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Clean Getaway by Nic Stone

Jun22

WARNING: There will be spoilers in this review.

This book begins with a quote from Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy: “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” And author Nic Stone gives us a story that is an exploration of that idea as well as the accompanying truisms that “there’s sometimes more to people than meets the eye” and “people have a way of surprising you.” While the story is certainly timely with its depiction of racial tensions and the history of discrimination based on race in the past that sometimes continues into the present, some cursing and a flawed ending that buries the past instead of making it right make it unacceptable, IMHO.

In this middle grade novel, Scoob, who is black, and his G’ma, who is white, go on a road trip, following the route that G’ma and Scoob’s African American grandfather took through the South from Atlanta, Georgia headed to Juarez, Mexico more than forty years ago. The trip begins in a bid for freedom as Scoob joins G’ma, his favorite person in the world, in her new RV. When G’ma invites Scoob to “go on a little adventure”, little does he know that that adventure will take him halfway across the country as well as deep into his family’s past. And he accidentally, on purpose, leaves his cell phone behind so that Dad can’t spoil the adventure by reminding Scoob that he’s supposed to be grounded at home.

So the set-up for the story is pretty good, although it stretches credulity to swallow that Scoob doesn’t really notice at first that a brand new Winnebago has replaced G’ma’s MINI Cooper. Still, I was ready to go with it just as Scoob goes with the whole notion of a surprise road trip with G’ma. And the entire trip is full of surprises, with G’ma acting just like the grandmother Scoob has always known and loved, except when she doesn’t act like G’ma at all.

It was the ending that threw me. Of course, Scoob’s and G’ma’s adventure must come to an end, and it’s not exactly a good ending. That sad ending was not entirely unexpected. But my question is (spoiler alert): if I find a cache of jewels that my recently deceased grandmother stole, maybe recently, maybe forty years ago, what is my responsibility in regard to those jewels? Don’t I need to at least think about trying to return those jewels to their rightful owners? Or to the police? The fact that Scoob never even considers this idea, except in the case of one small set of earrings, is problematic, especially in a book written for middle grade readers.

This book is Nic Stone’s first middle grade novel, and it’s promising. The author works into the story a lot of information about racial injustice and civil right era history without being too preachy or teachy. Scoob and his G’ma are engaging characters, and I’m always up for a good road trip story. But I can’t quite bring myself to make peace with the ending. Maybe that’s because an ending where you bury the past instead of bringing it out into the light in all of its messiness and difficulty is just an unresolved ending, and a bad one.

Christmas along the Bayou Barataria, Louisiana, 1941

Dec1

“The day before Christmas, Papa Jules came into the kitchen laden down with mysterious packages and on top of them, two fat ducks. Maman eyed him suspiciously, so he explained.

‘Me, I killed a big buck and Eugene, he shipped it to market and give me a good price for it.’

‘How much?’ demanded Maman.

‘oh, two-three cent!’ laughed Papa. Everybody else laughed, too. ‘Now, en’t you glad I I go hunting’ every day? EN’t you glad that big buck make Christmas for us? Oh, yes, here two fat ducks I brought down—cook ’em for dinner tomorrow.’

The mysterious packages disappeared from sight. Maman forgot all her worries and set to work She loved to cook and Christmas dinner was worthy of her best efforts. There was chicken and oyster gumbo, fluffy white rice, roast duck, white cream tarts, and a layer cake. Tante Toinette and Nonc Moumout came to help eat it, drink wine and enjoy the fun.”

~From Bayou Suzette by Lois Lenski.

Bayou Suzette is one of the books in Ms. Lenski’s series of books about children of various regions of the United States. Published in the 1940’s these books tell stories steeped in the culture and vernacular of the many heritage groups that make up our melting pot/tossed salad of a country. One of the books in this series, Strawberry Girl, won the Newbery Award for distinguished children fiction in 1946.

