Review of Revolution, by Jennifer Donnelly

Adventure, Audiobooks, Contemporary, Historical, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Revolution

by Jennifer Donnelly
read by Emily Janice Card and Emma Bering

Listening Library, 2010. 12 CDs. 15 hours, 4 minutes.
Starred Review
2011 Odyssey Honor Winner

This book is incredible. One of those audiobooks that had me thinking about it all day long and eventually bringing the CDs into the house to finish listening.

I almost didn’t make it through the first two CDs, since the book starts out very depressing. Andi Alpers’ little brother Truman died two years ago, and Andi is convinced it’s her fault. Her mother can’t cope, but spends her time painting pictures of Truman. Her father walked out on them. The only thing that keeps the sadness at bay is Andi’s antidepressants, but if she takes too many, she starts having hallucinations. Even her music can’t keep the depression away for long.

Then Andi’s Dad comes in and takes charge. He puts her mother in a psychiatric ward and makes Andi accompany him on a trip to Paris. He’s a world-renowned geneticist, and his job is to find out if a preserved child’s heart belonged to the Dauphin of France who was locked in a tower during the French Revolution.

While in Paris, in an old guitar case, Andi finds a hidden compartment and a diary written during the French Revolution by a girl who was companion to the Dauphin. The details of Andi’s life are intricately parallel to the story in the diary. Meanwhile, she meets a French musician who seems to really care about her. But even weirder things begin to happen.

The plotting in this book is exquisite. There are resonances between the two plotlines on so many levels. It also doesn’t hurt that the diary is read by another voice, with a beautiful French accent!

The reader only slowly discovers the full story of Truman’s death and all that Andi is dealing with. Despite her prickly exterior, we come to care about her deeply.

This book is amazing. The craftsmanship is astonishing, in the weaving of the two plotlines alone. If you add to the mix how much research the author must have done, it’s an incredible achievement. An interesting thing for me is that I had just seen an article on the Catacombs of Paris in National Geographic. The article talked about cataphiles who explore the tunnels and showed a picture of “The Beach,” where parties happen. The article came out after the book, just a month before I read it. But the French musician Andi meets is a cataphile, and he takes Andi to a party at The Beach in the catacombs, described exactly like the picture. I was impressed that the author took such care with contemporary details, and have no doubt she was also careful about historical details.

Hmm. Now that I’m posting this review, I don’t know where to put it. The diary is historical, but Andi’s story is contemporary. There’s a small paranormal element. It almost should be put in a class by itself as “Masterpieces.” I think I’ll put it in the “Contemporary” category, but be aware that there is much more to this book.

The whole time I was listening to this book, not only did it stick with me all day long, but I was telling everyone I worked with how incredible it was. I do recommend it in audio form, since listening to the French accent added a level of enjoyment for me. Teens and adults alike will find this book a work of art.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/revolution.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 Heaven Is For Real, by Todd Burpo

Christian, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Heaven Is For Real

A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back

by Todd Burpo
with Lynn Vincent

Thomas Nelson, 2010. 163 pages.
Starred Review

I gobbled up this book in one afternoon. It’s not long, and the story it tells is truly amazing.

My first reaction was that this story would be a hard one for an atheist to explain away. However, I was quickly informed that is not the case. This concerns a little boy’s testimony. As for me, I think his way of talking about it totally rings true, but the fact that he was so young does allow skeptics to propose that he may have been swayed without realizing it.

However, if you do believe in Heaven, this book will encourage you tremendously. And anyone who has suffered a miscarriage, or lost a beloved parent will find themselves incredibly touched.

Colton first gave them a clue that something unusual had happened when they drove to the city where he almost died.

“‘Do you remember the hospital, Colton?’ Sonja asked.

“‘Yes, Mommy, I remember,’ he said. ‘That’s where the angels sang to me.'”

A little while later, they asked him more about it.

“Then he grew serious. ‘Dad, Jesus had the angels sing to me because I was so scared. They made me feel better.’

“Jesus?

