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Blackthorn Winter by Kathryn Reiss

May15

Blackthorn Winter is a YA murder mystery set in a small village in England. The setting is emphasized since the main characters are “Yanks” from California. The other emphasis in the novel, besides murder, is adoption and familiess since the protagonist, Juliana, is adopted. The book reads like an episode in a TV detective series or a made-for-TV movie; it’s decent entertainment for an afternoon, but nothing profound, just what I needed at the time I read it.

The book did have a couple of minor annoyances. First of all, the author over-emphasized the differences between American and British terms. Every Britishism was pointed out, made into a joke or a misunderstanding, or the very least “translated” in parentheses. It got old, but maybe kids who were completely unfamiliar with British torches and boots and chips would appreciate the too helpful explanations. Also, there were way too many coincidences infesting the plot. I won’t go into detail, but the solution to more than one mystery in the book depends on coincidence, and motive for the murderer is a little weak.

As a side note, not a criticism, I remember when books for children and even teenagers never included actual murders. I think the first children’s book I read that was a true murder mystery was The View From the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts in which a child actually witnesses a murder, but no one believes him. That plotline was unusual for children’s books back in the seventies when View was first published. but it’s not so unusual now. Child-in-danger movies and books are common fare these days. We’ve become much more lenient about what stories our children are exposed to and more confident of what violence and emotional content they can handle.

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

May14

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”

O.K., so I read Nick and Norah and hated it. I thought it was rude, crude, socially unacceptable, sad, and eminently disposable. Now I’ve read An Abundance of Katherines, and it’s full of crude language, unsupervised, snotty kids, and way too much sex talk. So why did I like the second book and hate the first? I think I just identify more with geeky kids than with Cool. Nick and Norah were both so frustratingly, pitifully, in-your-face, up-to-date, New York City Cool! Blech! Give me Colin the Eternal Dumpee any day.

” . . . he always had books. Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.”

“In the first century CE, Roman authorities punished St. Apollonia by crushing her teeth one by one with pliers. Colin often thought about this in relationship to the monotony of dumping: we have thirty-two teeth. After a while, having each tooth individually destroyed probably gets repetitive, even dull. But it never stops hurting.”

“The missing piece in his stomach hurt so much —and eventually he stopped thinking about the Theorem and wondered only how something that isn’t there can hurt you.”

Colin and his best (only) friend Hassan (not-a-terrorist) are on a road trip designed to make Colin forget the pain of Katherine #19’s breaking up with him. Yes, Colin has been “in a relationship” with eighteen previous girls named Katherine, and now Katherine #19 has broken his heart —as usual. Colin always gets dumped by Katherines. Hassan (not-a -terrorist) is a great sidekick, and he’s the only funny Muslim book character I’ve ever encountered. The two buddies end up in Gutshot, Tennessee where they meet a girl named Lindsey, not Katherine, and Colin tries to formulate a Theorem that will predict the course of a romance from first kiss to the eventual End —dumping, divorce or death.

Maybe I liked the profane, wise-cracking, over-sexed An Abundance of Katherines because it’s funny, and unlike Nick and Norah I don’t feel as if the author is secretly sponsored by Planned Parenthood and the the Alan Guttmacher Institute charged with the task of feeding me propaganda about the sweetness and inevitability of teen unmarried sex. I get the idea that John Green just wanted to write a funny story about a nerdy genius who gets dumped by a whole string of girls named Katherine. The story is unbelievable (who even knows that many Katherines?), but I don’t get the impression that I’m expected to believe anything.

NOTE: If profanity, crude situations, and premarital sex offend you, you probably won’t like An Abundance of Katherines. But, darn, it’s a fun ride! I didn’t recommend the book to my young adults. I’m offended by all those things, but I still found myself chuckling at Colin’s and Hassan’s adventures. And I don’t even care for Walt Whitman either —much too juvenile and contradictory.

Yellow Fever: America’s Plague

May10

An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 by Jim Murphy.

Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson.

The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever the Epidemic That Shaped our History by Molly Caldwell Crosby.

I read the nonfiction 2003 Newbery Honor book for children and young adults by Mr. Murphy first. All I knew, or thought I knew, about yellow fever before I read it was that it’s carried by mosquitoes, it’s common in the tropics, and Walter Reed figured out about the mosquitoes. It turns out that yellow fever isn’t confined to tropical climates, it is spread by mosquitoes, and Walter Reed had a little help. Oh, yes, and by the way, yellow fever hasn’t been eradicated, and there’s no cure. Treatment consists of rest, fluids, and time. You may or may not survive if you contract the disease. Thousands of Philadelphians in 1793 didn’t. Of course, many of them may have been bled to death by Dr. Benjamin Rush and his colleagues—who also believed in dosing patients with strong, nearly lethal, purgatives to make them vomit and eliminate all the “bad blood” collected in the digetive system. Rest, fluids, and time are starting to sound good, aren’t they?

