Review of Okay For Now, by Gary D. Schmidt

Children's Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

Okay For Now

by Gary D. Schmidt

Clarion Books (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Boston, 2011. 360 pages.
Starred Review

Okay, I’ve found my early pick for the book I want to win the Newbery Medal next year. The story is told from the perspective of just the sort of kid I never liked, as a child or as an adult: A troublemaker, not interested in books or learning, with a smart mouth toward authority. I got halfway through the book and realized I was nuts about that kid and just wanted everything to go right for him.

The main character is Doug Swieteck, who was in The Wednesday Wars, but you don’t have to have read The Wednesday Wars or remember what it was about. Right at the beginning, Doug’s father gets himself fired, and the family has to move to Marysville, where Doug’s father’s drinking buddy found him a job at a paper mill.

Doug has a lot against him. He’s an outsider at this new school, and the only new eighth grader. His father has quick hands. The whole town is convinced that he and his brother are hoodlums. It gradually dawns on the reader that Doug can’t read. And it turns out to be a horrible thing that the gym teacher won’t let him switch from the Skins team to the Shirts team. As for the principal, Gary Schmidt has created a completely odious, but frightfully believable villain:

“Principal Peattie, who had been waiting for this moment and who decided to stretch things out and make me sweat, told me to sit in this chair by the secretary, which I did in my stupid gym uniform for almost half an hour before he opened his door and told me to come in and sit down and said that Principal Peattie had been expecting something like this all along and Principal Peattie was surprised that it hadn’t happened sooner and Principal Peattie was going to throw the book at me so I learned my lesson and learned it good, and dang it, I should take this like a man and look Principal Peattie in the eye.”

One bright spot is Doug’s weekly visits to the Marysville Public Library, where the elderly lady librarian gives him dirty looks, but the other librarian, Mr. Powell, gives Doug art lessons over the pages of a book by John James Audubon. Each bird in each painting sticks in Doug’s mind. Unfortunately, the library is selling off some of the pages because it needs money.

Doug’s voice is believable and consistent throughout. He’s got a pessimistic outlook, but he sneaks in some optimistic thinking when things feel good, and you find yourself so rooting for him. Here’s a part early on, when he’s figuring out how to draw the feathers of the Arctic Tern:

“I looked at the feathers, and rolled the paper up to hide it beneath my bed, and unrolled it to look at the feathers again, and finally rolled it up and hid it beneath the bed. Then I turned out the light and lay down with my hands — and the pencil smudge on my thumb — back behind my head and I looked out the window. There was still a little bit of light left in the summer sky, and the birds were having a riot before turning in. A few stars starting up.

“I couldn’t keep myself from smiling. I couldn’t. Maybe this happens to you every day, but I think it was the first time I could hardly wait to show something that I’d done to someone who would care besides my mother. You know how that feels?

“So that’s why I went to the Marysville Free Public Library every Saturday for the rest of August and on into September.

“Not to read a book or anything.”

It’s hard to explain how incredibly good this book is. When I heard it described, it didn’t sound like anything memorable. I knew, however, that Gary Schmidt’s other books were outstanding, so I knew I had to give it a try. All I can say is: WOW!

There are lots more absolutely brilliant elements. Doug’s class is reading an abridgement of Jane Eyre, and the author gives Doug an positively magnificent use of “Dear Reader” in the story. Later, Doug gets involved in a Broadway adaptation of the book, and his job is the voice of Bertha Mason. After that he freely uses many, many references to a shriek “like an insane woman who has been locked in an attic for a great many years.” It’s amazing how very often that exact sort of shriek is appropriate.

I found it slightly unbelievable how many things turned around and went right for Doug by the end, and how many awful adults gained understanding — but I definitely liked it. (Especially after how horribly sad Lizzie Bright was.) The author does leave one major problem unresolved, but I refuse to believe anything but that one, also, will turn out okay. Doug will go far. And what do you know? I love that kid!

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

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

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

Review of A Red Herring Without Mustard, by Alan Bradley

Fiction Review, Historical, Mystery, Starred Review 0

A Red Herring Without Mustard

by Alan Bradley

Delacorte Press, New York, 2011. 399 pages.
Starred Review

Hooray! Flavia de Luce is back in this, her third mystery and adventure. She bikes around the family’s estate and nearby village in England on a bicycle named Gladys, and manages to find all sorts of trouble. The book begins with Flavia accidentally burning the tent of a Gypsy who tells her fortune. The next morning, Flavia discovers the Gypsy has been bludgeoned, and Flavia summons help — but not before she gets a good look at the evidence.

