Review of Butterfly Yellow, by Thanhhà Lai

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

Butterfly Yellow

by Thanhhà Lai

Harper, 2019. 284 pages.
Starred Review
Review written January 2, 2020, from an advance reader copy picked up at ALA Annual Conference
2019 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #3 in Teen Fiction

(I have to apologize. My web host doesn’t support the notations for the Vietnamese diacritics over ‘a’ and ‘e’. I carefully found the right symbol in Word, but it did not carry over when I copied it to my blog. I acknowledge that this is not the correct name for the main character without the diacritic symbol, nor is it the correct name for the country where she was born. It’s not even the correct last name of the author. I am sorry.)

Butterfly Yellow is set in summer 1981 in Texas, about a girl who has survived a harrowing journey from Viet Nam, including a traumatic journey on a boat where most of the other passengers, including her mother, died or were killed by pirates.

Now Hang is in Texas, staying with her uncle, who got to America before the war. But Hang is on a mission to find her brother, who was taken away from her six years ago, when he was five years old and she was twelve and tried to carry out a scheme.

In the final days of the war in April 1975, Hang thought she was so clever, devising a way to flee while her family strategized and worried. Every day newspapers printed stories about Americans panicking to save hundreds of orphans. There was even an official name, Operation Babylift. She assumed she and her brother would go first, then somehow her family would join them in America. But in line at the airport she was rejected, a twelve-year-old passing as eight. Linh was five, three to foreign eyes, just young enough to be accepted as an orphan. Hang saw little Linh thrashing as he was carried into a Pan Am.

By the time her brother was ripped from her, nobody cared to hear why she lied. With so many scrambling to flee before the victorious Communists marched in, one more screaming child was just that. An American volunteer with puffy, sweaty hands must have felt sorry for her. He pressed a card into her palm as he pushed her away from the ladder. Sun rays radiated through each strand of his mango-colored hair. She had to stop an impulse to extinguish the fiery puff of gold threads on his head. He was the last to board. Hang screamed until the Pan Am blended into the sky and left a long loose-curl cloud. For hours, until dusk enveloped her and mosquitoes chased her home, she focused skyward and pleaded for forgiveness. When she opened her palm, the card had disintegrated except for one clue: 405 Mesquite Street, Amarillo, Texas.

Hang’s mission, her one purpose now she is in America is to find her brother. That mission starts out on a bus, but when the bus’s motion, reminding her of the escape boat, makes her sick, the bus leaves without her. Her mission ends up entwining her fate with that of LeeRoy, a boy who is also eighteen and has left his home for the summer on a mission to ride in rodeos and be a cowboy.

When Hang does find her brother, he doesn’t remember her. And his American mother wants Hang nowhere near him. But Hang is going to find a way to stay as close as she can – and a lot of things happen to Hang, LeeRoy and Linh that eventful summer in Texas.

This book is beautifully written, from several different perspectives. One thing I love about it is how when Hang speaks in English, the phonetic spelling is given – but phonetic from the perspective of someone from Viet Nam, full of diacritic marks, and not using the same phonetics as an English-speaking person would use. The reader has to learn how to understand Hang and gradually figure out what she is trying to say. When she thinks or writes in Vietnamese, she is completely fluent, so the reader understands the difficulty of trying to communicate in a foreign language.

We gradually learn about the trauma Hang survived, both in Viet Nam and as she escaped from Viet Nam. It’s horrific, and explains why she covers herself up and hides even in the Texas summer and doesn’t even think of trying to look pretty.

This is a book of cross-cultural understanding, as well as a book of love and healing.

thanhhalai.com

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

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Review of Cog, by Greg van Eekhout

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

Cog

by Greg van Eekhout

Harper, 2019. 196 pages.
Starred Review
Review written October 20, 2019, from a library book
2019 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #2 in Children’s Fiction
2019 Cybils Award Finalist

This book is utterly delightful. It’s true that I’ve got a strong prejudice against books that claim robots have emotion or that assign basically magical abilities to robots, so I did have a tiny bit of trouble with suspension of disbelief. But I loved the characters so much, and they were so quirky and creative, I didn’t really care.

