Review of The Thing About Luck, by Cynthia Kadohata

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary 0

The Thing About Luck

by Cynthia Kadohata

Atheneum Books for Young Readers, June 2013. 271 pages.

Here’s how The Thing About Luck starts:

Kouun is “good luck” in Japanese, and one year my family had none of it. We were cursed with bad luck. Bad luck chased us around, pointing her bony finger. We got seven flat tires in six weeks. I got malaria, one of fifteen hundred cases in the United States that year. And my grandmother’s spine started causing her excruciating pain.

This book opens after that string of bad luck, or does it? Summer’s parents got a call from Japan, and three elderly relatives expect them to come take care of them in their last weeks and months. Summer and her brother Jaz are staying with their grandparents, Obaachan and Jiichan. They are going to be the ones working the harvest this year, so it will be up to them to get the money for the year to pay the mortgage. Summer and Jaz have to go along, so they’ll be hanging around the harvesters all summer, and it will be up to Summer to step in and help with the cooking when Obaachan’s back puts her in too much pain.

The family works for a custom harvesting company. Mr. Parker owns the $350,000 combines that the workers must use for long hours to get the farmers’ crops in before rain comes. The information about harvesting the wheat crop and how the whole procedure works is fascinating. The portrayal of Obaachan and Jiichan, with their constant crazy bickering, but underlying love for their grandchildren, made them come to life. We fully understand Summer’s frustration but love for them.

This is a quiet book. It feels a little bit unfinished, just stopping a little way into the harvest, though a book about the whole summer would have gone on too long. Summer has lots of reasons to worry about her grandparents and whether they can keep the job, and has to step up to help in much bigger ways than anticipated. There’s a cute boy on the harvest team, too, and then there are worries about her brother, who is not much like most other boys, and is having trouble making friends after his best friend moved away.

This book isn’t for people who want an action-packed plot. But it is for readers who are interested in rich, quirky characters, a kid caught up in big events, and a detailed setting based on what happens every year in America.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/thing_about_luck.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on an Advance Reader’s Copy I got at KidLitCon 2012.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Cold Tangerines, by Shauna Niequist

Christian, Musings, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Cold Tangerines

Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life

by Shauna Niequist

Zondervan, 2007. 250 pages.
Starred Review

I was surprised to see that Cold Tangerines was written in 2007. I checked it out because it was new to our library. Better late than never!

Cold Tangerines is another book of meditations on the importance of living a grateful life, on all the blessings God embeds in our everyday world.

A lot of her writing doesn’t seem momentous. But that’s fitting, since she’s talking about walking with God in the everyday.

Here’s a representative section at the end:

It’s rebellious, in a way, to choose joy, to choose to dance, to choose to love your life. It’s much easier and much more common to be miserable. But I choose to do what I can do to create hope, to celebrate life, and the act of celebrating connects me back to that life I love. We could just live our normal, day-to-day lives, saving all the good living up for someday, but I think today, just plain today, is worth it. I think it’s our job, each of us, to live each day like it’s a special occasion, because we’ve been given a gift. We get to live in this beautiful world. When I live purposefully and well, when I dance instead of sitting it out, when I let myself laugh hard, when I wear my favorite shoes on a regular Tuesday, that regular Tuesday is better.

Right now, around our house, all the leaves are falling, and there’s no reason that they have to turn electric bright red before they fall, but they do, and I want to live like that. I want to say, “What can I do today that brings more beauty, more energy, more hope?” Because it seems like that’s what God is saying to us, over and over. “What can I do today to remind you again how good this life is? You think the color of the sky is good now, wait till sunset. You think oranges are good? Try a tangerine.” He’s a crazy delightful mad scientist and keeps coming back from the lab with great, unbelievable new things, and it’s a gift. It’s a gift to be a part of it.

I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud. And I don’t want to get to the end, or to tomorrow, even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes. I want to eat cold tangerines and sing loud in the car with the windows open and wear pink shoes and stay up all night laughing and paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now. I want to sleep hard on clean white sheets and throw parties and eat ripe tomatoes and read books so good they make me jump up and down and I want my everyday to make God belly laugh glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift, who will use it up and wring it out and drag it around like a favorite sweater.

