane, the book itself was anything but pedestrian. I got to think about mobiles and art and play in a new way. The book asks questions: What is art? Can art change people’s perceptions? Can it make people see things differently? What is the difference between art and play? What is the place of art in our communities and in our living spaces? Can art enter our relationships and change them, too?

“A mobile is a moving, changing collection of objects constantly in motion, yet within the framework of a form. The framework of a family gives form, but as one starts with a man and woman, a mother and father, there is never any one day following another when these two, plus the children that come through adoption or birth into the home, are either the same age or at the same point of growth. Every individual is growing, changing, developing or declining – intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, physically and psychologically. A family is a group of individuals who are affecting each other…as each individual person is changing.” ~Edith Schaeffer

The Calder Game is, on the surface, a mystery adventure tale, and that’s its weakest aspect. Beneath the surface it’s profound on the subject of art and the influence of movement in art without being pretentious, and that’s where it shines. The book will challenge readers to find their own strengths and create their own mobiles. I predict that some kids, and some adults, won’t get it. But others will be inspired by the messiness of the game to take creativity to another level.

“The underlying sense of form in my work has been the system of the Universe, or part thereof.” ~Alexander Calder

“Think of the mobiles of God, the Artist, brought forth by the wind that He created. The wind, blowing in the trees, swaying the grass, bending a field of wheat as a ballet, rising again, bending again. The spray of the ocean, wild waves against rocks bringing forth a curve of spray, a mobile of spray. Light through spray, like thousands of diamonds blowing on invisible threads! The movement of the birth trees’ delicate branches and sensitive leaves twinkling and twisting, fluttering in a breeze; or clouds drifting slowly across a clear sky or scudding in swift movements as shapes change – God’s mobiles.” ~Edith Schaeffer

So, a non-traditional book deserves a non-traditional review. (By the way, I haven’t read Balliett’s first two books in this series yet, Chasing Vermeer and The Wright 3, but I plan to read them as soon as I get through Cybils season.)

Other more sequential blogger reviews:

KidsReads: “Like its predecessors, THE CALDER GAME utilizes real information about art, artists and places (in this case, the Cotswolds’ Blenheim Palace and its famous maze) to get readers excited about learning. It also shows how kids, each of whom has his or her unique way of thinking and problem-solving, can work together to make connections and find patterns. Unlike the previous two books, however, THE CALDER GAME relies more solidly on evidence, clues and deductive reasoning to arrive at its conclusion — resulting in a novel that will satisfy mystery fans as well as art lovers.”

Shelf Elf: “I don’t think this is a book for every kid. What Balliett is good at is creating a rich, half under-the-surface exploration of how art, philosophy, logic and people intersect. This book will really appeal to a certain sort of child – a kid who likes to look for connections, who spends time thinking about questions, who is a problem solver.”

Children’s Fiction of 2008: Violet Raines Almost Got Struck by Lightning by Danette Haworth

Oct25

When Melissa Gold sashays into church, late, in the first chapter of Violet Raines Almost Got Struck by Lightning, trouble is obviously on the way. Violet is used to being the center of attention, at least of her best friend Lottie’s attention, and she doesn’t take well to Melissa-from-Detroit taking center stage.

Violet is an eleven year old tomboy who lives and thrives in the town of Mitchell Hammock in rural Florida. She likes the Sunday night fish fry at Lottie’s house, a Brain Freeze bought at the gas station, playing in the woods with her friend Eddie, collecting words from the newspaper, and looking for shells by the river. She doesn’t like the old rotting net bridge across the river, long church services, girls who talk about bras and make-up and get all googly-eyed over boys, and especially she doesn’t like Melissa.

I learned something about lightning from reading this book. Did you know that:

“Florida is lightning capital of the United States. Florida experiences lightning strikes at least 100 days per year. In comparison, California has four or five thunderstorm days per year. Interstate 4 between Orlando and St. Petersburg is called lightning alley. There is more lightning activity on lightning alley than any other area in the U.S.” (Around Central Florida)

I also learned something more about pre-adolescent friendships and their ups and downs. I think this book will be especially popular in small towns and rural school libraries because Ms. Haworth has the feel of a backwoods Southern town just right. I do wish Violet didn’t have such a propensity for using the Lord’s name in vain, but it may not bother you. I also wish Melissa and Lottie didn’t have to get their ideas of what it means to grow up from Hollywood and from soap operas, but I reckon that’s fairly typical. And now that I’ve lapsed into Southern rural jargon myself, I’d better leave you with another quotation from Violet herself as she looks at a tree that hs survived a lightning strike:

“I put my hands on the tree and feel the wound. Closing my eyes, I can see that lightning strike again. This is one brave tree. It’s still standing and most of its leaves are still green. The storm didn’t knock it down. I’m glad now the tree isn’t naked. Even this scar don’t ruin its beauty. In fact, I think it gives it character, something most of your regular trees don’t have.”

