Review of The Dreamer, by Pam Munoz Ryan

Children's Fiction Review, Historical, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

The Dreamer

by Pam Munoz Ryan

drawings by Peter Sis

Scholastic Press, New York, 2010. 372 pages.
Starred Review
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010: #5 Children’s Fiction
2011 Pura Belpre Author Award
2010 Boston Globe-Horn Book Fiction Honor Book

I loved this book. I had hoped it would be a Newbery Honor Book, but can’t really complain because of the other awards it won. One thing I like about the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award is that they select based on the entire book, words and illustrations together and give the award to both the author and the illustrator, if both contributed to the complete book. In this book, the drawings work beautifully with the text to present a wonderfully poetical story.

This book is a novelization of the childhood of Pablo Neruda, who ended up being a great poet. Pablo Neruda was not his birth name, and we start out the book with a boy named Neftali, whose father thinks he daydreams far too much.

“On a continent of many songs, in a country shaped like the arm of a tall guitarrista, the rain drummed down on the town of Temuco.

“Neftali Reyes sat in his bed, propped up by pillows, and stared at the schoolwork in front of him. His teacher called it simple addition, but it was never simple for him. How he wished the numbers would disappear! He squeezed his eyes closed and then opened them.

“The twos and threes lifted from the page and waved for the others to join them. The fives and sevens sprang upward, and finally, after much prodding, the fours, ones, and sixes came along. But the nines and zeros would not budge, so the others left them. They held hands in a long procession of tiny figures, flew across the room, and escaped through the window crack. Neftali closed the book and smiled.

“He certainly could not be expected to finish his homework with only the lazy zeros and nines lolling on the page.”

Neftali is weak and shy. He stutters. His father is demanding and believes its shameful to spend your time daydreaming or writing.

The style of this book suits the subject. The language is poetical, and inserts some lines from actual poems by Pablo Neruda (with several complete poems at the back). When telling about his daydreams, the text may take on a shape or there may be an imaginative drawing from Peter Sis.

There is a plot, as Neftali learns to be the poet he was born to be, despite his father. But I think daydreamers will most enjoy the languid beauty of this book. It gives a leisurely and lovely look at the imaginative life of a child who notices things. Like me, readers will certainly want to read more of Pablo Neruda’s poetry.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/dreamer.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 copy I got at ALA Annual Conference.

Review of Forge, by Laurie Halse Anderson

Children's Fiction Review, Historical, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

Forge

by Laurie Halse Anderson

Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2010. 292 pages.
Starred Review
2010 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #6 Children’s Fiction

Curzon is a slave who has just escaped as this book opens. But unfortunately he soon finds himself hiding in a ravine right in the middle of a Revolutionary War battle. Instead of staying nicely hidden, he intervenes when a redcoat is about to kill a young Patriot soldier. One thing leads to another, and he finds himself enlisting as a Patriot soldier, claiming to be free.

The army ends up wintering in Valley Forge. Curzon is in a company with the boy whose life he saved, and he gains friends and enemies among them. Readers get a fresh view of the deprivations the army suffered at Valley Forge, and will feel like now they really know what it was like.

However, things change for Curzon when his former master shows up.

I already knew that Laurie Halse Anderson is an outstanding author from having read Speak. So I wasn’t surprised at how well she crafted this book. It’s a gripping story and gives you fresh insight into the Revolutionary War.

The only drawback for me was that having recently read The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, I felt like I’d already read the definitive story of a black soldier during the Revolutionary War, and I wasn’t really ready to read about more suffering. Now, mind you, Forge is for a younger audience. The story is simpler (though still complex — it’s easy to be simpler than Octavian Nothing) and the book is wonderfully well-crafted. In a lot of ways I enjoyed Forge more. It’s definitely a different story, since Octavian fought on the British side. It was things like when people got sick, I found myself cringing and bracing myself for the kind of epidemics I read about in the other book. (They didn’t happen.)

Forge is a sequel to Chains, but I hadn’t read the first book and followed this one just fine. It did make me want to read Chains, though, and read more about Curzon and his friend Isabel.