Here’s how Cog introduces himself:

My name is Cog. Cog is short for “cognitive development.” Cognitive development is the process of learning how to think and understand.

In appearance, I am a twelve-year-old boy of average height and weight. This means I’m fifty-eight inches tall and weigh about ninety pounds and seven ounces. In actuality, I am seven months old.

Now I will tell you some facts I have learned about platypuses.

Cog tells us about his home and his bedroom and about Gina, who lives with him and makes repairs and adjustments when he needs them.

Gina is a scientist for uniMIND. She has brown eyes like my visual sensors and brown skin like my synthetic dermal layer. Her hair is black and shiny, like the feathers of birds in the corvid family, which includes crows and ravens. When she smiles, which is often, a small gap is evident between her two front teeth. My teeth, which are oral mastication plates, have no gap, but I enjoy practicing smiling with Gina.

Cog is programmed to learn, to increase his cognitive development. As the book begins, Gina takes him to Giganto Food Super Mart to learn about shopping. She gives him a list and asks him to get the items unsupervised.

Cheese is the first item. Cog discovers many kinds of cheese that he hadn’t known existed before. He fills the cart with them. When he gets back to Gina, she tells him that for a first attempt he did a very good job.

“But we actually don’t need all this cheese,” she continues. “Nor do we need seven dozen apples or eight different kinds of orange juice or twelve different varieties of dish soap. So let’s start putting most of this back.”

I learn that unshopping takes longer than shopping.

As we return items to shelves, Gina explains to me where my judgment was faulty and led me astray.

“Is my judgment the result of a bug?” I ask her. “Can you fix it?”

“No,” she says, hanging seven bags of shredded cheese back on their hooks. “It’s just something you have to learn. It’s like my old professor used to tell me: ‘Good judgment comes from experience, but experience comes from bad judgment.’ That means we learn by making mistakes.”

I process this for a while.

“How long did it take you to learn good judgment?”

“Oh, I’m still learning it, buddy. I’m learning it all the time.”

Since Cog’s mission is to learn, he makes a resolution. The next morning, he sneaks out of the house.

Leaving the house without Gina’s permission is a mistake. this pleases me, because a mistake is an act of bad judgment, and I expect my act of bad judgment to increase my cognitive development.

Unfortunately, out in the yard, Cog sees a Chihuahua about to be hit by a truck. He saves the Chihuahua – and gets hit by the truck.

When Cog wakes up, he is in bed and hooked up to data ports beneath his flipped-up fingernails, but something is not right. He is not in his bedroom at home, and Gina is not there.

It turns out that since she allowed Cog to be hit by a truck, she’s been taken off the project. Cog is at UniMIND headquarters and told it’s his new home.

When he finds out they want to open up his brain and take out the X-Module (whatever that is), Cog resolves to run away and find Gina.

And so we end up with a delightful road trip story. Cog travels with four other robots – ADA, an Advanced Destructive Apparatus who looks like a twelve-year-old girl, a Trashbot that asks everyone if they have waste, a robotic dog, and a talking Car. The Car asks if he will accept liability before it agrees to set out with them.

The adventure is wild – okay, perhaps quite a bit unlikely – but oh, so much fun. Each one of the robots has a distinct and consistent personality, and I love Cog’s voice narrating the whole thing. In fact, I will end this review with some words of wisdom from Cog:

Since leaving the UniMIND campus, I have had several bad experiences, and one thing I have learned is that friends and sandwiches make even the worst of situations more tolerable.

writingandsnacks.com
harpercollinschildrens.com

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

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

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

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2019 Sonderbooks Stand-outs

Stand-outs 0

It’s time to post my Sonderbooks Stand-outs from the books I read in 2019!

I like to post these on New Year’s Day, but this year I was in California for my mother’s memorial service, so it’s put off a bit. (Two books from the list, I read on the plane, though! This is why I wait until the year is completely over.)

