Review of Daring Greatly, by Brené Brown

Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

daring_greatly_largeDaring Greatly

How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

by Brené Brown, Ph.D., LMSW

Gotham Books, 2012. 287 pages.
Starred Review
2014 Sonderbooks Stand-out, #3 Nonfiction

It was actually my 26-year-old son who gave this book to me – and did a brilliant thing in so doing. Two of my top three Sonderbooks Stand-outs in Nonfiction this year were given to me by him.

Of course, I’d already read and loved The Gifts of Imperfection, by the same author, so I was expecting this book to have helpful insights. I was not disappointed.

Brené Brown got the title phrase from a speech by Theodore Roosevelt. She opens the book by quoting from the speech and then saying:

The first time I read this quote, I thought, This is vulnerablilty. Everything I’ve learned from over a decade of research on vulnerability has taught me this exact lesson. Vulnerability is not knowing victory or defeat, it’s understanding the necessity of both; it’s engaging. It’s being all in.

Vulnerability is not weakness, and the uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure we face every day are not optional. Our only choice is a question of engagement. Our willingness to own and engage with out vulnerability determines the depth of our courage and the clarity of our purpose; the level to which we protect ourselves from being vulnerable is a measure of our fear and disconnection.

When we spend our lives waiting until we’re perfect or bulletproof before we walk into the arena, we ultimately sacrifice relationships and opportunities that may not be recoverable, we squander our precious time, and we turn our backs on our gifts, those unique contributions that only we can make.

Perfect and bulletproof are seductive, but they don’t exist in the human experience. We must walk into the arena, whatever it may be – a new relationship, an important meeting, our creative process, or a difficult family conversation – with courage and the willingness to engage. Rather than sitting on the sidelines and hurling judgment and advice, we must dare to show up and let ourselves be seen. This is vulnerability. This is daring greatly.

Join me as we explore the answers to these questions:

What drives our fear of being vulnerable?

How are we protecting ourselves from vulnerability?

What price are we paying when we shut down and disengage?

How do we own and engage with vulnerability so we can start transforming the way we live, love, parent, and lead?

She takes us on a journey to answer these questions, and the journey takes us in some surprising directions.

First, she looks at what we’re up against in our “Never Enough” culture. She talks about how it’s hard to be vulnerable when you’re wrapped up by a culture of shame.

The opposite of scarcity is enough, or what I call Wholeheartedness. . . . There are many tenets of Wholeheartedness, but at its very core is vulnerability and worthiness: facing uncertainty, exposure, and emotional risks, and knowing that I am enough.

Next, she debunks some myths about vulnerability and reminds us we’re all in this together.

Then she tackles the topic of how shame fits in and keeps us from being vulnerable.

Shame derives its power from being unspeakable. That’s why it loves perfectionists — it’s so easy to keep us quiet. If we cultivate enough awareness about shame to name it and speak to it, we’ve basically cut it off at the knees. Shame hates having words wrapped around it. If we speak shame, it begins to wither. Just the way exposure to light was deadly for the gremlins, language and story bring light to shame and destroy it.

She talks about combating shame, and the elements of shame resilience.

I mean the ability to practice authenticity when we experience shame, to move through the experience without sacrificing our values, and to come out on the other side of the shame experience with more courage, compassion, and connection than we had going into it. Shame resilience is about moving from shame to empathy — the real antidote to shame.

If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive. Self-compassion is also critically important, but because shame is a social concept — it happens between people — it also heals best between people. A social wound needs a social balm, and empathy is that balm. Self-compassion is key because when we’re able to be gentle with ourselves in the midst of shame, we’re more likely to reach out, connect, and experience empathy.

There’s a section here on how men and women experience shame differently and how lethal it can be to relationships. But she also looks at people who have learned to have shame resilience.

As I look back on what I’ve learned about shame, gender, and worthiness, the greatest lesson is this: If we’re going to find our way out of shame and back to each other, vulnerability is the path and courage is the light. To set down those lists of what we’re supposed to be is brave. To love ourselves and support each other in the process of becoming real is perhaps the greatest single act of daring greatly.

Chapter 4 looks at The Vulnerability Armory — the ways we protect ourselves from being vulnerable. And along with that she looks at the strategies that empower people to take off the masks and armor.

The three forms of shielding that I am about to introduce are what I refer to as the “common vulnerability arsenal” because I have found that we all incorporate them into our personal armor in some way. These include foreboding joy, or the paradoxical dread that clamps down on momentary joyfulness; perfectionism, or believing that doing everything perfectly means you’ll never feel shame; and numbing, the embrace of whatever deadens the pain of discomfort and pain. Each shield is followed by “Daring Greatly” strategies, all variants on “being enough” that have proved to be effective at disarming the three common forms of shielding.

And I loved the importance she placed on joy and practicing gratitude.

Even those of us who have learned to “lean into” joy and embrace our experiences are not immune to the uncomfortable quake of vulnerability that often accompanies joyful moments. We’ve just learned how to use it as a reminder rather than a warning shot. What was the most surprising (and life changing) difference for me was the nature of that reminder: For those welcoming the experience, the shudder of vulnerability that accompanies joy is an invitation to practice gratitude, to acknowledge how truly grateful we are for the person, the beauty, the connection, or simply the moment before us.

