Chang’An, China, 731: Han Yu sells steamed buns in a bustling market full of whispers about his ability to summon tigers.
Chinatown, New York City, 1931: Luli Lee gazes out from the roof of her parents’ restaurant, dreaming of dim sum and Chinese art.
Two places, two times, and two main characters. It could be confusing, but author Karina Van Glaser does a masterful job of telling and intertwining the stories of these two children, both of whom are trying to help their families through a hard time. Han Yu must travel the trade routes (Silk Road) to learn money for his quarantined family and find the healing grasses that might heal his little sister from her life-threatening illness. Luli’s family is about to lose the restaurant that is their dream and livelihood as the Great Depression squeezes all businesses in its financial collapse.
The story has a slight amount of “magical realism”, as a secretive, ghostly, guardian tiger appears and disappears, seeming to protect Han Yu on his journey. (For me, the tiger is reminiscent of the figure of Aslan in the Narnia books, but that may be my own eccentric reading.) For the most part, however, the stories are engaging, well written, and well researched straight historical fiction. The histories of Han Yu and Luli intersect in a believable way, and the story becomes a sort of ode to Chinese food, especially dim sum, Chinese art, Chinese history, and Chinese culture.
This book would be a great read aloud. Each chapter ends on something of a cliff-hanger which impels the reader to hurry on to see what will happen. And the chapters switch back and forth between Han Yu’s story and Luli’s, a device that adds to the suspense and interest. I can see why this book won a Newbery Honor. I would have chosen it for the Newbery Award.
I found this second book in the Carrick Hall series hard going at first, but perhaps I just started when I was tired and not in the mood. When I finally got several chapters in, I began enjoy this story, sequel to Once a Queen, which I reviewed here.
In this book, Frankie the gardener boy’s younger siblings–Jack, Tilly, Elspeth, and Georgie Addison– take center stage, along with the mysterious and silent Arash Tasbari, an immigrant/refugee from Iran whose Shakespeare-quoting grandfather owns a bookshop in the village. More characters join the cast: Charlie and Aurora Heapworth, Tilly’s crush and Elspeth’s best friend respectively; Paxton and Mrs. Fealston, the family servants or perhaps guardians; and from Ternival, a fisherman and his granddaughter, Zahra. Indeed, there are so many characters and so much movement from scene to scene and setting to setting, that I almost got lost several times as I struggled to remember who was who and where they all were and who knew what and when.
And I wasn’t the only one in a muddle. The characters themselves lose each other and find each other an amazing number of times before the story is resolved. The only stable (but actually unstable and crazy) character is the evil enchantress, Mindra, who always shows up where she is least wanted with the singular purpose of reclaiming the crown and the gems of Ternival along with her power in order to make a mess of everything, I suppose. (What else do archvillains want power for?) Even Mindra travels back and forth between worlds a few times, but wherever the crown and the gems are, there she is, too.
A map and a list of characters at the beginning of the book help the reader to make sense of it all, and it is a grand adventure. Talking animals, dryads, giants, dwarfs, centaurs, and a whistle-pig fill out the cast of characters. And the plot moves along at a fast pace. I would recommend reading the first book in the series before tackling this one, but Once a Castle can stand alone. I know because I couldn’t remember much of anything from the first book when I sat down to read this one, and I managed to enjoy this rather rollicking fairy tale fantasy anyway. There is to be a third book, titled Once a Crown, and I look forward to reading and enjoying that one, too. It’s not The Lord of the Rings, but it will do.
Jim Kjelgaard was a prolific author of over forty novels for children and young adults, mostly animal stories. His most famous and best-selling book was Big Red, the story of an orphan boy and his beloved Irish setter.
The main character in The Black Fawn is also an orphaned boy, Allan “Bud” Sloan. Bud comes to live with Gramps and Gram Bennett in an attitude of guarded fear and determination.
“With his little bundle of belongings wrapped in a spare shirt and tucked under his right arm–the orphanage did not furnish suitcases when they farmed you out–Bud started up the drive with his head held high and with what he hoped was a fearless, manly tread. But his insides felt like jelly that has stood too long in a warm place and his feet seemed to weigh five hundred pounds each. If he had been sure no one was looking, he would have burst into tears. He could not be sure, and not for an instant must he forget that weakness made him easy prey for whoever saw it.”