The other books in the series include:

Blue Ridge Billy (North Carolina Blue Ridge Mountains)
Boomtown Boy (Oklahoma oil fields)
Coal Camp Girl (West Virginia coal mining town)
Corn-Farm Boy (Iowa corn farm)
Cotton in my Sack (Cotton farming in Arkansas)
Deer Valley Girl (Vermont farm life)
Flood Friday (Connecticut)
Houseboat Girl (Houseboat life on the Mississippi River)
Judy’s Journey (Migrant farm workers from Alabama)
Mama Hattie’s Girl (Great Northward Migration of a black family)
Prairie Girl (South Dakota blizzard)
San Francisco Boy (Chinatown, Chinese American family)
Shoo-fly Girl (Amish family in Lancaster, Pennsylvania)
Strawberry Girl (Florida strawberry farm)
Texas Tomboy (West Texas ranching family)
To Be a Logger (Oregon loggers)

Pay Attention, Carter Jones by Gary Schmidt

Oct11

This book is not as good as the author’s Okay for Now, which I still maintain should have won the Newbery Medal, or at least an honor, but Pay Attention, Carter Jones is still a good story about a boy with father issues growing into a young man who knows his own mind and his own strength. With help of an English butler, August Paul Bowles-Fitzpatrick and the game of cricket, Carter Jones learns to “make good decisions and remember who you are.”

Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick is the perfect British gentleman’s gentleman and counterpart to Mary Poppins, only with a cricket bat instead of a parrot-headed umbrella. (Actually, Mr.Bowles Fitzpatrick has an umbrella, too, “an umbrella as big as a satellite disk.”) Carter Jones, whose father has not yet returned from his army deployment in Germany, is a typical American sixth grade boy trying to take care of his mom, his dog, and his two sisters while dad is away. When the former, Mr. Bowles Fitzpatrick, shows up on the doorstep of the latter, Carter, and says he’s been sent to serve the family while dad is deployed, Carter is grateful, but confused. Not only does the butler speak in a manner that is befitting a British gentleman (“you say everything like you want it to smell good”), but Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick just doesn’t seem to understand that he’s in the United States of America now, not Britain. He serves tea snd cookies for an afternoon snack. He has a different on the Boston Tea Party, and indeed on the entire war that Americans call the Revolution. And he wants Carter to learn to play cricket.

Unfortunately for me, I got lost toward the end of the book when Carter finally reconnects with his mostly-absent father on a father-son trip to Australia. I lost the thread of the story with the trip back to Australia and the dad and the clouds, and I just zoned out. I guess I need to re-read and pay attention! But I had to return the book to the library.

Final verdict: good characters, good themes of honor and forgiveness, lots of cricket, and a British accent. Recommended.

The Winged Girl of Knossos by Erick Berry

Sep11

Erick Berry was the pen name of author, illustrator, and editor Evangel Allena Champlin Best. She wrote this book, based on the Greek myths about Icarus, Theseus, Ariadne, and Daidalos, and interestingly enough, for this female author with a male pseudonym, she turns Icarus, Daidalos’ son, into a daughter named Inas.

Inas, the protagonist of this myth retold as historical fiction, is a brave and daring character. She dives in the Aegean Sea for sponges. She assists the Princess Ariadne of Crete in her court intrigues and plots to save the life of the Greek captive Theseus. She uses the wings that her inventor father has built to glide from the cliffs down to the seashore. She is a bull-vaulter, taking part in the ancient games of skill that her countrymen celebrate. She helps her father to escape the wrath of King Minos when the king is misled into thinking that Daidalos is a traitor.

There is a bit of romance in the novel, and the characters do a bit more dithering about trying to decide what to do and how to do it than I would like. But overall the book is a lovely introduction to the culture and history of ancient Crete encased in an exciting adventure saga.

“Long, long before blind Homer sang his songs of ancient Troy, long even before Troy itself rose from the ashes of her past and fair Helen smiled from the towers of Ilium, Minos reigned in Crete. The broad halls of the palace at Knossos welcomed traders from Egypt and from Sicily, from far Africa and rain-swept Cornwall and the savage shores of the Black Sea, and Daidalos built the Labyrinth, and dark Ariadne loved the brown-haired Theseus.”

I was, of course, reminded as I read of my favorite adult historical fiction that retells the story of Theseus and Ariadne and Crete and the Labyrinth: The King Must Die and its sequel The Bull From the Sea, both by Mary Renault. In Ms. Berry’s 1934 Newbery Honor winning version of the myth, Theseus is a boorish hunk who captures Ariadne’s eye for gorgeousness more than her heart. I found this image of Theseus hard to reconcile with the suave, bold, and daring Theseus of Mary Renault’s books. Middle grade readers won’t have this problem—unless they encounter the Berry Theseus now and later try to make him into a more heroic character when they read Renault’s books.

