Review of Just a Girl, by Lia Levi

Award Winners, Beginning Chapter Books, Children's Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

Just a Girl

A True Story of World War II

by Lia Levi
with pictures by Jess Mason
translated from Italian by Sylvia Notini

Harper, 2022. Originally published in Italy in 2020.
Review written February 24, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review
2023 Mildred Batchelder Award Winner

The Mildred Batchelder Award is given every year to a children’s book originally published in a language other than English in a country other than the United States. It’s given to the publisher, to encourage them to find and translate such books.

Just a Girl is a gently told early chapter book about a terrible time. The author Lia Levi was a girl living in Italy in 1938, having just finished first grade. The book begins as she’s told she won’t be able to go back to school this year, but will have to go to a Jewish school.

As the war progresses in Italy, her father loses his job. They think things will get better after Mussolini is put out of power, but then the Germans come and things get worse. Lia and her sisters have to hide in a convent boarding school and use fake last names.

The author does a good job of telling about bad things, but also reassuring the reader with insertions as her older self. She does acknowledge that she was luckier than many others and does highlight the unfairness of her family being targeted for who they were. And through all of the story, the worries and troubles are punctuated with stories of kids finding ways to have a good time.

And in the last chapter (I don’t think this is a spoiler.), she wrote a letter to a radio station and began with, “I am a Jewish girl.” She was surprised when her mother tore it up.

What terrible mistake could I have made? And even if I had made a mistake, couldn’t we have fixed it?

Mama’s face isn’t serious, though.

Now she’s happily tossing all those bits and ripped-up pieces of paper everywhere as though they were confetti at Mardi Gras.

“You’re not a Jewish girl,” she says, smiling. “You’re a girl. Just a girl.”

What’s this all about? For years now, they’ve been shouting and writing female student of Jewish race next to my name everywhere.

I know perfectly well that the laws against the Jews have been repealed. But what is this about not being a Jewish girl?

Mama laughs.

“You’re mixing things up. Of course you’re still Jewish,” she says. Then her face gets very serious and she tries to explain. “You’re Jewish, but that’s something personal. It doesn’t need to be a label you wear on your forehead. You’re Jewish, you have two sisters, you go to school, you like going to the movies. . . . These are all facts about you. If you want to, you can tell others, but only if you choose to. These facts are no longer of any importance to the State, to the authorities. They have to let you go to school, to the gym, to the library, to your tennis or dance lesson, without saying: she can, but she can’t; he can, but he can’t.”

A lovely story that gives a gentle way for young children to learn about discrimination.

harpercollinschildrens.com

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Review of Finding Papa, by Angela Pham Krans, illustrated by Thi Bui

Historical, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Finding Papa

by Angela Pham Krans
illustrated by Thi Bui

Harper, 2023. 36 pages.
Review written March 15, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review

Finding Papa is a picture book based on the author’s experiences as a small child when her Papa went ahead of them from Vietnam to America, and she and her mother traveled to join him in 1983.

Something I love about the book is that it authentically takes an older toddler or young preschooler’s perspective. The pictures also portray her perfectly as that age, and it’s all presented with as much as a small child can grasp. Here’s the beginning:

Mai’s favorite game to play with Papa was the crocodile chomp. When Papa went “Chomp! Chomp!” Mai would giggle and squeal. Crocodiles were scary, but Papa was not.

We see a happy toddler laughing as her Papa makes a crocodile mouth with his hands. This is repeated through the book, with Mai remembering Papa by making her hands go “Chomp! Chomp!”

At first, she’s waiting for Papa, who doesn’t come back after an extra-long hug goodbye. Then Mai and her Mama travel to go find Papa. They travel far to get to a boat, crowded with many people. Mai was still remembering Papa, wishing he were there. There was a storm, but after some time, the boat was rescued by a large ship and Mai and her mother climbed up a net to get into the ship. At a refugee camp, letters from Papa helped them find their way to America.

In America, Mai sees a man with a mustache she doesn’t recognize. When he makes his hands do “Chomp! Chomp!” Mai remembers that crocodiles are scary, but Papa is not.

This is a very sweet story that authentically shows a very young child’s experience as a refugee. It completely warmed my heart.

angelakrans.com
thibui.com
harpercollinschildrens.com

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Review of The Lost Year, by Katherine Marsh

Audiobooks, Children's Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 2

The Lost Year

by Katherine Marsh
read by Anna Fikhman, Christopher Gebauer, and Jesse Vilinsky

Macmillan Young Listeners, 2023. 9 hours, 5 minutes.
Review written July 9, 2023, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This book begins with Matthew, a boy bored at home during the start of the Covid pandemic. His 100-year-old great-grandmother, Gee-Gee, has come to stay with him and his mother, so they are being extra careful to keep the virus away.