“I glanced at Sonja again and saw that her mouth had dropped open. I turned back to Colton. ‘You mean Jesus was there?’

“My little boy nodded as though reporting nothing more remarkable than seeing a ladybug in the front yard. ‘Yeah, Jesus was there.’

“‘Well, where was Jesus?’

Colton looked me right in the eye. ‘I was sitting in Jesus’ lap.'”

That’s in the intro, to give you an idea of what’s in store. Then they tell about their crisis, where it looked like their four-year-old son was really going to die. Appendicitis wasn’t diagnosed correctly, and by the time a doctor at a second hospital figured it out, it should have been too late.

Colton’s father, Todd Burpo, is a pastor. But this was the latest of a series of trials, and he found himself yelling at God. “Where are you? Is this how you treat your pastors?! Is it even worth it to serve you?”

But miraculously, Colton recovered. And it was enough of a miracle that they noticed an awful lot of nurses coming to his room and just staring at him in amazement. One of them pulled his Dad aside.

“‘Mr. Burpo, I’ve worked as a nurse here for many years,’ she said. ‘I’m not supposed to tell you this, but we were told not to give your family any encouragement. They didn’t think Colton was going to make it. And when they tell us people aren’t going to make it, they don’t.'”

It wasn’t until four months later that Colton told them about hearing the angels sing.

“It was that conversation in which Colton said that he ‘went up out of’ his body, that he had spoken with angels, and had sat in Jesus’ lap. And the way we knew he wasn’t making it up was that he was able to tell us what we were doing in another part of the hospital: ‘You were in a little room by yourself praying, and Mommy was in a different room and she was praying and talking on the phone.’

“Not even Sonja had seen me in that little room, having my meltdown with God.”

They continue to ask Colton about his experiences, trying not to ask leading questions. They found out things from a child’s perspective that matched what they would expect from the Bible.

Some of the things he said were very striking. I loved this one:

“Suddenly, he piped up again. ‘Daddy, remember when I yelled for you in the hospital when I waked up?’

“How could I forget? It was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard. ‘Of course I do,’ I said.

“‘Well, the reason I was yelling was that Jesus came to get me. He said I had to go back because he was answering your prayer. That’s how come I was yelling for you.’

“Suddenly, my knees felt weak underneath me. I flashed back to my prayers alone, raging at God, and my prayers in the waiting room, quiet and desperate. I remembered how scared I was, agonizing over whether Colton would hang on through the surgery, whether he’d live long enough for me to see his precious face again. Those were the longest, darkest ninety minutes of my life.

“And Jesus answered my prayer? Personally? After I had yelled at God, chastising him, questioning his wisdom and his faithfulness?”

Later Colton had more bombshells for them. He talked about meeting his sister — the child he’d never known about, who had miscarried. He claimed to have met her in heaven. He also spent time talking with his Dad’s father, Pop, whom he had also never met on earth. He didn’t recognize a picture of Pop as an old man — but then later he spotted a picture of Pop young and newly married — and Colton knew him right away!

I also love the way he tells his Dad the pastor that the Holy Spirit “shoots down power for you when you’re talking in church.” He says the Holy Spirit showed him, that Colton got to watch the Holy Spirit “shooting down power.”

But I think my personal favorite of all the things Colton says is when he’s describing God’s throne:

“‘It was big, Dad . . . really, really big, because God is the biggest one there is. And he really, really loves us, Dad. You can’t belieeeeve how much he loves us!'”

Read this book to be encouraged and inspired. At the end of the book, Colton sums up what he wants to tell people:

“I want them to know that heaven is for real.”

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/heaven_is_for_real.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 Chime, by Franny Billingsley

Fantasy, Starred Review, Suspense, Teen Fiction Review 0

Chime

by Franny Billingsley

Dial Books, 2011. 361 pages.
Starred Review

Full disclosure: I consider the author, Franny Billingsley, a friend, because we attended the same fabulous writers’ conference in Paris in 2005, so I definitely was predisposed to like this book. However, I was predisposed to like her then because I liked her books so much, so it’s kind of a circular bias — which all started because she’s an outstanding writer.