I was thinking about my knowledge of History today and realized that I have a much more clear understanding of parts of history that I have read in novel form. And now my ideas about Valley Forge, combined with having visited the site, are much more memorable and vivid than they ever were before.

Compelling historical fiction from a masterful writer.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/forge.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 the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of A Brief History of Montmaray

Adventure, Historical, Stand-outs, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

A Brief History of Montmaray

by Michelle Cooper

Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2010. 296 pages.
Starred Review
2010 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #3 Other Teen Fiction

With a lonely castle on the front, I expected some kind of medieval romance, but that’s not what I got at all. Instead, I found a historical adventure, with suspense and mystery and danger, and some teens needing to be resourceful.

The book is the diary of Sophia Margaret Elizabeth Jane Clementine FitzOsborne, princess of Montmaray, begun on her sixteenth birthday, as World War II was brewing in Europe.

Montmaray is a fictional island in the Bay of Biscay, off the coasts of Spain, France, and the United Kingdom. Sophia’s Uncle John is king of the island nation — but he is, frankly, insane. Her older brother Toby, the heir to the throne, is going to school in England. She has an older cousin Veronica, and a ten-year-old sister Henry who wishes she were a boy. Their parents are dead, and they live in the castle with the housekeeper tending to their Uncle John.

There aren’t many villagers left on Montmaray, and they don’t have ships come by terribly often. They still try to keep up the trappings of royalty, but Sophia’s aunt wants her to come to England. If she did, who would watch things at Montmaray? But then when some Germans show up, Sophia wants to find out what they’re looking for. And if they don’t find it, what can the royal family do to defend themselves?

It’s very hard to explain this book. I’d heard it described as a romance, which doesn’t really fit, even though Sophia does talk about her crush on the housekeeper’s son. But there’s a lot more here than that. It’s a historical novel that feels real and draws you in. It gives us a delightfully unorthodox situation, quirky and fascinating characters, and a situation that seems all too real. What would you do if you were alone in the middle of the ocean with a kingdom everyone is leaving? When a war begins in Europe, would you be able to keep from taking sides? What if the larger countries don’t care which side you take?

One thing I can tell you about this book: It’s a good read! I highly recommend it.

Wonderful! Looking up the links to this book on Amazon, I just learned that a sequel is coming out in April 2011: The FitzOsbornes in Exile! Huzzah!

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/montmaray.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 the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of House of Dead Maids, by Clare B. Dunkle

Fantasy, Historical, Starred Review, Suspense, Teen Fiction Review 0

House of Dead Maids

by Clare B. Dunkle

Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, 2010. 146 pages.
Starred Review

I’ve never liked ghost stories. Too much imagination, I think. So I wasn’t planning to pick up this particular Advanced Review Copy at ALA Annual Conference — until I saw the author’s name, and then I snatched it up.

I consider Clare Dunkle a friend. We met when we both lived in Germany, after I raved about her first book, The Hollow Kingdom, on my blog right before she was doing a book signing at the local BX. We met up a few times after that, and I got to know her and like her. And her books continue to be fabulous. Here are my reviews of Close Kin, In the Coils of the Snake, By These Ten Bones, and The Sky Inside.

I still put off reading it, since the creepy cover freaked me out. (Though I’m sure it will entice many teen readers who come to the library looking for “scary” books.) But then I learned that Clare was doing a Blog Tour and asked her to include my site. So on October 14, 2010, I’m posting my first Author Interview! Her answers to my questions turned out to be fascinating, so I’m excited about it.

I read the book surrounded by people on a jet with my reading light firmly ON. I was coming back from the Horn Book at Simmons Colloquium in Boston. I had decided against reading it alone in my hotel room in a strange city! That was a good choice, because the book is definitely creepy. But it’s intriguing, and definitely got me hooked.

The House of Dead Maids is a prequel to Wuthering Heights. Now, believe it or not, I’ve never read Wuthering Heights. I had meant to, and even bought a paperback copy. I think I decided not to after all when my German landlady mentioned that she had to read it in her English class, and she thought it was awful. She asked why anyone would want to read such a horrible story. So I put it a little further on the back burner.

