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The Hour Before Dawn by Penelope Wilcock

Feb16

Last night I took another trip to the abbey of St. Alcuin, and I encountered tragedy, sin, horror, and of course, grace.

This fifth book in the series about a community of monks in a fourteenth century abbey begins with atrocity. The new abbot of St. Alcuin Abbey, Father John, recieves word that his mother and sister have been the victims of assault, violence, and gang rape by villagers who think they might be witches. Father John can barely assimilate the news that his mother is dead, and his defenseless sister has taken refuge with the Poor Clares in their convent nearby.

The book is about healing: Father John’s sister Madeleine is a healer, before she becomes the wounded sister in need of healing herself. Father John himself has been the infirmarian at St. Alcuin’s before he became abbot. Now, he, too, needs healing. And the new character, Father William de Bulmer, former prior of an Augustinian monastery who entered this series in the previous book, The Hardest Thing To Do, comes into his own. It is Father William who is the sturdy prop that Father leans upon in his suffering and grief.

I like William de Bulmer so much. He is a hard man, without much concept of grace or mercy, except that which he has received from the monks at St. Alcuin’s Abbey. He doesn’t pretend to understand either or to change when change comes hard for him. What he does do is respond to the love and grace that he has been given with loyalty and stalwart support. William reminds me of a friend of mine. She’s a deeply committed, highly intelligent Christian homeschool mother of 10+ children, but all the fluffy emotional stuff that goes along with that role just isn’t there. Not that she doesn’t have or express emotions, but when you ask my friend a question, you get a straight answer—no evasions, no emotional baggage, not much tact. I like that, but it does rather jolt some people’s equilibrium.

I also like the idea presented in the book that William’s response to the anguish Father John is experiencing is silent listening, for the most part. And this listening response is the most helpful thing to bring healing to Father John’s heart. William doesn’t have any answers for the question of why bad things happen to good people, so he doesn’t give any. He speaks when necessary, but mostly he listens and tries to guide Father John to avoid despair. I try too hard to find answers for all the questions people have when they are mourning and dealing with pain.

I highly recommend the Hawk and the Dove trilogy and this new series, set after the events in the first three books of St. Alcuin’s Abbey. Ms. Wilcock, who is an ordained Methodist minister and the mother of five children. She blogs at Kindred of the Quiet Way.

Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson

Feb9

I can’t count this one for my North Africa Challenge, but the geography and culture of this fantasy world sort of felt like North Africa–or the American southwest: desert winds, adobe houses, camels, cowls and robes, a language related to Spanish or Portuguese.

The story itself reminded me of Dune, not just the desert setting but also the political intrigue and war strategy. Dune is, if you’ve read it, a bit more sophisticated than this book, but then again while author Frank Herbert (Dune, Dune Messiah, and many sequels) overdid the philosophical and political complications to the point of farce, the world of Girl of Fire and Thorns feels more believable and down to earth, if one can use that term in reference to a work of fantasy.

Our protagonist, Princess Elisa, second daughter of King Hitzedar de Riqueza of Orovalle, feels fat, useless and unloved. Then, when she is rushed into an arranged marriage with King Alejandro of the neighboring country of Joya d’Arena, she feels even more disregarded and unappreciated. Alejandro won’t even announce their wedding in his own kingdom for some reason, and the marriage remains unconsummated. Elisa carries the Godstone, the special gifting that only comes into the world once in a generation, but her special gift doesn’t mean anything when she doesn’t know what her service is supposed to be or how to find out.

Religion plays a big part in this story, another aspect reminiscent of Dune. Elisa prays and receives answers to her prayers, assurance of God’s presence through the Godstone which turns warm in the midst of prayer and praise and icy cold in the face of danger. The religious practices and tenets in the world that Ms. Carson has created for her debut novel are not really like any one religion that exists in this world, although the “Sancta Scriptura” that is quoted sounds a lot like the Hebrew psalms in English translation. Anyway, it’s good to see religious practice integrated into a fantasy novel instead of its being jettisoned in favor of a modern, evolved consciousness or vague spirituality.

