Archives

Hideout by Gordon Korman

May10

“Adults have never stopped us before . . . All they are is bigger than us. That doesn’t mean much when you’ve got the right plan.”

Hideout is the fifth book in Gordon Korman’s “Man with the Plan” series about Griffin Bing and his five friends who solve mysteries, foil crooks, and have adventures while each using his or her special talents(s) to implement the Plan.

Griffin Bing is The Man With The Plan, the master planner for the group.
Savannah Drysdale has a special affinity for animals. She’s a dog-whisperer, especially for Luthor, her over-sized and ferocious-to-everyone-else Doberman.
Ben Slovak, Griffin’s best friend, has narcolepsy and a pet ferret, maybe not so much skills as idiosyncrasies. However, Ferret Face turns out to be a secret weapon in times of crisis.
Logan Kellerman is a consummate actor. Call on him to play a part, and he’s there.
Antonia “Pitch” Benson, the climber, can scale any cliff, climb any mountain, and ascend just about any house or tall building.
Melissa Dukakis has the tech skills. She’s a computer whiz and sometimes hacker.

Hideout has the six friends off to summer camp while the evil S. Wendell Palomino is busy stealing, or dog-napping, Savannah’s best friend, Luthor. Can they come up with a plan to save Luthor while keeping the camp authorities in the dark about the presence of a hundred and fifty pound Doberman in camp?

Griffin Bing: “Nothing is impossible if you have the right plan.”

I liked the way the kids banded together to work the plan and save Luthor. There is some law-breaking, lying, and disobedience involved, however, and the kids never do really reap any consequences for their ill-advised and sometimes illegal actions. It makes for a good story, but I have some qualms about children who read these books and take Griffin and his friends for role models. At least, the kids are adventurous and feisty. Maybe a dose of that intrepid spirit in our over-protected children’s reading wouldn’t be a bad thing. After all, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn couldn’t be said to be anywhere near law-abiding, either.

QOTD: The kids in this story aren’t superheroes, but each one does have a special skill or ability. What is your special gift or ability? What ability or interest or expertise do you add to any team or a group that you join?

The Ghosts of Tupelo Landing by Sheila Turnage

May7

The author of 2013 Newbery Honor winner Three Times Lucky, Sheila Turnage, has a new book set in Tupelo Landing and featuring the world famous Desperado Detective Agency, run by detective Moses (Mo) LoBeau and her sidekick Dale Earnhardt Johnson III.

Mo is a high-powered, rush in where angels fear to tread, dynamo of a sixth grade detective, and her partner Dale, who must be told when not to answer rhetorical questions, “has a flair for the obvious.” Together, they bait a bona-fide ghost girl, search for a still-working still, and talk straight to some very crooked crooks. While Miss Lana and Grandmother Miss Lacy accidentally purchase a haunted and dilapidated inn, Mo and Dale try to interview the ghost for extra credit on their history project. And somehow the new boy in town, Harm Crenshaw, becomes a friend and ally in their interview and detective endeavors.

I’m now anxious to go back and read the first novel featuring Mo and Dale, Three Times Lucky, so I guess that’s as good a recommendation for this one as there could be. The ghost in the novel is a real ghost, so if you don’t believe in ghosts or if you just don’t want them in your children’s books, this one would be a skip. However, I’d recommend swallowing the ghostly visitor, not to mention the ghost cars that I hadn’t mentioned yet, whole, for the sake of the characters and the descriptions.

Here’s a few samples of Mo’s take on life, and love, and detecting, exerpted from the text nearly at random:

“Anna Celeste liked Dale for a few days this summer and then dumped him like a truckload of bad meat. She about broke his heart.”

“‘Rat Face,’ I muttered. I would have said more, but Miss Lana don’t allow cursing. She does allow the creative use of animal names.”

“Friday evening, as I sat in my room contemplating the evils of fractions in general and common denominators in particular, my vintage bedside phone jangled. ‘Mo’s flat, Mo speaking,’ I said. I possess killer telephone skills.”

“When it coms to homework, the only excuse Miss Retzyl takes is Precise Death–death that happens to the Precise Student and not to a relative. If they have known relatives.”

“When the lunch bell finally jangled, I cut Dale from the stampede and edged him toward the hall. I didn’t ask about the test. Dale is to word problems as ship is to the Bermuda Triangle.”

“Usually I have a river of words flowing in me. Now my river ran dry.”