If you like that one, here are more quotes I collected on Sonderquotes.

I believe this stuff with all my heart. But it’s always good to have a reminder. I recommend reading this book slowly, a chapter or so a day, and getting a daily reminder that God is good and life is full of His gifts, even during hard times.

shaunaniequist.com
zondervan.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/cold_tangerines.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of The Boy Who Loved Math, by Deborah Heiligman and LeUyen Pham

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Mathematical, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

The Boy Who Loved Math

The Improbable Life of Paul Erdös

by Deborah Heiligman
pictures by LeUyen Pham

Roaring Brook Press, New York, 2013. 38 pages.
Starred Review

I’ve been looking forward eagerly to this book ever since Betsy Bird reviewed it. My hold came in today, and I am absolutely delighted! I need my own personal copy!

Now, I have a Master’s in Math. Having studied mathematics at UCLA, I’d like to think that my Erdös Number (explained in the book) is at least 4, maybe even 3. So I’m simply saying that I’m predisposed to like it.

But there’s so much here for anyone to like! Even without looking deeper (more on that later), the pictures are full of life and interest, fitting the lively descriptions of a little boy in love with numbers.

Here’s an example from page 6:

So Paul kept counting . . .
And thinking about numbers. One day, when he was 4, Paul asked a visitor when her birthday was. She told him.

What year were you born? he asked.
She told him.

What time?
She told him.

Paul thought for a moment.
Then he told her how many seconds she had been alive.

[The picture shows 1,009,152,358 in a speech bubble coming from the little boy. He’s with his Fräulein and a woman who could indeed reasonably be 32 — even the details are right!]

Paul liked that trick. He did it often.

She goes on to show Paul growing, full of movement, learning more, always thinking about numbers. I love the detail that the illustrator included at the end: “As a young boy, Paul was known to flap his arms when something particularly excited him. This behavior continued through his teen years, when his friends would often have to explain to passersby that there was nothing wrong with Paul — he was just thinking hard.” The illustrations reflect this, full of life and movement.

And the author makes a smooth transition from childhood antics to a stellar adult career:

By the time Paul was 20, he was already famous around the world for his math. People called him The Magician from Budapest.

But he still did not know how to . . .

do his laundry

or cook his food

or butter his bread.

That was not a problem.
He still lived at home and
Mama still did everything for him.

She goes on to explain his unusual, collaborative manner of living. He’d fly to different countries, staying with other mathematicians, and then he had a way of bringing out brilliance in others as well.

Now, like I said, I have a huge soft spot for mathematicians, and my heart simply warms at the picture of the big group of actual mathematicians (women included, yes indeed) discussing together number theory, combinatorics, the probabilistic method, and set theory.

So the first run through of the story is wonderful enough. A story showing a brilliant mathematician with an unconventional life who produced great mathematics and brought out brilliance in others. How many picture book biographies are there celebrating mathematicians? It simply makes me happy.

But look a little deeper. The illustrator’s note shows the incredible level of detail she worked into the illustrations. Early on, the numbers you see are amicable numbers, and worked into the buildings we have dihedral primes, good primes, Leyland primes, Mersenne primes, prime triplets, unique primes, palindromic primes, Ramanujan primes, and two-sided primes. Paul Erdös worked in graph theory, and there are diagrams in the illustrations including the famous Konigsburg Bridge problem and other famous graphs. She includes actual buildings from Budapest and actual distinguished mathematicians as well.

And this book achieved something picture book biographers aspire to — I am absolutely going to read more about Paul Erdös. But even better, this is a book that celebrates young number lovers and will encourage them that their passion is part of something grand.

I’m posting this tonight in honor of Nonfiction Monday, hosted today at

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/boy_who_loved_math.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Sonderling Sunday – Unusual Musical Instruments

Der Orden der Seltsamen Sonderlinge, Sonderling Sunday 3

It’s time for Sonderling Sunday! That time of the week when I play with language by looking at the German translations of children’s books. Sort of a handy phrase book of things you never knew you wanted to know how to say!

This week, it’s back to the book that started it all, James Kennedy‘s The Order of Odd-Fish, otherwise known as Der Orden der Seltsamen Sonderlinge. I left off right at the start of a short section about an extremely unusual musical instrument, which is on page 175 in English, Seite 221 auf Deutsch.