The moral dilemmas and the coming of age of the main character are all a part of the novel, too, making it a classic fantasy with the usual themes. But Girl of Fire and Thorns is fresh and compelling. Without its becoming a feminist tract, the novel has a strong female protagonist who deals with her own weaknesses without becoming dependent on a man for her salvation and her growth as a character. Elisa is a well-rounded character, sometimes weak and self-indulgent, but finally reaching within herself and looking to God to find the strength she needs to carry out the task assigned to her for the sake of the people of her country and of her world.

The final plus for this novel is that it’s self-contained. It has a perfectly adequate ending, and although I see the wiggle space for the sequels in a planned trilogy, I didn’t feel cheated or teased by a cliffhanger ending. I appreciate that kind of respect shown by the author for her readers, and I will reciprocate by reading the next two books in the series, if they’re anywhere near as good as this one.

100 Valentine Celebration Ideas at Semicolon.

12 Best Children’s and Young Adult Novels I’ve Read in 2011

Jan3

Some of these were actually published in 2011; some were older but good-er.

The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic by Jennifer Trafton. Semicolon review here.

How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr. Not reviewed yet.

The Berlin Boxing Club by Robert Sharenow. Semicolon review here.

Lord of the Nutcracker Men by Iain Laurence. Semicolon review here.

For Freedom: The Story of a French Spy by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. Semicolon review here.

Divergent by Veronica Roth. Semicolon review at Breakpoint Youth Reads.

Daughter of Xanadu by Dori Jones Yang. Semicolon review here.

Trash by Andy Mulligan.

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi. Semicolon review here.

With a Name Like Love by Tess Hilmo. Semicolon review here.

Invisible Inkling by Emily Jenkins.

Fallen Grace by Mary Hooper. Semicolon review here.

For more great children’s and YA literature of 2011, check out the 2011 Cybils Finalists.

For Freedom: The Story of a French Spy by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Dec23

“This book is written as fiction but tells a true story.”

Suzanne David Hall was thirteen years old in 1940 when the Germans invaded France, and she later became a spy for the French resistance. While training to become an opera singer, she relayed messages that helped bring about the Allied invasion of Normandy. The 2003 novel For Freedom: The Story of a French Spy by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley is based on interviews with Hall.

The novel is quite exciting, and the tension builds as Suzanne is called on to deliver her messages more and more frequently and as the spy network in which she works becomes smaller and smaller when the Germans capture the spies one by one. Suzanne is a brave girl, and she continues her work even though she knows the Nazis will torture or even kill her if she is found out. The prose in the story is simple and straightforward, and the pacing is mostly good, although the novel does start out a little slowly. The book is halfway through before Suzanne’s spy adventures start.

For Freedom is a good introduction to so many World War II topics: Dunkirk, Vichy France, the French Resistance, German occupation of France, daily life under German occupation, the Allied invasion of Normandy. But it’s not just a nice “salad” accompaniment to the main course of the history of World War II. The story carried me along and made me feel how difficult it must have been to be involved in the Resistance, never knowing from one day to the next whether this day would be the last before you were captured by the Germans.

Isn’t that what courage is? Courage: to keep doing right, to persevere in the face of uncertainty and even valid reasonable fear. If I were doing something that I knew would lead to disaster, if I were certain that I would be caught and killed and unable to complete my mission, it would be foolish and useless to persist. But if it’s only very likely that I might be arrested and if what I was doing was likely to help many people if I could continue, then bravery would be required. Suzanne was a brave young woman, “a hero of France.”

Words in the Dust by Trent Reedy

Dec20

I found the story behind this book almost as intriguing as the book itself. In an author’s note at the end of the book, Mr. Reedy says he wrote the novel by accident. He planned to write children’s books set in small town Iowa, but he was sent to Afghanistan in 2004 as a part of an Army National Guard unit. At first, he hated his job providing security for reconstruction teams that were rebuilding Afghanistan’s infrastructure after decades of war and repression. He felt as if he were being cheated of his chance to repay the Al Qaeda terrorists for their actions on 9/11. Then, he began to meet and get to know average Afghan people, including a girl named Zulaikha who was afflicted with a cleft lip. American army surgeons were able to perform corrective surgery on Zulaikha’s lip and palate. And Mr. Reedy had a story that that he was anxious to tell.