Though a little way into Chime, I might have quit, because I’m not a fan of dark fantasy, and this book definitely gets dark. However, I was extremely glad I didn’t quit, because by the end I thought this book a masterpiece.

At the start of the book, Briony hates herself, which makes it a little harder for the reader to like her. Here’s how she begins:

“I’ve confessed to everything and I’d like to be hanged.

Now, if you please.

I don’t mean to be difficult, but I can’t bear to tell my story. I can’t relive those memories — the touch of the Dead Hand, the smell of eel, the gulp and swallow of the swamp.

How can you possibly think me innocent? Don’t let my face fool you; it tells the worst lies. A girl can have the face of an angel but have a horrid sort of heart.

I know you believe you’re giving me a chance — or, rather, it’s the Chime Child giving me the chance. She’s desperate, of course, not to hang an innocent girl again, but believe me: Nothing in my story will absolve me of guilt. It will only prove what I’ve already told you, which is that I’m wicked.

Can’t the Chime Child take my word for it?”

At the start of this story, you suspect it’s a historical novel set in a superstitious time when witches were hanged. We’re sure Briony must not be a witch and this must be a story of how she was falsely accused.

The setting fits. Briony’s father is a clergyman in the Swampsea. Her twin sister, Rose, has something wrong with her so that she still acts like a child. Early on, Rose runs into the swamp while Bryony is talking to their new lodger, the handsome Eldric. They set out looking for her, being sure to bring a Bible Ball — a piece of paper with a Scripture written on it. We assume it’s a quaint superstition.

But right away, Briony hears the Old Ones of the swamp calling to her. She has the second sight. That’s how she knows she’s a witch.

“I tried to disbelieve Stepmother when she told me I’m a witch. I knew she was right, yet I tried to make a case for myself, pecking at the proof Stepmother offered — pecking at it, turning it over, saying it didn’t exist. Then pecking at another bit, and another, until Stepmother took pity on me. If I wasn’t a witch, she asked, how else was it that I had the second sight?”

Later, when they go into the swamp again, Eldric’s tutor doesn’t bring a Bible Ball — and sure enough, he gets lured into the Quicks and swallowed by the swamp. We realize that all the “superstitions” Briony’s been talking about — Mucky Face, the Brownie, the Boggy Mun, and hearing ghosts — It’s all real, and she can see them.

There’s also a mystery. Two months and three days before the start of this story, Briony and Rose’s Stepmother died. Right away Briony tells us there’s something more to that death:

“But the villagers are wrong about Stepmother, and so is Father. She would never kill herself. I’m the one who knew her best, and I know this: Stepmother was hungry for life.”

I’m sure this is a book that will get better with each rereading. The author feeds you the details slowly, and your curiosity builds. How did Stepmother die? Is Briony a witch? What caused the fire in their library? Can Briony get the Boggy Mun to stop the Swamp Cough that’s killing Rose?

Yes, the story starts out dark and sinister, but I love the beautiful way it all ends up, and all the different threads that come together. I’d better say no more than that! This is a book well worth reading and rereading. This is a fantasy novel, true, but it doesn’t read quite like any other.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/chime.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 Minding Frankie, by Maeve Binchy

Contemporary, Fiction Review, General, Light Reading, Literary, Starred Review 0

Minding Frankie

by Maeve Binchy

Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2011. 383 pages.
Starred Review

Maeve Binchy’s books always end up keeping me reading until the small hours of the morning. Why, oh why, didn’t I know better than to start reading this book late at night, thinking I could stop after only one chapter? It’s not that the plot is exciting or action-packed, but you definitely get to caring about these people and want to find out what happens to them.

I do love the way she brings characters we’ve already seen in her other books. You don’t by any means have to have read the other books, but you have the sense that these are old friends. Everybody has a story in Maeve Binchy’s books, and in each book she focuses on a set of intertwined lives and the beautiful way they get through.

Minding Frankie is about the birth of a little girl.