Slowly, over the course of the novel, Bud responds to the open-hearted love and care of Gram Bennett and the measured and careful teaching and example of Gramps, and the three become a family even as Bud learns to be a man. The black fawn is something of a touchstone that Bud first saves when the fawn is almost orphaned in infancy, and then watches in brief glimpses as he grows to be a mighty buck that Bud reluctantly hunts along with Gramps.
So the book showcases the love of animals, but also the thrill of hunting and the satisfaction to be found in farming and animal husbandry. Bud learns “the ways of nature and the meaning of true sportsmanship.” It’s a balanced view of all three of these ways that man interacts with nature and the animal world.
I’m just starting a re-read of James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small, and I couldn’t help comparing the two books. Herriot’s Yorkshire farmers care for their animals, but they also know that farm animals are meant to be of use, sometimes for food. The attitude in Kjelgaard’s story is the same. The deer are meant to be respected and admired for their beauty and animal sense, but also to be hunted for food and for sport as well. Gramps sees the black buck as a magnificent and wily adversary, and himself as an elder with lessons worth teaching to young Bud. Some of those lessons come through the medium and process of deer hunting.
The ending to the story is perfect for hunters and animal lovers both, although animal welfare activists and vegetarians might not love it so much. Kjelgaard balances a respect for wildlife and nature with a deep appreciation for the sport of hunting and the lessons that it teaches. This blog post by Daniel Schmidt, a deer hunter, explicates the basic idea contained in this story: Humble Appreciation: A Deer Hunter’s Prayer.
Benjamin MacDonald is the six year old younger son of William and Esther MacDonald. The year is 1870, and the place is somewhere to the north of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. In this prairie land the MacDonald family own a farm, and Ben, a child who in today’s parlance would certainly be called “neurodivergent”, has lived his life so far on that farm, exploring those prairie lands. In 1870, folks just say that Ben is “dreadful queer,” “some sort of monster or throwback, an animal-boy.” Ben seldom speaks to people even in his own family, and he has a strange attraction to and affinity for all sorts of animals–farm animals, wildlife, even birds and insects. He spends most of his days following, observing, and mimicking the creatures he finds on the farm and out on the prairie. And the animals seem to respond to Ben and accept his overtures of friendship, even kinship.
So, this Newbery Honor book from 1972 is a nature story with lots of close description of wild creatures and how they live. Although the Newbery Award and Newbery Honor are intended to be awards for children’s literature, Incident at Hawk’s Hill was originally published as an adult novel. Many older children would still appreciate the book. However, sensitive readers should be warned that the Nature pictured is indeed “red in tooth and claw.” Eckert doesn’t shy away from describing–in detail– predators hunting and eating their prey, animals fighting and and defending their young, and eventually the deaths of some of those predators at the hands of men.
The author prefaces his story with this note, “The story which follows is a slightly fictionalized version of an incident which actually occurred at the time and place noted.” An historical magazine, Manitoba Pageant, in 1960 published an article entitled “The Boy Who Lived in a Badger Hole”. The article tells about an 1873 reported incident of a lost boy, found after ten days living in a badger hole. Eckert may have based his Ben’s story on this magazine report. In the book, one day in June, Ben becomes lost on the prairie, and the story becomes a tale of his survival. It’s a somewhat grisly and nearly unbelievable survival story as a wild badger befriends Ben and shares its den and its food with him, and ultimately Ben almost forgets his humanity as he becomes absorbed in badger life.
The ending is a bit disturbing, too, with a fight between two men, almost to the death. If violent death and threats of death, for both animals and people, are too much for you or your child reader, this book is not for you.
Nonetheless, I found this 1972 Newbery Honor book to be fascinating thought-provoking, and quite well written. The language is descriptive and evocative of a prairie world, almost a fantasy world. In fact, at one point in the story, the storyteller writes about Ben’s getting lost, “It was certainly well past midafternoon now but still nothing looked at all familiar to him and he had the momentary panicky feeling that somehow, like the little girl in the story his mother had read to him, he had stepped into another world.” (Alice in Wonderland, published in 1865?)