“Before long, we all got good. Lavender looked like a movie star, dancing with Miss Retzyl’s sister, and then with every woman and pre-woman there—including me. ‘You look beautiful, Mo,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Dance with me?’
Even the stars smiled.”

Like the samples? You’ll like the book. It’s got what Mo would call “voices smooth as butter and moves sweet as Miss Lana’s blackberry jam.” You won’t want to miss it.

QOTD: Do you like ghost stories? What’s your favorite ghost story?

The Chapel Wars by Lindsey Leavitt

May6

Setting: The Las Vegas strip, Rose of Sharon Wedding Chapel
Characters:
Grandpa Jim Nolan, owner and proprietor of Rose of Sharon Wedding Chapel, deceased.
Holly Evelyn Nolan, sixteen year old math whiz, counter of everything, inheritor of Rose of Sharon Wedding Chapel.
Sam, Holly’s best friend.
Camille, Sam’s homeschooled secret girlfriend.
Victor Cranston, Grandpa Jim’s rival and enemy, proprietor of Cupid’s Dream Wedding Chapel.
Dax Cranston, Victor’s grandson and Holly’s possible new love interest.
Plot: Romeo and Juliet, without the marriage or the suicides, transposed to Las Vegas, with the addition of a family business to save from bankruptcy.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a children’s or YA novel set in Las Vegas. In fact, maybe I’ve never read any novel set in Las Vegas. (Have you?) The Chapel Wars has a promising premise: Holly has inherited her grandfather’s Las Vegas wedding chapel, along with all of its quirky employees and money problems. For Holly Rose of Sharon is home, the only home she’s ever known. She has to do whatever it takes to keep the chapel in business, even if it means going against Grandpa Jim’s business model, dressing her friends up as Elvis or even Cupid, and trying to keep her love life and her business life separated.

Unfortunately, there were several aspects of the novel that kept this old fogey from enjoying it wholeheartedly. The comedic possibilities of the plot are obvious, and they were exploited to the full. However, the sarcasm got a little heavy at times. And the heavy, heavy disdain for any character who took romance and long term relationship (marriage) seriously (Sam, in particular, who proposes to Camille and is shot down with great scorn) was uncomfortable. This derision for marriage or a serious consideration of long term commitment for teens, even those who are old enough to get married, is a given element in a lot of YA literature these days. Teens can “suck face”, a crude and vile term used in the novel as a euphemism for the display of physical affection, or they can even have sexual relations, but heaven forbid that they should consider the even long term possibility of commitment and marriage at the age of seventeen or eighteen or nineteen. It’s the new taboo.

The novel also sported a prejudice against any serious life decision that might be made by a sixteen or seventeen year old. Holly is told, “You can’t let someone else’s dead dream keep you from finding your own.” True, as far as it goes. However, Holly believes that her own dream is to keep the chapel open, but she’s not allowed to have that dream because she’s only sixteen or seventeen. Long-term commitment, to a a person or to a goal, is reserved for old people who have nothing better to do with their time and energy. The advice for Holly: “Go hang out with your friends or make out with that boy across the street.”

The underestimation of young adults and the crude pandering to their supposed taste in terms of language and pastimes is rampant in our culture, and I felt that disrespect for teens was particularly egregious in The Chapel Wars. Romeo and Juliet were old enough at thirteen and maybe fourteen or fifteen to get married, make really poor decisions, and take responsibility for their own actions. Why aren’t sixteen, seventeen and eighteen year olds in our culture old enough to pursue a dream or a marriage commitment or even use the English language with some sophistication?

Anyway, The Chapel Wars is funny and cute, if you ignore the implications of treating young adults like overgrown children who should spend their time sucking face and sowing wild oats.

QOTD: If you were offered a free trip to Las Vegas (free plane ticket, free accommodations), would you go? Why or why not? If you did go, what would you do while you were in Las Vegas?

I Kill the Mockingbird by Paul Acampora

May5

“The very first spark for I Kill the Mockingbird began with a conversation about summer reading lists that started on blogs including Pam Coughlan’s Mother Reader, Colleen Mondor’s Chasing Ray, Leila Roy’s Bookshelves of Doom, and Elizabeth Bird’s A Fuse #8 Production among others. Barely a day goes by that I don’t learn something new and also laugh out loud because of these fantastic writers and their peers in the incredible community of kid lit bloggers.” ~Acknowledgments by Paul Acampora.