Josie and Charles Lynch live in 23 St. Jarlath’s Crescent with their son Noel. They had always hoped Noel would be a priest, and set aside money early on for that purpose. Noel, however, was definitely not interested.

“Not so definite, however, was what he actually would like to do. Noel was vague about this, except to say he might like to run an office. Not work in an office, but run one. He showed no interest in studying office management or bookkeeping or accounting or in any areas where the careers department tried to direct him. He liked art, he said, but he didn’t want to paint. If pushed, he would say that he liked looking at paintings and thinking about them. He was good at drawing; he always had a notebook and a pencil with him and he was often to be found curled up in a corner sketching a face or an animal. This did not, of course, lead to any career path, but Noel had never expected it to. He did his homework at the kitchen table, sighing now and then, but rarely ever excited or enthusiastic. At the parent-teacher meetings Josie and Charles had inquired about this. They wondered, Does anything at school fire him up? Anything at all?”

Later, Noel got an office job instead of continuing his schooling.

“He met his work colleagues but without any great enthusiasm. They would not be his friends and companions any more than his fellow students at the Brothers had become mates. He didn’t want to be alone all the time, but it was often easier….

“He took to coming home later and later. He also took to visiting Casey’s pub on the journey home — a big barn of a place, both comforting and anonymous at the same time. It was familiar because everyone knew his name.”

Meanwhile, Noel’s parents aren’t sure what to do with the money they had saved to train Noel for the priesthood. And then Charles Lynch is told they don’t want him at his job any longer.

Into this home comes a woman from America, Charles Lynch’s niece Emily. Emily’s father moved to America years ago, and never kept in touch with his family. The family isn’t sure what to expect, but Emily is the sort of person who changes people’s lives by getting to know who they truly are.

She helps Charles and Josie realize what they really want to do is build a statue to St. Jarlath. And she helps Noel realize that he’s an alcoholic and needs help.

But then Noel gets a life-changing phone call. A woman he knew once and spent a drinking weekend with wants him to visit her in the hospital. She tells him she’s pregnant, and he’s the father. And she’s about to die of cancer.

So the book is about Noel trying to get his life together and be a father. The social worker assigned to his case doesn’t think he can do it. But thanks to Emily, there is a community of people around St. Jarlath’s Crescent who care and who help him with minding the little girl, Frankie.

That description doesn’t sound like a book that would keep me up reading through the night. But Maeve Binchy’s books are about Community. The characters are quirky, and some are powerfully flawed, but as we watch them working together, helping each other, working out problems, making mistakes, being wonderfully kind, we get hooked into their stories.

Another uplifting and life-affirming book by Maeve Binchy. I highly recommend getting to know the wonderful people who live in her books.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/minding_frankie.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 Great Wall of Lucy Wu, by Wendy Wan-Long Shang

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

The Great Wall of Lucy Wu

by Wendy Wan-Long Shang

Scholastic Press, New York, 2011. 312 pages.
Starred Review

Full disclosure: I met Wendy Shang at KidLitCon09 and liked her very much. She’s also a local author, a member of the awesome DC KidLit Book Club, and a volunteer for Fairfax County Public Library — so an all-round wonderful person! Anyway, I was definitely predisposed to like her book, but I confess I didn’t expect to love it like I did. In fact, I checked it out as soon as I saw the library had ordered it, but I found myself putting off reading it. I expected some sort of problem-novel book about being Chinese in America.

I decided I really should read my friend’s book, and chose it as my first choice for the 2011 48-Hour Book Challenge. And I was completely delighted with it! Yes, okay, it does have issues about a sixth-grader being Chinese in America. But mostly, it’s a great story about an American kid whose sixth-grade year does not turn out as she expects it to.

Lucy Wu has been looking forward for ages to the day when her older sister Regina, the one everyone thinks is so perfect, moves out of their shared bedroom and goes to college. But Lucy’s hopes come crashing down when she learns that her grandmother’s long-lost younger sister, Yi Po, is going to come visit for several months. And the only place where she can sleep is that bed Regina vacated in Lucy’s room.

