Review of Flame of Sevenwaters, by Juliet Marillier

Fantasy, Fiction Review, Historical, Romance, Starred Review 0

Flame of Sevenwaters

by Juliet Marillier

A Roc Book (Penguin), 2012. 434 pages.
Starred Review

I completely blame Juliet Marillier. Sunday afternoon, I should have gotten a whole lot of organizing and packing done for my impending move. Instead, I read Flame of Sevenwaters. I should have known better than to even start it, since pretty much all of her books has absorbed me to the extent that I forget about trivial things like eating.

This is the sixth book in her stories from Sevenwaters, completing a second trilogy. Each book completes a story, but there is an overarching storyline throughout each trilogy, so the books are best read in order. The second trilogy features three sisters from the household of Sevenwaters.

Flame of Sevenwaters takes place from the viewpoint of Maeve, who was sent away from Sevenwaters as a child to be tended by Aunt Liadan after she was severely burned in a horrible accident in which she tried to save her dog from a fire. Maeve is reconciled to the fact that there’s not much she can do, with her fingers that don’t bend. The people at Harrowfield are used to her shocking scars, but she’s been putting off going back home to Sevenwaters because she can only be an embarrassment at the high table, unable even to feed herself.

However, ten years after the accident, Uncle Bran is sending a fine young horse to her father, in hopes he can use it to placate a local nobleman after his sons and their companions disappeared on Sevenwaters land. Maeve does have a way with animals, and her presence will help calm the horse. The people of Sevenwaters are sure the disappearance is the work of Mac Dara, the powerful fey prince who’s the father of Cathal, a man who married one of the daughter’s of the house. Cathal’s been staying out of Mac Dara’s reach, but now it seems a showdown is at hand — and Maeve, despite herself, is going to be part of that showdown.

At Sevenwaters, Maeve finds two dogs alone in the forest. She slowly wins them over, and wonders where they came from.

This was the first time I had taken the dogs to the keep with me, but we had been practicing against this possibility. They had walked halfway there and back again with me and Rhian several times now. They had learned to stay quiet and calm while Emrys or Donal worked with Swift in the field or on the tracks around the clearing. They had learned not to bark at the cows or the druids. As for sleeping arrangements, I had not been displaced from my bed as Rhian had anticipated. Bear would have slept inside readily, but Badger did not like to be in the cottage when the door was closed. When night fell and Rhian began to secure our abode with shutters and bolts, he always went out to lie on the old sacks beyond the door. Bear would generally cast a sad-eyed look in my direction as he followed, but he would not leave Badger on his own. I had never before seen a dog with eyes of such a remarkable color as Bear’s, a mellow, lustrous gold-brown. Against his black coat, now glossy with good care, they were striking indeed.

I thought I’d figured out some patterns to Sevenwaters books, but this one breaks them. And it’s a wonderful culmination to the story so far. I sincerely hope this isn’t the end.

julietmarillier.com
penguin.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 the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely 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.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Navigating Early, by Clare Vanderpool

Children's Fiction Review, Historical 2

Navigating Early

by Clare Vanderpool

Delacorte Press, 2013. 306 pages.

Let me say right up front that I don’t review books I don’t like. Navigating Early was a wonderful reading experience.

The book is set shortly after the end of World War II. Jack Baker and his Mom bore up when his Dad had to go to war. But then, at the end of the war, his Mom died in her sleep. Now Jack has been taken far from home in Kansas to boarding school in Maine. His whole world has changed.

Jack is a well-drawn character. The kids he meets at school aren’t intentionally mean; they seem like real kids. Jack often pretends to know about things like rowing that he knows nothing about; that seems realistic, too. Jack meets Early Auden, an autistic boy, before that word was really used. He simply comes across as strange. Early plays records of a different musician on different days of the week. He’s obsessed with the number pi. He’s a demanding coxswain and he knows how to rebuild a boat.

Then it’s fall break, and Jack’s Dad’s shore leave is postponed. Early had already invited him to go on a crazy quest to find the Great Bear of the Appalachian Trail. In a wave of disappointment and loneliness, Jack and Early set out on an epic adventure.

