Review of The Witch of Blackbird Pond

Classics, Historical, Old Favorites, Stand-outs, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Witch of Blackbird Pond

by Elizabeth George Speare

Laurel-Leaf Books, 1993. First published in 1958. 224 pages.
Winner of the 1959 Newbery Medal.
Starred Review.
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010: Wonderful Rereads

When I took a class on the Newbery Medal, some of my classmates got to talking about The Witch of Blackbird Pond, and I found I simply couldn’t resist rereading it, even though for the class I was reading winners that I’d never read before.

Kit grew up in the West Indies, on her grandfather’s plantation. She wore fashionable clothes in bright colors, went swimming in the warm water, and took slaves for granted.

Her grandfather dies, leaving debts that an old widower will help her clear up, if she marries him. So Kit flees to the Massachusetts colony, to her mother’s sister, who married a Puritan long ago.

To say that Kit doesn’t fit in among the Puritans is an understatement. She tries to help in her aunt’s household, but it takes her time to get used to the tasks. She finds a friend in Hannah, an old woman living out by Blackbird Pond, a Quaker who’s rumored to be a witch, but whom Kit finds to be loving and kind.

There’s all kinds of drama in this story. It’s a testament to its power that most of us in the Newbery class were most enthusiastic about the romance, but one participant, who had read the book when she was younger, in elementary school, hadn’t even noticed the romance. She loved the book because of the drama of Kit trying to fit in and being accused of witchcraft.

The book takes place shortly before the American Revolution, so you also have good historical background. Of course, that’s more conflict for Kit, since she and her grandfather were Royalists, but the Massachusetts colony is talking about rebellion.

This is truly a wonderful book worth reading over and over again. It stands the test of time and spans almost all age levels.

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Review of The Rebel Princess, by Judith Koll Healey

Adventure, Fiction Review, Historical 0

The Rebel Princess

A Novel of Suspense

by Judith Koll Healey

William Morrow (HarperCollins), 2009. 365 pages.

I enjoyed Judith Koll Healey’s earlier novel, The Canterbury Papers, so much, I made sure to preorder this one on Amazon so I could read it as soon as it was published. Although I did enjoy it, I wasn’t as thoroughly captivated as with the earlier book.

In The Canterbury Papers Princess Alaïs, daughter of Louis VII, gets in deadly peril and falls in love. In The Rebel Princess, she has a disagreement with her beloved. He wants her to stay safe while he rescues her son, who doesn’t yet know he is her son. But Alaïs gets new information and is convinced her son’s life is in danger, and she must go save him.

Thus, the story isn’t such lovely romance as the earlier book. Alaïs again gets in deadly peril with court intrigue, but I felt that some of her conclusions fell into her lap, following her intuition rather than cleverness.

Still, this is another gripping adventure tale, and fans of medieval historical fiction will enjoy it.

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Review of Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, by Gary D. Schmidt

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

Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy

by Gary D. Schmidt

Clarion Books, New York, 2004. 219 pages.
2005 Newbery Honor Book.
2005 Printz Honor Book.
Starred Review
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010: #4 Other Teen Fiction

I read this book as one of my assignments for the class I took on the Newbery Medal. I’m afraid I would have liked it better if I hadn’t just read Kira-Kira, the Newbery Medal winner for 2005. I was ready for something cheerier. An awful lot of people die in this book! So it, too, is better if you want a book that makes you cry.

However, this is a truly wonderful book. Well-crafted, with characters that come alive and plenty of humor mixed through the tragedy. There’s some injustice that doesn’t get righted, but many eyes are opened, and the story is satisfying and uplifting.

“Turner Buckminster had lived in Phippsburg, Maine, for fifteen minutes shy of six hours. He had dipped his hand in its waves and licked the salt from his fingers. He had smelled the sharp resin of the pines. He had heard the low rhythm of the bells oon the buoys that balanced on the ridges of the sea. He had seen the fine clapboard parsonage behind the church where he was to live, and the small house set a ways beyond it that puzzled him some.

“Turner Buckminster had lived in Phippsburg, Maine, for almost six whole hours.

“He didn’t know how much longer he could stand it.”