At any rate, The Winged Girl of Knossos, long out of print and unavailable for most of today’s readers, was re-published in 2017 by Paul Dry Books in a beautiful paperback edition. This edition includes an after-afterword, called “an appreciation,” written by librarian and blogger Betsy Bird, who advocated for its reissue.

The Wonderful Winter by Marchette Chute

Sep10

The Wonderful Winter is a wonderful story, exciting but fairly unrealistic in that the runaway protagonist, young Sir Robert Wakefield, mostly meets up with kind and helpful people as he spends the winter on his own in London. And he gets to act and live with Shakespeare’s company of actors in the first production of Mr. Shakespeare’s new play, Romeo and Juliet!

In 1596, orphan boy Robin Wakefield runs away from his home in Suffolk with his three formidable aunts because said aunts won’t let him keep the spaniel puppy he found and named Ruff Wakefield. He very politely leaves a note:

Dear and honored ladies,

Do not worry about me and the dog. We will be all right. I wish you long life and every happiness.

Your respectful nephew,
Robert Wakefield

By a series of choices and events, Robin ends up in London where he takes refuge from a thief, the only bad guy in the story, in the theater. And from that point on, we get to explore with Robin the lives of Shakespeare and his fellow players and the exciting culture of the Elizabethan theater.

The go-to historical fiction book about Shakespeare and his life and times is Gary Blackwood’s The Shakespeare Stealer. Comparing Blackwood’s book to The Wonderful Winter is difficult since I read The Shakespeare Stealer many, many moons ago. I would say either/or, and if you or your child like one you might enjoy the other. Other historical fiction books with a Shakespearean setting:

Shakespeare’s Scribe and Shakespeare’s Spy, both by Gary Blackwood. Sequels to The Shakespeare Stealer.

The Playmaker by J.B. Cheaney. Another runaway boy-joins-Shakepeare’s-company story. This time young Richard Malory is hiding out from enemy or enemies unknown at the Globe Theatre.

Cue for Treason by Geoffrey Trease. Peter and his friend Kit find jobs as apprentices to the Bard himself.

Mistress Malapert by Sally Watson. In this exciting story the runaway is a girl, Valerie, who dresses as a boy and gets to meet Mr. Shakespeare and various other personalities of the time. Sally Watson is especially good at writing spunky girls who manage to get themselves into all sorts of scrapes and adventures.

The Lost Girl by Anne Ursu

Aug19

Iris and her identical twin sister Lark take care of each other. Well, Iris, the practical twin, takes care of Lark, the dreamy one. And Lark, the imaginative, creative sister, helps Iris deal with her nightmares and anxieties. They “have better outcomes when they’re together.” It’s a workable and loving relationship until the girls’ parents decide that they need to be in separate classrooms for fifth grade. Then Iris loses her confidence, even her sense of identity. Who is Iris without Lark beside her? Lark loses things, as various objects around the house and around town begin to disappear. Iris and Lark are afraid of losing each other, and their fear becomes identified with a strange new antique shop that just opened up across the street from the library. How can the twins make everyone else understand that they need to be together? Or do they need to grow apart?

This book might be profound in a psychological way, but I’m not sure I’m a deep enough thinker to get it. The twins are sort of co-dependent? Maybe co-dependent in a bad way, but by the end of the book they learn to help each other in good ways? It’s sort of dark, and there are some strong feminist girl-power themes and preachiness, but you-go-girl feminism wasn’t overwhelming to the point of being annoying. I did find the story fascinating and compelling. I read it in one day.

This book might win some awards. The last third of the book is particularly creepy and unsettling, but you can reassure frightened readers (yourself?) that the story does end well. And the writing is magical, both literally and figuratively speaking.