There were quite a few places where I had to stretch my belief a bit. I’ve read Born on a Blue Day, so I could accept that for some people, the digits of pi are like a landscape of colors and shapes. For Early, the digits of pi tell a story. That was a bit of a stretch, but I could believe it.

Then the story Early tells, from the digits of pi, mirrors what happens to the two boys on their quest. That’s a bit of a stretch, too, but I could suspend my disbelief.

The people they met on their quest all seemed pretty eccentric. Nobody asked why they were out in the wilderness on their own. Nobody insisted on taking them back to school. That was a bit of a stretch, but I could accept it.

Lots of different people in the story were dealing with some kind of grief. That was maybe a coincidence, but one that enhanced the story. In fact, the different shades of grief, experienced in the lives of the various characters, was a strength of the book.

What I absolutely could not believe? Well, Early’s obsessed with the number pi, right? Toward the beginning of the book, their math teacher tells them about a man named Professor Douglas Stanton:

He’s a mathematician at Cambridge who is on a quest of his own. He has spent much of his career studying this number and has a theory that, contrary to popular belief, pi is not a never-ending number. That yes, it is an amazing number that has over seven hundred digits currently known, and thousands more that haven’t been calculated yet. But he believes it will, in fact, end.

The fact is, pi was proven in 1761 to be irrational. That means it’s not a matter of “popular belief” that it doesn’t end. It doesn’t end, and mathematicians know it doesn’t end. They have proof. A serious mathematician would never entertain a theory like that with no possibility of it being correct.

It gets worse. At the culmination of the Fall Math Institute at the end of the book, Professor Stanton presents his “proof”:

Professor Douglas Stanton wrote out more than two hundred digits, which he explained, were the most recently calculated numbers of pi. He talked long and loud and wrote lots of symbols and equations on the chalkboard, highlighting the fact that there were no ones in the most recently calculated digits of pi. He explained that, based on this disappearance of the number one, he’d concluded that other numbers would also disappear and that pi would eventually end.

Early ends up refuting this so-called “proof” by showing that the calculations were wrong, and there actually should have been ones in the recently calculated digits.

Okay, this is wrong on many levels. I’ve been told that since pi is infinite, every conceivable sequence can be found among its digits if you go out far enough. There probably is a stretch of 200 digits somewhere that has no ones. And that would not prove anything! And a mathematician would know that it wouldn’t prove anything.

If Early finds an error in a published expansion of pi, great. But that wouldn’t disprove anything, either. The proof that pi is irrational (published in 1761) had nothing to do with its calculated decimal expansion.

Based on the Author’s Note at the end, the author knows that pi is irrational. I simply could not even come close to believing that a respected mathematician would seriously put forth a “proof” or even a conjecture that pi is a rational number. If this had been set in 1700, maybe. Or some alien, medieval-type world. In a historical novel set in 1945? No way.

I’m not sure if I think it’s good or bad that that particular plot point could be completely taken out of the book without any harm to the plot. (And I really don’t think that telling you what happens is a spoiler.)

I am afraid that once I noticed this, it’s bordering on a little obsession for me to point out that it’s incorrect. I suspect it bothers me, with a Master’s in Math, a lot more than it will bother most readers, particularly kids. But that bothers me, too. Mathematicians would never act as this Professor Stanton is portrayed acting, and I feel like it gives mathematicians a bad name. I don’t like kids getting the impression that pi’s irrationality is open to debate or that mathematicians aren’t absolutely certain about it. I would way rather she came up with something mathematicians actually might set out to prove, like the distribution of different digits in the expansion of pi. (How likely is it that a stretch of 200 digits has no ones? Now that’s an interesting question!)