The American Plague by Molly Caldwell, a nonfiction book for adults, focuses on two events: the yellow fever epidemic in Memphis, Tennessee in 1878 and the work of the Yellow Fever Commission in Cuba in 1900. Over one hundred years after the 1793 epidemic, doctors were still arguing about what caused yellow fever and how to prevent or to treat it. For prevention, some public health officials argued for a quarantine during the summer months if any cases of yellow fever were reported; others favored better sanitation and waste removal. Treatment came back to purgatives, quinine (good for malaria but ineffective against yellow fever), rest and fluids. Over five thousand people died in Memphis during the yellow fever outbreak of 1878 —more lives lost than in the Chicago Fire, the San Francisco Earthquake, and the Johnstown Flood combined.

In the fictional account of the Philadelphia 1793 yellow fever epidemic, Fever 1793, Laurie Halse Anderson illustrates the deadly nature of yellow fever and its effects on the community with a story about Mattie Cook, a girl of fourteen who lives above a coffeehouse that provides her family’s livelihood. Since Mattie’s father is dead, Mattie’s mother, her grandmother, and the black cook, Eliza, run the coffeehouse, and Mattie and the serving girl, Polly, help. At the beginning of the book in August 1793, Mattie worries about her mother’s temper and about how to get a little extra sleep and avoid as much work as possible. By the end of the story, Mattie has been forced to take on adult responsibilities: nursing, providing food for her family, repelling thieves and intruders, and running the coffeehouse, to name a few. The tone and the narrative voice of a young lady growing into a woman are quite similar to that of Ann Rinaldi’s historical fiction novels, anchored by specific historical people and events.

Interesting factoids:

Alexander Hamilton fled Philadelphia to avoid the fever in August 1793. He got it anyway, but recovered so tat he could die in his infamous duel with Aaron Burr ten years later.

George Washington also left the city of Philadelphia, which was at the time serving as the U.S. capital, but he neglected to take many of his important state papers with him. Nobody wanted to go back inot fever-infested Philadelphia to fetch the papers, and Madison and Jefferson contended that it was unconstitutional for Comgress to convene outside of the capital city anyway. So, the country survived without much government at all for the weeks that it took for the yellow fever to run its course in Philadelphia.

Dolly Payne Madison lost her first husband, Mr. Payne, and her young son to the yellow fever epidemic of 1793. Aaron Burr then introduced her to his friend James Madison, and she married Mr. Madison in 1794.

Dr. Benjamin Rush, a devout Christian and generally a good doctor, stayed in Philadelphia to treat the il, and at the height of the epidemic, he saw as many as 120 patients a day. Unfortunately, he truly believed the “cure” for yellow fever was to bleed and poison the fever out of his patients, and so he probably caused many of them to die. Dr. Rush himself fell ill with the fever during the 1793 epidemic, used his preferred treatment on himself, and survived.

George Washington laid the cornerstone for the U.S. capitol in Washington, D.C. on September 18, 1793 at the height of the yellow fever epidemic.

Three Books; One Review

May4

I read these three books all in April and saw similarities although each is very different from the others in terms of tone and audience.

Eclipse by Andrea Cheng. Published in 2006, Eclipse is set in 1952. Peti is a precocious eight year old boy whose family immigrated to the United States from Hungary. Unfortunately, his grandfather and other family members are still trapped in Communist Hungary, and also unfortunately, his aunt, uncle, and cousin are coming from Australia to live with Peti’s family. It’s unfortunate because twelve year old Cousin Gabor is not a nice person, and Peti, a very talkative and engaging young narrator, ends up with more problems than he can handle.


The Road to Paris by Nikki Grimes. Paris and her older brother Malcolm have lived with their alcoholic mother and her abusive boyfriend (not good), have survived an abusive foster home together (not good either), and now they’re separated: Malcolm in a group home, and Paris in a foster home that seems like heaven after all the trouble she’s seen. But Paris misses Malcolm, and she still loves her mom, Viola, even though she doesn’t trust her to take care of her children. So, what will Paris do when she has the opportunity to go back and live with her birth mother and her beloved brother? Will she leave the foster home where she’s experienced love and safety? Or will she stay with her foster family even without Malcolm?