Clare assured me that I could read The House of Dead Maids before reading Wuthering Heights, and she’d expressed that she was hoping her book would get more readers for the classic novel. I do intend to finally read Wuthering Heights now and see what I think. I did read Jane Eyre long ago and completely fell in love with it. Reading The House of Dead Maids, Clare Dunkle completely succeeded in creating a voice that reminded me of Jane Eyre. She says she was trying to write like the Brontes, and I think she did. The voice pulled me into that world and that kind of mindset.

As always, Clare’s writing feels like it was actually written at the time — which makes you believe all the more that the supernatural happenings “really” happened. In this case, she wove in superstitions and rituals of the time for a terribly creepy tale.

Tabby Ackroyd is the narrator, an orphan taken to serve at a creepy mansion. She is given charge of a wild young boy who claims to be master of the house. Tabby doesn’t know what happened to the orphan who went there to serve before her. But then she sees ghosts all over the house and grounds. It turns out they were both brought there for a sinister purpose.

I like the way Tabby Ackroyd turns out to be the housekeeper of the Bronte sisters. I found it quite plausible that she told the girls, who loved ghost stories, this tale of a wild boy who wanted to be master. It was left for them to tell what became of him….

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/house_of_dead_maids.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 Edition picked up at ALA.

Review of The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, by Alan Bradley

Fiction Review, Historical, Mystery, Starred Review 0

The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag

by Alan Bradley

Delacorte Press, New York, 2010. 364 pages.
Starred Review

Flavia de Luce, appearing in her second adventure, has got to be one of the most memorable and captivating fictional sleuths ever created. Flavia is eleven years old, living at Buckshaw, outside the village of Bishop’s Lacey, having the run of the place on her bicycle named Gladys. She lives with her distracted father, an avid stamp collector, and her two sisters, who torment and are tormented by her.

Flavia has a passion for poisons. She inherited her great uncle’s chemistry lab, and has an exhaustive knowledge of chemicals. Because she’s eleven years old, people don’t realize how much she knows and deduces.

In The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, a BBC puppeteer show has his van break down in Bishop’s Lacey. When the puppeteer is electrocuted during his performance for the village, Flavia does some digging and discovers a connection with a long-ago hanging of a little boy from the village.

The fun of this book, like the earlier The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, is the irrepressible character of Flavia. Add to that a fairly intricate and interesting mystery, with chemical details thrown in (I took Flavia’s word for the truth of those parts.), and you’ve got an enchanting book that makes for captivating reading.

“There’s something about pottering with poisons that clarifies the mind. When the slightest slip of the hand could prove fatal, one’s attention is forced to focus like a burning-glass upon the experiment, and it is then that the answers to half-formed questions so often come swarming to mind as readily as bees coming home to the hive.”

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/weed_that_strings.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 the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of One Crazy Summer, by Rita Williams-Garcia

Children's Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

One Crazy Summer

by Rita Williams-Garcia

Amistad (HarperCollins), 2010. 218 pages.
Starred Review

Delphine is looking after her sisters as they make their way on an airplane ride across the country to see their mother who abandoned them when Delphine was four years old.

“All the way to the airport, Pa had tried to act like he was dropping off three sacks of wash at the Laundromat. I’d seen through Pa. He’s no Vonetta, putting on performances. He has only one or two faces, nothing hidden, nothing exaggerated. Even though it had been his idea that we fly out to Oakland to see Cecile, Pa’d never once said how exciting our trip would be. He just said that seeing Cecile was something whose time had come. That it had to be done. Just because he decided it was time for us to see her didn’t mean he wanted us to go.

“My sisters and I had stayed up practically all night California dreaming about what seemed like the other side of the world. We saw ourselves riding wild waves on surfboards, picking oranges and apples off fruit trees, filling our autograph books with signatures from movie stars we’d see in soda shops. Even better, we saw ourselves going to Disneyland.”

