Review of Endangered, by Eliot Schrefer

Adventure, Contemporary, Starred Review, Suspense, Teen Fiction Review 0

Endangered

by Eliot Schrefer

Scholastic Press, New York, 2012. 264 pages.
Starred Review
2012 National Book Award Finalist
2013 School Library Journal’s Battle of the Books Contender

Endangered is the only Battle of the Books contender this year that I hadn’t already read. I’m glad I finished it before it’s out of the Battle. And, dare I say it?, now I find myself hoping it pulls an upset over The Fault in Our Stars. Though I don’t want it to beat my favorite, Code Name Verity in the next round, and The Fault in Our Stars is bound to come back from the dead anyway, so this doesn’t feel like a very fateful prediction.

But Endangered is a gripping, powerful, and suspenseful story that feels like it’s teaching you at the same time. I knew nothing about bonobos and very little about Congo or life in Congo. Eliot Schrefer writes with authenticity that sure makes the reader think he knows what he’s talking about.

I already had an idea of the story. Sophie was visiting her Mom on a bonobo sanctuary in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Without asking permission, she adopted Otto, a baby bonobo being sold on the side of the road. Later, her Mom heads out to release some adult bonobos at a safe location in the wild, but while she is gone, war erupts. UN peacekeepers try to take Sophie to safety, but Sophie won’t leave Otto to die.

What follows is an epic journey. Because war comes to the sanctuary. Sophie takes refuge in the electrified enclosure with the adult bonobos, so her first challenge is to be accepted by them. But when the electricity goes off, she knows she must escape before the soldiers come in to kill them all. Can she travel through the jungle and find her mother, miles away?

This book is a survival tale, a frightening story of war, and full of authentic details about bonobos and life in Congo.

At first, I was a little annoyed with Sophie for seeming more concerned about bonobo life than human life. But as the book went on, I came to feel that someone needed to care about “the least of these.” When another opportunity came up for her to go to safety if she abandoned Otto, but she had clear evidence he would die if she did, I was by then fully on Sophie’s side in continuing on with Otto.

Sophie’s journey takes her from one danger to another. But she never feels unduly lucky. There are many setbacks. Some she deals with better than others, and she does end up finding kind strangers who help along the way, after initial help from the bonobos. It’s hard to write a series of narrow escapes and still have the reader feel like it could happen, but Eliot Schrefer pulls it off. It all feels believable and terribly scary.

During a quiet moment it struck me that Congo was an easier country to survive in than most during a time of war. In peacetime the teacher couldn’t afford to buy food at the markets, which meant he had a field, and snares for wild game, and a well for water since the government had never run pipes out here. I tried to imagine getting by if the same thing happened in Miami and couldn’t. When a country was as primed for civil war as Congo was, when it came apart, the pieces weren’t as heavy.

eliotschrefer.com
scholastic.com

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

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

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I 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 My First Day, by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page

Children's Nonfiction Review, Science, Starred Review 1

My First Day

What Animals Do on Day One

by Steve Jenkins & Robin Page

Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, Boston, 2013. 32 pages.
Starred Review

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Steve Jenkins’ work, having named three of his books Sonderbooks Stand-outs. I love the way he combines amazingly detailed and realistic cut-paper artwork with scientific facts about the world.

My First Day gets extra bonus points for being way too cute. The book features twenty-two specific types of animals — for example, not just a tiger, but a Siberian tiger, not just a turtle, but a leatherback turtle — and tells us what they do on their very first day.

The range is wide. A capybara can swim and dive when it’s just a few hours old. A polar bear cub sleeps in a snow den with its mother until Spring. A blue wildebeest trots along with its mother, because its herd is on the move.

One thing I love about this book is the pacing and pictures and subject matter are all perfect for preschoolers or early elementary school kids. Yet it’s serious nonfiction, and fascinating information that I didn’t even know until I read the book. What a wonderful way to get a child hooked on nonfiction!

Here’s an example set of pages, to give an idea of the gentle pacing:

On my first day, my mother held me close so I wouldn’t drift out to sea.

I dozed on her belly while she floated in the waves.

sea otter

On my first day, I raced to the water.