Flavia’s old friend, Inspector Hewitt, comes to the scene, and this will give you the flavor of why you shouldn’t trifle with eleven-year-old Flavia:

“‘You’ve got goose bumps,’ he said, looking at me attentively. ‘Best go sit in the car.’

“He had already reached the far side of the bridge before he turned back. ‘There’s a blanket in the boot,’ he said, and then vanished in the shadows.

“I felt my temper rising. Here was this man — a man in an ordinary business suit, without so much as a badge on his shoulder — dismissing me from the scene of a crime that I had come to think of as my own. After all, hadn’t I been the first to discover it?

“Had Marie Curie been dismissed after discovering polonium? Or radium? Had someone told her to run along?

“It simply wasn’t fair.

“A crime scene, of course, wasn’t exactly an atom-shattering discovery, but the Inspector might at least have said ‘Thank you.’ After all, hadn’t the attack upon the Gypsy taken place within the grounds of Buckshaw, my ancestral home? Hadn’t her life likely been saved by my horseback expedition into the night to summon help?

“Surely I was entitled to at least a nod. But no —

“‘Go and sit in the car,’ Inspector Hewitt had said, and now — as I realized with a sinking feeling that the law doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘gratitude’ — I felt my fingers curling slowly into involuntary fists.

“Even though he had been on the scene for no more than a few moments, I knew that a wall had already gone up between the Inspector and myself. If the man was expecting cooperation from Flavia de Luce, he would bloody well have to work for it.”

In this adventure, another murder follows, and past secrets surface. Flavia still is obsessed with chemicals and poisons, and in this book she actually finds a friend near her own age.

The best thing about Flavia de Luce is that I am confident that the Inspector’s worst fears will come true: She will not be able to stay out of further trouble. I hear that the next book is coming out this Fall!

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/red_herring_without_mustard.html

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

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

Review of A Conspiracy of Kings audiobook, by Megan Whalen Turner

Adventure, Alternate History, Audiobooks, Award Winners, Events, Fantasy, Historical, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

A Conspiracy of Kings

by Megan Whalen Turner
narrated by Jeff Woodman

Recorded Books, 2010. 7 CDs. 8.5 hours.
Starred Review
School Library Journal’s 2011 Battle of the Kids’ Books Undead Poll Winner
2010 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honor Book

Yes, I’ve already reviewed A Conspiracy of Kings, and named it my #1 2010 Sonderbooks Stand-out for Teen Fantasy Fiction.

But our library just got the audiobook version, so of course I had to “read” it again, on audio. In honor of School Library Journal’s 2011 Battle of the Kids’ Books, this is the perfect time to present a review of the audio version of A Conspiracy of Kings, another finalist.

The interesting thing in the Battle of the Kids’ Books, was that, despite being the best new book I read in 2010, A Conspiracy of Kings didn’t win a single round. Still, the judges admitted that this is a well-crafted book:

In the first round, judge Dana Reinhardt freely admitted that this isn’t her usual type of reading. She said:

“As I mentioned, A Conspiracy of Kings isn’t generally the kind of book I reach for, but Turner abruptly whisked me out of my comfort zone, (not an easy feat, as I’m quite comfortable in my comfort zone), and for this I’m truly grateful, because I did so enjoy spending time with Sophos. I found him companionable and clever. Decent and thoughtful. If times were different, and I lived in a fantastical monarchy, I’d surely want him as my king.

“A Conspiracy of Kings asks the big questions. The questions I want to grapple with as a reader. Questions about honor and duty and responsibility and friendship and loyalty.”

In the Big Kahuna Round, Richard Peck gave each book plenty of space. He said about A Conspiracy of Kings:

“Of the three A Conspiracy of Kings addresses the most adult concerns and makes the greatest demand upon the reader. It is about the altering alliances and dark diplomacy of power politics: palace pacts forged and broken. Betrayal. Betrothal.

“This chronicle of spilt blood, flying arrows and barons, and a stabbed horse makes resonant reading in the same season as “across the Middle Sea” the forces of Cyrenaica and Tripliana clash across actual geography. But this will ring no bells with the intended readers who don’t know where Libya is, and won’t be hearing about it at school.

“Megan Whalen Turner’s book is about the making of kings. Embedded in its many layers is a boy, Sophos/Sounis, coming of age parentless, abducted, enslaved, and that all-time favorite, misunderstood. Throughout, the ages of the characters are muffled. But there is the clash and passion of adolescent friendship, between Sophos and that major figure from earlier volumes: “He would have given Eugenides his heart on a toothpick if asked.””