Gratitude, therefore, emerged from the data as the antidote to foreboding joy. In fact, every participant who spoke about the ability to stay open to joy also talked about the importance of practicing gratitude. This pattern of association was so thoroughly prevalent in the data that I made a commitment as a researcher not to talk about joy without talking about gratitude.

It wasn’t just the relationship between joy and gratitude that took me by surprise. I was also startled by the fact that research participants consistently described both joyfulness and gratitude as spiritual practices that were bound to a belief in human connectedness and a power greater than us. Their stories and descriptions expanded on this, pointing to a clear distinction between happiness and joy. Participants described happiness as an emotion that’s connected to circumstances, and they described joy as a spiritual way of engaging with the world that’s connected to practicing gratitude. While I was initially taken aback by the relationship between joy and vulnerability, it now makes perfect sense to me, and I can see why gratitude would be the antidote to foreboding joy.

She looks in great depth at additional ways to combat foreboding joy, perfectionism, numbing, and many other shields we use to hide from vulnerability.

After this she looks at the big picture. How can we cultivate change and fight disengagement and disconnection? And she looks specifically at ways of humanizing education and work to be a better teacher or leader. And she wraps it up with a chapter on wholehearted parenting, “daring to be the adults we want our children to be and raising shame-resilient children.

There are some empowering and inspiring thoughts in this book. As she sums up at the end:

Daring greatly is not about winning or losing. It’s about courage. In a world where scarcity and shame dominate and feeling afraid has become second nature, vulnerability is subversive. Uncomfortable. It’s even a little dangerous at times. And, without question, putting ourselves out there means there’s a far greater risk of feeling hurt. But as I look back on my own life and what Daring Greatly has meant to me, I can honestly say that nothing is as uncomfortable, dangerous, and hurtful as believing that I’m standing on the outside of my life looking in and wondering what it would be like if I had the courage to show up and let myself be seen.

I highly recommend this book. It will inspire you to Dare Greatly.

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Source: This review is based on a book sent to me by my son.

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.

Review of Hey, America, Your Roots Are Showing, by Megan Smolenyak

Nonfiction Review, Stand-outs, Starred Review, True Stories 0

hey_america_largeHey, America, Your Roots Are Showing

Adventures in Discovering
News-Making Connections, Unexpected Ancestors, Long-Hidden Secrets, and Solving Historical Puzzles

by Megan Smolenyak

Citadel Press, 2012. 256 pages.
Starred Review
2014 Sonderbooks Stand-out, #8 Nonfiction

I’ve gotten the genealogy bug since I came to work at City of Fairfax Regional Library, where I get to substitute fairly frequently at the information desk in the Virginia Room. I think it’s fascinating to find out about my ancestors, about where they lived and what they did and which fought in wars and when they came to America.

Megan Smolenyak takes genealogy so much further than all that. She shows its tremendous scope. The subtitle begins to give you an idea, but even with those hints, I wasn’t prepared for the wide variety of stories she tells in this book.

I’m going to quote at length from her Introduction, because it gives you a good idea of what you’ll find in this book:

I’m one of those obnoxious people you hear about from time to time who has the privilege of making a living doing what she loves. As a real-life history detective, I wake up excited every day about what I’m going to tackle and what I might uncover.

In this book, I’d like to take you into my world and essentially perch you on my shoulder to see how it’s done. How did I figure out who would be king of America today if George Washington had been king instead of president? How did I come to work with the FBI and NCIS on cold cases and with coroners’ offices to find relatives of unclaimed people? How did I unravel the mystery of a Hebrew-inscribed tombstone found on the streets of Manhattan? How did I successfully trace Michelle Obama’s roots when others had tried but gotten roadblocked early on? How did I research Hoda Kotb’s Egyptian heritage in no time flat for a Today show appearance? How did I use DNA to learn that the Haley family of Roots fame is Scottish?

This book includes more than twenty of my favorite investigatory romps, all of which extended my understanding of our history in some way. Following the path of a Bible that traded hands during the Civil War gave me a fresh perspective from both the Confederate and Union viewpoints. My first case with the FBI was an in-your-face education about the civil rights movement. And pursuing the real Annie Moore, first to arrive at Ellis Island (whose place had been usurped by an imposter), informed my understanding of the tenement life so many of our immigrant ancestors endured.

Given my proclivity for resurrecting the historically neglected, it’s no accident that many of the chapters in this book feature women and African Americans – both harder to research, but all the more rewarding because of it. So I’ll introduce you to everyone from Mabel Cavin Sills Leish Whitworth Davis, a partially paralyzed prostitute (yes, you read that right) who taught me about the realities of life in a Western mining community, to Philip Reed, the slave behind the installment of the Freedom statue on top of the Capitol dome.

Along the way, you’ll also find a healthy dose of my opinions, so consider yourself forewarned if you still believe your name was changed at Ellis Island!