Rita Williams-Garcia had me hooked right there, because I remembered when I was a bit younger than eleven-year-old Delphine when we moved to California in 1970 (two years later than this story is set), and the number one thing I was excited about was going to Disneyland.

I eventually had my dream come true, but not Delphine. Her mother lives in Oakland, far north of Disneyland, and she keeps saying that she didn’t send for them.

Delphine quickly figures out some things.

“I didn’t want to say Big Ma was right. Cecile was no kind of mother. Cecile didn’t want us. Cecile was crazy. I didn’t have to.”

Delphine still needs to look after her sisters, because Cecile is not doing it. As the third of thirteen siblings, my heart went out to her. It wrenches my heart to hear of kids being forced to take on the responsibilities of a parent when they should just be a kid.

But this book goes farther than that, goes much deeper than three kids with a neglectful mother. Cecile is a poet, and the Black Panthers are using her printing press. She doesn’t want to be disturbed by Delphine, Vonetta and Fern during the day, so she sends them to People’s Center to get breakfast and then stay for the program. The People’s Center is run by the Black Panthers.

So begins Delphine’s crazy summer. She’s in California, finding out what her crazy mother is really like, and looking after her little sisters. I like the way Rita Williams-Garcia shows each girl’s personality by their actions and words. Delphine is steady and reliable. Vonetta always wants to be the center of attention. And little Fern always holds onto her beloved Miss Patty Cake and observes the world. But what will happen to them if they stay involved with the Black Panthers and the rally they’re planning?

This novel is richly woven, warm and deep. We get a rich perspective on California in the late sixties, from the perspective of three colored girls. Delphine’s worried about the militancy of the Black Panthers. But on the other hand, she and her sisters count the number of colored people on television and don’t come up with much. They see people staring at them, expecting trouble. They are fascinated by Hirohito, a boy at the center whose father was arrested when the police burst into his family’s home. They begin to adopt the slogans they are taught, “Power to the People.”

I hope this book gets some Newbery attention this year. It’s got all the hallmarks of a winner: A powerful story; round, believable characters we come to love; insight into a period of history from a perspective we probably haven’t heard before; expert and beautiful use of language; consistent and distinct ways of talking that help us understand each character as an individual; and (my favorite) a story that leaves you warmed and smiling, with deepened understanding and with things to think about. This is a book that will stick with you.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/one_crazy_summer.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 the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Crossing Stones, by Helen Frost

Historical, Poetry, Teen Fiction Review 0

Crossing Stones

by Helen Frost

Frances Foster Books (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), New York, 2009. 184 pages.

Crossing Stones is a novel in verse about two families who live across a creek from each other during World War I. The book is masterfully and beautifully written. Unfortunately, I’m not a big fan of verse novels. Just hearing the thoughts of the characters from the start, it’s harder for me to picture the characters and the setting. Still, once I got going, I found this to be a powerful and moving story.

Both the families that live across the creek have a brother and a sister. Frank and Emma live on one side, and Ollie and Muriel live on the other. Frank loves Muriel, and Ollie loves Emma, but when World War I starts, Frank goes off to war, and Ollie soon follows, even though he’s only sixteen.

Muriel’s not a fan of the war, like her Aunt Vera, a suffragette. But not being happy about the war is considered unpatriotic, and women are told their place is in the home.

This book includes war, the flu epidemic, the battle for women’s rights, and the day-to-day struggles of farm chores that must go on even when the men and boys have gone to war.

I should have heeded the advice of our local Kidlit Book Club leader and read the “Notes on the Form” at the back of the book first. Helen Frost did something innovative and symbolic. She writes the poems in the voices of Muriel, Emma, and Ollie. Muriel’s poems are written in free style, in the shape of a rushing creek “flowing over the stones as it pushes against its banks” just as Muriel is pushing against the constraints of her society and time.

