Review of The Woman All Spies Fear, by Amy Butler Greenfield

The Woman All Spies Fear

Code Breaker Elizebeth Smith Friedman and Her Hidden Life

by Amy Butler Greenfield

Random House Studio, 2021. 328 pages.
Review written February 26, 2023, from a library book
2022 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award Finalist
2022 Cybils Award Winner – High School Nonfiction
Starred Review

Okay, I meant to read this book once it was named as a Finalist for the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award last year. When this year it won the Cybils Award for High School Nonfiction, that intention took on new urgency. On top of that, a book for younger kids about Elizebeth Friedman, Code Breaker, Spy Hunter, by Laurie Wallmark, was a 2021 Sonderbooks Stand-out and a 2023 Mathical Book Prize Honor Book. And I watched a PBS documentary about her online, “The Codebreaker.” This book for older readers gives many more details about her fascinating life.

Elizebeth Smith was born in 1892 and got started in code breaking by working for an eccentric millionaire, looking for hidden codes from Francis Bacon in the works of Shakespeare. That search came to nothing, but it was there that Elizebeth met her husband-to-be William Friedman, who turned out to be an equally brilliant code breaker.

Elizebeth ended up using her skills for the government to unravel and create coded messages during World War I, during Prohibition against rum runners, and during World War II and beyond. She and her husband helped found cryptanalysis as a science, and trained the nation’s corps of codebreakers.

Her career spanned world wars that happened before computers were used to solve codes, and she brilliantly could spot and break multi-layered cyphers of many different types and in many different languages, using paper and pencil.

This book is packed with amazing stories of her skills, with plenty of personal details about what was going on in her life. Her husband ended up battling mental illness, but Elizebeth carried on, a working mother when that wasn’t the norm. It tells about interagency rivalry as well as national security secrecy that kept her from getting credit for her amazing work.

I enjoyed the frequent “Code Breaks” in the book that looked in more detail at a specific kind of coded message. Those gave me new appreciation for Elizebeth’s intricate level of skill, showing how messages would get coded in multi-step processes — and she would still break them. (Though I was able to solve the simple cypher the author put in the Acknowledgements.)

This book tells a wonderful story of a brilliant woman who, in a time when women’s brains weren’t valued, used hers to defeat bad guys.

amybutlergreenfield.com
GetUnderlined.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teen_Nonfiction/woman_all_spies_fear.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.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but 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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Queer Ducks (And Other Animals), by Eliot Schrefer

Queer Ducks
(And Other Animals)

The Natural World of Animal Sexuality

by Eliot Schrefer
illustrations by Jules Zuckerberg

Katherine Tegen Books (HarperCollins), 2022. 230 pages.
Review written February 22, 2023, from a library book
Starred Review
2023 Michael L. Printz Honor Book
2023 Capitol Choices selection

Oh my goodness, I learned so much from this book! You’ve probably heard of the book And Tango Makes Three — a book about two male penguins starting a family and hatching an egg together? Well, that’s merely a drop in the bucket of same-sex relationships in the animal kingdom. In fact, “The number of species with confirmed substantial queer behaviors, published in well-regarded scientific journals, is 1,500 and growing.”

The thing is? In the past, we didn’t have an easy way to tell male and female penguins apart. Or the males and females of many species. So when scientists saw animals having sex or doing sexy things, they assumed they were looking at males and females. Well, now we have blood tests we can use to determine sex, and there’s a whole lot more going on out there.

The entire book is fascinating and eye-opening, even for me, a straight cisgender woman. But because I have a transgender daughter and left a church that doesn’t affirm LGBTQ people, I especially enjoyed the chapter on velvet-horned deer.

I already knew that many varieties of fish and frogs often change their gender. But I didn’t know anything about velvet-horned deer.

As they grow from yearlings into adults, all male deer go through a “velvet” stage, in which their growing horns are covered by soft fuzz. As they reach sexual maturity, the velvet is generally shed, revealinng the bone antlers underneath. Some deer born with external male genitalia, though, never shed their velvet, and have bodies closer to those of female deer.