Yes, that’s a slow start. But when Matthew’s mother takes away his video games and assigns him to help Gee-Gee go through boxes, he uncovers the stories of two other girls from 1933. And an old picture of two little girls makes Gee-Gee start crying — because she says there should have been three girls.

And what unfolds is a story of Ukraine during the Holodomor — a famine during which millions of Ukrainians died. We get this story from the perspective of Mila, whose father is a high-ranking Communist party member, and from Helen — a Ukrainian girl living in America.

Mila lives a life of privilege, believing that Papa Stalin and her own Papa will take care of her. And believes the stories her father tells her that any problems are caused by the dirty peasants in the countryside who refuse to collectivize their farms. So when a malnourished girl shows up at their doorstep claiming to be her cousin who says her whole family starved to death, Mila doesn’t want to believe her.

Meanwhile, in class in America, Helen’s teacher reads an article from the New York Times from a correspondent in Moscow saying that no one is starving in Ukraine. But Helen’s family has gotten a letter from their Ukrainian cousin begging for help, and she knows other Ukrainian American families who have received similar letters. So she collects stories and writes to the Times, but they tell her she needs first-hand accounts. That her reporting isn’t good enough.

Of course, one of these three girls is Gee-Gee, and we also know that one of the three is not going to make it to America. The book snowballs in tension as it progresses, telling the gripping story of a tragedy the Soviet Union covered up for decades, one that readers won’t know much about. (I certainly didn’t.) It’s unfortunate how timely it is, as the author had this book written before the attack on Ukraine brought the country back into the headlines. I hope that will lead more kids to pick up this book.

katherinemarsh.com

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Review of Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver

Audiobooks, Award Winners, Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 2

Demon Copperhead

by Barbara Kingsolver
read by Charlie Thurston

HarperAudio, 2022. 21 hours, 3 minutes.
Review written June 30, 2023, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review
2023 Pulitzer Prize Winner
2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction Winner

I’ll be honest: When I was in the middle of this long audiobook, I wasn’t enjoying it much. It tells the story of Demon Copperhead — a kid named Damon, who, like the father who died before he was born, had red hair. He was born in the very rural Lee County, Virginia, to an addict Mom, and bad things just kept happening to him, so the book was somewhat depressing. I kept listening, because it was written by Barbara Kingsolver, who is a truly amazing author.

There was abuse from a stepdad, overdose death of his mother, terrible foster home situations, and eventually getting addicted himself. The narrator had such an authentic rural Virginia accent, I was surprised when he spoke at the end of the book in the “thank you for reading this book” section without the accent.

Something the author does to make all this terrible stuff tolerable is telling the story from the perspective of an older Demon telling about his life. So we know he’s going to survive and get through these awful things. And when things take a particularly bad turn, there’s plenty of foreshadowing, with him wondering if he had done things differently in the events leading up to the disaster, if that would have helped. Or talking about how he didn’t fully appreciate it when things were good — so you know his troubles aren’t over.

When I was in the middle thinking I was tired of listening to it and that I don’t enjoy listening to a rural southern accent as much as a British one — that was when the kids in the story noticed that the media portrays to the world that rural southerners and hillbillies are stupid. Touché! As I began thinking I didn’t really like spending all that time in Demon’s life — then he naturally in the story pointed out that’s how the media wants me to think.

The book also showed the opioid crisis and how it gained full steam. (I’m going to call it Historical because it begins in the 1990s.) The drug companies actually looked for populations likely to get hooked and sent their representatives there, giving doctors kickbacks if they prescribed the addictive painkillers. Damon got hooked after a football injury — beginning by only taking exactly what was prescribed. The whole awful situation is told in a way that reminds the reader that these are people’s lives that were destroyed, not some kind of lazy subhumans who deserved their fate.

And yes, by the time I’d listened to all 21 hours of this book, I was glad I did. I ended up having a much higher view of the folks in the communities portrayed, and I was pleased and proud to have spent so much of my time with a kid who got way more than his share of tough breaks in life, but whose heart shines like gold.

barbarakingsolver.net

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Review of Reader, I Murdered Him, by Betsy Cornwell, read by Elisabeth Lagelee

Historical, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Reader, I Murdered Him

by Betsy Cornwell
read by Elisabeth Lagelee

Blackstone Publishing, 2022. 8 hours, 20 minutes.
Review written May 29, 2023, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Oh, I love this book so much!