Me and Sam-Sam Handle the Apocalypse by Susan Vaught

Aug17

Alone by Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were—I have not seen
As others saw—I could not bring
My passions from a common spring—
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow—I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone—
And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—
Then—in my childhood—in the dawn
Of a most stormy life—was drawn
From ev’ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still—
From the torrent, or the fountain—
From the red cliff of the mountain—
From the sun that ’round me roll’d
In its autumn tint of gold—
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass’d me flying by—
From the thunder, and the storm—
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view—

I came across this poem by one of my favorite poets today after I finished reading the middle grade fiction novel Me and Sam-Sam Handle the Apocalypse, and it seemed to be serendipitous. Me and Sam-Sam is a book about characters who are “neuro-divergent” —or “autistic” or “on the spectrum” or whatever term you prefer. The narrator of the story, Jesse Broadview, is a middle school age girl who lives with her teacher father and her great-aunt Gustine while Jesse’s mom is deployed in Iraq, the handler for a bomb-sniffing dog. Much like the narrator of the poem, Jesse doesn’t see as others see and doesn’t act as others act and doesn’t feel the same things that others feel. She has meltdowns. She sometimes comes across as rude because she doesn’t understand the rules for social interactions that other seem to apply without effort. She doesn’t like to be touched unexpectedly or without permission. She’s just not neurotypical, although she is smart, intelligent enough to worry that her differences are somehow bad and that her difficulties in understanding the way others think might mean that her brain is broken.

As the story progresses, Jesse makes a friend, Springer, who may or may not be neuro-divergent himself, and she learns that her differences can be strengths even though they sometimes make it difficult for her to navigate the world she lives in. The novel is part detective story, part experiment in understanding diversity, and part adventure story about facing up to bullies and natural disasters and one’s own inner demons. Jesse’s dad is accused of a crime, and Jesse and Springer are the only ones who really see a need to exonerate him. Jesse and her new friend have to contend with Jerkface and his two cockroaches, the bullies that make Jesse’s and Springer’s lives miserable. And some really bad weather is headed their way.

I found the story fascinating, especially as I worked to understand Jesse’s mindset and her perspective on all of the events in the novel. I really wanted someone to tell Jesse that calling people “jerkface” and “cockroach” is not a good way to deal with your—justifiable—hostility and enmity toward them. Nor is violence the answer. Instead, Jesse’s mother engages in name-calling herself, via Skype, and the violence and threats continue, even among the adults in the story. I sometimes struggled to understand Jesse and sympathize with her because, let’s face it, I’m pretty neuro-typical.

And yet, all of us have felt the feeling in the poem, the feeling of aloneness. The feeling that maybe my brain is broken, maybe I just don’t feel what other people feel or think the same way other people think. Books and poetry are good ways to start to understand the commonalities in human experience and the differences that define us as individuals. I thought Me and Sam-Sam was a decent attempt, not preachy but illuminating, to show what it is like to be neuro-divergent and somewhat immature and still valuable and growing as a person.

Great Northern? by Arthur Ransome

Aug16

Most books don’t have titles that end in a question mark. None of the other books in the Swallows and Amazons series have questioning titles. But this one, appropriately, does because in this installment of the adventures of the intrepid children who make up the Swallows and Amazons and their friends, Dick, the resident naturalist and birder, is looking for and hoping he has found a pair of Great Northern Divers in the Hebrides islands where the children are sailing with their uncle and enabler, Captain Flint.

“The Great Northern Diver nests abroad . . . usually seen solitary.”
“. . . nests in eastern North America, Greenland, and Iceland.”
“. . . may nest in the Shetlands, as it is often round these islands all summer, but this has never been proved.”

When Dick finds this rare bird, or at least thinks he has found it, in the Scottish Hebrides, he and his friends compete to protect the divers with other birdwatchers who want to exploit the birds for fame and fortune. This exciting story will delight all Swallows and Amazons fans.

I only have three more Swallows and Amazons books to enjoy for the first time now: Missee Lee, The Picts and the Martyrs, and The Big Six. I found a copy of this book Great Northern? while Engineer Husband and I were in Oxford, England in a small Oxfam bookstore. It will always hold a special place in my heart because of the good story, but also because of where I found it.

One of the things about Ransome’s stories that should make them popular nowadays is their concern with nature and its preservation and protection. The children in these stories are careful to observe birds and other flora and fauna without disturbing them or destroying their habitats. I won’t say that Ransome was ahead of his time because many naturalists, if not most, have always been concerned with protecting the creatures they study and with protecting habitats. However, the general tone and themes of the books is perfect for today’s environmentalist mindset.

The Friendship War by Andrew Clements

Aug7

Former fifth grade teacher Andrew Clements, according to the author blurb in this book, has written over eighty books for children, mostly fiction and mostly set in school classrooms. He’s the master of the “school story”, and his most famous book, Frindle, has sold over six million copies to date. The Friendship War, Clements’ newest novel, is about friendship, but also about how a fad, like pet rocks or cootie catchers, gets started and how it grows. Strangely enough, or maybe not so strangely, Frindle is also about trend-setting and how an idea, or a fad, gets started and grows and becomes uncontrollable.