Set during the summer between eighth grade and high school, this middle grade on the cusp of YA novel was absolutely a great read, but you have to know going in that it’s very meta-book-lovers with lots of inside jokes about first lines of novels and interpretations of To Kill a Mockingbird and nominations for the Great American Novel. Mr. Acampora must love kid lit and adult literature and books in general, and his characters do, too.

Those characters are a trio of friends, Lucy, Elena, and Michael, who have attended school together at St. Brigid’s Catholic School since kindergarten. Lucy’s mom has just miraculously recovered from a bout with a “rare, aggressive, and generally fatal” cancer (“sometimes it just happens”). Her dad is the principal at St. Brigid’s. Michael is a neighbor, a friend, and Lucy’s newly discovered crush. Elena is “certain that high school is going to swallow us up, spit, us out, and crush us like bugs.” Elena lives above a bookstore with her Uncle Mort since her parents died in car crash when she was a baby. I Kill the Mockingbird tells the story of how these three created a conspiracy to make Harper Lee’s famous novel into the hottest property on the shelves of all of the libraries, bookstores, and other book distributors in the state of Connecticut, maybe the whole U.S.

“Even in kindergarten, Michael, Elena, and I obsessed about books. Not only that, the three of us believed that characters like Winnie the Pooh and Ramona Quimby and Despereaux Tilling actually existed. We fully expected to meet all our favorite characters in person one day. Books carried us away.”

As I said, it’s a very bookish book, a fact which made the story twice as endearing to me because I, too, am carried away by books. In fact, I had a couple of good friends in junior high who planned a date and a time to go through the wardrobe to Narnia. They were serious, and although I was skeptical, I did call them that night to make sure they were still in Middle Earth, rather, on our Earth.

The book is, by the way, also very Catholic, in a cultural sort of way. The teens who are the main characters pray to saints and to Jesus, discuss books and religion, and generally behave themselves like good Catholic kids. They aren’t perfect, and they aren’t overly pious, but they are definitely Catholic. THey also discuss theology and the after-life with parents who are also very Catholic, but who hold their Christian beliefs rather loosely. The general attitude in the book is that religious devotion can’t hurt and Christianity may even be true.

The three friends in I Kill the Mockingbird get themselves into some trouble when their conspiracy/project grows beyond their ability to control it due to the power of the worldwide web. But everything ends well, and the summer ends well, the trio head into high school with the courage that a huge summer adventure can give to three friends who are willing to try Something Big. There are worse ways to spend a summer than obsessing over books and bonding through shared adventures.

I read an ARC of this novel, obtained from NetGalley for the purposes of review. The release date for I Kill the Mockingbird is May 20, 2014.

Q(uestion)O(f)T(he)D(ay): Have you read To Kill a Mockingbird? Have you seen the movie version with Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch? (Atticus Finch is my Hero. I want a T-shirt that says that.)

When Did You See Her Last? by Lemony Snicket

Apr30

When did you see her last? Did you get the message? What’s for breakfast? Who has the formula? Where could she have gone? Where is Cleo Knight? When did she go missing? What was she wearing when she left? How about some tea? Do you know the one about the big fight over an apple and a pretty woman? The one that ends with a hollow statue and a ghost who likes to bury things?

These are all questions from Lemony Snicket’s second book in the new series All the Wrong Questions. Some of the above questions are nearly right, but they’re all the wrong questions. In When Did You See Her Last? from the rapidly deteriorating town of Stain’d-by-the-Sea, Lemony himself narrates his adventures as an apprentice detective to the inept S. Theodora Markson. The case is the disappearance of the wealthy young chemist, Cleo Knight. Lemony is a rather melancholy young man of mystery in this noir detective story for middle grade readers.

Fans of the wildly popular A Series of Unfortunate Events will applaud this new series by the same author, Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler). And since in this particular series Mr. Snicket gets to be both author and character, we are treated to more insight into the narrator’s life and circumstances, even though Lemony Snicket remains somewhat of an enigma. Something is going on with his sister in another town in an underground tunnel? And in the first book in the series (which I haven’t read) Mr. Snicket and his associates find and lose a statue in the shape of the Bombinating Beast? It’s all slightly esoteric, but still loads of fun, especially the wordplay, literary allusions, and droll humor.

In addition to questions, there are also answers, or at least aphorisms. Try some of these on for size:

“Anyone who gives you a cinnamon roll fresh from the oven is a friend for life.”