It is my hope that by the end of this book, you will find yourself looking at some aspect of our history a little differently than you did at the outset – and better yet, feel compelled to reach into the past and contribute a few pixels yourself. It’s high time for all of us to let our roots show!

Who knew that a book on genealogy would read so much like a book of detective stories? I was amazed by how entertaining Megan Smolenyak made these stories, as well as the wide scope of them. She talks about identifying remains of missing soldiers in Vietnam, finding serial centenarians in a family, showing how all of us have some famous cousins, and tracing Barack O’Bama’s Irish roots, besides all the stories she hints at in the Introduction.

I took a long time to read this book, because it is like a book of short stories. But I was entertained and enchanted with each story, and indeed all the more curious about the past of my own family.

megansmolenyak.com
kensingtonbooks.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.

Review of Call the Midwife, by Jennifer Worth

Audiobooks, Nonfiction Review, Stand-outs, Starred Review, True Stories 0

call_the_midwife_largeCall the Midwife

A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

by Jennifer Worth
read by Nicola Barber

HighBridge Audio, 2012. Book originally published in 2002. 12 hours on 11 CDs.
Starred Review
2014 Sonderbooks Stand-out, #9 Nonfiction

I’ve been watching the BBC series Call the Midwife on DVDs from the library. When I watched the special features after the second season, they mentioned how the producer had loved the book when she read it, and decided then and there to make it into a series. That was enough recommendation for me!

Indeed, I found the book just as charming as the television series. Mind you, they romanticized some things in the series. I was a little disappointed not to hear about any romance with Jimmy. And if Chummy has a romance with the police officer she ran down on the bike, it hasn’t happened yet. But in some ways, it’s more interesting, because it’s all true.

Jennifer Worth was a midwife in the East End of London in the 1950s. It was the beginning of the National Health Service, and in the past, pregnant women were dealt with by amateurs and charlatans, with a lot of deaths. As it is there’s plenty of poverty and eye-opening situations, and they make riveting listening.

There’s the family with 24 children, whose mother does not speak English. There’s the young immigrant girl from Ireland who got tricked into prostitution. And especially lovely are the nuns whom Jennifer works with. (I liked being able to picture them from the TV series. The reader did a great job with their different voices.)

Mind you, this is not family listening. The part where she describes the past of the young prostitute is particularly graphic. However, it also includes more about the restoration of Jennifer’s faith than the series does. The author clearly had a deep love for the people of the East End and communicates that love to the listener. I was happy to see that my library owns two more volumes on audio CD.

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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.

Review of The Shadow Hero, by Gene Luen Yang and Sonny Liew

Fantasy, Graphic Novel, Historical, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

shadow_hero_largeThe Shadow Hero

story by Gene Luen Yang
art by Sonny Liew

First Second, New York, 2014. 158 pages.
Starred Review
2014 Sonderbooks Stand-out, #6 Teen Fiction

The story of why this graphic novel exists is so interesting, I’m going to copy text from the author’s note at the back of the book (minus examples from the actual Green Turtle comics):

[Chu] Hing was among the first Asian Americans working in the American comic book industry. This was decades before the Asian American movement, though, so he wouldn’t have self-identified as such. Most likely, he would have just called himself Chinese.

For Rural Home, Chu Hing created a World War II superhero called the Green Turtle. The Green Turtle wore a mask over his face and a cape over his shoulders. He defended China, America’s ally, against the invading Japanese army. He had no obvious superpowers, though he did seem to have a knack for avoiding bullets.

So those are the facts. Here are the rumors.

Supposedly, Hing wanted his character to be Chinese.

Supposedly, his publisher didn’t think a Chinese superhero would sell and told Hing to make his character white.

Supposedly, Hing rebelled right there on the page. Throughout the Green Turtle’s adventures, we almost never get to see his face. Most of the time, the hero has his back to us.

When he does turn around, his visage is almost always obscured by something – a combatant or a shadow or even his own arm….

The Green Turtle’s face isn’t all that Hing keeps from us. Over and over, the Green Turtle’s young Chinese sidekick, Burma Boy, asks him how he came to be the Green Turtle. Every time, an emergency interrupts before the Green Turtle can give his answer.

So Gene Luen Yang and Sonny Llew have stepped in and written an origin story that fits everything that appears in the short-running comic book series.

The Shadow Hero is our answer to Burma Boy’s question, our imagining of the Green Turtle’s origin story. We firmly establish him as an Asian American superhero, perhaps even the first Asian American superhero. Our Green Turtle is a shadow hero. Not only is his identity secret, so is his race….

But let me end on a fact: Studying Chu Hing’s comics, imagining what might have been going through his head, and then writing this book in response were a lot of fun – a crazy, Golden Age sort of fun. I hope reading it is, too.

And that brings me to the story found in these pages – the origin story of the Green Turtle. The story is indeed tremendous fun.

Hank is a Chinese boy living in San Incendio, America, with no ambitions other than to be a grocer like his father. However, his mother has ambitions for him.