Emma’s and Ollie’s poems are written to make the shapes of stones. The author explains:

“I ‘painted’ them to look round and smooth, each with a slightly different shape, like real stones. They are ‘cupped-hand sonnets,’ fourteen-line poems in which the first line rhymes with the last line, the second line rhymes with the second-to-last, and so on, so that the seventh and eight lines rhyme with each other at the poem’s center. In Ollie’s poems the rhymes are the beginning words of each line, and in Emma’s poems they are the end words.”

The rhymes are so unforced, I didn’t notice them at all until I read the note at the back. I was impressed when I looked back and found the rhymes, but wish I had noticed from the beginning. Helen Frost also tells us:

“To give the sense of stepping from one stone to the next, I have used the middle rhyme of one sonnet as the outside rhyme of the next. You will see that the seventh and eight lines of each of Emma’s poems rhyme with the first and last lines of Ollie’s next poem, and the seventh and eighth lines of Ollie’s poems rhyme with the first and last lines of Emma’s next poem. If you have trouble finding these rhymes, remember to look on the left side of Ollie’s poems, and on the right side of Emma’s.”

So besides writing a moving story of World War I, Helen Frost has also pulled off an impressive technical achievement.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/crossing_stones.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 the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of A Conspiracy of Kings, by Megan Whalen Turner

Adventure, Alternate History, Fantasy, Historical, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

A Conspiracy of Kings

by Megan Whalen Turner

Greenwillow Books, 2010. 316 pages.
Starred Review.

I’ve been waiting eagerly for this book, the fourth about The Thief Eugenides. When it did arrive last week, sure enough, I didn’t stop reading until I finished, even though that severely cut into my time to sleep. I will probably reread it soon to savor it more slowly and catch the things I missed that I’m sure Megan Whalen Turner inserted all along. She has a way of writing books that get richer every time you read them.

Again, I can’t say too much about the plot, because I don’t want to give away all that happens in the earlier books. This definitely is a book you would enjoy more if you read the earlier books first. Or at least you’ll definitely enjoy the earlier books more, because this book refers back to almost every surprising plot point in The Thief and The Queen of Attolia.

I was fully expecting to be championing this book for this year’s Newbery Medal, but now that I’ve read it, I think it’s probably not enough of a stand-alone story to win. However, rabid fans of the earlier books (like me) will gobble it up and be excited that she’s definitely setting the stage for further exciting drama and conflict with the Medes. I strongly suspect that Eugenides will be up to some further scheming in future books, and I only wish that Megan Whalen Turner could write such brilliant books just a little bit faster!

I like that this book featured our old friend Sophos from the first book, The Thief. In A Conspiracy of Kings, Sophos must grow into his heritage. He’s the heir to the throne of Sounis, but the book starts with his kidnapping. There are powerful people who would like to make him a puppet king with the Medes pulling the strings. Can Sophos find a way to escape that fate? Can someone who preferred poetry to swordplay and who blushes easily and can’t lie convincingly seize and hold a kingdom?

In the first chapter, Sophos writes:

“I was crossing the courtyard of the villa, and it was as if one of Terve’s lessons had come to life. He may as well have been there, shouting, ‘You are suddenly attacked by fifteen men; what are you going to do?’ Only they weren’t a product of Terve’s imagination; they were real men, cutting down the guards at the front gate and streaming into the courtyard of the villa.”

If you haven’t yet read these books, full of adventure, danger, plots and counterplots, and wonderfully flawed heroes and heroines — order a copy of The Thief right away and get started!

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

Review of Mare’s War, by Tanita S. Davis

Award Winners, Contemporary, Historical, Teen Fiction Review 0

Mare’s War

by Tanita S. Davis

Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2009. 341 pages.
A 2010 Coretta Scott King Honor Book

I’ve always enjoyed books about teens driving with an elderly relative or acquaintance and being changed by the experience. Some notable examples are Rules of the Road, by Joan Bauer, Hit the Road, by Caroline B. Cooney, and Walk Two Moons, by Sharon Creech.

Mare’s War is along those lines. Octavia and her older sister Tali have been ordered to spend their summer vacation driving across the country with their grandmother, Mare, to go to a reunion in Alabama. Along the way, Mare tells them about her days as a member of the Women’s Army Corps during World War II.