Known as velvet-horns, these intersex deer don’t enter the pecking order of the rest of the deer society. In fact, they’re soon driven out by the males. They skip the bachelor herds and the groups of mothers, and instead form their own troops of three to seven velvet-horns. Velvet-horns don’t produce offspring, but live out healthy deer lives in their own velvet-horn societies.

Life as a velvet-horn sounds kind of awesome, actually. You hang out with your “found family” of like-minded deer, skip the work of birthing your own fawns, and avoid the deer-on-deer violence of the bachelor herds.

That’s just part of the chapter about animals apparently outside the gender binary. But I wish I could show it to the pastor whose entire argument that being transgender is “against God’s design” was because of a verse in Genesis that says God created them “male and female.” Because God also created the animals “male and female” and it turns out that they aren’t constricted by that. (Of course, God also made “day and night” — and we still know about twilight. It was never even close to a good argument, but knowing what I know now, it got even worse.)

And I knew, from old “Wild Kingdom” TV shows, that many birds do elaborate courtship dances. What I didn’t know is that some birds will do them to a member of the same sex and pair bond with them for life. In albatrosses, it’s often the females who do this. They’ll have some sex on the side to get eggs, and then they work together to raise the chicks — and those two-mother “nest-holds” end up having better chick survival rates.

I can’t even begin to tell all the stories of what I learned in this book. They’re told in an engaging way and just completely surprised me. It turns out that animals of all kinds have lots of sex and a lot of it is not males and females making babies. Who knew?

The author of the book is gay, and grew up being told that was unnatural and twisted.

This is partly a book for lonely eleven-year-old Eliot, who only began to see himself as worthy of full respect many years after coming out. I thought that queerness separated me from the rest of the animal world, but came to love myself once I began to feel deep in my bones that being “unnatural” didn’t automatically make me bad or wrong. That’s still certainly true: there’s no innate link between unnatural things and wrongness. After all, reading books could be considered “unnatural,” but few people argue that it’s bad. Regardless, the young Eliot would have had a quicker journey to self-acceptance if he’d known the science that’s in this book.

I admit I giggled a little when I first checked out this book. Once I started reading, I was flat-out fascinated! It’s not often I read a book so packed with scientific facts I didn’t know before.

Here’s a paragraph from the concluding chapter:

While the “why” of animal queerness is still a topic of productive and exciting scientific debate, the “that” of it — the fact that animal queerness exists and is substantially represented in the natural world — is unmistakable. There’s an incredible diversity to animal sexual behavior and sexual expression, and each new piece of research in this exciting field has led to revelations that reshape what we assume animals are capable of — and what humans themselves are capable of. Queer behavior in animals is as diverse and complex — and natural — as any other sort of sexual behavior.

It turns out that queer humans are not unusual after all, if you look at the wider animal kingdom. And that’s a refreshing and eye-opening perspective.

Oh, and let me also mention that it’s all told in a humorous and friendly tone, with cartoons at the front of each chapter portraying an animal GSA group. The book doesn’t stir up lustful feelings, but it does stir up lots of scientific curiosity and wonder.

Learn some science! Read this award-winning book!

eliotschrefer.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teen_Nonfiction/queer_ducks.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.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but 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.

What did you think of this book?

2022 Sonderbooks Stand-outs — Books for Teens

It’s taking me so long to post my Sonderbooks Stand-outs this year! But at last, I have no tooth pain and I’ve finished reading for the Cybils Awards and the Mathical Book Prize — and a long weekend coming up. I hope to get the whole set posted here and on a webpage before the weekend is done.

Again, Sonderbooks Stand-outs are simply my favorites — the books that stand out in my mind after a full year of reading. I don’t choose them for literary merit or any deeper criteria, but simply go with my heart — which books most warm my heart when I think of them?

The ranking is very subjective and goes back and forth a bit. Please take the ranking as secondary, because I love all of these books.

Many of these do not have their reviews posted yet, especially the ones I read for the Cybils. After I make a page for the Stand-outs, my next priority will be getting all these reviews posted.

Books for Teens were especially difficult this year, because I read more than I have in years. At the start of the year, I was a judge for the 2021 Cybils second round in Young Adult Speculative Fiction, and at the end of this year I was a panelist for the 2022 Cybils first round in the same category. I also think that I’ve had a delayed reaction to being on the 2019 Newbery committee, and for the last couple years have been less interested in reading middle grade books. I still read plenty, but I enjoyed binge-reading for award committees the older level books.