After she is saved by a superhero from a carjacking by a bank robber, Hank’s mother decides that he needs to be a superhero.

Her methods are hilarious, including pushing him into a toxic spill and trying to get him bitten by a dog used for scientific research. Eventually, she settles for arranging for him to learn to fight.

But his first efforts toward fighting for justice end up getting his father shot. However, what Hank and his mother don’t know is that a spirit from ancient China was residing with Hank’s father. Now that he is dead, the spirit – shaped like a turtle – will stay with Hank – and grant one request.

This book has plenty of humor and plenty of adventure. It nicely captures the flavor of Golden Age comics. (I know a little bit about this because my son is a fan.) At the end of the book, the first Green Turtle comic is reproduced in its entirety. I like the way the source of all the details in the comic has been revealed (including our hero’s unnaturally pink skin).

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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.

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

Review of The Periodic Table: A Visual Guide to the Elements, by Paul Parsons and Gail Dixon

Nonfiction Review, Science, Stand-outs, Starred Review 1

periodic_table_largeThe Periodic Table

A Visual Guide to the Elements

by Paul Parsons & Gail Dixon

Quercus Editions, Ltd, 2014. First published in the United Kingdom in 2013. 240 pages.
Starred Review
2014 Sonderbooks Stand-out, #10 Nonfiction

One look at this beautiful book, and I had to read it. I had no idea I was interested in the chemical elements until I saw this book!

The book consists of a brief introduction, and then a one-page explanation (in a few cases more pages) of each of the first 100 elements in the periodic table, with a large photograph of something related to the element on the facing page. In most cases, it’s a picture of the element, but also includes things like a picture of the atomic bomb dropped over Nagasaki next to Plutonium, a krypton-gas discharge lamp next to Krypton, and a bone scan next to Technetium.

At the beginning of each element’s page, we see its place in the periodic table, its category, atomic number, atomic weight, color, phase, melting point, boiling point, crystal structure, and a diagram of its electrons.

I read this book slowly, an element per day – and found it consistently fascinating. I’m not sure how much of the information stuck, but something about the big beautiful pictures made it seem so much more alive than high school chemistry class (which I loved, but this was very different).

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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.

Review of Trees Up Close, by Nancy Ross Hugo and Robert Llewellyn

Nonfiction Review, Science, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

trees_up_close_largeTrees Up Close

The Beauty of Bark, Leaves, Flowers, and Seeds

by Nancy Ross Hugo
photographs by Robert Llewellyn

Timber Press, Portland, 2014. 200 pages.
Starred Review
2014 Sonderbooks Stand-out, #4 Nonfiction

When I checked out this book, it looked familiar. Sure enough, the copyright page states, “This work incorporates portions of Seeing Trees copyright 2011 by Nancy Ross Hugo and Robert Llewellyn.” Back in 2011, I checked out Seeing Trees and liked the look of it so much, I bought myself a copy. Well, the book is extra large format and heavy and doesn’t fit nicely into my daily reading piles.

Seeing Trees, on the other hand, is paperback and a smaller seven-inch square. I ended up reading a chapter a day most days and being completely enchanted. I would like to take it outside with me and look much more closely at the trees in my neighborhood and by my lake. Though I will probably instead settle for looking at the trees which I can see out my window and learning what the things I see actually mean.

In fact, reading this book has gotten me taking far more pictures of bare branches in my walks by my lake. And now I’m noticing that each tree is different.

Normally, I’ve always thought that winter is not the time to notice trees. After all, they’re dormant then. What is there to see when a tree has no leaves?

Nancy Ross Hugo and Robert Llewellyn have now taught me otherwise. Here’s a bit from the chapter on “Buds & Leaf Scars”:

When most of us think of buds, we think of spring phenomena — and usually in association with garden flowers. But tree buds, which contain embryonic leaves, stems, and flowers, are usually formed the summer before they grow into the forms they take each spring, and winter is one of the best times to view them.

During the summer and fall, tree buds grow to a certain size then stop, or rest, for the winter. At that stage, these winter or resting buds, as they are called, remind us that life hasn’t fled the body of a leafless tree — it’s just in waiting, and the shapes of next year’s leaves and flowers are already programmed into its buds. Resting buds also provide one of the best ways to identify trees in winter, because their designs are unique to each species.

I found even the Introduction to the book inspiring:

Instead of traveling thousands of miles to see exceptional trees, as we had for our first collaboration, Bob and I decided to focus on the exceptional traits of ordinary, backyard trees. We did little traveling (unless you count walks around our own yards and neighborhoods), but we were no less impressed by what we saw. In fact, limiting the descriptions and illustrations of what we saw became harder than finding interesting tree traits to feature.

Our goal in creating this book was to share the beauty of what we discovered and to get other people outdoors searching for tree phenomena like the ones we observed, because what is startling in Bob’s photographs is infinitely more inspiring outdoors, where it can be appreciated in context and with all the senses. And it is in the process of discovering these phenomena in nature that the real joy of tree-watching resides. We want to convey that tree-viewing can be as exciting as bird-watching (perhaps even more exciting, if trees are your favorite wild beings) and that through intimate viewing, one’s sense of trees as living, breathing organisms, as opposed to inanimate objects, will be enhanced.