Once again, I do not have my reviews for all of these books posted yet. This year, I’m going to make that a priority and try to at least post my reviews of my 2019 and 2018 Stand-outs before I post other reviews. One of my 2020 resolutions is to post reviews more regularly.

I always want to stress that these are my personal favorites. Sonderbooks Stand-outs are not any attempt to predict which books will win awards, and I don’t screen them for diversity or literary merit. These are simply the books that I personally enjoyed.

Let me give my stats for 2019. I did not include books I reread in my Stand-outs. (They’re already Stand-outs or I wouldn’t reread them.) In 2019, there were an abundance of those.

I reread 13 books in January as I was doing Newbery selection committee deliberations. I’ll never tell which books those were, except to say that our medalist and two honor books were included. In 2019, I also reread 12 books by L. M. Montgomery, in preparation for my amazing road trip to Prince Edward Island with my childhood friends.

Other totals of books read:
Grown-up Nonfiction: 38
Grown-up Fiction: 13 (Hmm. I meant to read more after being off the Newbery committee.)
Teen Fiction: 15
Children’s Fiction: 56
Children’s Nonfiction: 143 (Most of those are picture books.)
Picture Books: 458

Yes, that’s significantly fewer than I read the year before, but that’s what happens when you can no longer make reading the top priority in your life.

Here is my list of my personal favorite books I read in 2019. I will try hard to get these reviews posted in the next couple of weeks. I do break the Stand-outs into categories so I can honor lots and lots of books.

Adult Fiction:
1. Becoming Mrs. Lewis, by Patti Callahan
2. Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik
3. The Harp of Kings, by Juliet Marillier
4. Marilla of Green Gables, by Sarah McCoy

Christian Nonfiction:
1. The Universal Christ, by Richard Rohr
2. Raising Hell, by Julie Ferwerda
3. That All Shall Be Saved, by David Bentley Hart
4. Creation and the Cross, by Elizabeth A. Johnson
5. Nothing But the Blood of Jesus, by J. D. Myers

Other Adult Nonfiction:
1. Educated, by Tara Westover
2. Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson
3. Becoming, by Michelle Obama
4. Joyful, by Ingrid Fetell Lee
5. The Landscapes of Green Gables, by Catherine Reid

Teen Fiction: (This is the category where they’re getting switched around a lot. These are all fantastic.)
1. Damsel, by Elana K. Arnold
2. Stepsister, by Jennifer Donnelly
3. Butterfly Yellow, by Thanhha Lai
4. The Wicked King, by Holly Black
5. The Toll, by Neal Shusterman
6. Lovely War, by Julie Berry
7. With the Fire on High, by Elizabeth Acevedo
8. On the Come Up, by Angie Thomas

Children’s Fiction:
1. We’re Not From Here, by Geoff Rodkey
2. Cog, by Greg van Eekhout
3. Pie in the Sky, by Remy Lai
4. Pay Attention, Carter Jones, by Gary D. Schmidt
5. Sal & Gabi Break the Universe, by Carlos Hernandez
6. White Bird, by R. J. Palacio
7. The Dark Lord Clementine, by Sarah Jean Horwitz
8. The Potter’s Boy, by Tony Mitton
9. Homerooms and Hall Passes, by Tom O’Connell
10. The Lost Girl, by Anne Ursu
11. Rabbit’s Bad Habits, by Julian Gough

Children’s Nonfiction Picture Books:
1. Nine Months, by Miranda Paul, illustrated by Jason Chin
2. How Many? A Different Kind of Counting Book, by Christopher Danielson
3. The Important Thing About Margaret Wise Brown, by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Sarah Jacoby
4. Can You Hear the Trees Talking? by Peter Wohlleben
5. The Lost Words, by Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris

Longer Children’s Nonfiction:
1. They Called Us Enemy, by George Takei, Justin Eisinger, and Steven Scott, art by Harmony Becker
2. Shout, by Laurie Halse Anderson
3. Ordinary Hazards, by Nikki Grimes
4. Free Lunch, by Rex Ogle
5. Best Friends, by Shannon Hale, artwork by LeUyen Pham

Picture Books:
1. Truman, by Jean Reidy
2. Saturday, by Oge Mora
3. Maybe Tomorrow? by Charlotte Agell, illustrated by Ana Ramírez González
4. One Fox: A Counting Book Thriller, by Kate Read
5. Harold & Hog Pretend for Real! by Dan Santat
6. Circle, by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen
7. Penny and Her Sled, by Kevin Henkes

Happy Reading!