“Boredom is not black licorice. . . . There’s no reason to share it.”

“Do the scary thing first, and get scared later.”

“The world is a puzzle, and we cannot solve it alone.”

“They can teach you anything. That doesn’t mean you learn it. It doesn’t mean you believe it.”

“It doesn’t matter if you look ridiculous, not if you are with people you know and trust.”

You’ll have to make up your own questions. Maybe they will be the right questions. Maybe not. But if you enjoy slightly nonsensical, noirish adventures in which the main point and backstory of the series is Yet To Be Revealed, you might want to check out Lemony Snicket’s All the Wrong Questions. I’d suggest, unlike me, that you start with the first book in the series, Who Could That Be at This Hour?, proceed immediately to the second, and then to the third in the series, Shouldn’t You Be In School?

From Amazon (in case you are not familiar with the author’s rather wacky style): “Author Lemony Snicket is a broken man, wracked with misery and despair as a result of writing ‘A Series Of Unfortunate Events’. He spends his days wandering the countryside weeping and moaning and his evenings eating hastily-prepared meals. He has also written the mystery series ‘All the Wrong Questions’. Artist Seth is no stranger to a town that is fading. He is a multi-award-winning cartoonist, author, and artist, whose works include’ Palookaville’, ‘Clyde Fan’s, and ‘The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists’. He lives in Guelph, Canada.”

The Boy on the Porch by Sharon Creech

Apr29

“The young couple found the child asleep in an old cushioned chair on the front porch.”

When John and Mary find a six year old boy asleep on their front porch, they are naturally curious to know who he is and where he came from. But the boy doesn’t talk. He does hear, and he draws and paints beautiful pictures, and he plays wonderful music. But he says not one word.

The Boy on the Porch is an odd sort of book. I can see it being the kind of book that an adopted child or a foster child might latch onto and love. Newbery Medal and Carnegie award winning author Sharon Creech (she’s the first author to win both the British and the American awards for children’s literature) writes of her inspiration for the novel:

“I discovered that the boy, who does not speak, is like all characters that do not have a voice until a writer is ready to listen to them; and he is like so many children who do not have a ‘voice’ in this world; and he is like all children who come into our lives: when they arrive—at any age—we wonder who they are and what they think and fear and feel and who they will become.”

So the theme is children without voices, both literally and metaphorically, and the adults who love those children who in turn need someone to see and hear their unique beauty. John and Mary are the stand-ins for all of the many, many adults who foster and adopt and care for children who are abandoned and in need of a caring family. The style is almost hypnotic: you can read or listen to a sample here. It’s a short book, 151 pages. It’s not a verse novel, but it almost has a poetic feel to it. It’s also not fantasy, but the boy who is found on the porch, Jacob, is a fantastic magical realism kind of character. He paints and makes music with abilities way beyond his years, but he never speaks and later in the book, he simply disappears.

This book tells a story that would be just right matched with just the right reader(s). However, they’re probably going to have to find it serendipitously because it’s going to be a hard one to sell—or to peg the right child to sell it to.

The Battle of Darcy Lane by Tara Altebrando

Apr28

Taylor and I were sitting on my front porch pretending to be millionaires as the afternoon sun turned into evening. It was only the second week of summer vacation and already boredom was like a pesky mosquito that we were swatting away.
“Only boring people get bored,” my mom had already said like a hundred times. “Life’s what you make it.”

Now that’s a good beginning for a middle grade summer read. I’m seeing comparisons to Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume, and although the latter is probably a good readalike author, The Battle of Darcy Lane is definitely pitched to the twelve and up crowd who have probably outgrown Ramona Quimby. Our narrator, Julia, is not sure what she’s “outgrown” (dolls? unicorns?) and what pseudo-sophisticated games and paraphernalia she thinks are just nonsense, courtesy of the new girl across the street, Alyssa (lipstick? women’s magazines?).

The summer devolves into a series of games and contests. Whose best friend is Taylor, Julia’s or Alyssa’s? Who’s the best player of the complicated ball game, Russia? And does it really matter? Does Peter, Julia’s crush/neighbor/fellow band geek, like Julia or Alyssa best? Why is Taylor acting so weird? Why is Alyssa so mean? Will the cicadas, the ones that only come out every seventeen years, ever really emerge?