Violet, too, is a survivor, and she’s certainly got character.

Bloggers review Violet Raines:

The Reading Zone: “Violet Raines Almost Got Struck by Lightning is the perfect book for rising middle schoolers. It beautifully depicts the struggles and triumphs of middle grade friendships- especially those tricky friendships that cross gender lines. It also provides a wonderful picture of growing up, growing friendships, and growing maturity.”

Hello Ello (from her nine year old daughter’s review): “I really want to read more funny books about Violet. I really wonder what Ms. Haworth’s next book will be about. I really hope it is like this one.”

Kate Messner: “There are so many things to praise about this novel — the lively, quirky characters, Violet’s fabulous voice, the Florida-in-summer setting, painted so perfectly I kept swatting imaginary mosquitoes while I read.”

Shelf Elf: “I’d happily put this in the hands of any Grade 5 girl. Here’s hoping that there are lots more titles just as worthy in the very long and ever-growing list of Cybils nominations.”

Children’s Fiction of 2008: Waiting for Normal by Leslie Connor

Oct24

Addie’s mom, Mommers as Addie calls her, is an all-or-nothing kind of person. She’s always got a new plan, a new burst of enthusiasm, a new guy in her life, another way to strike it rich or make it big. But Addie doesn’t want a big house or a brand-new family or a even a new start in life; she’s just waiting for normal. Unfortunately, living with Mommers, normal is the one thing Addie doesn’t have a chance to get used to. Addie says: “Me, I’m good at getting used to things—been doing it all my life.”

Waiting for Normal is a sad and disturbing novel. Addie has an ex-step-father, the father of her two half-sisters, Brynna and Katie, who loves her and wants to take care of her. But she’s stuck in the custody of a neglectful, flighty, and irresponsible Mommers. Addie makes friends with the people who run the convenience store across the street, but they can’t do much about her living situation either. And Addie, of course, loves and defends her mom, even though Mommers is clearly delinquent and possibly under the influence of an addiction of some kind. (The novel, told from Addie’s point of view, is never clear on the drug issue, although it is implied.)

I go back and forth about this sort of novel. The writing is good, and the plot moves along at a good pace. Addie is a “normal” little girl caught in an abnormal situation. I think there are kids who are caught in similar situations who would feel relieved at being able to identify with Addie. And it doesn’t hurt other kids who have more stable families to learn to appreciate and sympathize with the difficulties some children have in their lives. That said, many children, both from normal and abnormal families, want to escape in reading, not to have to live through a child neglect story that does turn out well in the end, but has a lot of twists and turns, as Addie would say, in the meantime.

I suppose that Clementine and Pacy and Abigail Iris and the Penderwicks have their place in children’s literature and so do Gilly Hopkins and Lucky (The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Phelan) and Addie Schmeeter. I just usually prefer the Penderwicks or some really out of this world confrontation between good and evil like Lord of the Rings. Sad to say, I’m afraid Waiting for Normal hits a little too close to home and makes me worry that I’m missing the call to be a “hero”, in the words of Addie, to someone I’m not even noticing:

“I know the health stuff is important, but I think there’s more to getting happy than that. . . . I think you need heroes, too,” I said. I made a little fist for punch.

“Heroes?” she asked. “Like friends and family?”

“They can be be friends or family,” I said. “Webster’s says —”

“Webster’s?”

“The dictionary,” I explained. “A hero is someone who sets themselves apart from others. You know —someone who is strong or shows courage, takes a risk. And I know Webster’s is talking about well-known heroes. Like from the newspapers and history books. Inventors and athletes and people like Martin Luther King.”

“Uh-huh.” Soula was still listening.

“But don’t you think it’s possible . . .” —I twisted up my face— “that every person is a hero to someone else?”

Controversial subjects warning: some mild language, minor character is openly homosexual, characters living together before marriage, discussion of menstruation, negligent mother.

What other bloggers have to say about Waiting for Normal:

Megan at Read, Read, Read: “I would recommend this book to GIRLS in my class. I would love to say I would read it aloud or recommend it to everyone, but that is not possible in this case. Although it is one of the best books I have read this year for my age group students, it has far too much girlie talk to recommend to a boy.”

Fuse 8: “I would recommend reading the first chapter of this book (it’s only five pages) in a children’s literary course or a class on how to write for children as an example of showing, not telling. Our slow realization that Addie’s mother is selfish and self-centered isn’t crystal clear from page one. All the same, you’re getting hints of it.”

Bill at Literate Lives: “Addie’s character evokes sympathy from the reader without being a helpless victim. She is strong and refuses to let her surroundings defeat her. In the end, things turn out well for Addie but, Leslie Connor develops her story so well that it isn’t corny or overly sappy, just satisfying.”