“I have never been a girl and I am not an Afghan. Many would say that stories about Afghan girls should best be told by Afghan girls. I agree completely. I would love nothing more than to read the story of the girl who we helped in her own words. However, the terrible reality is that by some estimates, 87 percent of Afghan women are illiterate. . . Though progress is being made in Afghan education, too many Afghan girls are unable to get their stories out. In spite of this, or maybe even because of it, I believe it is very important for more Afghan stories to be told, as a greater understanding may foster peace.”

So, Words in the Dust is the fictional story of Zulaikha, a Muslim girl living in northern Afghanistan, based on the story of the real Zulaikha and on the stories of other people Mr. Reedy met during his time in Afghanistan. I thought the story was fascinating, true to life as far as I am able to judge, and somewhat horrifying. Some really, really bad things happen in Zulaikha’s life in in her family. So this book is not for young readers or tender minds. Mr. Reedy describes the bad stuff in a respectful, almost understated, way, but it’s still bad stuff.

So I would classify this book as Young Adult fiction, emphasis on the adult. Zulaikha is an engaging heroine, and again quite representative of what I would think Afghan girlhood is really like. The culture is very Muslim, very male-dominated, and the book ends with Zulaikha’s hopes for the future along with the word, Inshallah, “God willing”. Words in the Dust would be a good introduction to life in a traditional Muslim culture in a country that has been torn by war and nearly destroyed by Taliban terrorism and persecution of females.

I appreciated the story and the look into another way of life and the possibilities and problems that are present in Afghanistan even now.

Giving Books: Dystopian and Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

Dec10

A seventeen year old friend of Brown Bear Daughter asked for some book suggestions. She just finished The Hunger Games trilogy (Semicolon review here), and she’s asking for “more dystopian fiction like The Hunger Games, with a little romance thrown in.”

First of all, The Classics:
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.
On the Beach by Nevil Shute. Published in 1957, this novel has the requisite romance, but it’s very, very, very sad. Nuclear holocaust slowly and inexorably moves over the whole earth, and one of the last habitable places is in Australia, near Melbourne. The last surviving humans must decide how to end their lives honorably.
Semicolon review here.
Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank. This one is a bit dated, but it must have scared some people silly when it was first published back in 1959 at the beginning of the Nuclear Age. In the story, a massive nuclear strike by the Russians destroys most of the large to medium-sized cities in the United States, including Tampa, Miami, Tallahassee, and Orlando. The survivors must decide what to do about nuclear fallout, government, and survival in general.
Reviewed at Upside Down B.
Semicolon review here.
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. This book grew out of a short story by the same author. The short story was published in 1977, and the book was published in 1985. It’s more of a boy’s book, and there’s some crude soldierly language. Nevertheless, it’s tremendously compelling and exciting. Ender is a boy genius, chosen by the Powers That Be to train to save the world from an alien species that is coming to attack from outer space. No romance that I remember.
Reviewed by Girl Detective.
Bonnie at Dwell in Possibility hated it.
Semicolon review here.
The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton. A deadly microorganism from space is released on Earth, and a team of scientist must find a way to combat and eradicate the disease before everyone is killed or driven insane.

O.K. so those classics are probably not exactly what my daughter’s friend is looking for. She’s looking for a Hunger Games read-alike.

