Touring the USA with Cybils Nominees

Dec26

You can do an armchair tour of almost the entire USA, reading books nominated for the 2010 Cybils. Here are a few in which the setting is vivid and memorable:

Alabama: Leaving Gee’s Bend by Irene Latham. Semicolon review here. Gee’s Bend is a small town tucked into a bend in the Alabama River, and ten year old Ludelphia has never been outside her little town until she must leave to find help for her beloved mama.

Alaska: Blessing’s Bead by Debbie Dahl Edwardson. “How glorious it is when summer comes again! Glorious to be out on the open water of the summer sea in the night-long sun, watching the bright ocean drift by, dreamlike, on the smooth dark water. Watching the grassy tundra roll past us, nearly close enough to touch, thick with the smell of sunshine and earth and greenery.”
A Place for Delta by Melissa Walker. “Joseph looked out the window and saw mountains that he could not have imagined–huge jagged peaks, harsh gray stretches of bare rock, enormous rivers of ice cutting theri way to the sea–but no trees, roads or signs of life.”

California: One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia. “The green prickly house was surrounded by a dried out but neatly trimmed lawn. To one side of the house was a rectangular concrete slab with a roof over it. A carport, she said. Just no car. On the other side, a baby palm tree sloped toward the sun.” Semicolon review here. Three girls go to visit their mother in Oakland during the summer of 1968.
The Fizzy Whiz Kid by Maiya Williams. “My mom dropped me off at the principal’s office, where I met Principal Lang. He led me out of the main building and past bunch of long, rectangular buildings called ‘bungalows.’ Each one held two classrooms.” When Mitch Mathis moves to Hollywood and Cecil B. DeMille Elementary School, he does what he must to become part of the Hollywood scene.

Colorado: Finding My Place by Traci L. Jones. Semicolon review here. Tiphanie Jayne Baker is the one whoâ€™s â€œfinding her placeâ€ at a nearly all-white high school in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado in the 1970’s.

Connecticut: Canterwood Crest: Elite Ambition by Jessica Burkhart. “Paul eased the car up the winding driveway and passed rows of dark-railed fences that kept bay, black, gray and other beautiful horses from roaming free. Even though I’d only been away fro a week during fall brak, the beauty of the campus almost made me press my nose to the glass. I wanted to take in every inch of the gorgeous Connecticut campus.”

Florida: Turtle in Paradise by Jenifer L. Holm. Semicolon review here. Take one eleven year girl named Turtle with eyes as â€œgray as sootâ€ who sees things exactly as they are. Plunk her down in Key West, Florida with her Aunt Minnie the Diaper Gang and a bunch of Conch (adj. native or resident of the Florida Keys) relatives and Conch cousins with nicknames like Pork Chop and Too Bad and Slow Poke.
Zora and Me by Victoria Bond and T.R. Simon. “It had just finished raining. Grass slimed my ankles and calves. Crickets chirruped. Then a water moccasin slithered by fast like a streak of black lightning, making me jump. As I groped for my balance, the tree branches began to move all at once with the force of an angry parent’s switch, and the fear of getting caught or worse, of my mama waking up and finding me gone steadied me.” A fictional account of an adventure in the life of a young Zora Hurston.

Hawaii: Gaff by Shan Correa. “I took Honey up the hill to the back of the house. It’s shady there, with a little lawn and a grove of bamboo and octopus trees and woodrose vines back behind. Ferns and ohia trees hang onto the lava rock behind that.” Semicolon review here. I was rooting for Paul and his family to find the perfect way out of the cockfighting business and into a better way of making a living. The detailed descriptions of life in Hawaii and the occasional taste of pidgin English gave the book a regional flavor that was lots of fun.

Illinois: The Sixty-Eight Rooms by Marianne Malloy. Semicolon review here. In Chicago you can see the Thorne Rooms at the Childrenâ€™s Galleries of the Chicago Art Institute. The Rooms are a collection of 68 exquisitely crafted miniature rooms made in the 1930s by Mrs. James Ward Thorne. Each of the 68 rooms is designed in the style of a different historic period, and every detail is perfect, from the knobs on the doors to the candles in the candlesticks.

Kansas: Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool. Reviewed by Melissa at Book Nut. Manifest, Kansas.
The Chestnut King by N.D. Wilson. Reviewed at books4yourkids.com. Magical adventures in Kansas.

Kentucky: To Come and Go Like Magic by Katie Pickard Fawcett. Semicolon review here. Twelve year old Chileda Sue Mahoney of Mercy Hill, Kentucky is growing up in the heart of Appalachia in the 1970â€²s, but she longs to travel, to come and go like magic.
Dream of Night by Heather Henson. “Shiloh has seen real horses, of course. In fields along the side of the road. But she’s never seen anything like this. A streak of black, like a dark shadow flying over the grass.” Semicolon review here. On a Kentucky horse farm, a child and an abused racehorse both learn to trust again.