The cover blurb calls Incident at Hawk’s Hill “a poignant story of human courage and change, a simple fable rich with wonder.” I’m not so sure about the “fable” part, but the story is rich with wonder. Several characters call Ben’s survival a miracle and attribute it to God’s intervention. I like the way the story points, without preaching, toward tolerance and understanding for people whose engagement with the world does not fit inside the “normal” template. Those readers with an interest in nature, wildlife, and natural history will also find the descriptions of the habits and ways of various animals in the story to be quite engaging and informative.
Ponti, James. City Spies. Aladdin, 2020. Book 1 of 6 in a series by this author. Other books in the series: Golden Gate, Forbidden City, City of the Dead, Mission Manhattan, London Calling.
Ponti, James. The Sherlock Society. Aladdin, 2024. This series is new and possibly as yet uncompleted. Book #2 is called Hurricane Heist.
Because I have seen James Ponti’s middle grade novels suggested and praised in multiple places, I wanted to check them out for myself –and for possible inclusion in my library. I have only read the first book in each of the two series, but I would like to read more. So that’s my initial reaction.
City Spies, Ponti’s bestselling series starter, is indeed a good read. When Sara Martinez is sent to juvie for hacking computers, it’s really a revenge arrest initiated by her abusive foster parents. However, Sara is a computer whiz, and her hacking abilities have not gone unnoticed. A British spy, sent by M16, rescues Sara from the clutches of the New York juvenile justice system and recruits her to join a secret team of juvenile spies instead of going to jail. The City Spies are five kids from around the world who live now in Scotland, attend an elite school, and in their spare time, go on spy missions for the British Secret Intelligence Service.
It’s an intriguing set-up, and the book delivers on its premise. The City Spies, along with their handler, code name Mother, are sent to Paris to infiltrate an international youth competition on the science of rainmaking (seeding clouds and such), while they are really there to protect the reclusive millionaire who’s sponsoring the competition. And there are a few side missions and quirks and turns in the main mission such that Sara is initiated into the team in an exciting and adventurous operation. The assignment is resolved satisfactorily, but there are plenty of remaining questions about the team and its future to lead to another book (and another and another, it seems).
The writing is adequate. The plotting is the same. And the characters are interesting enough, as I said, to make me want to read at least the next book in the series. I can see why this series has gained such popularity. I have no content considerations, really, although there is a murder involved, off-stage, not explicitly described. And the kids do spy stuff: lies, deception, computer hacking, breaking into buildings, false identities–all in pursuit of catching and stopping the bad guys.
Ponti’s second series (that I read), The Sherlock Society, begins with a book not quite as exciting as City Spies, but promising. Instead of international intrigue, this one is about a group of American kids in Miami who are looking for a way to earn some money during the summer break. Babysitting is boring and mowing lawns is hot and sweaty, so Alex Sherlock and his friends Yadi and Lina, inspired by Alex’s surname and the famous predecessor of that same name, decide to start a detective agency. Then, Alex’s older sister, Zoe, and his retired journalist grandfather become involved, and the search for Al Capone’s hidden money becomes a crazy and dangerous chase after environmental polluters and current day criminals.
I liked this one almost as much as I did City Spies, but the pacing was a little off. There’s a lot of Miami history interspersed between the adventure, and any kids’ library in Florida would do well to have a copy of this book just for the history aspect. The characters in this one were fun. Grandfather is just crazy enough to be believable, and Alex’s parents are actually involved in his and Zoe’s lives and in the story, not absent, and that’s a breath of fresh air. Alex and his friends are nerdy, and lovable, and Zoe is a bit harder to get to know and love but worth it in the end. I look forward to reading Hurricane Heist soon, just in time for height of hurricane season here in Houston and in Florida.
For 2025 Newbery Honor author Lauren Wolk (Wolf Hollow) offers a story about a precocious twelve year old, Lucretia Sanderson and her struggle to find friendship and community on Candle Island where she and her mother have come to live after the death of Lucretia’s father. Lucretia finds secrets, six secrets she says at the beginning of the book, on Candle Island, and she’s not sure she can manage to fit in with the islanders or deal with the rude, entitled summer people. Nevertheless, independent-minded Lucretia is determined to carve out her own place on the island and continue to follow her vocation as an artist, whether anyone likes her or believes in her or not.