Above all, like most writers and photographers who value what they describe and illustrate, Bob and I hope this book will help make the world safer for trees. In my most romantic imaginings, I sometimes think that if I could just draw enough people’s attention to the beauty of red maple blossoms, the extraordinary engineering of gumballs, the intricacy of pine cones — all would be well in the tree world. That is a romantic notion. But sometimes romance can accomplish what rhetoric cannot. Look carefully at the hair, veins, pores, and other wildly vivifying tree characteristics captured in the photographs in this book, and you’ll never see a tree in the same way again.

Indeed, the authors have changed what I see when I walk among trees. And I’m thankful for it.

The meat of this book is the photographs — up close, stunning photographs of many different types of trees. There are five chapters — Leaves, Flowers & Cones, Fruit & Seeds, Buds & Leaf Scars, and Bark & Twigs. Each chapter has a short text that explains what you’re looking at for this part of a tree. Then many pages of photographs give you concrete examples of what this means, and show you the variation between different types of trees.

Since so much of reading this book is absorbing the stunning pictures, and since it comes in such a convenient size, it was easy to finish this book at the rate of a chapter a day. However, I will be thinking about the things I learned for the rest of my life, every time I go outside.

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robertllewellyn.com
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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.

Review of Greenglass House, by Kate Milford

Children's Fiction Review, Mystery, Paranormal, Starred Review 0

greenglass_house_largeGreenglass House

by Kate Milford

Clarion Books (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), 2014. 373 pages.
Starred Review
2014 Cybils Finalist, Speculative Fiction for Elementary and Middle Grades
2014 Sonderbooks Stand-out, #3 Children’s Fiction

Here’s a snowed-in mystery for kids with some non-traditional elements. It’s the start of Christmas vacation, and Milo was counting on some quiet down time with his parents. Milo’s home, Greenglass House, is itself something of a character in the book.

Milo Pine did not run a smugglers’ hotel, but his parents did. It was an inn, actually; a huge, ramshackle manor house that looked as if it had been cobbled together from discarded pieces of a dozen mismatched mansions collected from a dozen different cities. It was called Greenglass House, and it sat on the side of a hill overlooking an inlet of harbors, a little district built half on the shore and half on the piers that jutted out into the river Skidwrack like the teeth of a comb. It was a long climb up to the inn from the waterfront by foot, or an only slightly shorter trip by the cable railway that led from the inn’s private dock up the steep slope of Whilforber Hill. And of course the inn wasn’t only for smugglers, but that was who turned up most often, so that was how Milo thought of it.

Milo had lived at Greenglass House ever since he’d been adopted by Nora and Ben Pine when he was a baby. It had always been home. And he was used to the bizarre folks who passed through the inn, some of them coming back every season like extended family who showed up to pinch your cheeks at holidays and then disappeared again. After twelve years, he was even getting pretty good at predicting who was going to show up when. Smugglers were like bugs or vegetables. They had their seasons. Which was why it was so weird when the huge old bell on the porch, the one that was connected to the winch that drove the cable that in turn hauled the car up its tracks, started ringing.

The whole family is very surprised to have a guest the first day of Milo’s Christmas vacation, especially on the afternoon just before a big snowstorm is forecasted. They are even more surprised when four more guests follow. None of the guests will give details about when they expect to leave. All of the guests are vague about why they are there. And the snow continues to fall.

Mrs. Pine is quick to ask for help, so she goes out to the town for groceries and to get Mrs. Caraway and her daughter Lizzie to help out. Milo is frustrated by all the bustle when he’d expected a quiet vacation, so he hunkers down in one of his favorite places for when the hotel is full of guests, behind a high-backed loveseat. He got absorbed in the stories in a book one of the guests lent to him.

But the spot wasn’t private enough, and that’s when he meets another important character in the book.

Another girl, about Milo’s own age whom he had never seen before, was peering curiously at him over the back of the loveseat. This had to be Lizzie’s younger sister, Meddy. Milo had heard plenty about Meddy but had never met her. “Hi,” he said quietly, trying to tamp down annoyance at being looked at so closely while he was in one of his special places. “You must be Meddy. I’m Milo.”

Meddy Caraway looked as though she was just about as happy with this arrangement as Milo was. “Hello.” She yanked off her knitted cap, and static electricity sent her short reddish-blond hair shooting out like a spiky halo around her red face.

Yay, vacation.

Meddy is a bit annoying. Milo was looking at a chart one of the guests dropped. It’s a mysterious chart and looks like some kind of navigational chart, but it’s not of anywhere he’s heard of. Meddy grabs it and asks about it and all the guests coming at once, and she suggests that they start a campaign. Milo asks her what she means.

“It’s an adventure within a game world. Our game world is your house, and our adventure – our campaign – is going to be figuring out the mystery behind that chart.”

“Okay . . . how?”