Louisiana: The Healing Spell by Kimberley Griffiths Little. “The sprawling giant oaks and tall, straight cypresses gathered me inside like a mother hen hugging her chicks. Nudging the boat forward, I liked to imagine I was in the middle of my own private forest.” Semicolon review here. Livie travels through Cajun country in her pirogue in the swamps and bayous of Louisiana.

Maine: Touch Blue by Cynthia Lord. “Lifting the seaglass up to my eye, I watch the whole world change: The far and near islands, the lobster boats in the bay, the summer cottages ringing the shore, even Mrs. Ellis’s tiny American and Maine flags flapping in the wind beside her wharf turn hazy, cobalt blue.” Semicolon review here. Eleven year old Tess Brooks and her five year old sister Libby are excited about welcoming a foster brother into their familyâ€™s life on a small island off the coast of Maine.

Maryland: Wildfire Run by Dee Garretson. “Agent Erickson motioned at the hikers and slowed the car as the road narrowed. ‘Camp David is located in a national park, so even outside the fence we are surrounded by woods.'” Camp David, the presidential retreat in the woods of Maryland, is the only place where Luke, the president’s son, can almost be normal. Then, disaster strikes, and nothing is normal.

Massachusetts: Pies and Prejudice by Heather Vogel Frederick. “Mud season in New England is a total pain. It happens when winter’s not quite over and spring’s not quite here, and it’s cold and wet and drizzly and the snow is melting and slushy and the ground turns to sludge.”
The Devil’s Door: A Salem Witchcraft Story by Paul Thompson.

Montana: As Easy As Falling Off the Face of the Earth by Lynne Rae Perkins. (YA FIction) Reviewed by Ami at Three Turtles and Their Pet Librarian.

Nevada: Jump by Elisa Carbone. (YA fiction) Semicolon review here. Critter, an escapee from a mental hospital, and P.K., a runaway who just wants to avoid being sent to boarding school, find themselves hitchhiking across country to Nevada and then to California to find a place where they can share their mutual passionâ€“-rock-climbing.

New Jersey: Enchanted Ivy by Sarah Beth Durst. (YA fantasy) Reviewed at Bookshelves of Doom.

New Mexico: Tortilla Sun by Jennifer Cervantes. Semicolon review here.
When Molly Was a Harvey Girl by Frances M. Wood. “She wanted to shut out what remained of the light. But even dimmed, the New Mexico sun was inexorable. It pushed through the cracks between Molly’s fingers. It filled her closed eyes with its brightness. It forced tears down her cheeks.”

New York: Rocky Road by Rose Kent. “Outside the evergreen trees blurred like a green kaleidoscope. Then we passed what had to be the hundredth deer-crossing sign as we headed north on Interstate 87, this dreary highway that was sending us deeper into the New York section of Antarctica. Hail was smacking the windshield like frozen turds, and the chain pulling the U-Haul was groaning like it had a stomach bug.”

North Carolina: The Other Half of My Heart by Sundee Frazier. “The streets were no longer lined with high-rises and businesses but houses—old houses with pointy roofs and porches and lots of gingerbread-type decorations painted in colors like light blue, yellow, and mint green.”

Ohio: What Happened on Fox Street by Tricia Springstubb. “When Mo Stepped out of her house, the summer air was tangy and sweet, a mix of city smells from up on Paradise and country perfume from down in that Green Kingdom.”
Nuts by Kacy Cook. “It was a warm, sunny day, so I decided to take a walk. I told Mom where I was going and headed toward the ravine near our house, where I thought I might see some different kinds of birds. I took along my life list.”

Oregon: It’s Raining Cupcakes by Lisa Schroeder. “I’d never been anywhere outside the state of Oregon. Grandma calls me a native Oregonian, like it’s something to be proud of. What’s there to be proud of? The fact that I own three different hooded coats, because it’s the best way to be ready when the sky decides to open up and pour?”
Storm Mountain by Tom Birdseye. “Primeval forests were just the beginning, she knew. The Storm Mountain Wilderness was also chockfull of deep canyons, roaring rivers, precarious boulder fields, towering cliffs, wild animals, and of course, its namesake, the treacherous Storm Mountain itself.”

Tennessee: Somebody Everybody Listens To by Suzanne Supplee. (YA fiction) Semicolon review here.

Texas: Belly Up by Stuart Gibbs.“We lived in the farthest trailer from FunJungle, right on the edge of the wilderness; white-tailed deer wandered past our home every day. A herd of six was grazing by the front steps as I returned, but they scattered at the sight of me.”
Keeper by Kathi Appelt. Reviewed by Abby the Librarian.

Virginia: Closed for the Season by Mary Dowling Hahn. “Rolling hills stretched away toward the mountains. Cows lay in the shade chewing their cuds, looking thoughtful. Now and then a dog barked. The air smelled of honeysuckle and cut grass and diesel fumes.” Semicolon review here.

Washington: The Fences Between Us by Kirby Larson. Semicolon review here.
Seaglass Summer by Anjali Banerjee.

West Virginia: Finding Family by Tonya Bolden. “Then I noticed a rack of picture postcards. Most were scenes from Charleston. Capitol Street. Kanawha Street. The depot across the Kanawha River. Those were the ones I liked the most.”