This novel has Newbery contender written all over it. (I said the same in my review of Beyond the Bright Sea, one of Lauren Wolk’s previous books.) The writing, descriptive and lyrical, and the setting, an island off the coast of Maine, both reminded me of Gary B. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars and Okay for Now) and of Katherine Paterson (Jacob Have I Loved). Lucretia is a child with a deep inner life, and she and her new friends (or enemies?) on the island, Murdock and Bastian, are almost too talented and mature to be believable. But that’s one of the points of the story, take it or leave it: that adults should have more respect for children who are gifted beyond their years.
Another issue in the story is the enmity between the summer kids, only on the island for summer vacation, and the islanders, who live on Candle Island year round. The summer teens are rich, rude, and possibly delinquents, while the islander are prickly, working class, and insular. This rift makes for a volatile dynamic as Lucretia attempts to become a part of the island community while also remaining true to the Quaker suffragette, Lucretia Mott, from whom her name is taken.
This story is also for animal lovers. Lucretia brings several animals to the new island home where she and her mother live, including an injured osprey that Lucretia is determined to rehabilitate and then set free. The complication is that ospreys are a protected species, and the law mandates that any injured bird found is supposed to be reported to authorities. So Lucretia’s responsibility to care for the osprey with the understanding that it must eventually go free is another conflict to be resolved over the course of the novel.
I really enjoyed reading Candle Island. Some of the minor characters are underdeveloped; the summer kids are all bad, all the time, spoiled rotten. But Lucretia and her new islander friends are full and interesting characters, and the story is about them, especially Lucretia, not about the summer vacationers. I’ve read three of Ms. Wolk’s other middle grade novels—Wolf Hollow, Beyond the Bright Sea, and Echo Mountain—and appreciated all of them. However, Candle Island is my favorite of her novels so far.
The Bounce family consists of four siblings: Matthew (14), Markia (12), Luke (10), and Johanna, the baby of the family. As the book begins the Bounces are on their way to their uncle’s home in Cynthianna, Oregon. They have left, and sold, their own home in Rhode Island after the sudden death of their mother. With her death the Bounces are now orphans, and Uncle Seth is their only remaining relative (except a fifth cousin somewhere in Maine). But the Bounces are in for a surprise, indeed many surprises, when they arrive in Cynthianna. How will they fulfill their promise to their dying mother to keep the family together when it turns out that Uncle Seth is not there to help?
The story takes place in the late 1800’s, around 1870 or 1880, perhaps, but the book never divulges an exact date. The Bounces travel by ship from Rhode Island to Oregon and by stagecoach from the coast to Cynthianna. Cynthianna itself is a small town with small town values and prejudices, but the townspeople take the children in and provide for them until a relative and guardian can be found. Slowly over time, the Bounces become a part of the town family of Cynthianna, and when it’s time to leave, there are hard decisions to be made.
The town is full of “characters.” Doc Kinsey is self-taught, and he needs Luke to drive his horse and buggy because Doc tends to fall asleep on his rounds. Mrs. Weddle, who takes in Markia, is sharp-tongued and crochety, and it’s touch and go whether Markia will be able to get along with Mrs. Weddle and perform all the tasks that the older lady assigns. The other two Bounces, Matt and Johanna, are parceled out to other homes in town. Then there are the minor characters, Peaches Charley and Feng and the Widow Morrison. Peaches Charley is introduced:
“Standing in the middle of the kitchen floor, regarding them with dull, black, expressionless eyes, was an Indian. He wore a pair of ragged pants, a tattered old hat, and a dirty blanket which he clutched about his shoulders like a shawl. Rain trickled in small streams from the hat brim and dripped from the blanket to the clean planks or the kitchen floor.”