She beckoned Milo closer, and he clambered off the hearth to crawl down behind the tree beside her. “We’re going to explore the house and investigate the guests,” she explained, “and along the way we’re going to look for clues. But first, you need a character.”

She explains to Milo about role-playing games and choosing a character. His character, named Negret, is a blackjack, an escaladeur. “Escaladeurs are masters at getting over walls and through fortifications and sneaking around things like castles and fortresses. They’re reconnaissance experts, one of the types of characters you send to gather information.”

Meddy chooses a character she calls Sirin.

Meddy scratched her head. “Well, there is a kind of character I’ve always wanted to play. It’s called a scholiast. They’re these winged creatures who follow angels around like familiars, and they’re not supposed to act in ways that change the course of events. But they love adventures, and they never get to have any, so when you come across one – they’re usually non-player characters, meaning you run into them and get information or clues or tools or something – you can almost always convince it to help. But I don’t see why a player couldn’t be one. I love the idea of a scholiast who’s decided to have an adventure, even though she isn’t supposed to. Do you mind if I try playing one?”

He shrugged, curious. “Why would I mind?”

“Well, for starters, Sirin would have to be invisible to all the other non-player characters – meaning everyone but you.”

Milo grinned. “I have to pretend you’re invisible?”

“Milo,” Meddy said sternly, “Sirin’s an otherworldly creature who’s not supposed to interact, just observe – unless ordered to do something by her angel. She’d have to be invisible to everyone but Negret. And that would make Negret the captain of our campaign. Sirin wouldn’t be comfortable being in command. She’d just be excited to be able to join the adventure. But she might be very useful in terms of seeing things Negret can’t. And she’d have unearthly powers that might come in handy.”

So they begin the game. And, right away, the chart disappears. This is where the book isn’t so much a traditional mystery. There’s no dead body. But some things are stolen, and Negret and Sirin work to recover the items and figure out who took them.

But the main mystery of the book is finding out why each of the five guests from that first night came to Greenglass House. With all of them, it ties in to the history of the house itself, which was once owned by a famous smuggler, Doc Holystone.

The mystery does involve finding out who the thief is, but there’s a lot more to it than that. Milo gets the guests to tell stories in the evenings (like the characters in the book he’s reading) and the tales intertwine in lovely ways. Meanwhile, ice and snow keep everyone at Greenglass House, each with their own reason for being there in the first place.

Perhaps the biggest weakness in the book is the coincidence that all these characters arrived at the same time. Because most of the reasons for being there are quite different from each other. But since that’s the foundation, the beginning situation, it’s easy for the reader to go with the story… what if all these characters decided to descend on Greenglass House at the same time?

This book is good for readers who enjoy a puzzle, but this puzzle has plenty of heart to go along with it, and interesting characters, and smugglers, and adventure, and hidden treasure.

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hmhco.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 an Advance Reader Copy sent to me by the publisher for consideration for the Cybils Awards.

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.

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

Review of The Night Gardener, by Jonathan Auxier

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

night_gardener_largeThe Night Gardener

by Jonathan Auxier

Amulet Books, New York, 2014. 350 pages.
Starred Review
2014 Sonderbooks Stand-out, #5 Children’s Fiction

Let me say right from the beginning that this book is not for everyone. It would have been way too scary for me when I was in upper elementary and middle school. However, for kids who like a dose of fear and creepiness with their adventures, this well-crafted tale delivers.

Molly and Kip are kids from Ireland, and they’re traveling in England without their parents, looking for work, looking for food, looking for a place to stay. They left Ireland because of the famine, and it’s not clear what happened to their parents. Molly speaks bravely about the adventures their parents must be having, but Molly’s a storyteller, and those adventures don’t sound all too likely.

The book opens with Molly and Kip trying to find their way to an estate owned by the Windsors. A lawyer in town said they could work for that family. But when she asks directions, over and over she’s told things like “My advice: go back to whatever country you came from. The sourwoods is no place for anyone.”

They find a storyteller who looks like a witch who’s willing to tell them the way – if they’ll bring her back some stories. It turns out that the estate is on an island in the river.

The heart of the island had been cleared away to create an open field surrounded by dark trees. The lawn was not flat but covered in a series of miniature hills, each ranging between one and two feet in height. Wind swept across the grassy mounds to create an effect that reminded Kip of rolling ocean waves. At the far end of the lawn stood the Windsor mansion. The house had obviously been left vacant for some years, and in that time it seemed to have become one with the landscape. Weeds swallowed the base. Ivy choked the walls and windows. The roof was sagging and covered in black moss.

But strangest of all was the tree.

The tree was enormous and looked very, very old. Most trees cast an air of quiet dignity over their surroundings. This one did not. Most trees invite you to climb up into their canopy. This one did not. Most trees make you want to carve your initials into the trunk. This one did not. To stand in the shadow of this tree was to feel a chill run through your whole body.

The tree was so close to the house that they almost seemed to have grown together – its gnarled trunk running up the wall like a great black chimney stack. Palsied branches crept out in all directions like a second roof – including a few that appeared to cut straight through the walls. “It’s almost a part of the house,” Kip said softly.