Wisconsin: I, Emma Freke by Elizabeth Atkinson. “The state of Wisconsin was wide open compared to the East Coast. I liked how everything seemed to be precisely built and organized from the neat rows of houses to the parking lots and malls. Even the trees seemed to be perfectly spaced.”

Wyoming: Little Blog on the Prairie by Cathleen Davitt Bell. (YA Fiction) “The sky was a light blue. There were white puffy clouds in it. The only noise I could hear was the wind in the tops of the trees way above us. They were everywhere, the trees, and inside the woods there was green light filtering through the leaves.”
Faithful by Janet Fox. (YA FIction) Reviewed by My Friend Amy.

Heart of a Samurai by Margi Preus

Dec17

John Manjiro was a Japanese fisherman who, as a boy in 1841, was stranded on an island after a storm and rescued by an American whaling ship. Heart of a Samurai is the fictionalized story of Manjiro’s life and his attempt to straddle two cultures, Japan and the West, especially the United States. The bare facts of Manjiro’s life are almost unbelievable:

As far as we know, he was the first Japanese person to set foot on American soil.

He was also the first Japanese to attend an American school, where he learned surveying, navigation, mathematics, and the English language.

In 1849 Manjiro left New England to go to Sacramento as a part of the Great Gold Rush, and he actually earned $600 working in the gold mines, enough to finance his return to Japan.

In Japan, a society at that time that was closed to Westerners and suspicious of even the few Japanese who traveled abroad, Manjiro was jailed and interrogated for over a year.

He translated the navigational texts of Nathaniel Bowditch into Japanese and taught in Japanese schools the geography, navigational techniques, English and mathematics that he had learned in the U.S.

In 1853, he was the intermediary and translator between the Shogun of Japan and Commodore Perry of the American fleet, who pioneered the opening of Japan to Western influence and trade.

Heart of a Samurai is a well written story of an amazing man, John Manjiro. And it has such a good theme of cultural understanding, showing how people misunderstand and calumniate one another as a result of pride and stubbornness and misinformation. Manjiro meditates on the lack of understanding between his native people and his adopted country:

“It actually made him laugh out loud, the idea of explaining at home that barbarian girls thought they were too good for a Japanese boy. But he wouldn’t be able to explain it, because at home, nobody knew what a real Westerner was like—they could only picture goblins with horns and fangs and enormous noses like bulbous roots growing out of their faces.

He wished he dared to run through the town of Fairhaven shaking people and saying, ‘Ha ha! You Americans think you are better than the Japanese! But the Japanese believe they are better than you!'”

I am so impressed with the historical fiction that I’ve read for the Middle Grade Fiction Cybils this year. In addition to Heart of a Samurai, here’s a timeline of some other historical fiction titles that should become staples in the history classroom and in libraries for pure enjoyment:

c200 AD The Year of the Tiger by Allison Lloyd. “During the second century, the Emperor sends the Tiger Battalion to northwestern China to repair a section of the Great Wall. Upon its arrival, the Commander proposes an archery contest. His son Ren thinks victory will prove his worth to his father. Hu, a local peasant boy, wants to win to save his family from starvation. As they train, the two boys form an unlikely friendship.” I haven’t read this one yet, but it sounds good, doesn’t it?

Late 1500’s Alchemy and Meggy Swan by Karen Cushman. Meggy Swan is a survivor. Crippled form birth, believed to be cursed by the devil, with a mother who doesn’t want her and a father who’s only interested in alchemy, Meggy comes to London and uses the resources she does have, courage and inner strength, to make friends and find a way to thwart the evil plans of a group of greedy plotters.

1692 The Devil’s Door: A Salem Witchcraft Story by Paul B. Thompson.

1841-1853 Heart of a Samurai by Margi Preus.

1850’s Emily’s Fortune by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. Semicolon review here.

1852 Emma’s River by Allison Hart. 10 year old Emma Wright and her horse, Licorice Twist, travel on a steamboat up the Missouri River.

1863 Grease Town by Ann Towell. Semicolon review here.

1887 When Molly Was a Harvey Girl by Frances M. Wood. Semicolon review here.

1890’s Wishing for Tomorrow: The Sequel to A Little Princess by Hilary McKay. Semicolon review here.

1900-1902 Zora and Me by Victoria Bond. Fictionalization of the life of author Zora Neale Hurston from age nine to age eleven. In the book Zora becomes a girl detective who tries with her friends to figure out what happened to a man who was murdered or accidentally killed in their small Florida town.

1905 Finding Family by Tonya Bolden. Another young black turn-of the century solver of mysteries, Delana must unravel the fiction from the facts in her Aunt Tilley’s family stories.

1904-1973 The Dreamer by Pam Munoz Ryan and Peter Sis. Based on the early life of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, The Dreamer tells the story of an imaginative boy who uses the challenges in his life to become a writer of immense talent and influence.

1930’s The Wonder of Charlie Anne by Kimberley Newton Fusco. Semicolon review here.