Published pre-Hunger Games:
The Giver by Lois Lowry. Classic Newbery award winning dystopian fiction. Companion novels are Gathering Blue and Messenger.
Reviewed by Zee at Notes from the North.
Semicolon review here.
Reviewed by Marie at Fireside Musings.
Unwind by Neal Shusterman. This dystopian stand-alone novel is one of Karate Kid’s favorites.
Reviewed by TeacherGirl.
Semicolon review here.
The Shadow Children series by Margaret Peterson Haddix. This series might be more appropriate for younger teens (ages 12-15), but I enjoyed it. In the series, it is illegal to have more than two children, and the illegal “thirds” are on the run from the law.
Semicolon review here.
The Declaration by Gemma Malley. “If the chance to live forever came with a price, would you opt in or out?” Sequels are The Resistance and The Legacy.
Semicolon review here.
Uglies by Scott Westerfield. Sequels are Pretties and Specials. What if you were ugly as a child (like everyone else), but on your sixteenth birthday you could undergo a procedure to turn pretty? In Westerfield’s dystopia, Tally can’t wait to have her surgery and become a Pretty. But maybe being pretty isn’t the most desirable goal in life.
Epitaph Road by David Patneaude. What if most of the men in the world were killed by a virus that only affected males, and as a consequence women ruled the world?
Semicolon review here.

Published post-Hunger Games (or at about the same time):
Divergent by Veronica Roth. This one is the book I would suggest first for reader who is “hungry” for a follow-up to Hunger Games.
Semicolon review of Divergent at The Point: Youth Reads.
Matched by Ally Condie. There’s not so much action and adventure in this book, but more romance and thoughtful commentary on the pros and cons of a “safe” society bought with the price of complete obedience to an authoritarian government. The second book in the series is Crossed.
Review of Matched by Megan at Leafing Through Life.
Delirium by Lauren Oliver. Lena lives in a managed society where everyone gets an operation when they turn eighteen that cures them of delirium, the passion and pain of falling in love. Sequels will be Pandemonium (2012) and Requiem (2013).
Delirium reviewed at A Foodie Bibliophile in Wanderlust.
Chaos Walking series by Patrick Ness: The Knife of Never Letting Go, The Ask and the Answer, and Monsters of Men. In Prentisstown everyone can hear the thoughts of all the men in town, a situation that makes for a lot of Noise and not much privacy. These books should be read together, if at all. They’re all one story, and they should have a violence warning attached.
The Knife of Never Letting Go reviewed at Becky’s Book Reviews.

Small Acts of Amazing Courage by Gloria Whelan

Nov4

Cybils nominee: Middle Grade Fiction. Nominated by Rebecca Herman.

Small Acts of Amazing Courage takes place in a river town in southeastern India. It is 1919 and World War I has been over for six months. During the war, more than a million Indian men fought alongside the British. Rosalind’s father led a battalion of Indian soldiers, the Gurkha Rifles. Now that the war is over, the British in India have returned to their comfortable lives of servants and clubs. ~Author’s Note by Gloria Whelan

Rosalind is a well-written character. She’s fifteen years old and just independent enough to get into trouble, which of course is necessary for a good story, and yet she still respects her parents and wants to please them. Rosalind has ideas and adventures and, well, spunk.

The setting of the book, India, is almost another character in the story. India is portrayed as the anti-Britain: colorful, messy, dangerous, and full of life, while England is drab, gray, safe, and lifeless. Rosalind’s older brother died in England when he was sent there to go to school, but India is the place where Rosalind’s aunt begins to come alive for the first time in her repressed and circumscribed life.

From my reading of history, Ms. Whelan over-simplifies the politics and cultural encounters of the time period. Gandhi and his followers are, of course, the good guys, and anyone who questions the wisdom of Indian independence is a patronizing colonialist, overbearing and/or willfully ignorant. Rosalind’s father falls into this category, as do most of the British residents of the Raj, the British mandate in India.

And Hinduism is, as a matter of course, presented as an interesting and colorful set of stories and beliefs that enrich the lives of the Indian people and of those British people who are open-minded enough to listen. Multicultural PC aboundeth. Christianity is not mentioned, but it is implied that India is the best place, has the longest and wisest history, and worships the best gods of all. If only we could all just get along as they do in India! The only differences between Hindus and Muslims that are mentioned are related to dietary practice, and surely what we eat can’t be a huge obstacle to peace in an independent India.