Revised to add: Aaaaaaaugh! I forgot Pie in the Sky, by Remy Lai!

Somehow, I didn’t get that book on my spreadsheet of books I read this year, so I forgot all about it when I first made this list. Alas! That means most of the other Children’s Fiction titles get their ranking revised downward. But if you’re wondering why the Children’s Fiction list looks slightly different than when I first posted it, the reason is that I forgot one title at first. (But it does stand out in my mind, honest! I just forgot I’d read it this year.)

Review of Brightly Burning, by Alexa Donne

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

Brightly Burning

by Alexa Donne

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018. 394 pages.
Starred Review
2018 Sonderbooks Stand-out:
#4 Teen Speculative Fiction

This book is a science fiction retelling of Jane Eyre, and is tremendously good. It reminded me of For Darkness Shows the Stars, a science fiction retelling of Persuasion, which I also loved.

However, the last time I reread Jane Eyre I was disappointed that now I can see a whole lot of things wrong with the relationship, so reading this book, I was somewhat upset with myself for finding it very romantic.

Now, they did clean up some of the more unsavory details. The ward of Captain Fairfax, in this book, is not his illegitimate daughter from a youthful indiscretion, and he doesn’t actually have an insane wife shut up in the attic. Nor is he many years older than our heroine.

However, he is Stella’s employer. She’s in a subordinate relationship to him, and he orders her to spend some time with him each evening, enjoying his library of actual paper books. And, similar to Mr. Rochester of Jane Eyre, he tries to make her jealous, and succeeds abominably. He brings a woman to their spaceship along with her family, and Stella learns that the families have long planned to one day combine resources with a marriage. To make matters worse, Captain Fairfax (of the ship Rochester) requires Stella to be present when the groups socialize in the evenings – just as Mr. Rochester did to Jane Eyre.

The end of the book does have things play out somewhat differently than what happens in Jane Eyre – though the gist is quite similar.

Once again, I don’t really see why I want our heroine to end up with this guy. And yet I do find the story romantic.

Maybe it rings too true when I remember the pain of unrequited love as a teenager having crushes? Only in our book, it turns out the love is not unrequited.

Or maybe it’s seeing someone who thinks herself small and insignificant being noticed for her shining character? In this book, Stella won’t let things progress between them until Captain Fairfax acknowledges her as an equal. (I’m glad that point was made, but it doesn’t quite make up for the disparity in power between them.) The truth is that in this book, Stella is the only one who seems willing to stand up for what’s right. So I’m not sure she should have fallen for him. But it is lovely that he found her, despite the fact that she wasn’t seeking his attention.

All that aside, as a science fiction retelling, this is cleverly executed with much obvious love for the original. The story is wonderful.

Parents, you might want to read both Jane Eyre and this book before you hand them to your teenage daughter – but I promise you’ll have a whole lot of fun if you do that. As well as having lots to discuss.

alexadonne.com
hmhco.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/brightly_burning.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 I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Darius the Great Is Not Okay, by Adib Khorram

Award Winners, Contemporary, Stand-outs, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Darius the Great Is Not Okay

by Adib Khorram

Dial Books, 2018. 316 pages
Starred Review
Review written September 18, 2018, from a library book
2018 Sonderbooks Stand-out:
#3 General Teen Fiction
2019 Morris Award Winner
2019 Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature

Darius the Great Is Not Okay is the story of Darius Kellner, who is a Fractional Persian – half Persian in his case, from his mother. Darius works in a tea store in Portland, and when we meet him, the kids who bully him walk in and give him a new degrading nickname and vandalize his bike.