1930’s Orphan by John Weber. When Iowa farm boy Homer finds out at age 13 that he’s adopted, he decides to ride the rails to New York City to find his birth family.

1932 Leaving Gee’s Bend by Irene Latham. Semicolon review here.

1935 Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm. Semicolon review here.

1936 Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool. “After a life of riding the rails with her father, 12-year-old Abilene canâ€™t understand why he has sent her away to stay with Pastor Shady Howard in Manifest, Missouri, a town he left years earlier; but over the summer she pieces together his story.” (Booklist)

1940’s Stolen Child by Marcia Forchuk Skrypuch. “Stolen from her family by the Nazis, Nadia is a young girl who tries to make sense of her confusing memories and haunting dreams. Bit by bit she starts to uncover the truth–that the German family she grew up with, the woman who calls herself Nadia’s mother, are not who they say they are.” (Amazon description)

1941 Camp X: Trouble in Paradise by Eric Walters. Trouble in Paradise is the latest in a Canadian World War II spy/adventure series. The first book in the series, Camp X, featured brothers, Jack and George, in Whitby, Ontario infiltrating Camp X, a spy training school, and then warning the army of a Nazi plot to attack the training camp. The sequels to Camp X include Camp 30, Camp X: Fool’s Gold, Camp X: Shell Shocked, this latest book, Camp X: Trouble in Paradise, set in Bermuda. Solid WWII adventure stories with likable boy heroes.

1941-42 The Fences Between Us by Kirby Larson. Semicolon review here.

1944 Warriors in the Crossfire by Nancy Bo Flood. “This taut, poetic story of Saipan, set before and during the U.S. invasion of the island in spring 1944, is narrated by the 13-year-old son of a local village chief.” Joseph’s friend, Kento, is the son of the Japanese administrator of the island. ‘As war comes closer, the two trade lessons in island survival for lessons in Japanese characters. But their loyalties are tested.” (from the Amazon description)

1962 Countdown by Deborah Wiles. Semicolon review here.

1962 This Means War! by Ellen Wittlinger. Semicolon review here.

1966 My Life With the Lincolns by Gayle Brandeis. Eleven year old Mina is convinced that her family is the Abraham Lincoln family reincarnated and doomed to play out the tragedies of that family unless Mina can do something to change their fate. When Mina’s father becomes involved in the civil rights movement, Mina comes along to protect him.

1968 One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia. Semicolon review here.

1970’s To Come and Go Like Magic by Katie Pickard Fawcett. Semicolon review here.

1975 A Million Shades of Gray by Cynthia Kadohata. Semicolon review here.

1982 Mamba Point by Kurtis Scaletta. Linus’s father works for the American embassy in Monrovia, Liberia. As Linus becomes acclimated to life in Africa he finds he has a strange and wonderful kinship with the most dangerous snake in Western Africa, the black mamba.

On the Thirteenth Day of Christmas, Harvey House, Raton, New Mexico, 1887

Dec11

In the Middle Grade Fiction Cybils nominee, When Molly Was a Harvey Girl by Frances M. Wood, a train is stuck in Raton Pass in ten foot snow drifts, and the staff at Harvey House in Raton provides refuge and comfort for the stranded passengers.

“I have sandwiches,” Molly told Annis. Gaston was sending out more substantial food. The townspeople ate too, as much as the passengers. Still, Gaston provided. “Pineapple,” Molly announced. This was a special treat, holiday fare. “Roast beef and crab salad.” The buffet was turning into Christmas dinner. Molly was now bringing out platters of ham, turkey, asparagus, pickled onions, salted almonds, roasted buttered yams, winter squash, applesauce.

“We need more coffee,” said Sissy. “I’ll fetch it, Molly.”

So many people, and yet the Harvey House provided. Colleen and Jeanette swirled through the crowd, carrying plates to the injured. Miss Lambert sent Molly back to the kitchen yet again. “The babies need milk,” Molly shouted above Gaston’s din. Susana grabbed her shawl and was gone.

Sometime during that long, long evening, a tree appeared in the dining room. Coal miners and railroaders and even some passengers carved trinkets for hanging. . . . What next? Molly wondered.

What next was Gaston. For hours he had been performing miracles. Now he left the kitchen as if on parade, wearing a clean hat and apron. The baker, breakfast cook, and two assistant day cooks walked ever-so-carefully behind him., carrying a huge tray. The tray bore a cake large enough for a wedding, but decorated for Christmas with garlands of bright red icing over white. The only way to achieve such red was by mixing in dried cocks’ combs. “He must have used them all,” Molly breathed.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading about 13 year old Molly’s adventures as a Harvey Girl waitress in Raton, New Mexico. Because Molly and her older sister Colleeen are orphans with no money left after the expenses of their father’s long illness, Molly pretends to be eighteen so that both girls can get jobs at Harvey House, a chain of restaurants along the railroad line from Topeka, Kansas to San Bernardino, California. Colleen and Molly travel from their home in Illinois to wild western New Mexico where Molly learns to work hard, and where she grows up among the railroaders and business people of the Wild West.