Another question: How much do we hold writers of fiction to the facts? If her presentation of rowing terms were all wrong (I have absolutely no idea if they were or not; I assume they were correct.), would that be considered a flaw in the book? And would I accept the word of an expert who told me it was incorrect? I think this presentation of a mathematician claiming to “prove” pi is a rational number is completely unbelievable (Shall I say “irrational”?) in a book set in 1945. Will those without advanced mathematical training agree with me? Will they take my word for it? I can’t help but think of the much-decorated book The House of the Scorpion, by Nancy Farmer, which had a huge plot point turn on the completely impossible scenario of a clone having the same fingerprints as his “father.” There is absolutely no way that would happen. And how much does a flaw like that affect your opinion of a work of fiction?

Did I mention that the writing is lovely and the characters are well-drawn? Yes, I enjoyed this story. But I was annoyed every time it mentioned the idea that a mathematician thought pi would end. And now I find myself annoyingly obsessed with making sure that people know that WOULD. NOT. HAPPEN!

It’s a good book, though! And, please, tell me what you think. Did this bother you? I’d love to hear from non-mathematically-minded and mathematically-minded alike. Would it not have bothered you if I hadn’t pointed it out? Does it not bother you despite the fact that I pointed it out? I’m really curious if I’m the nutty one here!

randomhouse.com/kids

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/navigating_early.html

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

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

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely 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.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of No Crystal Stair, by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson

Award Winners, Biography, Historical, Teen Fiction Review, True Stories 0

No Crystal Stair

A Documentary Novel of the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller

by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson
Artwork by R. Gregory Christie

CarolRhoda Lab, Minneapolis, 2012. 188 pages.
2012 Boston-Globe Horn Book Award Winner for Fiction
2013 Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book

This is a “Documentary Novel.” In the Author’s Note at the back, Vaunda Micheaux Nelson tells us, “Researching this family history was exciting and challenging, though nonexistent and conflicting information complicated the project. I did my best to tell Lewis’s story using facts where I could, filling gaps with informed speculation, making this a work of fiction. My goal was to leave readers with the essence of the man, an understanding of what shaped him, and a picture of how he and his National Memorial African Bookstore influenced a community.”

I think she admirably achieved this goal. The book reads like a work of nonfiction, so will be more interesting to kids who like nonfiction. It doesn’t read quite like a novel, but the absorbing information may be all the more interesting because it really happened. The author includes photographs and documents and even a copy of the FBI files on Lewis Michaux.

The story is inspiring. Lewis started out as something of the family troublemaker, growing up in his brother the preacher’s shadow. And it took awhile for him to find his own calling. Here’s where Vaunda Micheaux Nelson has him realizing what he should do:

I keep coming back to the same thing. Knowledge. Our people need to continue on the climb Douglass started. They need to read. I’m talking about books you don’t find in just any bookstore. Books for black people, books by black people, books about black people here and all around the world. The so-called Negro needs to hear and learn from the voices of black men and women.

This office would be perfect for a bookstore. My bookstore.

The author takes voices from people all around Lewis Michaux to show how he changed people’s lives. Through books.

lernerbooks.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 the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely 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.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of The Prairie Thief, by Melissa Wiley

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

The Prairie Thief

by Melissa Wiley

Margaret K. McElderry Books (Simon & Schuster), 2012. 215 pages.
Starred Review
2012 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #10 Children’s Fiction: Fantasy and Science Fiction

I read this book as one of the many nominees for the Cybils Award in Middle Grade Science Fiction and Fantasy, and I can safely say it was distinctly different from any other of the 151 books we considered. The book is a sweet story, and it’s set on the American prairie among some of the first European settlers, who live isolated and far apart from each other. Louisa’s Pa has been imprisoned for thievery, even though no one — least of all Louisa — thinks he’s the kind of person who’d do that. But many missing objects have been found in his abandoned dugout. What other explanation is there?

When the little girl from the family who’s taken Louisa in sees a little man nearby, it’s not hard for the reader to guess what’s going on (especially combined with the cover illustration). So though the plot may not be surprising, there is a good story here. There are some lovely moments, like when Louisa gets to ride on a pronghorn antelope to speed to her father’s trial.