Then Talent Chang tells Lucy’s mother that her mother is starting Chinese school on Saturday mornings. Never mind that Lucy has basketball practice at that time. Her parents see this as her chance to learn how to communicate better with Yi Po. Lucy loves basketball. She lives and breathes basketball.

“When I tell people that I play basketball, I usually get two kinds of reactions. The first is an awkward pause while my entire height of four-foot-nothing gets examined up one side and down the other, followed by something like, “O-kaaaay. What other sports do you like?” The second, while more positive, is really not any better. It’s a big fishy grin, followed by, “Oh! Just like Yao Ming!” Like I have anything in common with a seven-and-ahalf-foot-tall male basketball player, other than the fact that we’re both Chinese.

“But I love basketball. The day I got the hang of dribbling the ball through my legs counts as one of the best days of my life, and that feeling I get when I know the ball’s going in because everything has lined up perfectly is the greatest rush. To me, getting the ball to an open teammate on a no-look pass is a thing of beauty. And tell me there’s something more exciting than the last few seconds of a tied-up basketball game where tenths of a second count.”

So when they announce there’s going to be a basketball game this year between the teachers and the sixth-graders, and the Captain of the sixth grade team will be chosen by who can shoot the most free throws, well of course Lucy wants to be Captain, and her best friend Madison is sure she’ll win. But then she learns that Sloane Connors wants to be Captain.

“She’s the head of a little group that Madison and I secretly call the Amazons, and they can make your life miserable in a thousand different ways.”

Lucy does not want to cross Sloane, but unfortunately Sloane already found out that Lucy was planning to try out for Captain. Lucy wishes Madison would let her be a coward and give up, but Madison is adamant that Lucy will win and lead the team to victory.

I was going to just dip into this book while I was focusing on writing reviews, but I found myself reading it eagerly. And when I finished, I had a big smile on my face. This is a lovely, well-crafted book. Lucy comes across as a very real American kid. Yeah, she complains a bit much about having her great-aunt move into her room — but honestly, what American kid wouldn’t? There’s a boy she likes, and you won’t believe what happens when she gets a chance to have a good conversation with him. (This was beautiful, in a catastrophic way, but I won’t give it away.)

All the elements are woven together expertly — Lucy’s passion for basketball, her relationships with her family members, her birthday party plans, Chinese school and the girl Talent Chang who is annoyingly perfect but wants to be friends, school and the mean girls going after her, embarrassment over the ways she and her family are different, and even some cross-cultural awareness as to what Yi Po went through during the Cultural Revolution. It’s all in there and told in an engaging, warm, and delightful way.

And it’s all woven together with the story of a Chinese idiom that illustrates that things often turn out quite different than you expect. Bad things often turn out to be good, and good things often turn out to be bad.

Well, with this book, I was predisposed to like it, and it turned out to be delightful beyond my expectations. I wonder if there is an idiom for that?

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/great_wall_of_lucy_wu.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 Cazuela That the Farm Maiden Stirred, by Samantha R. Vamos

Contemporary, Picture Book Review, Readalouds, Starred Review 0

The Cazuela That the Farm Maiden Stirred

by Samantha R. Vamos
illustrated by Rafael Lopez

Charlesbridge, 2011. 32 pages.
Starred Review

What an exuberant book! And a beautiful and joyous way to easily learn some Spanish words. Fun to read out loud, too.

The Cazuela That the Farm Maiden Stirred riffs off the idea of “The House That Jack Built” with a cumulative story of making rice pudding, arroz con leche. This one, however, adds the innovative idea of introducing the items and animals in English, but then once you know what they are, using the Spanish words in later recitations.

For example, a couple steps in:

“This is the goat
that churned the cream
to make the MANTEQUILLA
that went into the CAZUELA that the farm maiden stirred.

“This is the cow
that made the fresh milk
while teaching the CABRA
that churned the CREMA
to make the MANTEQUILLA
that went into the CAZUELA that the farm maiden stirred.”