Good story.

Today’s Gifts:
A song: Hark the Herald Angels Sing

A booklist: Historical Fiction for Young Ladies, Part 1
Historical Fiction for Young Ladies, Part 2

A birthday: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, b.1918.

A poem: A Child of the Snows by Gilbert Chesterton

There is heard a hymn when the panes are dim,
And never before or again,
When the nights are strong with a darkness long,
And the dark is alive with rain.

Never we know but in sleet and in snow,
The place where the great fires are,
That the midst of the earth is a raging mirth
And the heart of the earth a star.

And at night we win to the ancient inn
Where the child in the frost is furled,
We follow the feet where all souls meet
At the inn at the end of the world.

The gods lie dead where the leaves lie red,
For the flame of the sun is flown,
The gods lie cold where the leaves lie gold,
And a Child comes forth alone.

The Dancing Pancake by Eileen Spinelli

Dec8

I like it when a book wins me over to a genre or style of book that I had not been accustomed to enjoying before. The Dancing Pancake is a verse novel, and although I still don’t understand why books are written in this particular style or what the line is between poetry that tells a story and prose that sings a song, I did enjoy reading the story of a girl named Bindi and her broken, struggling, loving family and a restaurant called The Dancing Pancake.

I liked reading about Bindi’s struggle to overcome selfishness and to forgive. She didn’t really seem much different in her difficulties from adults who deal with the same issues. For example, here’s Bindi remembering her absent father while she’s trying to read The Yearling:

“I start to cry.
Again.
I guess I’m not
as finished with sad
as I thought.
I wish I was still
just mad.”

Or Bindi trying to reconcile with a friend whose feeling she hurt and at the same time still working out her own feeling toward her dad:

“Ruby Frances pours
more syrup on her plate.
‘That so?’ she says.
I take another breath.
‘Well, actually, there’s more,’
I say. ‘Since God forgives us
for all the stupid,
thoughtless, mean things
we do and say,
We should forgive others.’
I give her a long sideways look.
Is she listening?
‘Right?’ I say.
Ruby Frances just chomps away.
I plunge on: ‘If God never
forgave anyone, Heaven would be empty.
Right?'”

The Dancing Pancake was a lovely story of separation and forgiveness and reconciliation. Bindi’s anger and sense of betrayal over her parents’ marital problems is real and not too lightly resolved, and Bindi makes some mistakes of her own, getting caught up in her unhappiness and ignoring the problems of her family and friends. However, the tone never gets too heavy, and the story remains appropriate for third through seventh graders throughout. And Bindi deserves the cake that she gets at the end of the book that reads “Bravo to our Bindi!”

This book would make a useful bibliotherapy title, but it would also resonate with any child who deals with forgiving imperfect family members and friends or who finds things to forgive in herself. And don’t we all struggle to forgive others and ourselves?

Clementine, Friend of the Week by Sara Pennypacker

Nov28

Have I told you lately that I love, love, love Sara Pennypacker’s Clementine? She’s Ramona Quimby, Shirley Temple, and Anne of Green Gables all mixed together and placed in an apartment building in Boston with a super dad and an artist mom and a little brother named Broccoli.

Well, okay, fine. His name isn’t really Broccoli or String Bean or Squash or any of the other names that Clementine has for him, but she figures since she got named for a fruit, her brother should be a vegetable name. And that’s the way Clementine thinks.

In this fourth installment of the Clementine saga, Clementine is chosen to be Friend of the Week in her third grade class. The Friend of the Week gets to “tell my autobiography,be line leader, collect the milk money, feed the fish” and have a booklet in which every other child in the class writes about why the Friend of the Week is a good friend. But soon the wonderfulness of being Friend of the Week is eclipsed by tragedy when Clementine loses her kitten, Moisturizer. What can she do? Where can Moistuizer be? How can they find him? And will the saying that Clementine is remembering come true: curiosity killed the cat?

I think every second or third grade girl in the U.S. ought to get a copy of at least one of the Clementine books in her stocking for Christmas, and half the boys should, too. Clementine just gets better with each book.

The Clementine books:
Clementine.
The Talented Clementine.
Clementine’s Letter.
Clementine, Friend of the Week.
Coming in Summer, 2011: Clementine and the Family Meeting

Travels With Gannon and Wyatt: Botswana by Patti Wheeler and Keith Hemstreet

Nov27

Travels With Gannon and Wyatt is something different in the world of children’s books. At least, I’ve never seen a book or a series quite like it. Travels With Gannon and Wyatt: Botswana is the first book in a prospective series of fictional travel adventures featuring homeschooled twin brothers, Gannon and Wyatt Wheeler, sons of the co-author Patti Wheeler. The idea, as I understand it, is to take the adventures of real brothers, Gannon and Wyatt, and cast them into a story that will hold kids’ interest and at the same time teach them something about the world and its inhabitants, both animals and people. In this first book the brothers go to Botswana where they see and photograph all kinds of wildlife on safari and encounter the most dangerous animals of all, human poachers.