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. Melinda on entering high school: “We fall into clans: Jocks, Country Clubbers, Idiot Savants, Cheerleaders, Human Waste, Eurotrash, Future Fascists of America, Big Hair Chix, the Marthas, Suffering Artists, Thespians, Goths, Shredders. I am clanless. I wasted the last weeks of August watching bad cartoons. Ididn’t go to the mall, the lake, or the pool, or answer the phone. I have entered high school with the wrong hair, the wrong clothes, the wrong attitude. And I don’t have anyone to sit with.”

What do these three books have in common? In each book the child protagonist is abused and unable to find a way to tell anyone about the abuse. Paris and her brother run away together from the abusive abusive foster home almost at the beginning of the story, and the rest of the story is really about Paris’s new home with good foster parents who help her learn to trust again. Peti finally works out a way to escape or make peace with his tormentor. Melinda fights back, first with silence and sarcasm and art, then finally with words and screams and physical actions.

Of the three, The Road to Paris is most appropriate for younger children, second to fifth grade. It’s a gentle story, and it doesn’t focus too much on racism and child abuse although both are present in the story. Paris learns to trust in God and to trust in those who prove by their actions that they are trustworthy, and those are good lessons for any child —or adult —to learn.

I really liked Peti, the narrator of Eclipse. He’s childlike in his curiosity and his incessant need to ask questions, but he’s caught up in worries and situations that are way too complicated and difficult for a child to understand no matter how many questions he asks. In fact, I wonder how many children who can read the book will understand that Peti’s grandfather is sent to a work camp in Communist Hungary or that Cousin Gabor is acting out his own insecurities and taking out his hostilities on Peti. And it bothers me that the ending, although realistic, doesn’t feel safe. Reading level: third or fourth grade. Understanding level: Eighth, ninth or even tenth grade.

Speak was the most haunting and memorable of the three books. It’s definitely a YA title because of the subject matter and tone of the narration, and parents will want to read it before allowing even their high school students to read. However, the book is an excellent response to a problem that is all too common. I don’t want to tell what that problem is because that’s part of the suspense of the book. But, again, parents should read the book first. In fact, not only should parents read, but I would advise you to keep reading. At first I thought the narrator Melinda was a snotty, defiant little pain in the neck, out to nail anyone and everyone with her private wit and her public silence, but there’s more going on in this novel than meets the eye. And Melinda turns out to be a brave and resilient young lady —even though she wouldn’t like being called a young lady.

Has anyone seen the movie based on this last book? Is it any good?

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born April 28th

Apr28

Harper Lee, b. 1926. Enough has been said and written about To Kill a Mockingbird. If you haven’t read it, put down whatever you’re reading now, especially if it was published after 1940, and go borrow or purchase a copy of Miss Lee’s book and read it.

Lois Duncan, b. 1934. Author of many YA suspense novels, including Killing Mr. Griffin and I Know What You Did Last Summer.
Lois Duncan’s website.
From the website: “Lois Duncan is known for award-winning suspense novels. Few people know she’s led a secret second life as a poet.” In her new poetry book, Seasons of the Heart:

“You can read about Belinda, who chewed her nails so fiercely that she ended up eating her fingertips:

They just went “Crunch” and disappeared.
Belinda thought, Now this is weird!
I wonder why that knucklebone
Is sticking up there all alone?

And there’s a poem about Jerome, who refused to take a bath:

There were deposits in his ears
That had been rotting there for years.
His neck and chest were quickly crusting.
His belly button was disgusting.”

North and Song of the Magdalene by Donna Jo Napoli

Apr25

Back in March when I was overdosing on books and avoiding the blog, I read two books by YA author Donna Jo Napoli. In North twelve year old Alvin emulates his hero, explorer Matthew Henson, when he runs away from his home in Washington, D.C., headed for the far north, maybe even the North Pole. Great adventure story.

Song of the Magdalene is the imagined story of Mary Magdalene, the New Testament character who was delivered from seven demons by Jesus. The story chronicles her childhood and especially her adolescence in the sleepy little Galilean village of Magdala. Miriam, as her name is rendered in Hebrew in the story, is a beautiful girl, spoiled by her indulgent widowed father, and eager to experience life and love and to sing her joy into the world. However, when she is only twelve years old, Miriam has her first “fit” (seizure) and realizes that, according to all that she has learned in her village, she is possessed by demon and can never be married or truly loved by a man.

“I took stock. I knew the source of such fits. Everyone knew. A demon had taken up residence in the shell of my body . . . this was my own personal demon of fits. In me. Inside me.”