But I nitpick, probably because I’ve been reading a lot about the time period. The book tells a good story in which personal freedom and national freedom are paralleled. If the narrative features political changes that are taking place in India at the time without including some of the problems that were inherent in those political changes, well, the book isn’t about the conflict between Hindus and Muslims. Nor is it about the poverty in India that is a direct result of some of the religious practices and beliefs of Hinduism. The story does include an episode that demonstrates the evils of the caste system and its effect on the Dalits of the time. And that little episode is left, without preaching, to speak for itself.

So, I leave the book to speak for itself. I enjoyed the story, but I also knew that there was more to be known and written about India and its culture and its independence movement than could be contained in this small book.

The Berlin Boxing Club by Robert Sharenow

Oct19

Nominated for 2011 Cybil Awards, Young Adult Fiction category. Nominated by Teacher.Mother.Reader.

Berlin, 1935-1938. Fourteen year old Karl Stern doesn’t look Jewish, and he doesn’t feel Jewish. His family has never been religious, and Karl’s name doesn’t give him away either. However, Germany is slowly but surely becoming a place where it doesn’t matter what you think or believe or feel: being Jewish is like being a rotten apple. And, according to Nazi propaganda, the rot will come out and become apparent for all to see.

So, Karl is one of those “self-loathing” Jews who denies his heritage and just wants to fit in. He wishes he could join the Hitler Youth like all of the other boys in his school. He wishes he weren’t Jewish. The problem with reading these Holocaust and pre-Holocaust novels is that one knows the ending. Karl won’t be able to hide from his Jewish background for long. His family isn’t safe in Germany no matter how much his father thinks that Nazism is a passing political phase. The Nuremberg Laws and Kristallnacht and Dachau and the entire Holocaust itself are coming, impending doom hanging over the events of any novel set in pre-war Germany, especially any novel involving a Jewish protagonist.

Yet, The Berlin Boxing Club held several surprises and revelations for me. I didn’t know much about German heavyweight boxing champion Max Schmeling who stars in this novel as Karl’s mentor. As Karl learns to box from the champ, he “comes of age”, and he learns to respect his own father, an intellectual and an art dealer with his own secret past. Over the course of the novel, Max Schmeling, the hero of Aryan racial superiority, has two fights with black American heavyweight champion, Joe Louis. I had a vague memory of the matches, but I didn’t remember who won.

I learned about Schmelling, about the culture and atmosphere of pre-war Berlin, about the art scene in Berlin at that time, about boxing, and most of all, about how complicated people can be. Schmeling hobnobs with the Nazi elite, including Hitler himself, and yet Schmeling’s manager is Jewish.

Karl feels the contradictions and conflicts of the time within himself. He’s an artist and a fighter. He loves his intellectual father, but he identifies with the more physical men at the Berlin Boxing Club. He despises and fears homosexuals, but it is a homosexual friend who rescues him and his sister on Kristallnacht. He admires and is grateful to Max Schmeling, but he doesn’t know if he can really trust him.

I would recommend this book for older teens. Some of the scenes and characters are too mature for younger readers. As I think about it, the book would make a good movie, but it would definitely be rated at least PG-13, probably R.

The Foreshadowing by Marcus Sedgewick

Sep28

The Foreshadowing tells the story of a girl, Alexandra, who is a sort of Cassandra: she can foresee the imminent death of people with whom she comes into contact. But of course, no one wants to hear her predictions, and no one believes her.

I just read the following article at the BBC website, before reading Marcus Sedgewick’s story of World War One horror and supernatural intervention. And the essay definitely colored my reading of the book.

First the article: World War One: Misrepresentation of a Conflict by Dr Dan Todman. Dr. Todman asks the question: “Is the traditional tale of ‘stupid generals, pointless attacks and universal death’ a fair representation of a war celebrated in 1918 as a great national deliverance?”
His answer: “Sassoon and Wilfred Owen could be used to evoke an emotional reaction against war which engaged students and satisfied teachers, but which utterly misrepresented the feelings of most Britons who lived through the war years.”