My twelve year old, Z-baby, might really like this book if I could get her to read it. It’s a realistic but sweet look at girls becoming teens and trying to fit in and be individuals and stand up to peer pressure and understand friendship—all over the course of one boring, eventful summer. Yes, it’s a series of contradictions and ups and downs. Isn’t adolescence rather like that?

(And yes, I am reminded of Judy Blume, but I like Ms. Altebrando’s “budding adolescence” novel better than I ever liked Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret.)

The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon by Alexander McCall Smith

Apr2

There are a few authors I could read all day, all week, and never get tired of their books, their characters, and their writing style. Whereas some authors I read and enjoy but then need a break—Dickens or John Grisham or even Tolkien. Others are so delightful and amusing and light-hearted that I could take a steady diet and not feel too over-filled or burdened. P.G. Wodehouse, Jan Karon, Agatha Christie (well, maybe not “light-hearted”), and Alexander McCall Smith fall into the latter category.

Mr. McCall Smith has written several series of novels set in various locales, and I’ve enjoyed at least a few of the books in each series:

Corduroy Mansions in London
44 Scotland Street in Edinburgh, Scotland,
The Isabel Dalhousie novels, also in Scotland,
Professor Dr. von Igelfeld novels in Germany and other settings,
and of course, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency set in Botswana, Africa.

The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon is the latest, and perhaps greatest, of this best-selling detective series. I enjoyed the contrasting of modern ways and the old conservative ways of traditional Botswanan culture—and the compromises between the two. I enjoyed the two mysteries and their cozy solutions. I enjoyed the continued unfolding of the friendship between Precious Ramotswe and her assistant Grace Makutsi. And Mma Ramotswe’s husband Mr. J.L.B. Maketoni continued to work in this book as in others at loving and caring for his traditionally built and professionally astute helpmeet. The supporting cast in this series also make an appearance and add to the story, each in his own way: Mma Potokwane, Phuti Radiphuti, and the apprentices, Charlie and Fanwell.

A couple of quotes, just to brighten your day and give you something to think about:

On forgiveness:
“She had forgiven him, yes, but she still did not like to remember. And perhaps a deliberate act of forgetting went along with forgiveness. You forgave, and then you said to yourself: Now I shall forget. Because if you did not forget, then your forgiveness would be tested, perhaps many times and in ways that you could not resist, and you might go back to anger, and to hating.”

On beauty:
“You could be very glamorous and beautiful on the outside, but if inside you were filled with human faults—jealousy, spite, and the like—then no amount of exterior beauty could make up for that. Perhaps there was some sort of lemon juice for inside beauty . . . And even as she thought of it, she realized what it was love and kindness. Love was the lemon juice that cleansed and kindness was the aloe that healed.”

Lockwood & Co. The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud

Mar31

“I can claim to be tolerably detached on the subject of ghost stories. I do not depend upon them in any way; not even in the sordid professional way, in which I have at some periods depended on murder stories. I do not much mind whether they are true or not. I am not, like a Spiritualist, a man whose religion may said to consist entirely of ghosts. But I am not like a Materialist, a man whose whole philosophy is exploded and blasted and blown to pieces by the most feeble and timid intrusion of the most thin and third-rate ghost. I am quite ready to believe that a number of ghosts were merely turnip ghosts, elaborately prepared to deceive the village idiot. But I am not at all certain that they succeeded even in that; and I suspect that their greatest successes were elsewhere. For it is my experience that the village idiot is very much less credulous than the town lunatic. On the other hand, when the merely skeptical school asks us to believe that every sort of ghost has been a turnip ghost, I think such skeptics rather exaggerate the variety and vivacity and theatrical talent of turnips.” ~G.K. Chesterton: Illustrated London News, May 30, 1936.

So if GK (and Shakespeare) were willing to suspend disbelief and leave a little room for ghost stories, so can I. And Lockwood & Co. The Screaming Staircase is an entertaining sort of ghost story. I’m not saying Mr. Stroud’s middle grade ghost novel is a true ghost story, but it is, within its own rather odd universe, believable and amusing and maybe even thought-provoking.

Lucy Carlyle leaves her provincial village after a ghostly disaster to go to London to find a job with one of the prestigious Psychic Investigation agencies there. She ends up accepting a position with Lockwood & Co., an agency staffed and run entirely by children. The three investigators at Lockwood & Co. are Lockwood, the owner of the agency, George Cubbins, his sloppy and nerdy assistant, and the intrepid Lucy herself. The subject of their investigations is The Problem, an infestation throughout Britain of ghosts, haunts, spirits, ghouls, specters, and other psychic phenomena. Only young people have the ability to sense and possibly eradicate these hauntings, but everyone is endangered by their ghostly presence. In fact, being touched by a ghost is usually fatal.