Recurring themes in the books I’ve read by Ms. Napoli are captivity, protection, and personal freedom. Adolescent characters are trapped with a culture or a family system designed to protect them, but the young adult must escape, grow up, experience life, even make mistakes. Since I’m the parent of four young adults, this theme hits a little close to home. How protective is over-protective? How much freedom is too much —for a twelve year old? For a fifteen year old? For a seventeen year old? I trust my urchins to make good decisions, for the most part, but I don’t trust the world to treat them kindly or respectfully all of the time.

Ms. Napoli’s books carry mixed messages about this issue of freedom and protection. Miriam in Song of the Magdalene suffers enormous hurt, physical, spiritual, and mental, because of the freedom her father gives her to roam the town and act in ways that traditional Jewish women in that culture are not allowed to act. Alvin in North faces danger and almost pays with his life in his bid for freedom from a loving but over-protective mother; however he ultimately, by running away from home, grows up and becomes a man of strength and courage.

So, is it different for girls and boys? Is the world dangerous for boys, but much too dangerous for girls? I do think that girls need more protection than boys, but something inside me protests that even if that’s true, it shouldn’t be so. Maybe Ms. Napoli wasn’t saying anything about male/female differences —just one protagonist who faces the challenge of growing up in the world and wins and another who loses and is almost destroyed by her encounter with evil and danger.

And I’m left with my questions: how do I love these kids of mine into adulthood? How do I help them to grow into strong, confident, and joyful adults?

The Small Rain by Madeleine L’Engle

Apr19

I’ve been working on several projects this year: my Newbery project, my TBR list, and my Madeleine L’Engle project. I want, over the course of the next year or two, to read or re-read all of Ms. L’Engle’s books —or as many of them as I can find. I started with A Winter’s Love, published in 1957, my birth year. Here’s what I wrote about that book. I then read Camilla, one of her first novels published in 1951 and then re-published in 1965 after A Wrinkle in Time won the Newbery and made Ms. L’Engle famous. I wrote about Camilla here.

During my blogging break in March, I re-read Ms. L’Engle’s first published novel, A Small Rain. It’s the story of Katherine Forrester, the daughter of two famous musicians. her mother is a celebrated concert pianist, and her father is an eccentric, but talented, composer. The novel follows Katherine through her lonely and difficult adolescence and ends with her plan to return to study with her beloved piano teacher, Justin, in Paris on the eve of what turns out to be World War II.

After reading A Small Rain, I had to skip ahead chronologically in Ms. L’Engle’s oeuvre and read A Severed Wasp, probably my second favorite of all Ms. L’Engle’s novels. She wrote A Severed Wasp (1982) as a sort of sequel to A Small Rain (1945) some thirty-seven years later. In this book, Madame Forrester Vigneras is an elderly woman beginning the task of looking back on her life and evaluating, forgiving, and coming to terms with the people and events that made her who she is. She has settled in New York City after a career as concert pianist travelling all over the world. The book contains multiple insights about love, marriage, forgiveness, aging gracefully, and simple grace, and it demonstrates maturity, wisdom, and craft gained by the author over many years of writing.

I highly recommend both books, read together if possible.

“. . . there was nothing Felix Bodeway couldn’t talk about, nothing he couldn’t put into words as facile as they were intense. And maybe that was good . . . maybe that was a way of exorcising things that worry you. For when you put something into words, it becomes an affair of the intellect as well as of the emotions, and therefore loses some of its fearsome power.” —A Small Rain

Words are useful for entrapping emotions and experiences and confining them to manageble proportions. It’s part of why I blog. I like using words and sentences to define my thoughts and feelings about a book or an issue or an everyday occurrence or even an episode of a TV show. Then, I can remember and re-examine and take out whatever is illogical or immoral or unreal, just leaving the true and the lovely essence of whatever it is I’m writing about.

At least, Truth is the goal. And truth, if one can get to it with words, even approximate it, does minimize, sometimes eliminate, fear.

Next L’Engle book to read: And Both Were Young, published in 1949.

What do you think about the covers of these 1980’s paperback editions? I’m not much of a design critic, but I think they’re odd with their pieces of face.

Book Review: Mary, Bloody Mary, by Carolyn Meyer

Apr18

This book was fantastic. I hate to start off a book review with such a vague word describing the book, but what else would I use? Amazing, fascinating, interesting? The book is all these and more.