Neither judge had read the earlier books, and neither judge felt that this one really stands alone.

But that brings me to a little pet peeve. So what if it doesn’t stand alone?

Many don’t realize that there is NOTHING in the criteria for the Newbery Award that says the book has to stand alone. Yes, it should only receive the award based on strengths in that particular book, but there’s nothing that says it can’t be part of a series or that all loose ends have to be tied up or that it can’t reference earlier books.

And of course, in this tournament, there was no criteria at all except the preference of the judges.

So, I’m concluding that it was simply unfortunate that the judges this book faced were ones who hadn’t happened to have read the earlier books.

No, the book doesn’t have to stand alone to win an award, but you can’t really expect a judge to read three additional books in order to give the one book they are judging the consideration it deserves. So by getting judges who hadn’t already read the earlier books, I didn’t really expect them to appreciate the true genius behind this book.

And, please, readers of my reviews, DO NOT read this book without reading the other three books first! All four books are exquisitely plotted. Why, oh why, would you want to risk ruining the surprises in the earlier books by reading them out of order? Start with The Thief and meet Eugenides and Sophos. Then move on to The Queen of Attolia, my favorite of all of them, with incredible plot twists and beautiful romance. Then read The King of Attolia, and finally you’ll be eager to read A Conspiracy of Kings.

Though A Conspiracy of Kings did not win a judged round, it was the clear, far-and-away winner of the Undead Poll. I found that interesting. So far, the Undead Poll seems to be about web presence. And Megan Whalen Turner’s books have a thriving fan site on livejournal. Now, I wasn’t absolutely sure that John Green’s book Will Grayson, Will Grayson, wouldn’t pull off the victory, since he has a huge online presence. However, John Green’s fan base is about his and his brother’s clever and amazing web videos. Whereas Megan Whalen Turner’s fan site is about her books. And since the books were what the poll was about, I wasn’t at all surprised that A Conspiracy of Kings won.

I’ve noticed that there are plenty of people for whom the books in this series are not “their type” of book. They don’t really like it, and aren’t interested in reading the series. But those for whom this is their type of book, well, we LOVE them all. The Sounis fan site shows that I am definitely not the only rabid fan.

And what type of book is it? Well, it’s generally classified as fantasy, but the only real touch of “magic” is a varying amount of involvement from the gods that the author has invented. It’s pseudo-historical, with a setting mirroring Greece just after the invention of gunpowder. I’ve filed the books under “Historical,” even knowing that’s not technically correct, just because they feel a bit more historical to me than fantasy books. Since the biggest issues are more about leading kingdoms than about using magic.

All I have to say is, try out The Thief. Read all the way to the surprising ending. If you like it at all, you are in for a treat, because you have three more books to read!

I should say that these books are my very favorite type of series book. I like each book in a series to have its own plot arc, and to have a definite ending of this episode. But I also like the books to build to a powerful whole. I just finished The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss. It’s a lyrically written, magnificent work of fantasy. But it’s the first book of a trilogy, and I don’t think the author ties up one single solitary plot thread. Yes, it’s a good book, a truly great book. And yes, I will DEFINITELY be buying and reading the next two books. But I wish it weren’t just Part One of a continuing story. The same is true of Pegasus, by Robin McKinley. It’s only Part One. (This is probably a big part of why I haven’t heard it’s won any awards.)

And yes, there’s a place for long sagas like that. But I do have a fond and appreciative spot for series like The Queen’s Thief and The Bartimaeus Trilogy, where each book is a complete story that contributes to an even greater whole. You still should read them in order, and you’ll still want to hear more, but at least each book leaves you satisfied and happy, and with some plot threads resolved nicely.

And now I should say something about the audio version. Jeff Woodman has again done an outstanding job of reading this book. I like that he used the same voices for returning characters, so I could recognize the Magus, for example, by his voice.

One thing I love about listening to the book is that it slows me down. There’s no way I can spread out reading the book over more than a few nights, but listening, I am forced to take more time — and thus I can savor the book, and be delighted with what I am “reading” for quite a long time. Now, I did bring in the last CD to listen at home, when I couldn’t stand to wait any longer. But still, I spent much more time listening to the book than I spent either one of the two times I read it to myself.

And, like all of Megan Whalen Turner’s books, there’s so much to see and appreciate on later readings. You can more appreciate and delight in her plot-crafting. This time through, I especially noticed Sophos’ growth. He starts out the self-doubting kid we saw in The Thief, and we see him grow, realistically, through facing incredible challenges. We see and feel his real temptation to just settle down and enjoy life as a slave, without having to face the difficulties of trying to become a king. And then we see the consequences of his choice.