Why any person would build a home so close to such a terrible tree was beyond him. Had it been too difficult to cut down?

When they enter the home, they aren’t exactly welcomed. But they have nowhere to go, so it is agreed that they’ll work in exchange for lodgings. The family consists of a lonely little girl, a spoiled older brother, a sharp and worried mother, and a father who is preoccupied, timid, and often absent.

And the mysteries pile up, slowly and eerily. There’s a door, supposedly to a closet, which is locked and which is forbidden. There’s a portrait of the family, painted only last summer, which shows them looking far more plump and healthy, far more colorful in skin, eyes, and even hair. Everyone living in the house has nightmares. But most sinister of all, a man is walking in the house at night.

Molly hears thumping footsteps. The door to her bedroom has come open, and dead leaves and wind have come in. There are muddy footprints leading right to the side of her bed, the same heavy, muddy footprints she’d cleaned from the stairs during the day. She goes to investigate.

Mistress Windsor’s bedroom was at the end of the hall. Molly could hear the woman murmuring, caught in her own nightmare. She could hear the footsteps again – heavy and slow. Through the crack around the door, she saw a tall shadow move inside, a shadow the size of a man. “Master Windsor, is that you?” she said as bravely as she could.

The footsteps stopped.

The wind stopped.

Her heart stopped.

Molly wiped the perspiration from her palm and adjusted her grip on the candlestick. She took a deep breath and inched toward the door. A howl split the darkness, and she felt a great burst of wind. The gust knocked her to the floor and swept along the upstairs hall. She covered her face as dry leaves skittered over her like bats from a cavern.

She heard a loud slam behind her, and the next moment, everything was still and dark. Molly climbed to her feet, trembling with fright. She felt her way along the wall until she reached the main stairs. She could hear no footsteps. The wind and leaves were all gone. The bedrooms were silent, and the front door was safely shut. The house was completely still. By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, it almost seemed as if she had dreamed the whole thing.

Molly was about to turn into the service hall when a shadow caught her eye. There, lying in the middle of the floor, was something that hadn’t been there before. It was an old top hat, tipped on its side. Molly remembered Kip’s words. “A tall black hat,” he had said. Molly knelt down and picked it up. It was as real as anything she’d ever touched, its brim damp with mildew and age. She slowly turned the hat over in her hand – dead leaves spilled from the crown, forming a pile at her feet.

Molly stared at the silent house, which only moments before had been filled with leaves. It wasn’t a dream. Kip, Penny – they had both been telling the truth.

The night man was real.

And that’s only the beginning. I love the way Jonathan Auxier spins this tale. He’s not explicit about the magic of the tree and the house. But you gradually learn, along with Molly, why the family would stay in such a place. And while you’re mentally urging Molly and Kip to just leave, you watch with horror as Molly, too, gets ensnared.

I won’t enjoy a book just for being creepy. The skillful plotting does go a long way toward winning me over, but I think what makes me love the book is the good-heartedness of Molly and Kip. Even the Windsor family grows on you, but Molly and Kip have been given a rough deal in life, and they come through with resourcefulness and kindness.

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to tell you the book has a happy ending – an earned one. I wouldn’t want to read it if all that scariness really did lead to doom. There are, however, a couple of violent deaths along the way, so I think my warning that the book is not for everyone stands.

Creepy and well-crafted, I will keep this book in mind for the next kid who asks me for “a scary book.”

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

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

Review of The Swallow, by Charis Cotter

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

swallow_largeThe Swallow

A Ghost Story

by Charis Cotter

Tundra Books, 2014. 318 pages.
Starred Review
2014 Cybils Finalist, Speculative Fiction for Elementary and Middle Grades
2014 Sonderbooks Stand-out, #11 Children’s Fiction

I don’t think of myself as liking ghost stories, but this didn’t feel like a typical ghost story to me. This is a cozy friendship story and a girl-in-a-big-family-finding-a-friend story.

Sections in this book alternate between the voices of Polly and Rose. Their houses are next door to one another, and it turns out that their attics adjoin. The houses overlook the cemetery.

Rose has always been able to see ghosts, and she hates it. Polly has always wanted to see a ghost, and she isn’t sure that Rose isn’t one herself. She’s so pale and otherworldly.

Polly says:

I’ve always wanted to see a ghost. More than anything. I keep watch at my window for hours, I go for walks in the cemetery almost every day after school and I read all the ghost books I can find at the Parliament Street Library.

Rose says:

I never want to see a ghost again. I’m sick of it. Ladies all in white who follow me down the street, sad men in suits who sit at the back of the bus, children in nightgowns floating out hospital windows – I wish they would all disappear.

Rose hasn’t seen any ghosts, for some reason, since her hospital stay a few months ago. But then, when she hears Polly through the wall of her attic, she thinks they’re back. Polly, after hearing Rose’s voice, thinks she’s finally met a ghost.

Rose says,

I felt sick to my stomach. I was not used to invisible ghosts. And I certainly was not used to ghosts that talked so much. Especially out loud.