Anyway, I read so many speculative fiction books for teens, I decided to use three categories for teen books: Fantasy (a fantasy world), Paranormal (magic or paranormal activity in our world), and everything else. Here’s how I ranked them in those categories:

Teen Fantasy Fiction

  1. Little Thieves, by Margaret Owen
  2. A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, by T. Kingfisher
  3. Moira’s Pen, by Megan Whalen Turner
  4. Vespertine, by Margaret Rogerson
  5. The Excalibur Curse, by Kiersten White
  6. Year of the Reaper, by Makiia Lucier
  7. The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea, by Axie Oh
  8. So This Is Ever After, by F. T. Lukens

Teen Paranormal Fiction

  1. The Mirror Season, by Anna-Marie McLemore
  2. A Snake Falls to Earth, by Darcie Little Badger
  3. From Dust, a Flame, by Rebecca Podos
  4. The Weight of Blood, by Tiffany D. Jackson
  5. Lakelore, by Anna-Marie McLemore
  6. Bad Witch Burning, by Jessica Lewis

More Teen Fiction

  1. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
  2. Aristotle and Dante Dive Into the Waters of the World, by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
  3. A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, by Holly Jackson
  4. Good Girl, Bad Blood, by Holly Jackson
  5. As Good as Dead, by Holly Jackson
  6. All That’s Left in the World, by Eric J. Brown
  7. The Many Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester, by Maya MacGregor

Teen Nonfiction

  1. Grand Theft Horse, by G. Neri, illustrated by Corban Wilkin
  2. Gone to the Woods, by Gary Paulsen
  3. Revolution in Our Time, by Kekla Magoon
  4. Welcome to St. Hell, by Lewis Hancox
  5. Punching Bag, by Rex Ogle

I guarantee some good reading with any of these books! Enjoy!

And here’s my permanent webpage for all my 2022 Sonderbooks Stand-outs!

Review of The Chemistry of Food, by Carla Mooney

The Chemistry of Food

by Carla Mooney
illustrated by Tracy Van Wagoner

Nomad Press, 2021. 118 pages.
Review written November 19, 2022, from a library book
Starred Review

I think this nonfiction book for middle school and up is just so cool. I took a Chemistry class in high school, but this book tells me all kinds of things I didn’t know about the chemistry of food. Sure, I know the basics, but it’s interesting to hear the actual science behind many different processes. It’s illustrated with photographs and diagrams on almost every page.

Here’s what the chapters cover: The intro chapter, besides talking about food, gives some basics of chemical bonds, mixtures, solutions, and compounds. And how heat affects those things. The next chapter covers chemicals in our food, looking at water, lipids, carbohydrates, proteins, enzymes, vitamins and minerals. Next there’s a chapter on the chemical reactions of cooking: endothermic and exothermic reactions, heat conduction, caramelization, and other kinds of chemical reactions. Then comes a chapter on nutrition and how we get nutrients and energy from food. After that we get the science of flavor, and it all wraps up with a chapter on texture.

One of the big strengths of this book are the many fascinating experiments it shows you how to do. I confess I didn’t try them, but I wanted to. If there were a kid in my home, I don’t think I could resist. Some of those experiments include: putting oil and water together and watching what happens when you add dish soap, learning about protein denaturation by making lemon curd, caramelizing sugar and checking the mixture at different temperatures, figuring out how much gluten is in different flours, examining cookies baked at different temperatures and times, making ice cream in a bag with different amounts of salt and ice, and comparing different starches as thickening agents, and comparing methods for making crispy fries. They don’t tell you what’s going to happen with these experiments, which makes them all the more intriguing. They do have follow-up questions to help you think through what did happen, as well as further things to try.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this book would kickstart a kid’s interest in science. But whether or not it does, it provides a fascinating look at the science behind everyday things.

nomadpress.net

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teen_Nonfiction/chemistry_of_food.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.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but 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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Somebody Give This Heart a Pen, by Sophia Thakur

Somebody Give This Heart a Pen

by Sophia Thakur

Candlewick Press, 2020. First published in the United Kingdom in 2019. 99 pages.
Review written October 24, 2020, from a library book

This is a book of poems, and Sophia Thakur is a performance poet. Learning that, I wasn’t surprised that several of the poems made me want to read them aloud.