Turner is the new minister’s son. There’s a lot of pressure on the minister’s son in Phippsburg, Maine, in the early 1900s. Turner would like to light out to the Territories, to somehow escape. He doesn’t play baseball like they do. He can’t jump off the cliff like they do. He gets picked on by the other kids. He gets criticized by the older people. It seems he can’t win, can’t fit in, can’t find a friend.

And then he meets Lizzie Bright Griffin.

Lizzie is the Preacher’s granddaughter from the community of colored people who live on Malaga Island. Turner meets her down by the shore when he was trying to be alone, practicing hitting a baseball.

Lizzie teaches him how to hit the ball every time. They dig clams together. They become friends. Lizzie even takes him out to Malaga Island.

But people in his father’s congregation don’t approve. They want to develop tourism in Phippsburg and feel the community on the island is an eyesore and needs to go.

The plot is much more intricate than this summary suggests. Turner makes an interesting friend out of an old lady who disapproved of him at the beginning, and she meets Lizzie, too. Meanwhile, he’s trying to gain his father’s approval, yet he can’t seem to stay away from Lizzie Bright.

This book will stick with you long after you finish it.

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Review of Kira-Kira, by Cynthia Kadohata

Historical, Teen Fiction Review 0

Kira-Kira

by Cynthia Kadohata

Atheneum Books for Young Readers, New York, 2004. 244 pages.
2005 Newbery Award Winner.

“My sister, Lynn, taught me my first word: kira-kira. I pronounced it ka-a-ahhh, but she knew what I meant. Kira-kira means ‘glittering’ in Japanese. Lynn told me that when I was a baby, she used to take me onto our empty road at night, where we would lie on our backs and look at the stars while she said over and over, ‘Katie, say “kira-kira, kira-kira.”‘ I loved that word! When I grew older, I used kira-kira to describe everything I liked: the beautiful blue sky, puppies, kittens, butterflies, colored Kleenex.

“My mother said we were misusing the word; you could not call a Kleenex kira-kira. She was dismayed over how un-Japanese we were and vowed to send us to Japan one day. I didn’t care where she sent me, so long as Lynn came along.”

Kira-Kira is a beautiful story about a struggling immigrant family in 1950s America. But even more, it is about two sisters, one of whom gets a long, slow disease. They grow up together, with the mix of conflict and love that sisters have, while their parents struggle to make a home for them in America.

This is a very sad story, but it also glitters with hope. Good reading for those who enjoy a book that makes them cry.

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Review of La’s Orchestra Saves the World, by Alexander McCall Smith

Fiction Review, Historical 0

las_orchestraLa’s Orchestra Saves the World

by Alexander McCall Smith

Pantheon Books, New York, 2008. 294 pages.

Alexander McCall Smith is good at writing about ordinary people living radiant lives. La’s Orchestra Saves the World is a stand-alone book, not part of one of his other series. It tells the story of La (short for Lavender), an ordinary woman who moved to the country at the start of World War II.

La contributes to the war effort in a small, ordinary way by growing a garden and looking after a farmer’s hens. She meets interesting people, including a Pole who has lost sight in one eye and can’t fight any longer. And she starts an orchestra.

This is a quiet, pleasant book, a little bittersweet. It tells about ordinary people living in extraordinary times and trying to make a difference in their own small ways.

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Review of A Christmas Promise, by Anne Perry

Christmas, Fiction Review, Historical, Mystery 0

christmas_promiseA Christmas Promise

by Anne Perry

Ballantine Books, New York, 2009. 193 pages.

There’s nothing like a cozy Christmas murder mystery to put me in the mood for the holiday!

Seriously, I’ve come to enjoy Anne Perry’s Christmas offerings. They are short and quick to read. They have just a hint of sweetness, but no overt sentimentality, and enough tension and mystery to provide a puzzle and a sense of relief when the danger is past.

Two poor girls in Victorian England are the focus of A Christmas Promise. Thirteen-year-old Gracie Phipps comes across little eight-year-old Minnie Maude, looking for Charlie, her Uncle Alf’s donkey. Minnie Maude insists that her uncle was murdered, and that Charlie must be lost and frightened because he didn’t come home.