The beach was a dangerous place, and I was on my own as soon as I hatched.

leatherback turtle

Combined with the gentle text, imagine detailed, realistic, yet adorable illustrations of the baby in question with or without its parent, as appropriate. And to cap it all off, the last baby featured is the polar bear cub, who tells us, on its first day, “I fell asleep.”

For older, inquiring minds, there are end notes that tell a little more about each creature, so you don’t have to end on that cozy, perfect-bedtime-story finish. This book will work for a wide range of ages, but will be especially perfect for getting the youngest listeners hooked on nonfiction.

I’m posting this review today in honor of Nonfiction Monday, hosted today by Pierogies & Gyoza.

hmhbooks.com

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

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

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I 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 Chloe and the Lion, by Mac Barnett and Adam Rex

Delightfully Silly, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Chloe and the Lion
by Mac Barnett
Pictures by Adam Rex

Disney Hyperion Books, New York, 2012. 48 pages.
Starred Review

Meta-fiction does not always work, but Chloe and the Lion is joining the ranks of great meta-fiction picture books, along with David Wiesner’s The Three Pigs, Mo Willems’ We Are in a Book!, and even The Monster at the End of This Book, by Jon Stone.

The art is ever-so-interesting, mostly a three-dimensional scene made from paper cut-outs, but it includes plasticine figures of the author and illustrator. They introduce themselves and tell us about Chloe, who saves nickels and dimes to ride on the merry-go-round on the weekend.

The story is on the bizarre side…

But one week, Chloe found a lot of change.
So she was able to buy a lot of tickets.
And she rode around and around and around.
Which was why she got very dizzy.
And that’s how Chloe ended up lost in the forest.

We read that a huge lion leapt out at Chloe from behind an oak tree, but in the picture we see a dragon, with smoke coming from its nostrils.

The author and illustrator have it out. Adam, the illustrator, thinks that a dragon is much cooler than a lion. In the end, Mac has no choice but to fire Adam and find someone else to illustrate the book. Once the illustrator has been changed, “The first thing the lion did was walk up to Adam and swallow him whole.”

Unfortunately, the new artist, Hank Blowfeather, just isn’t as good as Adam. And when Mac tries to draw instead? Disaster!

So, Chloe and Mac need to figure out a way to get Adam out of the belly of the lion and save the book. And a thank-you at the end would be nice, too.

This is another book where description simply doesn’t do it justice. There are visual jokes throughout, a wide variety of styles, and a lot of thought about how a story works. This is a book worth reading again and again.

Oh, and I’ll have to add it to my Pinterest board: Picture Books Where Someone Gets Eaten! (Even if it’s not permanent, getting swallowed whole counts. Maybe I should put it on the Eating Thwarted page, too.)

Meta-fiction at its finest!

macbarnett.com
adamrex.com
disneyhyperionbooks.com

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

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

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I 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 Glad No Matter What, by SARK

Musings, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Glad No Matter What

Transforming Loss and Change into Gift and Opportunity

by SARK

New World Library, 2010. 224 pages.
Starred Review

Even though this is a book about dealing with loss and change, this is a truly joyous and exuberant book. I love SARK’s use of color and art in her pages.

She puts it well right at the beginning:

This is NOT a book about feeling glad when you don’t.
How annoying.
This is a book about finding and living from the glad parts in all of your feelings.

There’s so much wisdom in these pages. Stories. Insights. Encouragement. I’ll post a few more excerpts to give you the idea, but remember that if you read the book, you have the addition of SARK’s wonderful colors and fonts and interesting emphases.

I’ve seen and experienced over and over that grief and loss are always doorways to transformation.

My experiences with both have showed me that we can more actively work with time as we process grief and loss, instead of just waiting for time to pass. We really can consciously practice integrating loss and grief and living with them more fully and beautifully.

I know now that this healing happens in spirals and layers and NOT in steps like a ladder.

We cycle back around and start over, get stuck in the middle, and sometimes get to what feels like the end quickly.

We can weave all of these experiences together into an eventually elegant tapestry. I’ve been speaking with lots of people about the subjects of loss and grief, and it’s clear that in every case, whatever has been lost — job, savings, home, health, money, life — has tremendous gifts and opportunities to offer

if

we do our transformational work.

When we are caring for ourselves, we discover that there is actually plenty of time and energy to care for others and the world too. It is not negatively “selfish” to care for yourself brilliantly and exquisitely. In fact, as you fill your own well from the inside and tend to yourself with great love, it will naturally and effortlessly “spill over” for others to appreciate and utilize.