His father, a German Übermensch, thinks he should just stand up to the bullies. Darius is sure he can never please him. Though at least they still have one thing they share – nightly time together watching Star Trek, Next Generation.

There’s a Skype visit with Darius’s grandparents in Iran, and his little sister, Laleh, speaks fluently with them in Farsi, but Darius never knows what to say. When they learn that his grandfather has a brain tumor and is not doing well, the family makes plans for an extended trip to Iran.

Most of the book is about that trip to Iran. But it’s also a book about friendship. Yes, I said friendship, not romance. I was delighted to read a book about genuine friendship between high school boys. Darius meets and makes friends with Sohrab in Iran, and right away they can be honest and open with each other. There are some bumps in their friendship – which makes it all the more authentic.

This is also a book about depression. Both Darius and his father take medication for depression, and Darius cries easily. He calls it “stress hormone secretion.” Darius does a lot of obsessing over what people think of him, and I like the way that’s honestly portrayed.

It’s also a book about family. Darius is meeting his Iranian family in person for the first time, and learning about his heritage – generations of his family have lived in the town of Yazd for centuries. They celebrate holidays together with extended family during the visit, and Darius realizes he loves these people.

But none of it is simple. His friend Sohrab is bullied for being Baha’i, and Sohrab’s father is in prison. Darius’s grandfather is dying, and his personality is changing – or so Darius is told, but he mourns that he never really knew his grandfather before, except on the computer screen. Laleh fits in so much better in Iran, since she speaks Farsi. And his father even lets Laleh replace Darius watching Star Trek, Next Generation.

I love Darius’s expressions throughout the book. There are multiple references to Lord of the Rings and Star Trek. I enjoyed that I got pretty much all the references. Will teens get those? Maybe some will. He calls the bullies “Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy” and his own mood swings “Mood Slingshot Maneuvers.”

Overall, it’s a beautiful story of a young man fighting his demons, finding his place in the world, and making and being a true friend.

adibkhorram.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/darius_the_great.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 I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Summer Reading 2019!

Stand-outs 0

It’s that time of year — when the children’s library staff go out to the local schools and talk about the summer reading — and some books the kids might enjoy reading.

I need to make a list of the books I’m booktalking, with covers, so that when the kids come to the library and can’t remember the title, they can browse the list. A fun place to put that is my blog. I will provide links to my reviews — though since this was my Newbery year, not all the reviews are posted yet.

[Just a note: Last year I couldn’t publish a list because of being on the Newbery committee. Many of my favorites and 2018 Sonderbooks Stand-outs got booktalked last year.]

My list is more ambitious than I actually end up having time to talk about. But here are the books I booktalked this year, very loosely organized by grade:

Kindergarten to 1st grade:

We Don’t Eat Our Classmates, by Ryan T. Higgins

Crash, Splash, or Moo!, by Bob Shea

Thank You, Omu!, by Oge Mora

Dreamers, by Yuyi Morales

We Are Brothers, by Yves Nadon

Kindergarten to 2nd grade:

Two nonfiction books about chickens:

The Hen Who Sailed Around the World, by Guirec Soudee

Hawk Mother, by Kara Hagedorn

Two nonfiction books about geography:

Water Land, by Christy Hale

Animal Antipodes, by Carly Allen-Fletcher

1st to 2nd grade:

Rabbit and Bear: Rabbit’s Bad Habits, by Jason Gough

(Reading about why rabbits eat their own poo is a sure-fire hit!)

A Is For Elizabeth, by Rachel Vail

2nd to 3rd grade:

Three picture books about inventions:

The Boo-Boos That Changed the World, by Barry Wittenstein

Magic Ramen, by Andrea Wang, illustrated by Kana Urbanowicz

Pass Go and Collect $200, by Tanya Lee Stone, illustrated by Steven Salerno

Like dragons? Both of these begin new series:

Dragons in a Bag, by Zetta Elliott

Knights vs. Dinosaurs, by Matt Phelan

Two chapter books for animal lovers:

Saving Winslow, by Sharon Creech

My Father’s Words, by Sarah MacLachlan

4th to 6th grade:

For these grades this year, I start with “my” Newbery winners!