Mind you, as a teen, I listed Jane Eyre as one of my favorite books. So romantic! But rereading it years later as an adult, I noticed some things that disturbed me about the romance. Retellings, such as the science fiction Brightly Burning or the fantasy My Plain Jane more clearly pointed out some of the problematic details.

But this one! Oh, how it turns the story on its head, but feels so right in doing so.

The viewpoint character of this book is Adele, Mr. Rochester’s ward, the daughter of a dancer and prostitute in Paris. We start with Adele’s happy life in Paris, but then her mother, who is dying of consumption, gives her over to Mr. Rochester to make her English and one day be well cared for.

At Thornfield, Adele meets Bertha, the woman locked in the attic, who sometimes roams the house at night, but learns never to speak of her. And then Jane Eyre comes to Thornfield and into both Mr. Rochester’s and Adele’s lives. She is the closest thing to a mother Adele has had in years, and takes her into her heart. And she begins writing to Mr. Rochester’s 13-year-old cousin in Jamaica to improve her English, and gains a confidant.

After Jane leaves, Adele has a bad experience at a boarding school, but after her return, Jane does the work to find an excellent one for her. There at Webster school most of this book takes place. But at a party, when Adele comes across a man molesting one of her classmates on a balcony, she becomes a murderess. But because a young man speaks up for her, the story that this is an accident takes hold.

And then, through an interesting set of circumstances, when Adele is unsettled by what she’s done and upset by the power of ruthless young men, she makes a connection with a girl of the streets, a pickpocket and thief named Nan. She asks Nan to teach her some skills, and they work together in the style of Robin Hood, giving some of the worst young men their comeuppance, fashioning herself as a protector of her friends at school. And as they are doing that, she falls in love with Nan.

And that takes you quite far into the book, so I’m going to have to stop. But let me say that I completely loved things that happened past that point in the book, how Adele’s story played out, and the further insights we got into the characters we’d met in Jane Eyre.

Yes, there are some sex scenes, and the title itself warns you about the violence. Perhaps I shouldn’t like this book as much as I do?

Here is a happily ever after indeed.

betsycornwell.com

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Review of The Sinister Booksellers of Bath, by Garth Nix

Audiobooks, Historical, Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Sinister Booksellers of Bath

by Garth Nix
read by Marisa Calin

Listening Library, 2023. 9 hours, 49 minutes.
Review written April 10, 2023, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

The Sinister Booksellers of Bath is the sequel to The Left-Handed Booksellers of London (which is the best title ever). I didn’t remember very well what happened in the first book, but was quickly brought up to speed and delighted with this new adventure. Both books feel complete in themselves, which I always appreciate in a series. I’m not sure if there will be more, but I enjoyed the adventures.

Both books are set in an alternate-reality Britain of 1983. In the first book, Susan Arkshaw discovered a force of left-handed and right-handed booksellers who deal with powerful magical entities from the Old World, trying to keep ordinary mortals safe. But Susan discovered she’s not exactly an ordinary mortal.

This book begins as Susan’s friend Merlin (a left-handed bookseller) gets pulled by a magical map into a place outside of our world and our time. Merlin’s sister Vivian (a right-handed bookseller) tells Susan she needs her help, and Susan and Vivian go to get Merlin, using Susan’s power to bring them back to our world.

But that exercise of power stirs up powers in Susan. She starts getting vivid dreams as her powers seem to be awaking. At the same time, the entity who made the original map is now aware of Susan and all signs point to Susan being the target of the next Wild Hunt to happen on the Winter Solstice. All Susan wants is to live an ordinary life as an art student.

It all makes for a fun adventure, complete with magic and danger and surprising characters. This world has shades of Arthurian myth, but has a unique take on magic that makes it not your typical fantasy novel. And the characters are folks I was delighted to spend time with.

garthnix.com

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Review of Freewater, by Amina Luqman-Dawson

Award Winners, Children's Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

Freewater

by Amina Luqman-Dawson

Jimmy Patterson Books (Little, Brown and Company), 2022. 403 pages.
Review written February 2, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review
2023 Newbery Medal Winner
2023 Coretta Scott King Author Award Winner
2022 Cybils Middle Grade Fiction Award Winner

I was lucky and picked up this book at the Chantilly Regional Library immediately after its win of the Newbery Medal was announced, while the library was still closed. To be fair, I was the one who had turned it in at the Chantilly library the week before. I’d had it checked out because it was a Cybils Finalist, but had decided I wouldn’t get around to reading it. I changed my mind! But I also decided that to be fair to all the people wanting to read it, I should read it quickly and return it.