Peaches Charley and his fellow Native Americans who live near Cynthianna are seen through the eyes of the townspeople and characterized as lazy, beggarly, dirty, and also something of an oddity and a spectacle. And Feng, the “Chinaman” that Markia finds hiding in the barn loft, is also shown as a foreigner and a curiosity, although much cleaner than Peaches Charley. The counter-narrative to this characterization of non-whites in their midst is subtle: Peaches Charley becomes one of the heroes of the story when he finds a lost boy and bring him home. And Feng becomes an integral and respected part of the community of Cynthianna as he exercises his own gifts for service and homemaking. As the townspeople come to love and accept the Bounce family, they also, despite their prejudices, love and accept that Peaches Charley and Feng and the Widow Morrison, the recluse who lives alone and smokes a pipe and never participates in any community events, are also a part of the family, the community that is Cynthianna.
The Bounces of Cynthiann’ is an honest book. It doesn’t try to solve all of the problems of homelessness or prejudice or family tensions. It doesn’t try to show all sides of the issues that come up in the story. (I wonder how Peaches Charley and Feng thought about the white people in Cynthianna.) It just tells about some children and their absorption into a community full of quirky, imperfect people who somehow manage to get along and care for each other in spite of their imperfections. The book would make a really good read aloud, with lots of good discussion to be had about family and adoption and community and caring for strangers.
Published by independent Irish publisher, Little Island, and written by debut author Judith McQuoid, Giant is the the imagined story of a working class boy named Davy and his upper middle class friend, Jacks, in Belfast, c.1908. Jacks Lewis is an imaginative ten year old who lives in a big house with his mother and father and sometimes his brother Warnie, who is away at school for most of the story in our book. Davy lives on the other side of Belfast, near the shipyards, where his father drives a delivery cart. Davy’s little sister Minnie is his only sibling, and his mother works as a maidservant for the Lewises.
You may have already guessed that “Jacks” is the Belfast boy who grew up to become the famous professor and author, C.S. Lewis. Judith McQuoid, who is Irish herself, born in Belfast, wanted to write a story about Lewis’s boyhood and how his growing up years in Belfast might have shaped his later life and writings. In Giant, Jacks Lewis is seen through the eyes of Davy, and he becomes Davy’s mentor and inspiration and most of all friend, even though Jacks is a bit younger, much more wealthy, and less worldly-wise than Davy. Davy shows Jacks something of the real world outside his middle class home, and Jacks inspires Davy to see the magic and wonder that exists in that world despite Davy’s poverty and limited opportunities.
The boys share and communicate through the media of books and storytelling and drawings. There are so many references to Jacks’s favorite books and stories, books that he shares with Davy. But the stories and the everyday magic of nature and art are a contrast to Davy’s dangerous and difficult working life as a heater boy and later a rivet boy, working on the huge ships that were built in the Belfast shipyard, ships like the Olympic and the Titanic.
For Lewis fans who are ready to get a picture of some of the background for Lewis’s Narnia tales, Giant is great read. And for anyone interested in a visit to Northern Ireland, its history and landscape, Giant is a must read. I enjoyed all of it: the history, artfully woven into the story with a light touch, the Lewisian and literary references, and just the story of a boy growing up with grace and courage in difficult circumstances. I’d say it’s appropriate for readers ages nine or ten and up.
I actually met author Judith McQuoid a few years ago in England, and I even read an early draft of her manuscript for Giant. I think she solicited my advice on the story, but I had very little to give. I am a reader, not an author or and editor, but Ms. McQuoid, with this book, shows that she is indeed a first class writer. Her love for all things Irish and Belfastian shines throughout the book. I hope she writes more books. We need more books in the world about C.S. Lewis and about Ireland from people who love them both.
Sydney Taylor, author of the beloved series of All-of-a-Kind Family books, also wrote this story of a Jewish Hungarian family living in a newly constituted Czechoslovakia just after the end of World War I. The family consists of Mama and her two daughters, Szerena, about 12 years old, and Gisella, age 8. (As far as I can find, the book never gives their exact ages.) The family has a papa, too, but he has been absent in America for seven years, most of Gisella’s life. In fact, Gisella doesn’t even remember her papa, and whenever she thinks about him, she mostly feels some mixture of confusion and resentment. Gisella longs to have a “papa like everyone else”, but she does not want to leave her village, the only home she has ever known, and go to America to join a papa she doesn’t really know at all.