So how successful is this first book in the series? Well, great literature it’s not, but Ms. Wheeler and Mr. Hemstreet do tell an engrossing adventure story featuring a couple of intrepid young explorers. The story unfolds in the form of journal entries, alternating between Gannon’s voice and Wyatt’s. Each boy tells the story of their African adventure from his unique point of view: Gannon, the philosophical people person and Wyatt, the scientific fact gatherer. The boys have a LOT of adventures for one book: seeing all of the Big Five (lions, cafe buffalo, rhinos, leopards, and elephants) and also several more dangerous and fascinating animals, visiting a Bushmen village, rescuing a wounded lioness, and foiling poachers, among other events. Wyatt gets sick at one point in the story with an unknown African illness, and he almost dies. Gannon is charged by an aggressive lion, and then when they run out of food on safari, the boys get a taste of roasted black mamba.

By the way, mambas seem to be popular in kidlit this year. Trendspotter that I am, I’ve noticed the prominence of the nasty poisonous buggers in three of the books I’ve read so far for the Cybils Middle Grade Fiction: Mamba Point by Kurtis Scaletta, Belly Up by Sturart GIbbs, and now Travels With Gannon and Wyatt: Botswana. I also learned a lot about hippos from this book and from Belly Up!. Did you know that hippos are among the most dangerous animals in the African bush and that they have a penchant for overturning boats? Both books agreed on this fact, so it must be true.

I think boys in particular who have a yen for travel and adventure will get a kick out of these books. The first book comes with a DVD with video footage of the real Gannon and Wyatt on their trek through Botswana. And if kids are really into the whole travel/adventure/series thing, they can go the Travels With Gannon and Wyatt website where they can join the Youth Exploration Society, read the boys’ blog, or purchase Gannon and Wyatt merchandise. Future books in the series will feature Gannon and Wyatt in The Great Bear Rainforest, Egypt, and the Serengeti.

Other takes:
Carrie at 5 Minutes for Books: “I found Travels with Gannon and Wyatt: Botswana to be imaginative and engaging. It reads like a positive adventure story with lots of geographical facts thrown in so the reader is picking up information on the country or continent in focus.”

Roberta at Wrapped in Foil: “It becomes apparent the adventures in the book are fictionalized. The boys would have to be pretty unlucky to encounter all the things that befall them. Starting out with a close call with a mother white rhino that knocks their own mother out of the vehicle they are riding in, the boys run up against everything from frightening giant crocodiles to being held hostage by an angry poacher.”

Travels With Gannon and Wyatt: Botswana has been nominated for the 2010 Cybils Awards in the Middle Grade Fiction category.

If you could travel anywhere, where would you go first? Civilized or wild? Culture and history or wildlife and roughing it? You probably already know I’m in the first category. I’d head straight for London and Oxford and Stratford-on-the-Avon if I could. But I did enjoy reading about Gannon’s and Wyatt’s exploits in the African bush.

The Healing Spell by Kimberley Griffiths Little

Nov24

The Healing Spell is set in Cajun country in the swamps and bayous of Louisiana, and it’s a book about repentance, confession, courage, forgiveness, and of course healing. Incorporating all of those themes is a tall order for one book, and Ms. Little almost pulls it off.

Livie’s mama is in a coma, victim of the sleeping sickness as Livie calls it, and no one knows whether Mama will ever awaken from her unnatural sleep. What’s even worse is that only Livie knows that Mama’s accident was Livie’s fault. And since Livie’s fairly sure that entire family, including Mama, hates her, Livie is not about to tell anyone what really happened the day that Mama fell and hit her head and went into a coma.

The book begins rather slowly, and I would have given up had I not been intrigued enough to want to know Livie’s secret. I loved the parts of the book about finding good memories and getting rid of the bad ones and the reconciliation between Livie and her older sister Faye. The descriptions of life in southern Louisiana were vivid and lovely. And the relationship between Livie and her mama was real and convincing. Livie is daddy’s girl, and she and her mama find it difficult to understand and tolerate each other’s differences, even though the love that underlies their relationship is as palpable as it is complicated.

Livie herself is a lot like Charlie Anne in The Wonder of Charlie Anne. Livie is convinced that her mama doesn’t like her because Livie prefers fishing and frogging and paddling her pirogue on the bayou to dressing up and parties and painting pictures like her mama does. Livie’s a bit sassy, often in trouble, and something of a loner. I liked her character and her determination to help her mama in spite of their mutual misunderstanding of one another.

Unfortunately, the ending of the story was not as satisfying as the first three-fourths of the book. I couldn’t figure out if the final scenes in the story were Livie’s imagination or premonitions or supposed reality. If it was the latter, I didn’t believe it. I’m not sure what would have made a better ending for this story in which the entire plot, and even the title, lead readers to hope for complete healing for Livie’s mama, but I didn’t like the ending I got. Just sayin’.

Other takes:
Sandra Stiles: “This story was wonderful and all about forgiveness. I believe it will touch your heart the way it touched mine.”