When you see someone who radiantly glows from within, you are seeing a self-caring soul. This kind of self-care is a living example to be inspired by, so that you can live that way also.

The opposite of old is not young.
The opposite of old is new.
As long as we continue to experience
the new, we will gloriously
inhabit all of the ages that we are.”

In short, I was so happy and supported to read this book after dealing with the loss and change of divorce and then a stroke. So I am convinced this is a wonderful book for after you’ve experienced loss and change, but I believe it would also be wonderful to read during loss and change. And I’m convinced it would be beautiful preparation to read it before loss and change happen to you (and they will). So we’re left with the fact that any time is a good time to read this encouraging book. I recommend reading it slowly, like I did, dipping in to it a part at a time and savoring what you find there.

planetsark.com
newworldlibrary.com

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

Source: This review is based on my own personal copy, purchased via Amazon.com.

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 Runaway King, by Jennifer A. Nielsen

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

The Runaway King

by Jennifer A. Nielsen

Scholastic Press, New York, 2013. 331 pages.
Starred Review

The Runaway King is the sequel to Cybils-winning The False Prince, and I like it even better than the first book. Yes, you should probably read them in order, mainly because this book gives away some things from the first book. In fact, you probably shouldn’t read my review until you’ve read the first book. You do not have to vividly remember what happened in the first book to read this one, because crucial information is filled in without being tedious.

Jaron’s life is threatened right at the start of the book. The pirates who were hired to kill him are upset that they failed. If they don’t get him, they’re going to attack all of Carthya. Other neighboring countries are threatening as well, but Jaron’s regents don’t want to let him prepare for war.

The title is something of a misnomer, because Jaron never runs. He decides to pretend to be pouting in safety, but instead he’s going to head to the pirates and deal with them. How will he deal with them? That’s what this book is about.

I do think I’m going to need to reread the book to decide if I think Jaron is more clever or more lucky. His plot was rather complex, and I got the impression things didn’t go as he planned them — but there was still at least one major surprise for me regarding his intentions, and I enjoyed that. (Is that obtuse enough to not give anything away?)

I love the way Jaron compulsively tells the truth. The reader can see him doing it as he goes and watch people “misunderstand” his words with his careful misdirection. And how much do we readers misunderstand? I’m going to have to reread it just to figure that out.

The story still isn’t finished; trouble looms at the end of the book. But this is one of the more satisfying second books I’ve read in awhile. The story in this book has a nice beginning, middle, and end, and isn’t simply an unfinished continuation.

This book, like its predecessor, begs comparison with Megan Whalen Turner’s Queen’s Thief series. This one actually doesn’t suffer by the comparison (which is high praise coming from me!). Jaron doesn’t seem as in control of his complicated plan as Gen would be, but he also is in a more precarious situation to start with. He’s a younger king than Gen, and he’s growing into his kingship. Watching him do so is a delight to read.

jennielsen.com
scholastic.com

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

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

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I 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 Chloe, by Peter McCarty

Animal Characters, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Chloe

by Peter McCarty

Balzer + Bray, 2012. 36 pages.
Starred Review

Hooray! Another big family picture book! Chloe is the middle child in her family of rabbits. She has ten older brothers and sisters and ten younger brothers and sisters. And, more realistically than in Another Brother, even though they are rabbits, Chloe’s siblings are pictured as different sizes and different ages.

But this isn’t a story about having too many siblings. This is a story about having fun.

Chloe loved the end of the day, when her whole family was together. She called it family fun time.

But her father brings home a new television. When the whole family except Chloe and little Bridget watch TV, Chloe thinks it’s the worst family fun time ever.

But then Bridget finds the bubble wrap. . . .

Pop! Pap! Thip! Bip! Pop!

This is a simple story, about how doing simple things together can be the most fun at all. Peter McCarty’s wonderful illustrations are what make this a stand-out. Even though there are 21 siblings and two parents, each rabbit is portrayed as an individual. I love the way little Bridget imitates Chloe’s gestures and expressions. I love the way the character on TV looks over at Chloe and her brothers and sisters having fun. I love the way Dad stays up popping bubble wrap after everyone’s in bed, and I love the way the baby in the crib is the only child not asleep.