Jumping in to some fun phrases and interesting words:

“specialties” = Fachgebiete (“practice areas”)

“expertise” = Fachwissen (“specialist knowledge”)

“odd musical instruments” = seltsamer Musikinstrumente

“strange animals” = sonderbare Tiere

“milling around” = strömten (“flowed”)

“at the top of the stairs” = auf dem oberen Treppenabsatz (“at the top stairs-section”)

“blubbery thing” = blubberndes Ding
(Hmm. A little disappointing, that. Who knew it was almost the same in German?)

“dark yellow” = ockerfarben

“wriggling tubes” = windenden Röhrchen

“a single bored-looking red eye” = einem einzelnen, gelangweilt blickenden roten Auge

“as it cascaded down the stairs” = als es die Treppen hinabglitt

“shocking enough” = schockierend genug

“most shocking thing” = das Erschreckendste

“huge jaws” = gewaltiges Maul

“orifices” = Körperöffnungen (“body-openings”)

“can emit sounds” = Klänge erzeugen können

“a full-grown man may fit comfortably in its esophagus!”
= In seiner Speiseröhre findet ein ausgewachsener Mann bequem Platz!
(“in its meal-eyelets finds a grown man easily place!”)

“climbing” = geklettert

“most unusual music” = ungewöhnlichste Musik

“Out of the question” = Das kommt überhaupt nicht infrage
(“That comes at all not in-question”)

“squeeze or pinch” = drücken oder kneifen

“couldn’t hurt” = Das kann ja nicht schaden.

“most horrible noises” = der schrecklichsten Geräusche

And as a climax to this section:

“a howling, farting crescendo of gurgling belches and groans”
= ein heulendes, furzendes Crescendo von gurgelnden Rülpsern und Gestöhne

“Of course, it needs a little work.”
= Selbstverständlich bedarf es noch einiger Übung.

Lovely! Won’t it be handy, the next time you visit Germany, to be able to describe ein heulendes, furzendes Crescendo von gurgelnden Rülpsern und Gestöhne? Or at least to say it’s ungewöhnlichste Musik.

Sometimes I feel like I’m developing Fachgebiete nearly as useful as that of der Orden der Seltsamen Sonderlinge.

Be sure to mention in the comments your abundant opportunities to use these phrases this week!

Review of Raven Flight, by Juliet Marillier

Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Raven Flight

A Shadowfell Novel

by Juliet Marillier

Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2013. 406 pages.
Starred Review

When my copy came in for Raven Flight (no waiting on the library — I knew I had to have one.), it made a wonderful excuse to reread the first book, Shadowfell. This book is a continuation of the story, so, yes, you need to read the first book first.

And the story doesn’t finish with this one. But it does give you another chance to immerse yourself in this world. Neryn is already in love when this book starts, so the exquisite process during which she falls in love happened in the first book. She doesn’t see a lot of the man she loves in this book, and he’s in great danger, but they do get some time together, much to the reader’s satisfaction.

But most of the book is about Neryn trying to get training in her uncanny gift as a Caller. She’s been told she’ll need the help of powerful lords of the West, North, East, and South. But finding them is not easy, and traveling to them is difficult in an environment where any uncanny gift is reason for horrible death, and the king’s men know to look for her to try to use her as their own weapon. Right at the start of the book, the rebels learn that their time is limited. If they confront the king the summer after next, a powerful chieftain will join them. But if they wait, they will lose his support. Can Neryn get her training in time?

During the process, Neryn must go right into the king’s camp to try to help her friend. But that’s not the only time her life’s in danger, or that of the rebel leaders at Shadowfell.

This book is full of magic, intrigue, romance, and suspense. Our heroine is challenged in multiple ways as she tries to carry out her training. Juliet Marillier writes rich, lovely prose that will keep you spellbound.