I didn’t think Mare’s War was as powerful as the other books I’ve mentioned in the driving-with-the-elderly genre. In the first place, Mare’s story was told in separate chapters, as she experienced it at the time, not in the actual words she would have used to tell her granddaughters. And although the girls were interested in her story, they weren’t significantly changed by it. The book felt on the long side, because they were taking a leisurely road trip juxtaposed with Mare just getting through the war, so the plot had no sense of urgency.

However, Mare’s story was fascinating, so I still enjoyed the book very much. I had no idea that a company of black women served in the US Army overseas during World War II. I thought Tanita Davis did a great job expressing what that must have been like for those women.

The girls do gain a new appreciation for their grandmother, and the reader does, too. We definitely root for her as she experiences things completely new, learns how capable she truly is, and forms friendships she can count on forever.

This book shines a light on a piece of history I never thought about before, and tells a good story at the same time.

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

And the Rest…

Adventure, Award Winners, Children's Fiction Review, Christian, Classics, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Historical, Mystery, Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Teen Fiction Review, Writing 0

At the start of 2010, I had 43 books I’d read in 2009 that I wanted to review. I’ve been madly writing reviews, without posting them to my main site, waiting until I’ve caught up. I have eight books left from 2009. They were all very good, and worth mentioning, but in the interests of time, I’m only going to mention them with a short blurb in this post, and not give them a full page on my main site.

Once I finish them, I have another stack of seven books that I finished reading already in 2010. After I have caught up on writing those reviews, I hope to post all of the new reviews to www.sonderbooks.com. So here goes!

Children’s Fiction

These first three books I read as part of my class on the Newbery Medal. They are all historical novels, set in medieval times, and all well-written though just a tad old-fashioned. As Newbery Medal winners, you will be able to find more information about them than these reviews.

The Trumpeter of Krakow
by Eric P. Kelly

Scholastic, 1990. First published in 1928. 242 pages.
1929 Newbery Medal Winner.

Here’s a tale of intrigue and danger set in old Krakow. There are some strange sections about alchemy, and you can tell if someone is bad or good based on how they look, but despite its old-fashioned feel, this book still is very interesting. It’s almost more for teens, because the language is at a high reading level, and the main character is almost grown up, but he is still treated like a child, so the book has the feel of a children’s book.

Fifteen-year-old Joseph Charnetski and his family are fleeing to Krakow. As they almost reach the city gates, someone shows interest in an especially large pumpkin, which his father is not willing to sell.

They use an assumed name and find a hiding place in the city, near an old scholar and his daughter. Joseph’s father takes a job as the city trumpeter. The trumpeter is also the watchman, tasked to raise the alarm if there is a fire in the city. They never play the last three notes of the trumpet call in honor of an old trumpeter who gave his life keeping the call going during an invasion.

Joseph learns the call as well as his father, and as danger approaches, he finds a clever way to raise the alarm.

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Adam of the Road
by Elizabeth Janet Gray

Scholastic. First published in 1942. 320 pages.
1943 Newbery Medal Winner.

Adam of the Road is the story of a minstrel’s son in medieval England. The book starts out at school, with Adam waiting for his father to pick him up after some time apart, to go to London and back on the road. Adam has gained a beloved dog, Nick, who can do tricks and help with their act.

Along the way, a sinister rival minstrel steals Nick. As Adam’s chasing after him, he loses track of his father. He ends up wandering across England on his own, trying to find his father and his dog, and having various adventures along the way.

This is a good story that has stood the test of time. Adam is awfully young to be on his own, but people are kind to him, and he cleverly makes his way, never in real danger. A light-hearted and enjoyable adventure tale for kids interested in medieval times.

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The Door in the Wall
by Marguerite de Angeli

Yearling Newbery (Bantam Doubleday Dell), 1990. First published in 1949. 121 pages.
1950 Newbery Medal Winner.

The Door in the Wall is another story of a boy on his own in medieval times. Robin’s father went off to the wars, expecting his son to go train to be a knight. His mother went to be the Queen’s lady-in-waiting, expecting John-the-Fletcher to come soon to take him to Sir Peter de Lindsay, to train as a knight.