My heart sank. I hadn’t seen one ghost since I’d got home from the hospital, and I had really hoped they were gone forever. And now here was a ghost, right in my attic, in my own special nest. Where one came, the rest would follow, and I just knew I’d go stark raving mad if I couldn’t keep them away from me.

“Tell me,” said the ghost, “did you die a horrible death? Are you doomed to wander the ghostly regions between the land of the living and the life beyond?”

“Stop playing games,” I said. “You know I’m not a ghost. You’re the ghost, and you’re pretending to think I’m a ghost to drive me crazy. It isn’t going to work. Go away. All I want to do is sit in my attic and read my books and sing my songs in peace. Is that too much to ask?”

“Do ghosts read?” asked the ghost. “That’s very interesting. Do you have to turn the pages or can you sort of absorb the story by holding the book and pulling the words into your head?”

“I – am – not – a – ghost!” I said slowly and firmly. “Ghosts don’t read! They’re ethereal. They haunt people. They follow them down the street, they watch them when they’re doing their homework, they lurk behind gravestones, they hide in people’s attics –“

“For someone who says they’re not a ghost, you seem to know an awful lot about them,” said the ghost.

I opened my mouth but no words came out. This was the most infuriating ghost I had ever met.

I love the part – in the next chapter – where they figure out what’s actually going on. Rose had gotten frustrated and shouted out, “MY NAME IS ROSE MCPHERSON AND I LIVE AT 43 CEMETERY LANE AND I AM TWELVE YEARS OLD AND I AM NOT DEAD!”

She continues:

It felt good to lose my temper. I made a lot of noise, but the ghost didn’t seem at all put out.

“Wait. Where did you say you live?” she asked calmly.

“43 CEMETERY LANE!” I repeated.

Silence.

“Hit the wall again,” suggested the ghost.

THUMP.

“Umm . . . Ghost?” she said.

“My name is Rose!”

“Ummm . . . Rose?” she said.

“What?”

“I live at 41 Cemetery Lane. Next door.”

It took me a minute to figure it out. “You mean you’re in your own attic? On the other side of the wall?”

“Yes,” replied the ghost. “I guess you’re not a ghost after all.” She sounded disappointed.

“But why is it I can hear you so clearly?” I asked. “As if you were right here beside me?”

“I am right here beside you,” she said, starting to tap against the wall. “This wall must be really thin, not like the brick wall downstairs.”

“That must be it,” I said. A great feeling of relief swept over me and I spoke without thinking. “So you’re not a ghost either. You must be one of the dreadful Lacey children who live next door.”

“Who says we’re dreadful?” asked the girl.

Oops. “Um – my mother.”

“Oh,” said the girl. “Well – she’s right. We are.”

The girls agree to meet in the cemetery – and then find a grave with Rose’s name on it. Rose is convinced she’s not a ghost, but who is Winnifred Rose McPherson, who died at twelve years old, 40 years earlier?

The girls build a friendship. They research this other ghost. And then they find a way to go secretly into each other’s attics. But Rose’s home does have a ghost – and she’s angry, and doesn’t seem to want Polly to go into her attic.

This book is indeed a ghost story – but it’s also a friendship story, and a story that warmed my heart, despite the ghostly chill.

chariscotter.com
tundrabooks.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/swallow.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 to me by the publisher to evaluate for the Cybils Awards.

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.

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

Review of Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Stand-outs, Starred Review 2

whered_you_go_bernadette_largeWhere’d You Go Bernadette?

by Maria Semple
read by Kathleen Wilhoite

Hachette Audio, 2012. 8.5 hours on 9 compact discs.
Starred Review
2014 Sonderbooks Stand-out, #5 Fiction

Bee is trying to find her mother. Bernadette Fox has disappeared. Bee assembles various documents leading up to the disappearance to try to figure out what happened, and where her mother went.

Bernadette has been uptight for a long time, and has not been enjoying Seattle. What drove her over the edge? Was it the dispute with her neighbor over blackberry bushes? Was it stress about traveling to Antarctica to please their daughter and having to face the treacherous Drake Passage? Was the parents’ group at her daughter’s private school too much for her? Was it her husband’s long hours at Microsoft? Was it simply from trying to avoid interaction with people by using an internet assistant? Did she get wind of her husband’s plans to stage an intervention? Or is it nothing more than hatred of Idaho drivers?

The incidents happening around Bernadette were quirky enough to be humorous – at first. Toward the latter half, I began to think they were all simply too awful and couldn’t be overcome. A lot of little things had snowballed into big things, and let’s just say I was fully sympathetic with her for disappearing.

However, did she mean to disappear? Was she even still alive? And can Bee find her?

By the end of this book, I liked it tremendously. There were some fairly messy loose ends, but just enough to make the whole thing realistic. Bottom line, this book tells the story of a creative family who loves one another in extraordinary circumstances. And they found a realistic and hopeful, but extraordinary, way to get back from the edge of the cliff. The reader finishes with a belief that, one thing or another, they’re going to make it.

And getting there is quite a ride.

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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 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.

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