The story begins with Grace and her grandfather who discover a stash of thousands of buttons in an old mill that Grampa is rehabbing. Grace wants the buttons, and Grampa gives them to her. Then, it’s back to school and Grace’s longstanding friendship with the popular Ellie, a friendship that is about to be tested by the accidental beginning of a fad—a fad for buttons.

This story about friendship and about buttons is Clements’ best since Frindle. Grace is a great character, something of a collector, a thinker, and as her new friend Hank calls her, a catalyst. And these sixth graders are just at the age where a new fad in school can show them important things about themselves and about their friendships, if they are paying attention. Clements handles the dynamics of sixth grade friendships well. Grace’s new friend Hank doesn’t turn into a boyfriend or a crush, although there’s some very mild teasing about that from Grace’s grandfather, which seems perfectly in character. There’s a conversation about life after death between Grace and her mother that gives food for thought without being didactic. And the whole story is just deftly handled and insightful in regard to friendships and social groups and the life cycle of a fad or trend.

Middle grade readers will enjoy this story and probably make connections to fads and trends in their own experience. There is also a lot of wisdom in the book about friendships: how to initiate them, how to sustain them, how to repair broken friendships, what makes a friendship worth working for.This book is one I would like to add to my library, and that’s high praise since my shelf space is limited to only the cream of the crop.

A Place To Belong by Cynthia Kadohata

Aug5

To be honest, I am tired of reading children’s books about the Japanese internment camps in the United States during World War II. I know that it’s important to remember the injustice that was done to Japanese Americans during that time. I know that the story and the information are new to new generations of children. I know that everyone’s story deserves to be told, either fictionalized for the sake of privacy or as biography or memoir, and I know that survivors of injustice deserve to be heard. Nevertheless, I’ve read this book by Sandra Dallas and this one by Kirby Larson and Weedflower by Cynthia Kadohata and Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Houston and Journey to Topaz by Yoshiko Uchida and Paper Wishes by Lois Sepahban and Baseball Saved Us by Ken Mochizuki and The Journal of Ben Uchida: Citizen 13559, Mirror Lake Internment Camp by Barry Denenberg and . . . many more. I thought that this new middle grade fiction book by Cynthia Kadohata would have nothing new to say about this disgraceful episode in American history, but I expected it to be well written by Newbery award-winning author Kadohata.

And it was, well written and surprisingly engaging and informative. I knew that many Japanese internees decided to prove their loyalty to the United States, despite the way they had been treated, by enlisting and serving in the U.S. military. I didn’t know that up to six thousand others decided that there was no place for them in the United States immediately after the war, and so they renounced their U.S. citizenship and were returned to Japan. A Place To Belong is the story of one family who “went back” to a country that most of them had never visited in the first place.

The story is told from the perspective of twelve year old Hanako. She and her father and mother and her little brother Akira are on a boat bound for Japan. There they plan to stay with Hanako’s father’s parents, her grandparents, on a farm near Hiroshima. First, however, the train that they board in Japan goes through the ruins of Hiroshima itself, and that’s a tragic and sobering scene that sets the tone for the rest of the novel. Post-war Japan really has no place for Hanako’s family either, even though Hanako’s grandparents turn out to be the most gracious and loving grandparents a girl could want.

The grandparents, Hanako’s parents, Hanako herself, Akira who is “a strange little creature” (maybe autistic?), and the other characters who enter into the story are all drawn with loving care by a talented author. I learned a lot about Japanese history and culture, and I never felt as if I were being taught a lesson or preached a sermon on the evils of imperialistic racist America. Kadohata lets the story unfold its own lessons, lessons about justice, and forgiveness, and second chances, and forming new dreams. I was charmed by the wisdom and perseverance of Hanako’s grandparents and filled with compassion for Hanako’s family and for all the families and individuals who were faced with impossible choices during and after World War II.

I think there might also be certain parallels between the story of A Place To Belong and the current refugee/immigrant crisis at the Mexican/American border, but I haven’t completely teased those out in my mind. Suffice it to say that today’s refugees are often looking for a place to belong, too. And Americans would do well to look at their situation from their perspective if possible and show compassion for people making hard choices.