But Robin gets sick, and when John-the-Fletcher comes, he is not able to go along. For a month he is bedridden, unable to move his legs. He is lame and will never be a knight now.

Some monks take Robin under their wing. They help him learn to swim, to strengthen his arms, and eventually to walk with a crutch. They take him on a journey to meet his father, and they have adventures along the way. By the end of the book, only Robin is able to get a message out and save an entire castle.

This book is shorter than the others. It’s a fairly simple story, but interesting with the medieval setting and inspiring as Robin overcomes his handicap, and learns that his life still has significance.

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Teens

Growing Wings
by Laurel Winter

Firebird (Penguin Putnam), 2000. 195 pages.

All her life, Linnet’s mother has touched Linnet’s shoulder blades before she tucks Linnet into bed. One day, when she’s eleven, Linnet learns why. She’s itching horribly, and she has strange bumps on her shoulders.

Linnet’s mother assures her she doesn’t have cancer. She is growing wings. Linnet’s mother also grew wings when she was Linnet’s age, but her mother cut them off. Linnet’s mother is determined not to do that to Linnet, but she doesn’t know what to do to hide them.

Linnet finds a community of others with wings, living in a house in the wilderness. Some adults who are “cutwings” are in charge. So far, none of the teens with wings have been able to fly. They are trying to learn, but also to stay hidden.

This is an intriguing story, with plenty of conflict in the community of winged children. Linnet explores her heritage and wonders what she can make of her life. Will she have to spend her whole life in hiding?

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Fiction

Miss Zukas and the Island Murders
by Jo Dereske

Avon Books (HarperCollins), 1995. 258 pages.

This is the second mystery about Miss Zukas, librarian extraordinaire. In this book, Miss Zukas and her exotic friend Ruth arrange a twenty-year reunion on an island in Puget Sound for their high school class from Michigan.

While they’re preparing, she gets threatening letters that refer to the long-ago death of one of their classmates. Once they’re on the island, naturally a storm strikes, isolating them, and a murder occurs. Can they solve the murder and keep from getting killed themselves?

This is a fun mystery. Miss Zukas’s librarian nature didn’t come up as much in this book as in the first one, and I felt that she leapt to conclusions without a lot of reasons. But she’s an entertaining character to read about. Gotta love a librarian detective!

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Nonfiction

Gratitude
A Way of Life
by Louise L. Hay and Friends
compiled and edited by Jill Kramer

Hay House, 1996. 312 pages.

This book is full of essays about gratitude, written by many notable people. How can you possibly go wrong? I went for quite awhile, reading one essay per day. It’s a nice way to put your day on track.

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The Bait of Satan
Living Free from the Deadly Trap of Offense
by John Bevere

Charisma House, 2004. First published in 1994. 255 pages.

In this book, John Bevere teaches that Satan’s biggest trap is taking offense. What’s more, you feel justified and in the right!

“Pride causes you to view yourself as a victim. Your attitude becomes, ‘I was mistreated and misjudged; therefore, I am justified in my behavior.’ Because you believe you are innocent and falsely accused, you hold back forgiveness. Though your true heart condition is hidden from you, it is not hidden from God. Just because you were mistreated, you do not have permission to hold on to an offense. Two wrongs do not make a right!”

This book looks at many different ways the devil deceives us into taking offense, and encourages you in many different ways to overcome and find forgiveness. A valuable, helpful book.

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Write Is a Verb
Sit Down. Start Writing. No Excuses.
by Bill O’Hanlon

Writer’s Digest Books, 2007. 212 pages. DVD included.

This is a book about getting it together and actually writing. I read it after I had already made and was keeping a resolution to write at least fifteen minutes per day, every day, so this book only reinforced what I had already determined to do.

If you want to write, and are having trouble motivating yourself, this book has some great ways to think through your motivation and ideas for marketing yourself. Think of this as a great pep talk, complete with a DVD so you can see and hear an additional pep talk.

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