The Wonder of Charlie Anne by Kimberly Newton Fusco

Nov23

This novel takes place during the Great Depression, and Charlie Anne’s family is desperately poor. They’re so poor that Papa has to leave home to get work on the roads in one of President Roosevelt’s WPA projects. Charlie Anne’s mama is dead, and Cousin Mirabel has come to help Papa take care of Ivy, Chalrie Anne, Pete and Birdie. Mirabel is determined to teach Charlie Anne to work hard and to use good manners and to act like a lady. To teach Charlie Anne to behave properly, Mirabel reads aloud maxims from The Charm of Fine Manners by Helen Ekin Starrett. Charlie Anne, of course, hates the advice and the admonitions of The Charm of Fine Manners.

Charlie Anne’s favorite phrase and response to unwanted events in her life is, “Well, we’ll just see about that!” Ms. Fusco does a good job of telling the story from Charlie Anne’s point of view. As far as Charlie Anne is concerned, Cousin Mirabel is a cruel tyrant who makes Charlie Anne work too hard and do all of the nasty, strenuous, and horrid jobs. And Charlie Anne’s older sister, Ivy, is a lazy, vain, and deceitful teenager. The reader suspects that Charlie Anne may not be quite fair in her assessments of Mirabel and Ivy, but this story is Charlie Anne’s story, and it’s her voice we hear as we read.

And Charlie has a fine voice, feisty and determined and full of spitfire. When Rosalyn and her adopted daughter, Phoebe, move in next door, Charlie Anne is excited to have a new friend. But Phoebe is “colored,” and some people, including Mirabel, can’t get used to the idea of associating on equal terms with a colored girl. As the story continues, questions are raised and answered. Will Charlie Anne’s mama continue to give her advice and counsel from her grave down by the river? Will Mirabel break Charlie Anne’s spirit with her book of rules and her seemingly endless chores? Will Rosalyn and Phoebe be accepted in the small Massachusetts where Charlie Anne lives? Will there be a school where Charlie Anne can finally learn to read?

Well, we’ll just see about that!

Other takes:
Bookish Blather: “Charlie Anne has a wonderfully earnest voice. She’s young enough to still believe in magic in the world, but the rapid succession of her mother’s death, her father leaving to build roads, and the ugly face of racism in her family and community, are forcing her to grow up.”
The Fourth Musketeer: “Charlie Anne’s charismatic voice narrates not only scenes of every day drama, such as bee stings, falls off swings, peeling potatoes, harvesting tomatoes, Christmas pageants, and kittens born in the barn, but also more profound problems, such as broken families and racism.”

Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine

Nov22

I’ve been trying to figure out why it’s so satisfying, even illuminating, to read about people who approach life and relationships from a place outside our normal expectations. In this book, Caitlin’s world is drawn in black and white, very literal, no shades of colors, no confusing faces, and no conflicting emotions. Caitlin can read quite well, even though she’s only ten years old, and she likes definitions, words pinned down in a dictionary with definite, specific meanings.

Caitlin’s brother, Devon, used to explain the messy stuff to her–the colors and the feelings and the rules for right behavior in different situations. But now Devon is gone, killed in a school shooting, and Caitlin has to Work At It all by herself and try to find Closure for not only herself but also her father and her classmates and maybe her entire community. That’s a big job for a girl with Asperger’s who has trouble even Looking At the Person who’s speaking to her.

Caitlin is an engaging character. Her brother’s nickname for Caitlin was “Scout” from the movie/book To Kill a Mockingbird. He likened Caitlin’s direct, no nonsense approach to life to Scout’s disingenuous approach to members of the lynch mob in this scene from To Kill a Mockingbird:

“I’m back in Devon’s room staring up at SCOUT carved into the wood and seeing my special name makes me feel good. Devon said his favorite part in To Kill a Mockingbird is where Scout talks to the crowd of angry men and makes them go away. All she says is hi and that she knows their kids from school. Then all the angry men leave. I don’t Get It. But Devon says that’s exactly what I’m like because I say stuff that’s obvious and people go, Oh, and it makes them think.”

Scout looks into the forest of men who have come to lynch Tom Robbins, and she sees individuals, men from her community with names and families and the ability to feel ashamed of themselves. Caitlin must Work At It, but she, too, has the ability to approach individual children in the mob scene that is her school’s playground and begin to make friends and bring healing to those around her.

I liked this book so much, just as I enjoyed reading Marcelo in the Real World and Anything But Typical and The Speed of Dark and other books featuring autistic and Aspergers children and young adults. Autistic people, at least in literature, have a way of cutting through the bull to the heart of the matter and showing me ideas and relationships between things that I am unable to see by myself. “Simplify, simplify,” said Henry David Thoreau. Through these books and others, I’m learning to simplify a complex world and still enjoy all the colors.

Ooooh, I just learned that Mockingbird won the 2010 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. I am delighted because I think the book deserves lots of praise and attention, although Ms. Betsy at Fuse #8 (and apparently others) holds a contrary opinion. To each his own, but I’ll take Mockingbird and books like it any day.