The poems talk about writing out your feelings, and they do express feelings remarkably well. Many of the poems are about loving but breaking up, and some of those made me nod my head at the Truth.

Here’s the start of a poem called “Let Hurt”:

Sometimes
to heal once and one time only
first we must properly hurt.
To understand the sadness that stifles us
we must let it stifle us first
let it sink its teeth deep into our eyes
and let whatever leaks out purse
its lips against our cheeks
like a kiss asking us to be patient
to slow dance with the aching
to understand its twists and turns

Here’s the end of my favorite poem, called “Sprouting.” It’s about new life after healing from a break-up.

This growth is not for you or in spite of you.
In fact it stopped being about you once I let go of you.
But I’m healed enough to be honest.
It did take being emptied by you
to reseed
and to bloom.
So I guess this is me thanking you
for forcing me to move.

And here’s the beginning of the final poem, “When to Write”:

When your fists are ready to paint faces
When there is nowhere to confide
When your skin lingers high above your bones
and you’re so out of touch with self,
Write.
When the mouth fails
and shyness strangles
and your throat becomes tight,
Write.
When your eyes won’t dry,
Write.
Before you fight
Before you fall,
Write.
When they lie to you
When they hurt you
When they leave you,
Write.

I so glad somebody gave that heart a pen.

candlewick.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teen_Nonfiction/somebody_give_this_heart_a_pen.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.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but 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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Dancing at the Pity Party, by Tyler Feder

Dancing at the Pity Party

A Dead Mom Graphic Memoir

by Tyler Feder

Dial Books, 2020. 202 pages.
Review written July 27, 2020, from a library book
Starred Review

I like the way Dancing at the Pity Party gives you full disclosure in the subtitle. Yes, this is a graphic memoir about the author’s experience with her mother’s death from uterine cancer that happened when Tyler was 19 years old and a sophomore in college.

The book is really well done. It’s a wonderful tribute to her mother and the relationship they had. It tells the story of how the cancer unfolded and the horrible and strange things that did to her emotions. And it explores the mess of grief and the strange things people say.

I probably should not have read this book only eight months after my own mother died. One of the things people do that’s insensitive is compare grief. I can’t fully understand what Tyler went through, because my mother was 78, not 47, and had Alzheimer’s, so by the time she died, it seemed horrible that she’d been alive so long. But I found myself saying, “Yeah, but my father died, too!” – because my father died unexpectedly two months before my mother finally passed. And that has nothing to do with Tyler’s experience – but for me it pointed out that all grief is sadly individual. You can find people who understand certain aspects of what you’re going through, but each one of us has our own journey.

And that’s what’s brilliant about this book. It portrays Tyler’s individual journey with grief. It makes a beautiful tribute to her mother, and it’s a wonderful story about human emotions.

I especially liked her fantasy Deadmom App. Among other things, it mutes all Mother’s Day social media and looks up any movie to find out if the mom dies in it. (I went to see the Mister Rogers movie with Tom Hanks when my Mom was dying in another state. I didn’t know the other main character would be dealing with the deaths of his parents.)

She thinks of so many aspects of the experience of losing someone so important, things that you don’t necessarily think of when you think about loss.

Reading this book will touch your heart whether you’ve ever experienced grief or not.

penguinrandomhouse.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teen_Nonfiction/dancing_at_the_pity_party.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.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but 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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Welcome to St. Hell, by Lewis Hancox

Welcome to St. Hell

My Trans Teen Misadventure

by Lewis Hancox

Graphix (Scholastic), 2022. 298 pages.
Review written October 2, 2022, from a library book

Memoirs in graphic novel format are the perfect way to capture all the emotion and angst of the teenage years. In Welcome to St. Hell, Lewis Hancox tells about how difficult life was for him in high school when his name was Lois and everyone thought he was a girl.

Lewis grew up in a small town in England, officially named St Helens, but known to locals as St. Hell. It wasn’t a posh town, and the book is peppered with British slang I had to get used to, but it gives the feel of the place where he grew up.