As you can hear, the Spanish words inserted are fun to say, and the chant takes on a musical feel. This book makes you want to read it aloud, and I found myself doing that even as I just read the book to myself to review it. How much more fun it would be to read to a roomful of children or a child on my lap.

But the plot does get more interesting than just the simple cumulative story. After all the ingredients are in the CAZUELA,

“the CABRA gave out spoons,
the GALLINA sang a tune,
the PATO beat a TAMBOR,
the BURRO plucked a banjo,
the VACA shook a MARACA,
and the CAMPESINO and the farm maiden danced . . .

“. . . and no one watched the CAZUELA that the farm maiden stirred.”

Don’t worry! They do get their delicious dish, and the recipe is provided at the back of the book (as well as a glossary and pronunciation guide).

What makes this book absolutely perfect and completely irresistible is the pictures. The best words I can use to describe them are exuberant and joyous. The colors are bright. And the people and animals are happy and completely given over to celebration.

So this book has it all: Something educational, something traditional, a little bit of plot, great fun for the ear, and delightful to the eye. A winner in every way!

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Picture_Books/cazuela.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 End of the Line, by Angela Cerrito

Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The End of the Line

by Angela Cerrito

Holiday House, New York, 2011. 213 pages.
Starred Review

Full disclosure: Angela Cerrito is my friend, and was a member of the Writer’s Critique Group I was in at Sembach Base Library in Germany. In fact, I was very happy on the last page of the book to discover acknowledgements that included my name and our other friends from the writer’s group, and even my dear co-worker at the library, Elfriede Moehlenbrock. (And then I remembered that Angela had asked me how to spell her name — but it takes a long time after writing the acknowledgements for the book to actually appear in print.) I don’t think I actually helped with this particular book, but like Angela, I am sure that when I get published some day, I will need to thank the many writers who critiqued and encouraged me along the way.

Before the main text of the book opens, we see these words:

“If you kill someone, you are a piece of murdering scum. When I saw his body all twisted and still, I knew . . . I knew my life was worthless. It didn’t matter what Dad said or how hard Mom cried. There was nothing they could do.

“It didn’t matter that my teachers tried to pretend nothing had changed when I went back to school. ‘Nice to see you,’ they cooed. But I could tell by the way their voices got squeaky that they didn’t believe a word from their own lips. I could tell by the way their eyes swept over me quick. They looked at my feet or over the top of my head, because they didn’t want to look into the eyes of a murderer.”

Then, as the book begins, Robbie says, “They call this place Great Oaks School, but it must be a prison.” Normally, I’d think a kid was exaggerating if they said that, but Robbie definitely has a point.

“I guess my parents have finally given up on me. They’ve locked me up. I’ve been trapped in this room for hours, just me and a school desk with a stack of paper. That’s all, except a yellow pencil making a blister on my finger.”

A school official, Mr. Lester, comes in and tells Robbie to make a list telling who he is. When Robbie’s list doesn’t come up to Mr. Lester’s standards, Robbie doesn’t get any food.

Then the next short chapter takes us back in time to River Falls, the day Ryan, the new kid, showed up. He spent the first day actually under the desk next to Robbie. And then he followed Robbie home and ate dinner with his family.

The chapters alternate between Robbie’s time in Great Oaks School or Prison with chapters about Robbie’s normal life in River Falls. Great Oaks is the end of the line — the school that will take kids no one else wants to deal with.

So what happened to get Robbie to this point? Angela Cerrito does a masterful job of weaving the two stories together. Mr. Lester wants Robbie to talk with the other kids at Great Oaks about what happened, and Robbie doesn’t want to. Meanwhile, Robbie has what seems like a pretty normal life. Sure, Ryan does some strange things, but the more Robbie gets to know him, the more understandable it seems. And Ryan is great with Robbie’s mom’s daycare kids. And he even gets some of their classmates to come to Robbie’s races.