Merci Suarez Changes Gears, by Meg Medina

The Night Diary, by Veera Hiranandani

The Book of Boy, by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

The winner for our own library’s Newbery Book Club:

The Flight of Swans, by Sarah McGuire

Two about Escalator Trades:

The Eleventh Trade, by Alyssa Hollingsworth

The Season of Styx Malone, by Kekla Magoon

Two partly told in pictures:

The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge, by M. T. Anderson

The Faithful Spy, by John Hendrix

Two about space for the 50th anniversary of the moon landing:

To the Moon, by Jeffrey Kluger

We’re Not From Here, by Geoff Rodkey

Two for Inventors:

Calling All Minds, by Temple Grandin

The Doughnut Fix, by Jessie Janowitz

Two great graphic novels:

Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, by Rey Terciero

Be Prepared, by Vera Brosgol

Two more wonderful novels:

Sweep, by Jonathan Auxier

Nowhere Boy, by Katherine Marsh

As you can see, I had far too many favorites to get to talk about them all at each school. But it was fun to share those I could, and maybe they’ll check a few more from this list.

Review of Pay Attention, Carter Jones, by Gary D. Schmidt

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

Pay Attention, Carter Jones

by Gary D. Schmidt

Review written March 25, 2019, from a library book
Clarion Books (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), 2019. 217 pages.
Starred Review
2019 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #4 in Children’s Fiction

This book was delightful. I shouldn’t have chosen it to read during Silent Book Club, because I kept coming to spots that made me chuckle. My friend was reading Game of Thrones, and she said it was a little incongruous. Oops!

And yet some serious topics are covered in this book. There’s a little brother who died and an absent father. So that my primary response was chuckling shows that the serious topics were handled with a light touch and my overall response is delight.

Here’s how the book begins:

If it hadn’t been the first day of school, and if my mother hadn’t been crying her eyes out the night before, and if the fuel pump on the Jeep had been doing what a fuel pump on a Jeep is supposed to be doing, and if it hadn’t been raining like an Australian tropical thunderstorm – and I’ve been in one, so I know what it’s like – and if the very last quart of one percent milk hadn’t gone sour and clumped up, then probably my mother would never have let the Butler into our house.

As it was, it was a crazy morning, and Carter Jones was the one who answered the door when the Butler rang their bell.

There’s some confusion, but the Butler, Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick, takes things in hand. It turns out that Carter’s grandfather has died, and in his will, he provided a generous endowment for Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick to now serve his son’s family.

That son is Carter’s father, who is now serving with the military in Germany. But the family can definitely use his services, though Carter’s not so sure he wants someone calling him “Young Master Jones” and requiring him to behave with good manners.

And then the Butler dresses Carter up in white, along with his friend Billy, and takes him to the school football field to learn to play cricket.

It seems like disaster when the eighth grade cross country team sees them – two sixth graders dressed strangely being taught to play cricket by an Englishman. But one thing leads to another, and soon the entire eighth grade cross country team is learning the fine points of playing cricket.

There are tidbits about the game of cricket at the start of each chapter – and I’m still completely confused by the rules. Though I do have a much better idea of how it works than before I picked up this book.

The whole idea of a proper English gentleman’s gentleman dealing with an American sixth-grade boy is what gives this book layers upon layers of humor. Carter Jones, though, is dealing with some big issues – and Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick also has compassion, in his proper English way.

I finished this book with a smile on my face. Completely delightful!