Yes, the ending has a rather large coincidence. But the story is so nice, it was easy to forgive, especially since the coincidence was told with humor. There are nice imaginative touches along the way, too. Reminiscent of Little House on the Prairie, but with little people, maybe it should be called Little People on the Prairie. I like the imagining how little people would deal with the New World if they decided to stowaway with the Big Folk.

melissawiley.com
KIDS.SimonandSchuster.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 the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely 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.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Audiobook Code Name Verity, by Elizabeth Wein

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

Code Name Verity

by Elizabeth Wein
read by Morven Christie and Lucy Gaskell

Bolinda Audio, 2012. Unabridged. 10 hours 9 minutes on 9 compact discs.
2012 Sonderbooks Stand-out, #1 Teen Fiction
Starred Review

In my mind, Code Name Verity is easily the best book written in 2012. It’s not a pleasant story. It’s not even a happy story. But Wow! It blows you away.

I’m already thinking about how to booktalk the book. Spies. The Resistance. A British pilot stranded in France during World War II. Nazi interrogators. Think that will do it? It’s also a book about friendship.

I already reviewed the print version of the book, which I devoured as soon as it arrived via Amazon. But as soon as I finished, I knew I’d want to read it again. There are lots of things in the second part referred to in the beginning part, and I wanted to see if I would have a new perspective having already finished the book. Besides, I wanted to enjoy it again! So when the audio version was nominated for Capitol Choices, that seemed like a good excuse to reread the book in a different format.

And, Wow! Okay, I realize I’m not being even slightly eloquent. Let me simply say that this is an outstanding audio production of an outstanding story. They got someone from Scotland to read Julie’s parts, and someone from England to read Maddie’s. And they were magnificent. It felt like I was really listening to the two friends talking about their wartime service and their friendship.

I still love this passage. I almost burst out crying in the car when it came up in the audiobook:

Then she hitched up her hair to its two-inch above-the-collar regulation point, swabbed her own tears and the grease and the concrete dust and the gunner’s blood from her cheeks with the back of her hand, and she was off running again, like the Red Queen.

It’s like being in love, discovering your best friend.

I wouldn’t have thought there was a way to improve this book. But listening to Morven Christie and Lucy Gaskell made me feel like I was listening to Julie and Maddie tell me their thoughts.

Now, I suppose I should add that there’s torture that happens in this book. It’s set during wartime, and it isn’t pretty. Julie and Maddie are adults, young ones, yes, but adults serving during wartime. So although Code Name Verity is published as a young adult book, “old” adults won’t feel the least bit like the book is too young for them. And this isn’t a YA book I’d want to give to the youngest teens, because the subject matter is deadly serious. This audiobook is wonderful for listening in the car, but I wouldn’t call it a “family” audiobook if there are young kids around.

But Wow. Code Name Verity is a story of wartime, yes, but it’s a beautiful one. The story of the friendship, of these amazing young women, far outshines the ugly details of wartime.

elizabethwein.com
bolinda.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 audiobook from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely 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.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Twelve Kinds of Ice, by Ellen Bryan Obed

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

Twelve Kinds of Ice

by Ellen Bryan Obed
illustrated by Barbara McClintock

Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, Boston, 2012. 61 pages.
Starred Review

It doesn’t seem like it would work in a children’s book — an adult talking about what it was like for her growing up as a child in Maine. But the story is told firmly from a child’s perspective, and it does work, completely. I’m afraid it may cause a wave of discontent across America. If I had read it as a child growing up in Los Angeles, already sad because I never got to have snow, it would have added a new thing to wish for — ice.

The story is told beautifully and simply. You’d think it would lose effectiveness because it’s about all their childhood winters, and isn’t the story of one particular year — but it stays wonderfully evocative.

And who knew it took so long before they could use their vegetable garden as a rink? The beginning “chapters” (almost more like poems) are simple:

The First Ice

The first ice came on the sheep pails in the barn — a skim of ice so thin that it broke when we touched it.

(There’s a full page illustration of three kids looking in the bucket.)

The Second Ice

The second ice was thicker. We would pick it out of the pails like panes of glass. We would hold it up in our mittened hands and look through it. Then we would drop it on the hard ground to watch it splinter into a hundred pieces.