I love the way she plants clues to later surprises in full view of the reader. I think I can even mention one of them, without giving it away. She says that he doesn’t do a full bow, so the barons won’t notice a lump in his robe. Just beautiful to catch what that means on the rereading! And there are many of those little mentions, in each one of the books. Delightful to notice when reading it again! And it’s not just a gimmick or a trick — it actually reflects what Sophos was thinking about, how he was focusing on every detail…. I will say no more except to reiterate that I never get tired of rereading Megan Whalen Turner’s books.

So, I was sad that A Conspiracy of Kings didn’t win the 2011 Battle of the Kids’ Books, but I was proud that it won the popularity contest, the Undead Poll. And very glad that maybe these books will gain some more readers. But I hope they will listen to the judges saying that it doesn’t stand alone, and start with the very first book.

When I was following the links to the Sounis Livejournal site, I learned that Megan Whalen Turner is speaking, along with Jonathan Stroud, Rick Yancey, and Cindy Dobrez, at the Los Angeles Times Book Festival on the USC Campus. Although I can’t go myself, my youngest sister, Melanie Hatch, is a student at USC (in fact, she’ll be graduating soon and winning the Biegler Award for the graduating Electrical Engineering student with the highest GPA — Go, Melanie!), so I made sure she knew about it. Melanie was quick to point out that the event is actually happening on her birthday! So she’s looking forward to the best birthday ever! I’m so pleased for her! And I’m considering her my representative, so I can enjoy the event vicariously through her!

What’s more, it turns out that A Conspiracy of Kings is a finalist for the Los Angeles Book Prize for Young Adult Literature. It’s up against two other books that were in School Library Journal’s Battle of the Kids’ Books, including the winner of SLJBoB, The Ring of Solomon, by Jonathan Stroud, and the also excellent How Sugar Changed the World, by Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos. Two other finalists are Wicked Girls, by Stephanie Hemphill, and The Curse of the Wendigo, by Rick Yancey.

Will Ring of Solomon pull off the victory again? Will the judges appreciate Megan Whalen Turner’s true genius? We shall see, but however it turns out, these are some excellent finalists, and I’m really looking forward to my sister getting to hear these people speak — and telling me all about it!

Buy from Amazon.com

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

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

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

Review of The Sheen on the Silk, by Anne Perry

Fiction Review, Historical, Mystery, Starred Review 0

The Sheen on the Silk

by Anne Perry

Ballantine Books, New York, 2010. 518 pages.
Starred Review

I have enjoyed Anne Perry’s Christmas mysteries, and have been meaning to read more of her work. However, I wasn’t sure if I should tackle her different series at the beginning, or just dive in with her latest. So when I saw she’d written a stand-alone novel set in ancient Byzantium, I decided this would be a good time to start. I knew she is good with historical fiction, and I was not disappointed.

The book is set in thirteenth-century Constantinople. Anna Zarides has come to the city disguised as a eunuch with the goal of clearing her twin brother’s name. He has been charged with the murder of a political figure and exiled to Jerusalem.

Anna stays in Constantinople for years and gets embroiled in the politics and intrigue. The whole city expects Rome and Venice to attack Constantinople as part of the next Crusade — unless the city can compromise their religious convictions and convince Rome they are all one church.

Anna gets a patron early on in the powerful Zoe Chrysaphes, whose heart is set on vengeance. She was there when Constantinople was first overthrown and is determined to get revenge on the families of the people responsible. But Zoe also seems to be embroiled in the attack which Anna’s brother was exiled for.

Anne Perry shows us Anna solving the mystery, but also gets us involved in the currents and cross-currents of the plans to attack Constantinople — or divert the attack. We also get caught up in the story of Venetian Guiliano Dandolo, whose ancestor led the earlier attack on Venice, but whose mother was Byzantine. Anna makes friends with him, yet all the while she’s holding on to the secret that she is a woman. If her masquerade is discovered, especially after she’s served as physician to the Emperor, she could be executed.

The beautifully woven saga in this book will draw you in to a world far removed from our own. Anne Perry makes you feel you understand it, in all its complexity. You’ll root for Anna to clear her brother’s name, and even more, for Constantinople to be saved.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/sheen_on_the_silk.html

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

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

Review of The Postmistress, by Sarah Blake

Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

The Postmistress

by Sarah Blake

Amy Einhorn Books (Penguin), New York, 2010. 326 pages.
Starred Review

I had the library book of The Postmistress actually sitting on my bedside table with my bookmark right in the middle when I saw a line at ALA Annual Conference where the publisher was giving away copies of the book for you to have the author sign. I was enjoying the book very much, so I eagerly got in line and got her signature.

