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The Nine Moons of Han Yu and Luli by Karina Yan Glaser

Feb23

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.

Once a Castle by Sarah Arthur

Feb17

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.

Candle Island by Lauren Wolk

Jul28

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.

Giant by Judith McQuoid

Jun10

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.

Will’s Race for Home by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Apr22

Rhodes, Jewell Parker. Will’s Race for Home: A Western. Illustrated by Olga and Aleksey Ivanov. Little, Brown and Company, 2025.

This middle grade novel is indeed a western, but a bit different from most books in the genre. Set in 1889 before and during the Oklahoma Land Rush, the story features twelve year old Will, and his family who are Black sharecroppers on a farm in Texas. Will’s father is a taciturn man, formerly enslaved, and tired of working on another man’s land. Will doesn’t understand his father, and doesn’t believe his father cares much for him. Then life changes when Father hears about free land available in Oklahoma for those who rush in to claim it. He is anxious to travel to the border to try to be one of the few who benefit from the opportunity.

Father needs someone to go with him, someone he can count on when the journey becomes difficult. So since Will can read and since there’s no one else, Will becomes his father’s trusted companion on the long way to Oklahoma and the land rush. The book also chronicles Will’s internal journey toward becoming what his father calls “tough”, becoming a man.

At first, I didn’t particularly like the prose style the book was written in: lots of short choppy sentences, with phrases interspersed between the sentences. “Sometimes Grandpa lets me try shooting a rabbit. Not often. I’m a bad shot.” “Father and Grandpa study the map. Marking, re-marking the trail. Praying for ten miles a day.” But as I read I began to appreciate the spare, straightforward prose as a reflection of the character of Will’s father in particular, and of the other western men they meet along the way. These are men who work hard and don’t always have much to say, but when they do speak, it’s important enough to require listening. The kind of man Will eventually will become, too.

So, it’s a coming of age story, a western, and a boy’s tale. In her afterword, Ms. Rhodes writes,

“Tales of African Americans on the western frontier are few. But having spent most of my life in the West and as a historical fiction writer, I felt compelled to explore the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889. . . Will’s Race for Home is only one story, exploring a fictional African American family experiencing tragedy and triumph in their quest for freedom and a home in a ‘promised land.’ Will, the son of formerly enslaved people, is my hero. He has resilience, courage and loyalty.”

Many boys , and even some girls, would enjoy this story becoming a man at the turn of the century in the Wild West. There is some extended, and I think balanced, discussion, in short bursts, of guns and violence and when to use a gun and when to threaten violence in self-defense. And the ideas about the use of guns and violence are put to the test when Will must defend his family’s land claim from claim-jumping thieves.

I haven’t read too many middle grade fiction books from 2025 yet to compare, but this one is a favorite so far. Will is my hero, too. And with the tie-in to history and the Oklahoma Land Rush, I may very well put this novel on my wish list for Meriadoc Homeschool LIbrary’s collection.

Orris and Timble: Lost and Found by Kate DiCamillo

Apr18

DiCamillo, Kate. Orris and Timble: Lost and Found. Illustrated by Carmen Mok. Candlewick Press, 2025.

In my review of the first book in this early reader chapter book series, Orris and Timble: The Beginning, I said that the illustrations by Carmen Mok were adequate, but nothing special. Either the illustrations have improved in this second book, or I have grown in my appreciation. Whatever it is, there were several pictures in this book, which continues the saga of the friendship between the snowy white owl Timble and the curmudgeonly rat Orris, that I wanted to frame and enjoy at my leisure. Timble the Owl grows up in this book, and his world gets bigger. But he eventually returns to his home in the barn and to the comfort of his friendship with Orris the Rat.

If that first book was “about friendship and adventure and choices and risk taking”, this second book is a twist on the story of the Prodigal Son from the Bible. Timble is lost, but eventually found. And the central ideas that I took from the book are two: Stories tie us together. And we can always find our way home if we look hard enough.

Maybe these books are too meditative and philosophical for some children, and even some adults, but I think others will appreciate them deeply. The vocabulary is somewhat challenging, but the sentences are simple, with only a few sentences on each page, along with those now lovely pictures. And the plot line is easy to follow, even though the ideas contained in these “easy” stories are beautiful and profound.

This book and the one that precedes it, Orris and TImble: The Beginning, are both available for check out from Meriadoc Homeschool Library.