I like the way older Lewis ushers the reader through the book, assuring everyone that it’s all going to turn out okay. But he tells how uncomfortable he was in his own skin when everyone – including himself – thought he was a girl.

And yes, when he started making out with his first girlfriend, his dysphoria made him extremely uncomfortable getting intimate — and there’s a diagram showing his naked body as it was then, with all the things he was uncomfortable about highlighted.

Yes, current book banners are citing that page. No, it’s not pornography. It’s a cartoon, and it’s not going to titillate anyone. It’s demonstrating his extreme gender dysphoria.

And he went through extremes to try to get a body that looked more like a man’s. Extreme dieting followed by obsessive working out. When he finally got to go to a gender identity clinic, it felt like life was opening up for him. And calm and happy adult Lewis, who has been leading us through the book, shows that he did find the solution to his troubles.

So if you’ve ever wondered what it’s like for transgender teens, who may not know yet that they’re transgender, only that they’re different, I highly recommend this book. And it needs to be available to teens, so the transgender ones who might come across it will know they are not freaks and they are not alone.

If you think that teens are too young to know which gender they are, I offer this book as a counter example. Lewis may not have then known what his feelings meant, but he knew that something was wrong with the way people perceived him. Please have some respect for what people know about their own bodies. Please!

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teen_Nonfiction/welcome_to_st_hell.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.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but 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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of All Boys Aren’t Blue, by George M. Johnson

All Boys Aren’t Blue

A Memoir-Manifesto

by George M. Johnson
read by the author

Macmillan Audio, 2020. 5 hours, 12 minutes.
Review written November 9, 2020, from a library eaudiobook

In this book, George Johnson talks about what it was like for him growing up Black and queer, even in a loving and supportive family.

His storytelling style is interesting and engaging, though a little repetitive in spots. He had me on the edge of my seat when I listened to him tell about getting his teeth kicked out when he was five years old. His stories of his family, especially his grandma, are warm and loving.

When he talks about sexual coming-of-age, he gets way more detailed than what this middle-aged heterosexual white woman wanted to hear. But this book isn’t written for heterosexual middle-aged white women. It’s written especially to other Black and queer folks to find out they aren’t alone. He even talks about how little information he had about gay sex and how he hopes he can help others go beyond trial and error with a few less errors.

I’m glad this book is out there, and even for those not in its target audience, it’s a story of a boy growing up as an outsider and finding his way with the help of community.

iamgmjohnson.com
us.macmillan.com/audio

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teen_Nonfiction/all_boys_arent_blue.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.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but 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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh, by Candace Fleming

The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh

by Candace Fleming

Schwartz & Wade Books, 2020. 372 pages.
Review written May 8, 2020, from a library book
Starred Review

The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh is a biography of Charles Lindbergh written for teen readers. As such, there’s a priority on being interesting and readable, but still a level of detail that gives you a complete look at his life.

She groups the book into two parts – the Rise and the Fall. He was only twenty-five years old when he made the transatlantic flight that propelled him into celebrity. He found a wife after that, and their first child was kidnapped, which made him again the focus of the whole nation. We learn all about his background, his upbringing, his ambitions, and his philosophy of life.

By the end of the book, I didn’t like the guy much, because of all I learned in the second half of the book. It tells about how he was duped by Hitler, but also how his own philosophy of life and belief in eugenics set him up to have sympathy with the goals of Nazism. He’d decided that fascism was a better form of government than democracy, because he thought white people with good genes should determine the direction of the country.

Candace Fleming does an excellent job of explaining his beliefs while pointing out problems with them. She shows the seeds of his ideas and how they developed over the course of his life.

She glosses over his life after World War II somewhat – but does mention that he had three other families in Europe, which he kept secret as long as he lived.