If Dr. Todman is right, then Marcus Sedgewick’s book, The Foreshadowing, totally buys into that misrepresentation, as does most of the fiction I’ve read about World War One and its aftermath. The protagonist, Alexandra, who has disguised herself as a nurse in order to rescue her brother from her vatic vision of his impending death in battle, speculates about a Tommy she meets along the way: “Presumably he had killed at least one man. Maybe several. He was a friendly man, he seemed very ordinary, kind even, but he didn’t seem to be bothered by what he’s done. And when he got to the German trenches he must have met German soldiers, who would have killed him too, if they could. I wondered if either Englishman or German had the slightest idea what they were killing each other for.”

All of the characters in the book seem to have little or no motivation for going to war other than honor and the desire to “do my bit”. Alexandra’s father tells her brothers Edgar and Tom that they must”do their bit”. And Tom later tells Alexandra that he came to war to die, no purpose at all except slow suicide.

Alexandra is the only one with a purpose: to change the future that she has already seen in a vision and to save Tom’s life. She pursues that purpose with single-minded determination and with the help of a friend, Jack, who hares her gift/curse of prophetic vision. The picture of what World War One was really about and how the soldiers who fought there really experienced it may be flawed—apparently one can re-write the past–but the story about whether one can or should try to change the future is suspenseful and intriguing with a surprise ending that made me gasp and appreciate.

Recommended, but the pace is slow at first. And the chapters are very short, a page and a half or two, a device I found annoying. Others probably won’t notice. I did become impatient with Alexandra way before she became impatient with herself.

Lord of the Nutcracker Men by Iain Lawrence

Sep27

Yep. It’s all twentieth century history all the time here at Semicolon this year—except when it isn’t. Actually, I have so many irons in the fire with Texas Tuesday, and Wednesday’s Word of the Week and the Saturday Review and other stuff that just catches my interest that I think I should call myself an ADD reader—Attention Distracted Disorderly reader. Yes, there is method in my madness, but it’s sometimes buried deep in the chaos of what passes for an orderly mind.

And all of that verbiage was my introduction to Mr. Lawrence’s Lord of the Nutcracker Men, a young adult or middle grade fiction book set in the first year of World War One, 1914, in England. Ten year old Johnny has a set of “thirty soldiers carved from wood, dressed in helmets and tall black boots. They carried rifles tipped with silver bayonets. They had enormous mouths full of grinning teeth that sparkled in the sun.” Johnny’s dad made the soldiers and gave them to Johnny for his ninth birthday.

Now the world is at war, and Johnny’s toy soldiers look just like the German Kaiser’s army that is now storming through Belgium. And Johnny asks his father, “Can you make me some Frenchmen? Can you make me some Tommies” (British soldiers)? So Johnny’s dad makes him a little French soldier with a blue coat.

Soon, Johnny’s father volunteers for the army. He’s sent to the front, to the trenches, but he promises to be back by Christmas. And Johnny is sent to the country to live with his aunt since rumors of German Zeppelins flying over London are frightening his mother into sending him away for his own safety, “just until Christmas, of course. Just until the war is over.”

Most of the story takes place with Johnny in the country, playing with his toy soldiers,including the new ones that his dad sends him from the war front. And, then, there are letters in which dad tells Johnny what is happening in the war and what the front is like for him. The letters are quite graphic in describing the violence and the degradation that the soldiers endure, and although they’re realistic as far as I can tell, I think it’s highly unlikely that a father would send a ten year old letters that described war in such explicit terms. Nor do I believe Aunt Ivy would read them aloud without editing if dad did write them.

But this breakdown in the logic of the narrative can be ignored, especially if you decide that the book is a better fit for young adult readers rather than ten and eleven year olds. Johnny at first glorifies war and the military with his wooden toys and his imagination, but as his father’s letters become darker and full of gloom and discouragement, Johnny becomes fearful. He begins to imagine that the battles he stages with his toy armies are determining the outcome of real battles at the front and even the fate of his father, personified by one of the carved soldiers.

It’s a good story, and it ends on a hopeful note with a letter from Johnny’s dad at Christmas about the informal and undeclared Christmas truce of 1914, in which many soldiers on both sides of the war stopped fighting to celebrate Christmas together in no-man’s land.