Here’s what the author puts at the front of Freewater:

Some escaped the treacheries of enslavement by going North. But there were also those who ran away to the deep swamps and forests of the American South. There, in secret, they created free lives.

This is a tale of what might have been.

After that, we’re pulled into the action, with dogs chasing a boy named Homer and his 7-year-old sister Ada. Homer is upset with himself because he’d promised to bring his friend Anna with them, and Mama went back for her. But now neither Mama nor Anna is here, and they’re trying to fight off the dogs. But a river is nearby, and Homer and Ada jump into the river.

The river does take them away from the dogs, but it sweeps them downriver into the swamp. After some wandering, a man camouflaged in the trees rescues Homer from a snake. He takes them to some “tree people” — people dressed like trees, camouflaged like trees, who lead them further into the swamp, until they come to the community of Freewater, where an entire community of Black folks have been making their home in the swamp for years.

So this is the story of life in that community. But there’s lots of tension. The master of the plantation is clearing part of the swamp, and plans to hire some militia men to find all the runaways he suspects are living there. At the same time, Homer wants to go back for Mama and Anna. And Sanzi, who was born in Freewater, longs to go outside the community and bring back useful things that will make her a hero — but in her eagerness and impatience, sometimes things go wrong. So the reader worries for the community. Can they continue to live free, in hiding, foraging from the swamp and stealing from plantations?

Things all come together when there’s a big wedding at the plantation Homer escaped from. He thinks that would be the opportunity to help his Mama escape. But when he goes, several children of Freewater insist on going with him, including little Ada. It’s all too easy to imagine disaster happening.

Without telling what happens, it’s dramatic and tension-filled and very satisfying. I finished the book very happy about this year’s Newbery choice.

lbyr.com

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Review of When the Angels Left the Old Country, by Sacha Lamb

Award Winners, Historical, Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

When the Angels Left the Old Country

by Sacha Lamb

Levine Querido, 2022. 400 pages.
Review written February 24, 2023, from a library book
Starred Review
2023 Michael L. Printz Honor
2023 Sidney Taylor Award Winner, Young Adult
2023 Stonewall Book Award Winner, Young Adult

Oh, this is an amazing book. I read it because of the awards it won, and even with my expectations high, I was blown away.

The story tells of an angel and a demon who are leaving a shtetl in Poland and going to America to check on Essie, the granddaughter of a rabbi in their shtetl whose letters haven’t made it back home. But this book is nothing like what I’d expect from that description. Along the way, they encounter various people preying on Jewish immigrants and defend their people.

Along the way, they also befriend Rose, a girl who’s emigrating to America on her own, after her best friend she thought would go with her had the audacity to marry a man. But Rose takes an interest in Essie and her lovely picture.

This book reminded me of the wonderful book The Golem and the Jinni, by Helene Wecker, with some of the same naivete of the angel in dealing with people. At the same time, this book is very different, surprising, and refreshing. It’s the kind of book I couldn’t resist talking about because it so captivated me.

Here’s the first paragraph:

In the back corner of the little synagogue in the shtetl that was so small and out of the way it was only called Shtetl, there was a table where an angel and a demon had been studying Talmud together for some two hundred years. Indeed, they had been studying in that corner since before the little shul was built, and had been rather startled to look up one day and realize an entire building had sprung up around them.

And on the next page:

Little Ash knew hardly any magic and did not even have the wings with which most adult demons fly from place to place. He had made trouble in the demons’ yeshiva, where they learn their magic, and without completing his studies he had been sent to Poland, where he found he liked it better than at home, as in his father’s palace other demons were always treating him like a child and telling him what to do.

The angel had been sent to Shtetl for a purpose it had now forgotten, and had stayed in Shtetl to hinder the mischievous whims of Little Ash. Like Little Ash, it resembled a human youth; unlike Little Ash, who considered himself to be male, the angel had merely chosen the shape of a man for convenience, as angels have done since the time of Abraham, Our Father. It had never had a bar mitzvah, or a bat mitzvah, or any such ceremony at all, and had never bothered to wish for one.