The book starts when Mary Tudor is about eleven years old, and her father, King Henry VIII, has decided she should marry the king of France, King Francis. Mary does not look forward to marrying, even meeting, her future husband. During a masque while her betrothed is visiting England, Mary notices a certain lady-in-waiting named Anne Boleyn. Anne wears mostly black and white clothing, and a ribbon about her neck. Mary is not particularly interested in Anne until she catches her father, the king, staring at her during the masque. Mary is troubled, but she hears no more about Anne Boleyn until she discovers that her father has exiled her mother and is trying to marry Anne! The King, searching for some Biblical reference that supports his claim that his marriage to Catherine of Aragon was illegitimate, says that since Catherine had been his brother’s wife before she had married him, his marriage to her was unlawful. And though the Catholic Church still will not allow Henry to divorce Catherine, Mary, who knows her father’s stubbornness and anger, fears her father will find a way to marry Anne despite the Church…

I really love books set in this time in history. In the time of King Henry VIII, Elizabethan times, et cetera. And this is one of the best books I’ve read that take place during that time period. Before I had read anything about Mary, my view of her was of an evil, oppressing queen. I was horrified by her persecution of protestants. While most of this view didn’t change, after reading this book, I realized Mary had had her share of hardship and suffering.

There were a couple of rather disgusting parts, including the description of Anne’s beheading and the birth of Elizabeth. They were not so horrifying, however, that I couldn’t push them out of my thoughts.

I loved seeing into a view of Mary’s feelings as though she were a real person, not just some character in history who had no personality. I enjoyed meeting Mary’s ladies-in-waiting, as though they were a part of the story, too, and not just nameless people who had no part in her life. I liked reading about her thoughts, her feelings.

It says, that before Anne was beheaded, she begged for Mary’s forgiveness. But at first I doubted whether she had really repented, because I imagine it would be easier for one to apologize to someone when you know it’s going to be the last chance you get to do it. But then I reconsidered and I like to believe that Anne really repented of how terrible she had been to Mary. I can think whatever I want to of characters in a book, no matter what they may have done. Because I suppose we’ll never really know the whole truth. And that’s one thing I really enjoyed about the book.

All that is to say, it was a great book and you should read it.

Reading Suggestions?

Apr12

I am involved in a conspiracy to turn a fourteen year old young friend of mine into a reader. He is a pleasant and intelligent young man, but he does not read books. He can read, but he doesn’t. I like this young friend and think he should be reading more than the occasional street sign, menu or assigned reading for English class.

So do any of my bright blog visitors have any suggestions on how to trick, cajole, or persuade my friend to begin the wonderful adventure of reading?

Follow-up to Monday’s Review of Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist

Apr11

If you come to Semicolon to read book reviews, you have a right to know what my standards are for judging a book. Sometimes I just don’t care for a book; the author and I just don’t mesh or it was a bad day for me. If so, I usually say so in my post on the book. Sometimes I really like a book that I know might be offensive to other people; if so, I try to remember to mention the parts that might be offensive so that readers can be forewarned. Sometimes I read a book that I hate for reasons that I am willing to share in print here; if so, I state my reasons as plainly as I can.

I read books that have profanity, vulgarity, sexual content, and violence. I think some of these books are excellent, vividly portraying the human condition and our need for God’s mercy. As many people have pointed out, the Bible tells stories about people who were profane, vulgar, sexually immoral, and violent.

I don’t like books that contain pervasive profanity and/or vulgarity, graphic, detailed sexual descriptions, or lurid, gratuitous violence. And I don’t like books that try to make sin and degradation, however graphically described, seem exciting, fulfilling, and joyous. Enjoyable, yes, sin is usually pleasureable for a season. But adultery and promiscuity do not lead to joy and happiness in this world or the next, and violence is wrong and awful, even if you believe (as I do) that it is sometimes necessary.

“Do not be deceived, whatever a man sows, he will reap.” Books that depict characters who “sow” rebellion and sexual sin and violence and “reap” happiness, peace, and joy are simply untrue. And their authors do a disservice to their own talent and to readers in writing such books. Oscar Wilde said famously that there is no such thing as an immoral book, only a badly written one. However, Oscar Wilde, who was quite witty and often quite immoral himself, was wrong in this instance. Books that deceive and tell lies and portray evil as good and good as evil are immoral —and badly written, too, no matter how skillfully their authors may use words and phrases and elements of prose to create that effect. In fact the more skillful the author is in manipulating words and ideas, the more harm he can do when he sets out to serve a lie instead of the truth.

So one of my standards is that I like books that tell the truth. If I think a book is lying, I’ll say so.