This is a story of World War II and lives that intertwined in England and in America.

Frankie Bard, an American radio reporter in London during the war introduces the story:

“There were years after it happened, after I’d returned from the town and come back here to the busy blank of the city, when some comment would be tossed off about the Second World War and how it had gone — some idiotic remark about clarity and purpose — and I’d resist the urge to stub out my cigarette and bring the dinner party to a satisfying halt. But these days so many wars are being carried on in full view of all of us, and there is so much talk of pattern and intent (as if a war can be conducted like music), well, last night I couldn’t help myself.

” ‘What would you think of a postmistress who chose not to deliver the mail?’ I asked.

” ‘Don’t tell me any more,’ a woman from the far end of the table cried in delight, shining and laughing between the candles. ‘I’m hooked already.’

“I watched the question take hold. Mail, actual letters written by hand, being pocketed undelivered. What a lark! Anything might happen….

“Never mind, I thought. I am old. And tired of the terrible clarity of the young. And all of you are young these days.

“Long ago, I believed that, given a choice, people would turn to good as they would to the light. I believed that reporting — honest, unflinching pictures of the truth — could be a beacon to lead us to demand that wrongs be righted, injustices punished, and the weak and the innocent cared for. I must have believed, when I started out, that the shoulder of public opinion could be put up against the door of public indifference and would, when given the proper direction, shove it wide with the power of wanting to stand on the side of the angels.

“But I have covered far too many wars — reporting how they were seeded, nourished, and let sprout — to believe in angels anymore, or, for that matter, in a single beam of truth to shine into the dark. Every story — love or war — is a story about looking left when we should have been looking right.

“Or so it seems to me.”

The Postmistress is a story of a postmistress who is new to a small New England town in 1940. It tells what happens that results in a fine upstanding conscientious woman not delivering a letter.

It’s also the story of the other people of the town: a young doctor and his wife, a man who watches for German submarines landing off the coast, and what people in the town think of the war “over there.” It’s the story of a war correspondent writing stories for the radio that catch people’s imaginations back home. And it’s the story of why Frankie Bard came to visit that little town.

This story is richly textured and intriguing. It gives you a taste of what it must have been like in London during the Blitz. But mostly, it tells you the story of fallible humans trying to do what’s right in extraordinary times, humans who each have their own stories, but whose stories become intertwined.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/postmistress.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 signed copy I got at ALA Annual Conference.

Review of The Blood Red Horse, by K. M. Grant

Audiobooks, Historical, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Blood Red Horse

by K. M. Grant
Performed by Maggie Mash

Recorded Books, 2005. 9 compact discs, 9.75 hours.

Here’s a horse story of the same sort I loved as a kid: We’ve got a horse who’s strong and fast and brave, who narrowly escapes death many times, and loves his master. The horse of the title is named Hosannah, and he belongs to a boy in medieval times who sets out on one of the crusades with Richard the Lionheart.

The story is many-layered. We follow Will de Granville and his horse, but also his friend Ellie who must stay behind in England, and his brother Gavin who is betrothed to Ellie and almost kills Hosannah with his recklessness. The book also takes a close look at a Saracen boy who fights against them and also encounters Hosannah. We see many sides to the conflict, and it’s not portrayed as one side either good or bad.

The narrator wasn’t bad, though I would have preferred a male narrator doing so many male voices. This book is the first of a trilogy about the deGranvilles, and I intend to read them all, but will probably read the rest in print form. Still, it did make an enjoyable way to pass many hours in traffic.

This book is good for those who like historical fiction on an epic scale, battles, or just a good old-fashioned horse story.

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

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

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

Review of The Dreamer, by Pam Munoz Ryan

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

The Dreamer

by Pam Munoz Ryan

drawings by Peter Sis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Buy from Amazon.com

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

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

Source: This review is based on a copy I got at ALA Annual Conference.

Review of Forge, by Laurie Halse Anderson

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

Forge

by Laurie Halse Anderson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Compelling historical fiction from a masterful writer.

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

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

Review of A Brief History of Montmaray

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

A Brief History of Montmaray

by Michelle Cooper

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

House of Dead Maids

by Clare B. Dunkle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: This review is based on an Advance Reader’s Edition picked up at ALA.