The story paints a vivid picture of life in a small Eastern European village. The girls celebrate holidays, Jewish holidays like Passover and Sabbath, and also secular Hungarian holidays like May Day. They herd and pick the feathers from their geese, help Mama spin the flax into linen, raise silkworms, go to school, and help with all of the multitude of tasks to be done on a small family homestead. And all the while they are anticipating their eventual journey to New York City where Papa is living. Mama has had to take care of her girls mostly by herself all through the war and its aftermath, and she and Szerena are looking forward to the time when Papa will have enough money saved for them to join him in America.
This year-in-the-life-of book reminds me a little bit of All-of-a-KInd Family, except for the fact that in this story Papa is absent and the community is a rural village in Hungarian Czechoslovakia. A Papa Like Everyone Else also reminds me of Kate Seredy’s The Good Master and The Singing Tree, set in rural Hungary at about the same time period, during World War I. These books are so wonderfully descriptive of Hungarian and Jewish life during that time. I felt transported to another place and time.
Even though it might be a difficult book for any child who is missing a beloved father, deployed perhaps or just having to travel for work, A Papa Like Everyone Else might also be cathartic for children in that situation. And everyone can enjoy the depiction of farm life and Jewish life with just enough detail about how the family make plum preserves, lechwar, or how they fatten the geese by force feeding them, or how they do all the other tasks that support their meager, but also rich, family and community life.
A few content considerations: A robber comes when the family is away from home and steals almost all of their possessions. This robber is said to be a “gypsy”, and the constable slaps one of the Roma suspects, showing the usual contempt and prejudice that was current at the time for Roma people. One of GIsella’s cousins is whipped by the schoolteacher for the cousin’s lack of preparation for his lessons. And a neighbor shoots the fox that has come to steal the chickens and geese in the barn.
All’s well that ends well as Gisella and Szerena and Mama do leave the village and go to join Papa in America. The ending, in case you’re a reader of endings, is:
“As Papa caught them both in his strong arms, the girls buried their faces against his dark jacket, too overwhelmed to speak. Gisella thought, Szerena and I aren’t orphans with only a Mama to love, anymore. We’re a real family now–a family with a mama and a papa.
Papa knelt down and tipped Gisella’s chin up.
“Papa!” she whispered in shy happiness. “Oh, Papa!”
A Papa Like Everyone Else would be a perfect read aloud book for Father’s Day (or really anytime). Maybe it would give us all a renewed appreciation for our own fathers.
Zion, Gene. Harry the Dirty Dog. Illustrated by Margaret Bloy Graham. Harper, 1956.
Here’s another book that was first published in 1956, the year before I was born. And it’s remained in print all the years since then because it tells a classic story of a dog who doesn’t want a bath. (I remember some children who were much like Harry–bath-resistant.) Because Harry, a white dog with black spots, runs away when it’s bath time, he gets very dirty and turns into an unrecognizable black dog with white spots. And when his own family doesn’t recognize him, well, Harry begs for that bath that he so successfully avoided at the beginning of the story. I could read this story over and over and not get tired of it, which is why it’s one of the 520 books listed in Picture Book Preschool.
I have A Harry the Dirty Dog Treasury in my library with Harry the Dirty Dog and two more stories about Harry, No Roses for Harry and Harry by the Sea. In No Roses for Harry, Harry’s hated sweater from grandmother unravels, to his delight. And in Harry by the Sea, another Picture Book Preschool selection, Harry, covered in seaweed, is mistaken for a sea monster. Harry and the Lady Next Door is the fourth and last of the Harry books. All four Harry books, whether you read them in the treasury or individually, are warm and funny and just a delight that no preschooler should miss out on.
Illustrator Margaret Bloy Graham and author Gene Zion were a husband and wife team collaborating on the Harry books. And a fine team they were. Unfortunately, the couple divorced in 1968, and there were no more books about Harry, the dirty dog after that. Margaret Bloy Graham did, however write and illustrate at least one book of her own, Be Nice to Spiders, which is also a Picture Book Preschool selection in the week themed “Creepy Crawly Creatures.” Mr. Zion, on the other hand, quit writing after their 14-year long collaboration ended with the divorce.
I’m thankful they were together long enough to give us Harry, one of the great dogs of picture book literature. You can check out all of the Harry books by Gene Zion and Margaret Bloy Graham from Meriadoc Homeschool Library.