PS: Something else I loved about the book was that the principal was Principal Swietek! And the town is Marysville! Why is that so exciting? We find out who Doug Swietek married from Okay for Now, which was set in Marysville in the sixties. (The principal is female and her first name is given at one point.) Very fun for Gary Schmidt fans. In fact, I reread my review of Okay for Now, and yes I was right that it was the same town. Now I want to reread the book.

hmhco.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/pay_attention_carter_jones.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 I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Muse of Nightmares, by Laini Taylor

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Stand-outs, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Muse of Nightmares

by Laini Taylor
read by Steve West

Hachette Audio, 2018. 16 hours on 13 CDs.
Starred Review
Review written December 10, 2018, from a library audiobook
2018 Sonderbooks Stand-out:
#3 Teen Speculative Fiction

Wow. This book is wonderful. I confess, I listened to this book even though it’s technically eligible for the Newbery Medal. Our committee had agreed not to listen to audiobooks of eligible books so as not to be swayed in either direction. But the book this follows, Strange the Dreamer, was the book that gave me a crush on narrator Steve West (what a gorgeous voice!), and it’s very long – way too long to indulge in reading the book – and that first book struck me as much more appropriate for young adults than for children.

That continues to be my opinion. Yes, there are some teens in this book – but they are dealing with life as adults, deciding careers and where to live and yes, having sex. There are no parents telling them what to do.

This second book is even sexier than the first. I would hesitate to give it to a 14-year-old. In fact, it would almost be a shame to give this to anyone who hasn’t already had sex themselves – might give them the wrong idea. Our two protagonists have some special powers. Sarai is a ghost with a body – but she can do things like make her body light up when Lazlo kisses her. And they can go to fantasy locations in dreams – and it’s all very amazing. And I wouldn’t want to give anyone a misleading impression about what normal sex is like!

Even setting aside that part, this book is amazing. We’re set up at the end of the first book with what seems to be an impossible situation. Minya is keeping Sarai “alive” as a ghost. But Minya also wants to destroy the people of the city of Weep. Lazlo is caught in the middle. If he doesn’t let Minya get her vengeance, then she’s going to let Sorai completely die.

Can Laini Taylor pull off a satisfying and believable ending from that set-up? It turns out that yes, she can.

To pull off that satisfying ending involves telling another story and giving us a bigger picture of worlds parallel to the one where our story is set. It’s all intricate and well-worked-out and I am again marveling at Laini Taylor’s imagination.

It’s also long. Yes, there’s some repetition. Yes, there are some places where we get more descriptions of people’s emotions than we necessarily need. But again, listening to Steve West’s narration on my commute, I didn’t mind the experience being prolonged.

In the first book we found out about generations of abuse that happened to the people of the city of Weep. In the second book, we find out what was behind that abuse – and see realistic beginnings of healing from it.

And the whole story is intricate and imaginative and beautifully told.

lainitaylor.com
strangethedreamer.com
hachetteaudio.com

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

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

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Review of Sweep, by Jonathan Auxier

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

Sweep

The Story of a Girl and Her Monster

by Jonathan Auxier

Amulet Books, 2018. 358 pages.
Starred Review
Review written September 23, 2018, from a book sent by the publisher
2018 Sonderbooks Stand-out:
#2 Children’s Fiction – Fantasy
2019 Sydney Taylor Gold Medal

The way this book begins gives you a feeling of the magic to come:

There are all sorts of wonderful things a person might see very early in the morning. You might see your parents sleeping. You might see an unclaimed penny on the sidewalk or the first rays of dawn. And if you are very, very lucky, you might even catch a glimpse of the girl and her Sweep.

Look! Here they are now, approaching through the early fog: a thin man with a long broom over one shoulder, the end bobbing up and down with every step. And trailing behind him, pail in hand, a little girl, who loves that man more than anything in the world.

The girl, Nan, is the assistant to the Sweep and life is beautiful by his side.

But one night, the Sweep doesn’t come back. He leaves her his hat and coat, with a charred clump of soot in its pocket. She calls it her “char,” and it’s oddly comforting and unnaturally warm, as she lives the difficult and dangerous life of a “climber” – working for a sweep who is not kind or loving with a bunch of other stray kids who have no other home.

But one day, when Nan’s life is in danger in a tight chimney, she calls out for help – and the char in her pocket comes to life and breaks through the chimney. She ends up escaping from the cruel master and hiding out with her char, who quickly grows into a creature bigger than she is herself. He’s oddly innocent and very protective of her – and eventually Nan figures out that the Sweep made her a golem to protect her. She names him Charlie

This lovely book tells about Nan and Charlie’s adventures in the city, trying to make a home for themselves and escape her cruel master, who is looking for her since she escaped the chimney and was thought to be dead. Meanwhile, we learn about the horrible plight of all the climber children in Victorian London. Can Nan and Charlie make things better for them as well?