(This time the illustration shows a girl looking through a round pane of ice.)

The different types of ice continue. There’s field ice and stream ice and black ice, where they can skate on the lake. All of those come before they’re ready to turn their summer vegetable garden into a skating rink for the entire community — Bryan Gardens.

Then the book changes. She talks about rink rules, her Dad’s skating tricks, skating parties, and having a big Ice Show. Here’s a chapter from later in the book:

Late-Night Skate

After homework was done, after Dad had flooded, after lights were out in neighbors’ houses, my sister and I would sometimes go out for a skate. Late-night skates were more exciting than daytime skates. We were alone with our dreams. We would work on our figure eights. We would work on our jumps and spins. We would put on music and pretend we were skating before crowds in a great stadium. We would try out moves that we’d seen figure skaters doing on television or in a picture in the newspaper. We were planning and practicing for some distant Olympics.

This is a lovely little book. It’s short and not intimidating, but it’s going to be hard to know which children might be interested in it. It will be a good choice for readers beginning with chapter books. There’s definitely not an action-packed story, but the reader who tackles it will be drawn into a world of anticipation, joy, and skill. I’m looking forward to finding out what kids say about it at our Mock Newbery Book Club in January.

I’m not sure what to call this book. My friend who grew up in Maine says things aren’t like that any more there, so I think the closest category is Historical. I’ll probably cop out and call it a beginning chapter book, since it’s so short, has lots of pictures, and is non-threatening. It pulls you into a time where children’s activities were centered around the world outdoors. Even reading about such a time and place is refreshing.

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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 the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely 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.

Review of The Mysterious Howling, by Maryrose Wood

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Historical, Humorous, Starred Review 0

The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place

The Mysterious Howling

by Maryrose Wood

Balzer + Bray (HarperCollins), 2010. 267 pages.
Starred Review

I’m so glad I finally read this book! In a way, it’s nice that I took so long, because the final three words are those dreaded ones, “To Be Continued . . .” I can go straight to rushing to read the next two volumes.

I found The Mysterious Howling completely delightful. The story is of Penelope Lumley, a Poor but Deserving young fifteen-year-old girl, penniless and sent away from her boarding school to try her luck at a grand house, Ashton Place, to be the governess.

Her interview with Lady Constance is unusual. Even Penelope, with no experience in such things, finds it surprising how quickly Lady Constance offers her the job and that she won’t speak of the children. She closes the interview like this:

And with that, they both affixed their signatures to the bottom of the letter of terms that Lord Ashton had prepared. Penelope hardly thought this necessary, but Lady Constance assured her that signed, binding contracts were the custom in these parts, a charming formality which she would not dream of omitting.

When Penelope does meet the children, she learns that they were, in fact, raised by wolves, and discovered by the mysterious Lord Ashton in Ashton Forest on one of his hunting parties. Penelope must revise her hopes and dreams of what she can teach the children, but her compassion, and her binding contract, compel her to stay.

The rest of the book concerns itself with Penelope teaching the children, trying to get them not to chase squirrels and teach them enough words to speak politely to people. In fact, when Lady Constance plans a big party on Christmas Day, Lord Ashton particularly wants the children to be there, so Penelope is under deep pressure to teach them proper things to say to the guests, and drill them on how to behave. It’s not her fault if things don’t go as she plans….

Meanwhile, there’s a mystery at Ashton Place. In a tribute to Jane Eyre, besides the mysterious howling from the children before Penelope met them, there’s a sound coming from a room in the attic.

I’m not sure who exactly the audience for this book is, except that I am firmly in it. Definitely those who have read and loved Jane Eyre will find themselves laughing over Penelope Lumley’s expectations of being a governess and the rich contrast with the children she actually teaches. There are obvious sections inserted to delight the adult reader, such as this one:

“My heavens!” Mrs. Clarke exclaimed. “I am sure I have never seen three such extraordinarily handsome and well-turned out children!”