I complain sometimes (a little tongue-in-cheek) that with all the quest for diversity in children’s literature, big families simply aren’t well-represented. Well, here’s a picture book where the big family isn’t the point, isn’t held up as strange. The big family is what it is. This is a simple story about having fun.

[I also love that it’s a book that celebrates the fun of popping bubble wrap. Did you know those bubbles are called utricles? It was featured on my 365 Words a Year calendar one day when I was in college, and my officemate and I used to gloat over any opportunity to pop utricles.]

petermccarty.net
harpercollinschildrens.com

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

Source: This review is based on a library book from the 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 Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

The Dark Is Rising

by Susan Cooper

Simon Pulse, New York. First published in 1973. 244 pages.
1974 Newbery Honor Book
2012 Margaret A. Edwards Award
Starred Review

I decided to reread Susan Cooper’s books when I heard she’d won the 2012 Margaret A. Edwards Award. I missed her books when I was a kid; I’m not sure why. They would have fit nicely with the other fantasy books that were my favorites: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Edward Eager, Zilpha Keatley Snyder. But I have read them once, as an adult. Also in the meantime, The Dark Is Rising was named one of the Top 100 Children’s Novels in School Library Journal‘s poll.

I have to admit, The Dark Is Rising isn’t my favorite kind of fantasy, at least not as an adult. I like the main character to have some clear goals and some plans for attaining them. In The Dark Is Rising, Will Stanton does have to find the Six Signs, but to do that, he has to follow his gut. He has to trust to luck and his newly discovered magic and do his best.

However, The Dark Is Rising is a wonderfully atmospheric book. The Dark Rider isn’t as sinister as Tolkien’s dark riders, but he’s close. (And, come on, this is a children’s book!) In her Margaret Edwards speech, Susan Cooper described how she was living in America, far from her home. She answered that longing for her home by putting it in The Dark Is Rising. You can feel it. The places described feel real.

And Will moves by feel. You see that throughout the book. So though I personally don’t prefer a book where the character just senses what should come next, Susan Cooper was able to pull it off by giving us the feelings along with Will. In fact, as I thought about rereading this book, I admit I remembered most vividly how frightening the beginning of the book is, where the cold tries to get in, and the snow breaks Will’s attic room skylight. Here’s the scene after he cleans that up:

There was nothing to see, now, except a dark damp patch on the carpet where the heap of snow had been. But he felt colder than the cold air had made him, and the sick, empty feeling of fear still lay in his chest. If there had been nothing wrong beyond being frightened of the dark, he would not for the world have gone down to take refuge in Paul’s room. But as things were, he knew he could not stay alone in the room where he belonged. For when they were clearing up that heap of fallen snow, he had seen something that Paul had not. It was impossible, in a howling snowstorm, for anything living to have made that soft unmistakable thud against the glass that he had heard just before the skylight fell. But buried in the heap of snow, he had found the fresh black wing feather of a rook.

He heard the farmer’s voice again: This night will be bad. And tomorrow will be beyond imagining.

She’s definitely got the atmosphere going. She also works in so many things that seem mythic. Elements of wood, bronze, iron, water, fire, and stone. Herne the Hunter. Even the time of Midwinter through Twelfth Night. And she moves her characters back and forth through time smoothly, which is an accomplishment in itself.

In some ways, it’s appropriate for Will to follow his nose in this book. On his eleventh birthday, he discovers as the seventh son of the seventh son, he’s one of the Old Ones. He has a task, but has to learn quickly. Part of that learning is to learn to feel his own magic. I don’t remember the remaining books well enough to remember if this progresses to where he is more of the instigator. I am looking forward to noticing that this time around.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/dark_is_rising.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 my own personal copy.

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 One of Our Thursdays Is Missing, by Jasper Fforde

Fantasy, Fiction Review, Mystery, Science Fiction, Starred Review 0

One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

by Jasper Fforde

Viking, 2011. 362 pages.
Starred Review

I never thought I liked metafiction, where characters enter books. The concept always broke down at some point and just seemed silly. That was before I read Jasper Fforde. While his work is, indubitably, silly, the concepts are inscrutable and flawlessly carried out.