Its name, of course, changed according to the activity in which it was engaged. At the moment, the angel’s name was Argument.

The argument they’re having at the beginning is that they should follow the young people of Shtetl to America. Little Ash convinces the angel by showing it that doing so would be a mitzvah, finding out what happened to Essie.

Much of the book takes place on the way to America, where they encounter the first unscrupulous person and a spirit not at rest. The angel gets a name when the demon makes him papers, and that changes some things about it.

And I don’t need to tell you all that happens. But it’s an imaginative, wonderfully-spun historical novel about an angel and a demon working together to help people who need help, with much danger to themselves along the way.

levinequerido.com

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Review of Horse, by Geraldine Brooks

Audiobooks, Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

Horse

by Geraldine Brooks
read by James Fouhey, Lisa Flanagan, Graham Halstead, Katherine Littrell, and Michael Oblora

Penguin Audio, 2022. 14 hours, 6 minutes.
Review written March 18, 2023, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review

A big thank you to my friend Keith, who persistently recommended this book to me. When he first recommended it, I was reading for the Cybils and didn’t get to it. Then at the start of the year when he said it was the best book he’d read in 2022, I put the audiobook on hold again, and this time when it came in a couple months later, I made a point of listening, and was glad I did.

This book is a rich tapestry. It’s set in 2019 and also in the 1850s. The two viewpoint characters in 2019 are working behind the scenes at the Smithsonian. One of those is an African American grad student writing an article for Smithsonian magazine on restoring a painting he found when his neighbor put it out in the trash. And his dissertation is about the depiction of African Americans in 19th century American equestrian art. Those two things come together.

And along the way he meets Jess, who works behind the scenes at the Smithsonian with animal skeletons. A British researcher has come to examine a particular skeleton, and Jess has to do some research to find it. The label just says “Horse,” but records show it’s the skeleton of Lexington, one of the greatest thoroughbreds of all time.

This book is the story of Lexington. The main viewpoint character from the past is Jarret, an enslaved boy who was present when Lexington was foaled. He manages to stay with Lexington for the horse’s whole life, and this book tells that story, mixed in with the story of restoring the painting and the skeleton in 2019.

The story is wonderfully told. And this audio production, using different readers for all the different viewpoint characters, makes it all the more immersive.

I was very surprised at the end to learn that Lexington was a real horse with an actual stellar career as a racer and as a sire. I had assumed she’d have to make up a fictional horse. His skeleton actually did spend time in the Smithsonian labeled as “Horse.” Most of the historical characters were real people, but the author brought them to life through the eyes of Jarret, the African American groom who loved him and knew him best. Jarret’s life is the fictional part, though with enough plausibility, you can tell yourself this is what really happened.

As she says in the afterword, because African Americans were so crucial to American racing in the nineteenth century, her story of a racehorse had to become a story of race. I have to say that I completely hated some things that happened toward the end of the book, though I see why she put them in. But I sure would have liked the story to go a different way. However, even with that reservation, this was an amazing book that I won’t forget any time soon.

geraldinebrooks.com

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Review of From the Tops of the Trees, by Kao Kalia Yang, illustrated by Rachel Wada

Award Winners, Historical, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

From the Tops of the Trees

by Kao Kalia Yang
illustrated by Rachel Wada

Carolrhoda Books, 2021. 32 pages.
Review written 2/3/2023, from a library book.
Starred Review
2023 Asian/Pacific American Literature Award Winner, Picture Books

I’m so glad I checked out award winners and found this book. Kao Kalia Yang has taken an incident from when she was a small child in a refugee camp on the border of Thailand and has made a beautiful picture book from it, assisted by the wonderful paintings of Rachel Wada.

Since Kalia was small and didn’t remember anything but living in a refugee camp, she asked her father if the whole world is a refugee camp. He told her No, but wasn’t able to explain what the wide world is like.

So one day, he had her mother dress her up in her good clothes, and he climbed with her on his back to the top of a tree. From there, she could see far beyond the refugee camp. Her mother took a picture of them.

“Father, the world is so big,” I say.

My father answers, “Yes, it is.” He says softly, “One day my little girl will journey far into the world, to the places her father has never been.”

My father tells me to smile at the camera, but I can’t because I now know that the world is bigger than anything I had imagined. My little legs will have to carry me far.

I love that the Author’s Note at the back includes the photograph that inspired the story.

kaokaliayang.com
rachelwada.com
lernerbooks.com

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