A bit of mild cursing (h—, d—, and the like) mars the otherwise excellent writing and subtle humor woven throughout the story. Lucy is a versatile and insightful narrator, and Lockwood himself, while somewhat enigmatic, is an engaging character. Since this novel is Book One of a series, the author preserves some mysteries about both Lockwood and about The Problem itself, presumably to enliven other books in the series. In the meantime in this book, we are introduced to a London in which children use iron chains, silver seals, and salt-bombs to fight off malevolent spirits bent on righting old wrongs and harming the still-living.

The book ends with the following hint (from a captured ghost) about where the story might be headed in terms of plot and theme:

“I can tell you things, you see. Important things. Like this: Death’s coming. . . . It’s nothing personal. Death’s coming to you all. Why? Because everything’s upside down. Death’s in Life and Life’s in Death, and what was fixed is fluid. And it doesn’t matter what you try, Lucy, you’ll never be able to turn the tide—“

I am definitely curious enough to read the second book in this series, Lockwood and Co. The Whispering Skull, due for release in September, 2014. Lockwood and Co. The Screaming Staircase was the winner of the Cybils Award for Middle Grade Speculative Fiction for 2013.

Zane and the Hurricane by Rodman Philbrick

Mar26

Middle grade fiction subtitled A Story of Katrina, Zane and the Hurricane tells about the adventures, or misadventures, of Zane Dupree, a visitor to New Orleans from New Hampshire during the worst disaster in the city’s history, Hurricane Katrina. And Zane sees the worst of the worst.

I remember Katrina, but I think I must have subconsciously blocked out many of the details of the news coming out of New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina’s devastation. I think I found it hard to believe that, for a few days at least, lawlessness reigned, and the governing authorities were at least somewhat powerless to help survivors of Katrina’s floods and winds. I do remember the refugees that came to Houston from New Orleans and from other places in Louisiana and the crime that some of them brought with them. (Wikipedia says: “The number of homicides in Houston from September 2005 through February 22, 2006 went up by 23% relative to the same period a year before; 29 of the 170 murders involved displaced Louisianans as victims or suspects.”)

However, I also read that reports of the lawlessness in New Orleans after Katrina were exaggerated:

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was characterized by extensive reporting of looting, violence, shooting against rescuers, murder and rape. While some criminal acts did occur, such as the emptying of an entire Wal Mart, many reports were also exaggerated, inflated, or simply fabricated. Several news organizations went on to issue retractions.

The media reports did fuel a paranoid anxiety in many homeowners who decided to take up arms to defend their property. Investigations carried out in the years following the hurricane turned out evidence of violence by white vigilante groups against evacuees and survivors, usually young black men. For example A.C. Thompson, after extensive investigation and eyewitness interviews in New Orleans found that “at least 11 people were shot. In each case the targets were African-American men, while the shooters, it appears, were all white.” Wikipedia, Effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans

So, take most of the bad things that really did happen during and after Katrina, and Zane Dupree sees or experiences them all: floods, heat, wind, looting, vigilantes, shooting, crime, death, lack of medical services, and more. This approach to telling the Katrina story through the eyes of a young survivor makes for a dark tale, but it’s deftly lightened by the heroism of Zane’s rescuers, jazz musician Trudell Manning and his ward Malvina Rawlins. Zane’s dog, Bandy the Wonder Dog, also adds a bit of humor and lightheartedness to the story. While Malvina tells very bad jokes (What did the ocean say to the ship? Nothing, it just waved!), and Mr. Manning tries to get himself and the two children to a safe place in a devastated city, Zane learns that that he can survive the worst of the worst, even in New Orleans,—with the help of family and friends.

Zane, the narrator, gives readers a warning on the first page that “there’s some really gross stuff in this book”, but most readers eleven or twelve and up have probably seen worse on television. However, if your child is particularly sheltered or sensitive, Zane and the Hurricane may not be the book for them. Other wise, it’s a good introduction to a sad episode in recent history and a good discussion starter. How would you act in a crisis? What if police were scarce and services such as electricity and food services were to disappear in a disaster? How would you treat your neighbors? How would they treat you?