Gracie’s compassion for the little girl quickly gets her involved. But what can two girls do if Uncle Alf was murdered?

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Review of Al Capone Does My Shirts, by Gennifer Choldenko

Children's Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

al_capone_does_my_shirtsAl Capone Does My Shirts,

by Gennifer Choldenko

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 2004. 225 pages.
2005 Newbery Honor Book
Starred Review

I had meant to read this book for a very long time, since my sister was working as a park ranger at Alcatraz when the book was published, so I have an extra fondness and interest in the island. I still haven’t ever been there myself, but superimposed her stories of camping out on the island with what was in this book, and, well, I have to visit some time! (Wendy, have you read this book yet? What do you think of it? Please comment!)

I finally got Al Capone Does My Shirts read when I took an online class on the Newbery Medal and had to read two Honor books from the same year as one of the Medal winners I read. I chose to read Al Capone Does My Shirts, and Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, having already read The Voice That Challenged a Nation, all from 2005, the year that Kira-Kira won the Medal. Now, I might have chosen the Medal differently, but I do have to agree that all four of those books are truly distinguished contributions to American literature for children. (And one of the things we learned in the class is that you may not agree that the Medal winner is the one best book of the year, but you can be pretty darn sure that the set of books honored is going to be a collection of excellent books.)

In Al Capone Does My Shirts, Moose Flanagan has just had to move with his family to Alcatraz Island. It’s 1935 and jobs are scarce, and his father got a good job offer as an electrician there (with some time as guard on the side), so they have to move so they can afford to have his sister Natalie go to the Esther P. Marinoff School, where his mother is convinced Natalie will learn to go on to live a normal life.

Moose is not happy about moving to Alcatraz. He’s not happy about his new school, he’s not happy to watch his sister while his mother takes on extra work, and he’s especially not happy about the warden’s daughter who looks sweet on the outside but seems bent on breaking all the rules and getting everyone else in trouble.

You can tell Moose is a great brother. He knows what Natalie needs and he’s extra considerate of what’s going to upset her (like losing her box of buttons or letting them get messed up). But he’s just a kid himself. Somehow, he’s the one people want to blame when other people’s schemes go awry.

Watching Moose cope with a new home — on a prison island, no less — new routines with his parents’ jobs, making new friends and trying to fit in, and even finding a way to help his parents get his sister to the desired school, all gives us lots to root for and sympathize with. This is an interesting, humorous and inspiring story about a quirky fact of American history — that families actually lived on Alcatraz Island, in a separate compound from the prisoners.

Gennifer Choldenko has recently written a sequel, Al Capone Shines My Shoes. I assure you that I will NOT wait so long to read it!

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Review of The Storm in the Barn, by Matt Phelan

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Graphic Novel, Historical, Starred Review 0

storm_in_the_barnThe Storm in the Barn

by Matt Phelan

Candlewick Press, 2009. 201 pages.
Starred Review.

The Storm in the Barn, like L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, is a uniquely American fairy tale, but this one is written in the form of a graphic novel.

Given the setting of the Dust Bowl, this book shows us poor dejected Jack Clark, a kid who’s eleven years old and hasn’t ever seen rain since he was seven. The doctor thinks he may have dust dementia, as his sister has dust pneumonia.

Jack isn’t sure himself. Is it dust dementia, or is he really seeing an evil man made out of a thunderstorm, with lightning in his bag, a man who is hiding in the old abandoned barn and causing all their troubles? If Jack can release the lightning, can he save the country?

The images in this book are haunting and surreal. They will leave the reader wanting to know more about this bit of American history. I like the way the author weaves in Jack’s sister reading from Baum’s Oz books, since telling American fairy tales was exactly what Baum also tried to do, along with Jack tales from Europe that fit right in with Jack’s own story.

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Review of The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

helpThe Help

by Kathryn Stockett

Amy Einhorn Books (G. P. Putnam’s Sons), 2009. 451 pages.
Starred Review.
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010: #2 Fiction

First, thank you to my friend Intlxpatr for recommending this book. I finished it at 3 AM this morning and am still thinking about it.

I’m not usually a fan of books about civil rights era issues, but this one is so warm and personal, I was completely won over.