Orson Scott Card, Truth-Teller

Oct23

Orson Scott Card, author of Ender’s Game (Semicolon review here) and many other titles of science fiction, fantasy, and historical fiction, is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist. However, in this column, he blasts both his party and his profession for their lack of truth-telling about the ongoing financial crisis in the U.S.
Take this:

This housing crisis didn’t come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

And this:

If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.

There’s more.

My only question: why can’t John McCain talk like Mr. Card? What happened to Mr. Straight Talk?

Children’s Fiction of 2008: The Year of the Rat by Grace Lin

Oct23

Grace, or Pacy as she’s known to her family, the Taiwanese American equivalent of all the feisty little girl characters who are trying to figure out the world in children’s literature, is back. Last year’s The Year of the Dog (Semicolon review here) had Grace thinking about whether she was American or Taiwanese or Chinese and about who she is and who she wants to become. That story ended with Grace’s making a new friend, Melody, who was Chinese like her and deciding that she wanted to become an author and an illustrator.

But Pacy’s dad tells her, “The Year of the Rat is the time to make a fresh start and to change things.” Grace/Pacy is not so sure she like changes. Why can’t things stay the way they are?

Stories within the story, told mostly by Grace’s mom and dad, showcase Taiwanese culture and teach subtle lessons about thankfulness, consideration, diligence, and other important values. Because it’s not preachy and not overused, these stories-within-the-story about “when I was a little girl” or even”when you were little” become some of the most memorable parts of the novel.

Grace/Pacy is a thoughtful little girl, rather serious, but with a happy close-knit family to help her understand the things that puzzle her and to help her celebrate both her American-ness and her Chinese heritage. Most of the issues Grace deals with in the book are the same ones that show up in other books for children this age: what to do when your best friend moves away, how to treat others at school and in the family, how to remain true to who you are without losing friends who may not understand. But Pacy/Grace draws on her family’s cultural strengths and her own “tiger strength” to not only survive the changes of The Year of the Rat, but also to surprise herself with how she can shape her own destiny.

Bloggers on The Year of the Rat:

Matt at The Book Club Shelf: “From the dedication to the reader to the Author’s Note at the end, I loved every minute of this book (a sequel to The Year of the Dog) and am certain that young readers would as well.”

Cloudscome at A Wrung Sponge: “I love that this friendly, engaging story has the depth to show a regular kid dealing with every day meanness and racism to find a satisfying, peaceful result. So often kids are left alone to process the bullying they encounter. Here’s a story where a girl finds a way to stand up to it and her so-called friends grow beyond their pettiness to be better friends.”

Fuse 8: “Grace Lin’s semi-autobiographical stories of Pacy and her life in New Hartford contain just the right balance of sweetness and story. Without ever becoming trite or saccharine, Lin hits gold yet again with The Year of the Rat.”

Jama Rattigan interviews Grace Lin, April 2008. (with recipes).

Grace Lin’s blog Gracenotes.

Children’s Fiction of 2008: Eleven by Patricia Reilly Giff

Oct22

Eleven is another book about whether or not girls and boys can be friends. Like Nadie and Nick in The Trouble With Rules, Sam and his new friend Caroline are friends outside of school but hide their friendship while they’re at school for fear of being teased.

However, being friends with a girl is the least of Sam’s worries. Sam is almost eleven years old, and he can’t really read. And he’s afraid, for some reason, of the number eleven. And worst of all, he’s found a newspaper clipping in the attic with a photograph of himself at three years old and an article he can’t read. It says something about “missing” and “Sam Bell”, but Sam’s last name is MacKenzie, not Bell. Sam lives with his grandfather, Mack, but now he’s wondering: is Mack really his grandfather? Where does he really belong? What are the dreams that disturb his rest, dreams about shouting and a terrible house and a boat and drowning? WIll Caroline help Sam find out the truth about his past?

This one is a sort of mystery/problem fiction title since Sam is learning disabled and out to solve a mystery, too. I can’t put my finger on the exact cause, maybe because I’m not a talented writer myself, but something about the writing or the plot felt disjointed or full of holes. Ms. Giff may have written the book to mirror the way Sam thinks, disorganized and fragmented, and if so, I got the message. I didn’t love it, but it’s a serviceable title about kids with a reading problem and about friendship and about a loving and supportive family and community. Some kids who identify with these themes will probably like it very much.

Blogger reviews of Eleven:

The Reading Zone: “Sam is a very likable character, and I was immediately drawn into his story. He struggles with school, specifically with reading, but he is talented in woodworking and design. . . . While this is not an edge of your seat mystery, it is full of suspense and I kept turning the pages, hoping to learn who Sam really was!”

Brooke at Story Pockets: “Giff (author of the Newbery Honor-winning Pictures of Hollis Woods) is a master at showing the way kids internalize their struggles, and how clueless the adults around them can sometimes be. Sam and Caroline’s journey into friendship and family is a quiet study of an ordinary kid facing some pretty extraordinary questions about his past, and the strength that can result afterwards.”