Fostering Understanding

Nov18

Two of the books nominated for the Cybils Middle Grade Fiction award focus on foster children and their adjustment to living in a family not their own.

In Touch Blue by Cynthia Lord, eleven year old Tess Brooks and her five year old sister Libby are excited about welcoming a foster brother into their family’s life on a small island off the coast of Maine. (Don’t you just love that cover with the Monopoly pieces against the blue Maine-ish background?) As her family prepares to welcome Aaron, their new foster child, Tess says,

“I’ve never met a foster child before. But I’ve read books about them. There’s Gilly in The Great Gilly Hopkins, Bud in Bud, Not Buddy, and Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables. I hope Aaron’s the most like Anne: full of stories and eager to meet us. Of course, he won’t be exactly like Anne, because he’s not eleven years old.
Or a girl.
Or Canadian.”

It turns out that Aaron isn’t much like any of those kids in the books. He’s a thirteen year old trumpet player who still misses the mom who deserted him and still hopes to be reunited with her. Tess must deal with her disappointment and with her inability to control events as she tries to find a way to help Aaron become part of the family and comfortable with island life.

Dream of Night by Heather Henson reads at first like just another horse book, and I’m not too fond of horse books. However, it’s really about abuse and adoption and learning to trust. Shiloh, a twelve year old foster child and Dream of Night, a retired Thoroughbred racehorse who’s been abused and neglected by his owner, both come to live with Jess DiLima, a middle aged rescuer of both horses and children who’s not sure she still has the strength and energy to foster yet another child and a nearly starved horse. Shiloh and Dream of Night, of course, have a lot in common; both have been abused and both have trust issues. And eventually the horse and the child bond, but the inevitable friendship that grows between is not forced or sentimental. I’m not sure how, but author Heather Henson takes a formula plot and makes it seem real and emotionally engaging.

“Shiloh looks up at the black horse. He’s so big. She doesn’t understand how he got his scars. How he would let anyone hurt him like that. With his hooves and his screaming and his legs kicking out. It makes her angry. She can’t explain it, but she’s angry at the black horse for letting himself get those scars. She turns abruptly away. She walks toward the house. Without looking back.
If she were big, like Night, if she were big and fierce and strong, she would never let anyone near. She would never let anyone touch her ever again.”

Told from three different points of view, that of Shiloh, of Jess, and of the horse, Dream of Night, the novel’s strength is it’s characterization. I felt the hardness and fear in Shiloh and in Dream, and I understood Jess’s apprehensiveness about her ability to get through and earn the trust of either the girl or the horse. In fact, as I compared the two books, Touch Blue and Dream of Night, I thought that maybe Touch Blue could have benefitted from a change in viewpoint. Tess talks a little too much and understands too little, and I could have used some more insight into what Aaron was thinking and feeling.

But that’s really a small complaint. Both books give insight into the experience of foster children and into the feelings and difficulties of those who do the fostering. Both certainly deserve to be placed on the list alongside The Great Gilly Hopkins, Bud, Not Buddy and Anne of Green Gables as books for children who want to understand foster children and foster families.

Other titles about foster children and adoption:
The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron. Semicolon review here.
The Road to Paris by Nikki Grimes. Semicolon review here.
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson. I read this book a l-o-n-g time ago. As I remember it, it’s about a wise-cracking foster kid and the foster mom who loves her anyway.
Homecoming and Dicey’s Song by Cynthia Voigt. These two books are about homelessness and being abandoned by a parent who can’t cope, and about four resilient children who bring as much to their new home with their grandmther as she gives them.
Heat by Mike Lupica. I read this baseball-themed book for the Cybil Awards, and I really liked it. It’s bout two boys, brothers, who’ve lost both parents, and are trying NOT to get caught up into the foster care system. Semicolon review here.
Alabama Moon by Watt Key. A boy raised in the wilderness by a survivalist father runs away from a foster care facility. Semicolon review here.
Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis. I’ve got to read this Newbery Award book soon. It’s about “Bud–“not Buddy”–Caldwell, an orphan on the run from abusive foster homes and Hoovervilles in 1930s Michigan,” according to Amazon.
The Pinballs by Betsy Byars. Three children in a foster home grow and learn to care about each other.
The Orphan Train series by Joan Lowery Nixon.
In The Face of Danger (Orphan Train Adventures)
A Place to Belong (Orphan Train Adventures)
A Dangerous Promise (Orphan Train Adventures)
A Family Apart (Orphan Train Adventures)
Keeping Secrets (Orphan Train Adventures)
Where the River Begins by Patricia St. John.
Pictures of Hollis Woods by Patricia Reilly Giff.
Gossamer by Lois Lowry. Semicolon review here.
The Family Under the Bridge by Natalie Carlson Savage. This title is written for younger children, and it’s not as contemporary as the other books on this list, but definitely worthwhile. It’s the story of three children and their mother who must live under a bridge in Paris after they’re evicted from their apartment. It’s also about the old tramp who becomes their adoptive grandfather in spite of his determination not to get involved with any “little birds.” (children who steal your heart)