But the main trouble with loving a golem? He only lasts until his job is done.

TheScop.com
amuletbooks.com

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

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Review of What the Night Sings, by Vesper Stamper

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

What the Night Sings

by Vesper Stamper

Alfred A. Knopf, 2018. 266 pages.
Starred Review
Review written May 27, 2018.
2018 Sonderbooks Stand-out:
#2 General Teen Fiction

Wow. This is a Holocaust novel. They tend to be powerful. But not all of them have me closing the book saying, “Wow” – stunned by hope.

To be fair, the book begins as World War II is finishing. Gerta Rausch is in Bergen-Belsen as the British are liberating the camp, holding her bunkmate, sick with typhus, in her arms:

The soldiers begin removing the dead. There are so many. How could I not have noticed them lying right next to me?

And suddenly – Rivkah, too, is gone.

I feel her final breath wisp across my lips. They pull her from me, but I can’t let her go. She is my last connection to the living world. I clutch her arm, her hand, her fingers. I sing the lullaby after her, my foster mother. I know no one else in all of Bergen-Belsen, either from Auschwitz or Theresienstadt. Everyone has come and gone, piles of shells pulled in and out of waves, and I’m still here, a skeleton of a sea creature, dropped in this tide pool, living, watching, still living.

This book is about living – and trying to figure out how to make a life – after the war. Gerta is sixteen years old and in a displaced persons camp on the site of the old concentration camp. Her only family – her Papa – died during the war in the furnaces.

Gerta had trained to be an opera singer like her stepmother, her stepmother who watched while she and her papa were taken to the cattle cars. Gerta did manage to bring her papa’s viola with her – and got assignments to play in the camp orchestras. They played while people were sorted, for life or for death.

Part of the power of this book is that it includes illustrations. The book size is larger format than most novels, and many of the illustrations take up entire double-page spreads, though some are next to the text. The picture that hit me the hardest was a picture of a smokestack on the side with smoke going all the way across the top of the two pages. Those pages conclude with these words:

“Come with me,” the woman says softly, pragmatically. “You’ve been sent to the orchestra, yes? Well. Join your very lucky sisters. Music has saved your life today.”

“Where’s my papa?” I plead with her. “I want my papa!”

She signs and points ahead. “See that chimney?” she says, still softly, but so that I will clearly understand. “See that smoke? There’s your papa.”

But I said that it’s a book that left me with hope. Though the book does explain the dark setting, Gerta must make the hard choice to keep living. And to love. And it’s not easy.

I especially appreciated the Author’s Note at the back, because it put a bow on why the book felt so applicable to my life – I, who had never experienced anything remotely like the Holocaust. She explained that in high school she developed a deep identity as a musician.

There’s a problem with that, however. When you decide early on who you “truly are,” it can trick you into thinking that you were destined to live by a certain script. And when you’re out on your own and you realize that there is no script, you might panic.

Several years ago, I was rear-ended by a texting driver, which resulted in my arm being partially paralyzed. I completely lost the ability to play guitar – I had been a touring musician – and it took me a full year of rehab before I could reliably draw again. I had to relearn everything, even how to lift a fork to my mouth. This wasn’t in the script. A huge element of my deeply ingrained identity had been smashed. Like Gerta, I had hinged my future on a set of expectations, which depended on life’s machine running with no glitches. Being disabled cast a pall over every area of my life: my ability to drive, hold a baby, cook, hug or shake hands, let alone create art and music. How could I live my life? Without my script, who was I?

Perhaps that puts all the more power into Gerta’s story – and the art Vesper Stamper created to go with that story.

A stunning book about starting over when everything and everyone is gone. About finding joy again, about choosing life and choosing love.

vesperillustration.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/what_the_night_sings.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 book sent from the publisher.

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

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