As you may know complimentary remarks of this type are all too often made by well-meaning adults to children who are, to be frank, perfectly ordinary-looking. This practice of overstating the case is called hyperbole. Hyperbole is usually harmless, but in some cases it has been known to precipitate unneccessary wars as well as a painful gaseous condition called stock market bubbles. For safety’s sake, then, hyperbole should be used with restraint and only by those with the proper literary training.

However, the book is written at a child’s reading level, and I do think children will enjoy the story. There is silliness with the children learning how to speak and how to behave, despite a tendency toward howling, and a thread of a mysterious something bigger throughout the story.

Here’s a section shortly after Penelope has learned the nature of her charges. She goes, naturally enough, to the library:

It was chilly and dark, even on a sunny afternoon, with many more books than even the library at Swanburne had contained. The section on animal behavior was exceptionally well stocked. In short, Penelope was in library heaven, and she prepared to start taking notes. She quickly found a book on wolves, which provided many thought-provoking tidbits of information and even shed light on some of the children’s more intriguing habits — the way Alexander, for instance, would occasionally discipline his siblings by knocking them to the ground and rolling them onto their backs. Or the way Beowulf would rise from his bed during the night and gaze out the nursery window, mournfully ahwooing for hours on end. Or Cassiopeia’s tendency to scamper closely after Penelope and sit at her feet the instant she stopped moving.

Of course, I can’t help but think the most ideal audience would be a family read-aloud, or perhaps a classroom read-aloud. I am planning to listen to the second book on CD, so it will be fun to see if that reader does the story justice.

maryrosewood.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 my own copy, which I purchased at an ALA Conference and had signed by the author.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely 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.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Beswitched, by Kate Saunders

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

Beswitched

by Kate Saunders

Delacorte Press, 2011. First published in the United Kingdom in 2010. 244 pages.
Starred Review

I didn’t think I’d like this book at first. A spoiled girl is upset because she has to go to boarding school, but it’s a fancy upscale boarding school, “Penrice Hall — Individual Fulfillment in a Homelike Atmosphere.” Her grandmother broke her hip and is coming to live with their family, and her parents need to go to France to close up the house and bring her back.

But on the train to school, Flora falls asleep, has a strange dream, and wakes up in 1935, on her way to a very different boarding school. She’s in the place of a girl whose parents were in India, so the only part she doesn’t have to pretend about is that it’s her first time living away from her parents.

She makes the mistake starting out of trying to explain she’s from the future, and when the girls from her dorm room find out, they don’t react the way everyone else did. In fact, they were experimenting with a book of spells and tried one to “summon a helpful demon from the future.”

But there’s no spell to send her back.

So Flora must figure out how to get along in the past, at a school much stricter than the one her parents picked out for her.

This is an old-fashioned good-hearted school story with the twist of looking at it with the eyes of someone from our time.

randomhouse.com/kids

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/beswitched.html

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

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

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely 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.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of The Lions of Little Rock, by Kristin Levine

Children's Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

The Lions of Little Rock

by Kristin Levine

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2012. 298 pages.
Starred Review

This book is set in Little Rock in 1958. The schools have been ordered to integrate, and a few bold teens forced the issue. So now the mayor responds by closing the high school.

Marlee’s sister Judy is going into eleventh grade, so she’s going to have to go away to be able to go to school, leaving Marlee on her own. Marlee has a lot of fears. She doesn’t like to talk. Not to other people, anyway. But then a new girl comes to her middle school, and Marlee makes a wonderful new friend, a friend who helps her speak up and face the things she’s afraid of.

Marlee caught my sympathy early, because she uses numbers to steady herself. I also enjoyed her way of looking at the people in her life:

You see, to me, people are like things you drink. Some are like a pot of black coffee, no cream, no sugar. They make me so nervous I start to tremble. Others calm me down enough that I can sort through the words in my head and find something to say.

My brother, David, is a glass of sweet iced tea on a hot summer day, when you’ve put your feet up in a hammock and haven’t got a care in the world. Judy is an ice-cold Coca-Cola from the fridge. Sally is cough syrup; she tastes bad, but my mother insists she’s good for me. Daddy’s a glass of milk, usually cold and delicious, but every once in a while, he goes sour. If I have to ask one of my parents a question, I’ll pick him, because Mother is hot black tea, so strong, she’s almost coffee.