In this volume, we are following a written Thursday Next, a character in a book about Thursday. Thursday Next herself is missing. So is the written Thursday we are following possibly Thursday herself, hidden in the newly rebooted Book World? Whatever is the case, our Thursday has a mystery to solve, and we’re right there with her.

There is so much cleverness in this book! This series is for those who love words and literature and thinking about words and literature. I started marking passages I wanted to share with people, and now the whole book is full of post-it notes. I think I can recite these sections without giving away the plot. The plot is a good one, don’t get me wrong; but you will most enjoy these books if you love the playing the author does with the language and the concepts. For example, here’s a brief scene with some Lost Positives:

I moved quietly to the French windows and stepped out into the garden to release the Lost Positives that the Lady of Shalott had given me. She had a soft spot for the orphaned prefixless words and thought they had more chance to thrive in Fiction than in Poetry. I let the defatigable scamps out of their box. They were kempt and sheveled but their behavior was peccable if not mildly gruntled. They started acting petuously and ran around in circles in a very toward manner.

Our Thursday gets a chance to look for the real Thursday in the Real World, and Professor Plum explains the rigors of being briefly Real:

“It’s highly disorderly,” he explained, “not like here. There is no easily definable plot, and you can run yourself ragged wondering what the significance can be of a chance encounter. You’ll also find that for the most part there is no shorthand to the narrative, so everything happens in a long and painfully drawn-out sequence. Apparently the talk can be confusing — for the most part, people just say the first thing that comes into their heads.”

“Is it as bad as they say it is?”

“I’ve heard it’s worse. Here in the BookWorld, we say what needs to be said for the story to proceed. Out there? Well, you can discount at least eighty percent of chat as just meaningless drivel.”

“I never thought the percentage was that high.”

“In some individuals it can be as high as ninety-two percent. The people to listen to are the ones who don’t say very much.”

“Oh.”

“There are fun things, too,” said Plum, sensing my disappointment. “You’ll get used to it in the end, but if you go out there accepting that seventy-five percent of talk is utter twaddle and eighty-five percent of people’s lives are spent dithering around, you won’t go far wrong. But above all don’t be annoyed or distracted when random things happen for absolutely no purpose.”

“There’s always a purpose,” I said, amused by the notion of utter pointlessness, “even if you don’t understand what it is until much later.”

“That’s the big difference between here and there,” said Plum. “When things happen after a randomly pointless event, all that follows is simply unintended consequences, not a coherent narrative thrust that propels the story forward.”

Much later, I loved the character Thursday discovered involved in the mystery:

“And the name of the driver?”

“Gatsby.”

“The Great Gatsby drives taxis in his spare time?”

“No, his younger and less handsome and intelligent brother — the Mediocre Gatsby. He lives in Parody Valley over in Vanity. Here’s his address.”

When they go to see Mediocre, they meet his brother, Loser Gatsby, at a meeting:

“This is our Siblings of More Famous BookWorld Personalities self-help group,” explained Loser. “That’s Sharon Eyre, the younger and wholly disreputable sister of Jane; Roger Yossarian, the draft dodger and coward; Brian Heep, who despite admonishments from his family continues to wash daily; Rupert Bond, still a virgin and can’t keep a secret; Tracy Capulet, who has slept her way round Verona twice; and Nancy Potter, who is . . . well, let’s just say she’s a term that is subject to several international trademark agreements.”

Along the way, there are choice bits at the start of each chapter quoting from Bradshaw’s BookWorld Companion. Here are two I particularly enjoyed:

Although Outlander authors kill, maim, disfigure and eviscerate bookpeople on a regular basis, no author has ever been held to account, although lawyers are working on a test case to deal with serial offenders. The mechanism for transfictional jurisdiction has yet to be finalized, but when it is, some authors may have cause to regret their worst excesses.

Off the coast lies Vanity Island, and off Vanity likes Fan Fiction. Beyond Fan Fiction is School Essays and beyond that Excuses for Not Doing School Essays. The latter is often the most eloquent, constructed as it is in the white-hot heat of panic, necessity and the desire not to get a detention.

Though in most books written with so many jokes and so much cleverness, you wouldn’t expect to find a coherent plot, this book truly does have one, and contributed to making this a thoroughly satisfying read.