Set in Jackson, Mississippi, in the early sixties, the book speaks from the perspectives of three women, Aibileen and Minny, black maids who “help” in the homes of white women, and Miss Skeeter, a recent graduate of the University of Mississippi who is living in her domineering parents’ home, and would like to be a writer.

Aibileen gives tender loving care to a little girl whose mother sees her as an annoyance. The mother frantically spends her time at the sewing machine trying to sew covers to make things look nicer than they are.

Minny has recently been fired by Miss Hilly, the queen of Jackson society. And Minny, who always has had trouble keeping her true thoughts quiet, did the Terrible Thing to Miss Hilly. If Miss Hilly gets her way, and Miss Hilly always gets her way, Minny will never work in Jackson again.

But then Miss Hilly’s old boyfriend’s wife, who was poor white trash and desperately wants to get into the League, needs someone to help around the house and teach her how to cook. Only she doesn’t want her husband to know.

Meanwhile Miss Skeeter has an idea. What if she writes a book from the perspective of the maids? Only, how can she get anyone to talk to her? And if they do talk to her and get found out, what will happen to them?

One of the beautiful things about this book is that it doesn’t only show ugly things about racism. It also shows beautiful ways that people of both races lived and worked together and loved each other.

I do love the way the nasty self-important Miss Hilly gets her comeuppance, and the realistic course Miss Skeeter’s quest for romance and life purpose takes.

At first, I found it hard to believe that this book really took place in America the year or two before I was born. So it was strange when little cultural bits from my childhood came into it (like Shake N Bake!). The world that the white people of the book inhabit is as completely foreign to me as that of the help.

But that’s what this book does so beautifully. It does what it sets out to do, showing us, despite all the external differences:

“Wasn’t that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I’d thought.”

I found myself feeling drawn into the lives of the maids, and also the lives of the white ladies they were working for. The book was doing exactly what books do best, showing me a window into other people’s souls. This is a beautiful, warm, and inspiring story.

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Review of Shiloh, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Children's Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

shilohShiloh

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Yearling (Bantam Doubleday Dell), 1992. First published in 1991. 144 pages.
Winner of the 1992 Newbery Medal
Starred Review

Here’s another book I read as one of my assignments for a class I took on the Newbery Medal. It seems like the ultimate Newbery Medal winner — suitable for third or fourth graders, this is a heart-warming story about a boy and a dog. Look at that — a book with a dog on the cover and an award sticker, and the dog doesn’t even die! (See No More Dead Dogs, by Gordon Korman, to get a feel for how rare that is.)

Marty finds a beagle who’s run away from his owner, and the beagle is clearly afraid of getting hit. Marty names him Shiloh, after the place where he found him. But the dog belongs to Judd Travers, and his father makes Marty give him back. When Marty hears how Judd plans to punish Shiloh for running away, his heart is sickened.

Then Shiloh runs away again. Marty simply cannot bear to bring Shiloh back. But how long can he keep a secret from his family, his best friend, and, most of all, Judd Travers?

I like Marty’s reflections on his moral dilemma:

Thinking about an earlier incident where he lied, he says:

When Ma asked me again about that rabbit, I gulped and said yes, and she made me get down on my knees and ask God’s forgiveness, which wasn’t so bad. I honestly felt better afterward. But then she said that Jesus wanted me to go in the next room and tell Dara Lynn what I’d done, and Dara Lynn threw a fit all over again. Threw a box of Crayolas at me and could have broke my nose. Called me a rotten, greedy pig. If that made Jesus sad, Ma never said.

About Shiloh:

“Jesus,” I whisper finally, “which you want me to do? Be one hundred percent honest and carry that dog back to Judd so that one of your creatures can be kicked and starved all over again, or keep him here and fatten him up to glorify your creation?”

The question seemed to answer itself, and I’m pretty proud of that prayer. Repeat it to myself so’s to remember it in case I need to use it again. If Jesus is anything like the story cards from Sunday school make him out to be, he ain’t the kind to want a thin, little beagle to be hurt.

Even as short as it is, this book has surprising depth. Marty comes to see another side even to Judd Travers. But mostly it’s a heart-warming story about a boy who loves a dog.

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