When Marlee’s new friend Liz turns out to be black, trying to pass for white, Marlee’s life turns upside-down. She has to examine things like true friendship, what’s right and what’s wrong, as well as facing her fears.

This novel about civil rights isn’t quite like any other I’ve read. It works just as well as a novel about a girl learning to face her fears and examine her friendships as much as it works to cast light on a particular time in history.

kristinlevine.com
penguin.com/youngreaders

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/lions_of_little_rock.html

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

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

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely 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.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Grave Mercy, by Robin LaFevers

Fantasy, Historical, Paranormal, Romance, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 2

Grave Mercy

His Fair Assassin, Book I

by Robin LaFevers

Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2012. 509 pages.
Starred Review

Wow. This book reminded me of The Canterbury Papers, full of medieval palace intrigue, but this had supernatural powers thrown in.

The book is set in Brittany, beginning in 1485. Ismae has been told from birth that the scar she was born with, from the midwife’s poison failing, marks her as the daughter of Death himself, an ancient Breton god now called St. Mortain. When the man her father sold her to sees the scar, he is going to have her burned, but she is rescued by strangers and sent to the convent of St. Mortain.

At the convent, Ismae learns the special powers she has as the daughter of St. Mortain. She can see a mark on a person who is going to die. Poison does not harm her. She can see a person’s soul when it leaves his body. Also at the convent, they train her to be an assassin.

“If you choose to stay, you will be trained in His arts. You will learn more ways to kill a man than you imagined possible. We will train you in stealth and cunning and all manner of skills that will ensure no man is ever again a threat to you.”

Three years later, Ismae is ready for her first assignments. But now there is political trouble, and Brittany is in danger of being swallowed up by France. Ismae is sent to the court of the duchess herself, ordered to pose as the mistress of Duval, the duchess’s half-brother.

But at court, things don’t turn out as Ismae has been led to believe they will. Those she was told to be suspicious of seem kind and seem to have the Duchess’s best interests at heart. Those she is supposed to trust seem suspicious. What is right?

Meanwhile, there’s plenty of action and adventure. There are surprise attacks and deaths that Ismae had nothing to do with. And the duchess must marry soon, preferably to someone who can bring an army to her cause. Along the way, slowly and exquisitely, we see Ismae’s heart being won by a good man.

Here’s the situation as it’s laid out before Ismae leaves the convent:

Crunard spreads his hands. “Then you know it is true. The circling vultures grow bold. The regent of France has forbidden that Anne be crowned duchess. It is our enemies’ wish to make her France’s ward so that they may claim Brittany for their own. They also claim the right to determine who she will marry.”

Duval begins pacing. “Spies are everywhere. We can scarce keep track of them all. The French have set up a permanent entourage within our court, which has made some of the border nations uneasy.”

Crunard adds, “Not to mention that their presence makes it impossible to see Anne anointed as our duchess without their knowledge. But until we place that coronet upon her head before her people and the Church, we are vulnerable.”

I cannot help but feel sympathy for our poor duchess. “Surely there is some way out of this mess?”

I have addressed my question to the abbess, but it is Duval who answers. “I will forge one with my bare hands, if need be,” he says. “I vow that I will see her duchess, and I will see her safely wed. But I need information against our enemies if I am to accomplish this.”

The room falls so silent that I fear they will hear the pounding of my heart. Duval’s vow has moved me, and that he has made it on sacred ground proves he is either very brave or very foolish.

This is one book I was very happy to see called Book One. The story in this book does come to a satisfying conclusion, but I want to come back to this world. This book would be excellent if it only had the medieval intrigue and romance, but with the paranormal elements added in, there’s extra satisfaction seeing Ismae’s power far beyond what you’d normally expect of a woman in the fifteenth century.

robinlafevers.com
hmhbooks.com

Buy from Amazon.com

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

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

Source: This review is based on an Advance Reader Copy I got at an ALA conference and checked against a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely 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.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!