The Prologue is a striking way to start the book – at an enormous America First rally, where Lindbergh revved up the crowd. The author doesn’t give the name of the speaker running the rally when this paragraph comes up:

A couple of Firsters stepped assertively toward a reporter. Would the press cover the rally fairly this time? they wanted to know. Or would the newspapers be biased and inaccurate as usual? Many rally-goers believed the media couldn’t be trusted. Their hero, the face of America First and the man they’d come to hear speak tonight, had told them so. “Contemptible,” he’d called the press. “Dishonest parasites.” In a recent speech he’d even told supporters that the press was controlled by “dangerous elements,” men who placed their own interests above America’s. That was why he had to keep holding rallies, he explained. Someone had to tell it like it was. Someone had to speak the impolite truth about the foreigners who threatened the nation. It was time to build walls – “ramparts,” he called them – to hold back the infiltration of “alien blood.” It was time for America to close its borders, isolate itself from the rest of the world, and focus solely on its own interests. It was the only way, he claimed “to preserve our American way of life.”

Candace Fleming did her homework. There is a 6-page bibliography and 30 pages of source notes at the back.

candacefleming.com
GetUnderlined.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teen_Nonfiction/rise_and_fall_of_charles_lindbergh.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.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but 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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Revolution in Our Time, by Kekla Magoon

Revolution in Our Time

The Black Panther Party’s Promise to the People

by Kekla Magoon

Candlewick Press, 2021. 390 pages.
Review written August 20, 2022, from my own copy, purchased at the Walter Awards and signed by the author.
2022 Printz Honor Book
2022 Coretta Scott King Author Honor Award
2022 National Book Award Finalist
2022 Walter Dean Myers Honor Award
Starred Review

Revolution in Our Time is an amazing work of scholarship, telling the complete history of the Black Panther Party for young people, complete with hundreds of photographs and plenty of sidebars and analysis. It won multiple Honor awards, and the meticulous research and clear presentation make it an obvious choice, even for awards that are usually won by novelists.

I didn’t know much at all about the Black Panthers. And honestly, all my impressions of them were negative. I certainly didn’t know that much of their reason for existing was to protest the same disproportionate police violence against Black people that still exists today. But it went much further than that. They wanted to help Black people in poverty and help Black communities come together. Reading this book helped me understand the organization was much more nuanced than anything I’d heard about them.

The Panthers fought a revolution in their time, just as we are fighting one in ours. They were called troublemakers, terrorists, and branded as anti-American, but the truth of their work belies these labels. They boldly claimed their place at the vanguard of a centuries-old fight for equality, and their legacy continues to lead the way forward. The story of the Black Panther Party is one of violence and heartbreak and struggle and conviction. It is the story of a group of young people who set out to change the world around them — in very radical ways.

They came up against many obstacles — including an FBI effort to stop them. They had many successes and many failures. This book tells their complete story, and it opened my eyes.

I was especially interested to learn that especially at the beginning, they were careful to follow all laws. They “policed the police” following police actions with legally owned guns, to protect people in their neighborhoods from police violence. I’m afraid I’m not surprised this resulted in some changes to what was legal.

I like the way the last chapter focuses on how young the founders of the Black Panther Party were. There is a reason the author targeted this amazing work of scholarship to young people. Here’s a paragraph from that last chapter:

I discovered an archival video in the course of my research, with former civil rights movement leaders who were looking back in the early 2000s at their own words and convictions of the 1960s. They declared in retrospect that the biggest mistake of the civil rights era was to believe that all the problems could be solved in their lifetime, and they failed to train the next generation to take up the mantle in the necessary ways to maintain the struggle. My own life experience bears this up in a lot of ways: young people are often underestimated and excluded from challenging conversations. Whether it’s to protect the children, or due to a misguided faith in their own power to solve everything, the perennial mistake of elders is to dismiss the power and potential of youth. On the flip side, the mistake of youth is often to dismiss the wisdom and experience of those who have gone before. In their day, the Panthers didn’t make either of these mistakes. They placed the core of their emphasis on building a cadre of revolutionary youth, and they promoted empowerment through education about Black history. They were undermined and overturned at every stage, perhaps partly because of the truly systemic nature of the change they envisioned, and the fact that they made real progress in these directions in a very short time frame.

Not that the author paints a completely rosy picture of what the Black Panthers were trying to do. But whatever you know about the Black Panthers, I suspect this book will give you a fuller picture. An amazing story of people who wanted to bring about equality and were willing to fight to get it.

keklamagoon.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teen_Nonfiction/revolution_in_our_time.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.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but 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.

What did you think of this book?