Here Neryn tries to wake some of the Good Folk to ask for their help:

As I stood there in silence, I felt the strength of stone pass into me; I opened myself to its deep magic. The call woke inside me, rising from my heartbeat and coursing blood, forming words I spoke almost despite myself. “Folk of the North! Folk of deepest earth!” The call was bone and breath, memory and hope, the past and the future. In my mind I held the many faces of stone: the roots of great trees deep in the earth; the cliffs where stanie men stood in their long, silent vigil; pebbles in the riverbed, each different, each a small, lovely miracle. Crags raising their proud heads to the sunrise; mountains under blankets of winter snow. “In the name of stone I call you! Come forth! Show yourselves! I have grave need of you, and it is time!”

JulietMarillier.com
randomhouse.com/teens

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/raven_flight.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on my personal copy, purchased through Amazon.com.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Hoop Genius, by John Coy and Joe Morse

Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Hoop Genius
How a Desperate Teacher and a Rowdy Gym Class Invented Basketball

by John Coy
illustrations by Joe Morse

Carolrhoda Books, Minneapolis, 2013. 40 pages.
Starred Review

Hoop Genius is a simple picture book about the invention of basketball. The story it tells is pretty much summed up in the subtitle: James Naismith was a desperate teacher who’d taken on a gym class that had already forced two teachers to quit. But the author and illustrator dramatize that story in an exciting way (showing the young men in the class with progressively more injuries, for example). Then they show where Naismith got the idea (from a childhood game) and how he worked out the rules with his class. Then briefly, we’re shown how basketball took off. (James Naismith met his wife when she played in a women’s game he refereed.)

I love the endpapers – with copies of the first draft of the rules of basketball.

The story’s simple, but so interesting! This marvelous presentation of the story of how Basketball began will captivate readers of all ages.

lernerbooks.com

I’m posting this review tonight in honor of Nonfiction Monday, hosted today at Shelf Employed.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/hoop_genius.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Sonderling Sunday – Harry’s Birthday Edition

Sonderling Sunday 1

It’s Sonderling Sunday! That time of the week when I play with language by looking at the German translations of children’s books.

And tonight we get a special bonus. In honor of Harry Potter’s birthday this past week (July 1) and the fact that my son is home from school, with the German edition of HP#1, I’m going to look at the one book I own in English, German, and French, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen, Harry Potter à l’École des Sorciers.

When I started with Harry Potter, I didn’t get very far, but we learned that in French, Dudley has a “was suffering from a small crisis of choler.” And that the Germans don’t thank you in the first line, like everyone else.

Oh, and before I get started, I have a Special Bonus Word of the week. My son and I were learning a new game, and he grabbed the English rules, so I was trying to read along in the German ones, and I learned a brilliant word, Fingerspitzengefühl. It’s translated “balancing act” in the English rules, but it literally means “finger-peak-feeling.” You know, that feeling in your fingers when you put a block on the top of the pile? I love it!

Okay, back with Harry Potter. Think of this as useful phrases in case you’re ever traveling in Germany or France. Have you ever wondered where the phrase books get the phrases they choose to translate? Why not from a children’s book?

I’m starting on page 9 of the British version, page 8 in German, and page 9 in French. (Must be from less front matter that German is the lowest page number. Can’t be that it’s shorter!)

I’m beginning with the line:
“The Potters, that’s right, that’s what I heard –”
= »Die Potters, das stimmt, das hab ich gehört –«
= –Les Potter, c’est ça, c’est ce que j’ai entendu dire…

“Fear flooded him.”
= Angst überkam ihn.
= envahi par une peur soudaine (“overcome by a sudden fear”)

“whisperers”
=Flüsterern
=les gens qui chuchotaient

“snapped at his secretary”
= fauchte seine Sekretärin an
= ordonna d’un ton sec à sa secrétaire

“stroked his mustache”
= strich sich über den Schnurrbart
= se caressa la moustache

“he was being stupid”
= ich bin dumm
= il était idiot

“grunted”
= grummelte
= grommela
(all so onomatopoetic!)

“squeaky voice”
= piepsiger Stimme
= petite voix perçante

“You-Know-Who”
= Du-wei?t-schon-wer
= Vous-Savez-Qui

And this sentence needs to be translated in full so we can use it some day:
“Even Muggles like yourself should be celebrating, this happy, happy day!”
= Selbst Muggel wie Sie sollten diesen freudigen, freudigen Tag feiern!
= Même les Moldus comme vous devraient fêter cet heureux, très heureux jour!