In some ways, I was sorry I read this one so close to Okay for Now, by Gary B. Schmidt, because the two books felt very much alike. But instead of being historical, instead of having a close relative injured in the Vietnam War, Robbie has a close relative injured in the Iraq War, which feels much more immediate. Both books have a horribly unfair teacher, (So unfair, it makes me wonder if Angela drew him from life — because that particular unfair bias just seems too bizarre to be anything but real!) but in The End of the Line, that teacher never does come around.

Another difference is that in Okay for Now, we know what Doug Swieteck’s up against right from the start. We — along with the whole town — expect him to be a delinquent. In The End of the Line, Robbie seems like a great kid. What in the world happened to get him in this mess? Did he really murder someone? And why? As the book goes on, we feel like we understand more and more the anger and despair that are eating at Robbie.

I do love Angela’s website, which dovetails nicely with the book. Since writing lists becomes important for Robbie, Angela offers readers a chance to submit their own lists. Who are you? Answer with a list.

Here’s Robbie’s list:

I am…
I am a person
I am hungry
I am a boy
I am 13 years old
I am a son, a grandson, a nephew
I am sick of this place
I am angry
I am thirsty
I am skinny
I am a runner
I am a killer murderer

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/end_of_the_line.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 Won Ton, by Lee Wardlaw

Animal Characters, Children's Nonfiction Review, Picture Book Review, Poetry, Starred Review 0

Won Ton

A Cat Tale Told in Haiku

by Lee Wardlaw
illustrated by Eugene Yelchin

Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2011. 34 pages.
Starred Review

This book works both as a collection of short, accessible poems and as an entertaining picture book. The author’s note at the beginning informs us that technically the poems inside are senryu, not haiku. But the syllable format is the same, and I think it was a good choice to use “Haiku” in the title, since that is a term most school children are familiar with.

This book takes us from a cat in a pet store waiting to be bought to a cat in a home with his very own beloved boy. The illustrations show a true cat nature, and so do the poems.

Here are a few I particularly like:

Yawn. String-on-a-stick.
Fine. I’ll come out and chase it
to make you happy.

Scrat-ching-post? Haven’t
heard of it. Besides, the couch
is so much closer.

Letmeoutletme
outletmeoutletmeout.
Wait — let me back in!

Your tummy, soft as
warm dough. I knead and knead, then
bake it with a nap.

Definitely charming. Reading this to a small child will prompt them to look at a cat with new eyes. Reading it to an older child may get them writing haiku of their own.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/won_ton.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 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!

Buy from Amazon.com

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 Chalk, by Bill Thomson

Contemporary, Fantasy, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Chalk

by Bill Thomson

Marshall Cavendish Children, 2010, 42 pages.
2010 Cybils Picture Books Shortlist
Starred Review

Chalk is absolutely brilliant. Many of us were hoping it would win the 2011 Caldecott Medal. It came to my attention when it was listed on the Cybils Picture Books Shortlist, so I read it at the start of January. I will be very surprised if it is not my Number One Sonderbooks Stand-out for Picture Books for 2011. Though you never know what the year will bring, Chalk raises the bar very high.

Chalk is a wordless picture book. The pictures are photorealistic, and at first glance you think they’re done by a computer, but a note at the back says Bill Thomson hand-painted all the pictures, which makes the book all the more amazing.

The story is simple, but a knock-out winner. Three children (of three different ethnicities) come to a playground on a rainy day. They find a bag hanging on a bouncy dinosaur ride. The bag contains some sidewalk chalk. The first girl draws a sun shining — and immediately the rain stops and the sun comes out. The second girl draws butterflies, which pop off the pavement and fly away.

Then the boy takes a piece of green chalk and gets a gleam in his eye. He draws a tyrannosaurus rex.

Eventually, his quick-thinking saves them. He does still have a piece of chalk.

The children leave the bag of chalk where they found it, but we see the boy looking back.

You really need to check out or buy this book for yourself and see the pictures yourself. The story is compelling by itself, but the pictures make it brilliant. I don’t think any two pictures are painted from the same perspective. The unique angles on the action, the looks on the children’s faces — so many things make this a book you can read over and over and discover new details each time.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Picture_Books/chalk.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.