But, bottom line, reading the quotations above should give you the idea of what’s going on here. If you find those bits at all humorous, you need to read the Thursday Next books. I normally say to read them in order, but I’m starting to lose track of what has gone before, and I’m not completely sure it matters. In this book, I’m sure you could start fresh and still enjoy it.

jasperfforde.com
penguin.com

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

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

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

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I 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 Days of Blood and Starlight, by Laini Taylor

Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Days of Blood and Starlight

By Laini Taylor

Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2012. 517 pages.
Starred Review

Days of Blood and Starlight is the sequel to Daughter of Smoke and Bone. If you haven’t read Daughter of Smoke and Bone yet (What are you waiting for?), stop reading this review right now, since I can’t talk about this book without giving away a little bit of what happened in the first book.

Of course, if you have read Daughter of Smoke and Bone, there’s nothing I need to say further. Either I could never stop you from reading on, or I could never persuade you. I’ll just say that if you liked the first book, you will like this one. I liked the second one even more than the first.

But you know I won’t stop there! I have to give some impressions about the book. I’ll do my best not to give anything away. If you want to be more specific, please feel free in the comments.

First, I was pretty annoyed with both the lovers at the end of the first book. Later, they liken it to the scenario that Romeo wakes up and thinks Juliet is dead – so he goes out and kills all her family and her people. Really? This guy who talked about Peace? I mean, there was the little matter of torture and being forced to watch her die, but, Really? And then, as if that weren’t enough, now she’s working with Thiago, the guy who killed her and tortured the one she loved? I know, I know, they showed that extreme things were going on, but I wasn’t happy with the situation in the first 20 percent of the book or so.

But let me say this: I love how Book Two ends! It still includes those awful words, “To be continued,” but this time a few highly satisfying things happen toward the end, and a huge development happens that I never saw coming and that is going to make a fabulously dramatic final book.

Now the whole destined-for-each-other thing gets a little old in the beginning of this book, what with all the betrayals and deaths and war. But by the end of the book, that’s not so much their focus as the whole bigger picture and they’re thinking again about things like Peace and Life and trying to end the war, and I like that change of focus.

Oh, and I love Zuzana and Mik in this book!

Okay, I’ll stop before I give anything away. Read this book! She pulls it off! And she sets up the final book to be the most dramatic of all.

daughterofsmokeandbone.com
lb-teens.com

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Review of The Great Cake Mystery, by Alexander McCall Smith

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

The Great Cake Mystery

Precious Ramotswe’s Very First Case

by Alexander McCall Smith
illustrations by Iain McIntosh

Anchor Books (Random House), New York, 2012. First published in Scotland in 2010. 73 pages.
Starred Review

A book for beginning chapter book readers about the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective, Precious Ramotswe, when she was a little girl! Now readers ready for short chapters can enjoy the flavor of Botswana, as adults have been doing for so long.

Sweet things have been disappearing at Precious’s school, and one boy has been found to have sticky hands. But is that enough evidence against him? Precious doesn’t think so, and she comes up with a clever trick for catching the real thief.

The story is simple and perhaps a little predictable, but it doesn’t talk down to kids and would be a delight to read aloud to a class or to a family at bedtime.

The style, matter-of-fact and pleasant, matches that used in the books for adults, and I did feel like I was meeting the same person as a child. And now we have the treat of her interactions with her father, Obed Ramotswe. In fact, he tells Precious a story at the beginning, which is what triggers the thought that she may be a detective one day. And then a piece of cake is missing from her school.

She might easily have forgotten all about it – after all, it was only a piece of cake – but the next day it happened again. This time it was a piece of bread that was stolen – not an ordinary piece of bread, though: this one was covered in delicious strawberry jam. You can lose a plain piece of bread and not think twice about it, but when you lose one spread thickly with strawberry jam it’s an altogether more serious matter.

This book is a selection for this year’s Summer Reading Program in Fairfax County, Virginia, and I’m delighted that got me to finally read it. This will be a fun one to tell kids about. It’s perfect for that first desire to step into chapter books and will reward readers with an absorbing story.

I also love that it’s set in modern Botswana as a lovely place where normal kids live and go to school. Some things about Botswana – like the wildlife – are spelled out, and the pronunciation of names (like Ramotswe) is given. But it’s clear that kids are kids and are the same everywhere.

alexandermccallsmith.com
anchorbooks.com

Buy from Amazon.com

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

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

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

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

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