“hugged Mr. Dursley around the middle”
= umarmte Mr. Dursley ungefähr in Bauchhöhe (“hugged Mr. Dursley around in belly-height”)
= prit alors Mr Dursley par la taille et le serra contre lui (“then took Mr Dursley around the waist and squeezed against him”) (Have they no word for “hugged”?)

“imagination”
= Einbildungskraft (“picturing-in-craft”)
= imagination (I might have known. “-tion” words tend to be from French.)

“tabby cat”
= getigerte Katze
= le chat tigré

“the same markings around its eyes”
= dasselbe Muster um die Augen
= Il reconnaissait les dessins de son pelage autour des yeux.
(“He recognized the drawings of his coat around the eyes.”)

“Shoo!”
= Schhhh!
= Allez, ouste !

“pull himself together”
= sich zusammenzurei?en
= reprendre contenance (“regain composure”)

Here’s another nice handy phrase:
“Mrs Dursley had a nice, normal day.”
= Mrs. Dursley hatte einen netten, gewöhnlichen Tag hinter sich.
= Mrs Dursley avait passé une journée agreeable et parfaitement normale.
(“Mrs. Dursley had passed an agreeable day and perfectly normal.” Again, the French are so refined.)

“Mrs Next Door”
= Frau Nachbarin
= la voisine d’à côté

“Shan’t!” (Dudley’s first word)
= pfui
= Veux pas!

Well, I didn’t get far, but I shan’t go any further, because I’ve already spent an hour, pfui!

May my readers have a freudigen, freudigen Tag, or at least one that is agreeable et parfaitement normale!

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/help.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Another Piece of My Heart, by Jane Green

Audiobooks, Chick Lit, Contemporary, Fiction Review, General, Light Reading 0

Another Piece of My Heart

by Jane Green

Macmillan Audiobooks, 2012. 11 CDs, 13.5 hours.

Another Piece of My Heart is chick lit for grown-ups, which I suppose I should give the label “women’s fiction.” The story begins with a woman who got married late in life and is dealing with facing the fact that she’s not going to get pregnant. Add to her troubles a truly awful teenage stepdaughter, and she’s not sure if she’s going to be able to stick it out, even though she loves her husband.

The story continues with more perspectives, including the stepdaughter, and even the view of the alcoholic first wife. There are complications when Emily, the stepdaughter, gets pregnant.

This audiobook was read by the author. Since the author has a British accent but the book is set in California, that seemed a little odd — but I am never one to complain about a British accent, and listening to the author’s delightful voice kept me listening toward the beginning when I wasn’t sure I was terribly interested. (That was a brief moment toward the beginning when I was afraid the main character was going to cheat on her husband. She didn’t, and I never was tempted to quit again.)

In spots the book did go on a little longer than it might have. But overall, it was a richly layered story about what it means to be a family and about the negotiations that go into giving your heart.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/another_piece_of_my_heart.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on an Advance Listening Copy I got at an ALA conference.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Have You Seen My New Blue Socks? by Eve Bunting and Sergio Ruzzier

Animal Characters, Picture Book Review 0

Have You Seen My New Blue Socks?

by Eve Bunting
illustrated by Serge Ruzzier

Clarion Books, 2013. 32 pages.

I’m afraid I tend to cringe with most rhyming picture books. But here’s one that’s done well, with just a touch of tongue twister. Add to that a charming and recognizable situation, and you’ve got a winner.

Here’s a page toward the end:

“Peacocks? Have you seen my socks?
I did not put them in my box.
I asked my good friend Mr. Fox.
I asked my good friend Mr. Ox.
Peacocks? Have you seen my socks?
They are such a pretty blue!
I just got them. They are new.”

I recently used this book at a Baby Storytime where I was focusing on Phonological Awareness. I’m sure the babies didn’t understand the situation, but they could enjoy the rhymes. At the same time, the parents gave a chuckle of delight when it became apparent that the duck was wearing his new blue socks all along.

Now, I admit that the rhymes aren’t quite up to a Dr. Seuss level. But they aren’t bad, and the story makes for a delightful book good for reading aloud or for independent readers to tackle on their own.

hmhbooks.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Picture_Books/new_blue_socks.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.