Review of America Redux, by Ariel Aberg-Riger

History, Starred Review, Teen Nonfiction 0

America Redux

Visual Stories from Our Dynamic History

by Ariel Aberg-Riger

Balzer + Bray, 2023. 294 pages.
Review written July 4, 2023, from a book sent to me by the publisher.
Starred Review
2024 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award Finalist
2023 Kirkus Prize for Young Reader’s Literature Winner
2023 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #7 Teen Nonfiction

Finishing this book on July 4th was wonderfully appropriate, though because it’s eligible for the Morris Award, I can’t talk about it yet, which is frustrating.

America Redux is a book of visual American history for teens. What do I mean by visual history? The author and artist took mostly public domain images from the time periods of the stories she discusses and made collages. Then she hand-lettered the story on the collages.

The history here isn’t told in consecutive order. The author takes twenty-one issues that still affect us in America today and gives the history of that issue. Some go back farther than others. Some don’t have obvious implications today (though most do), but are fascinating stories.

The book is a quick read, a delight to the eyes, and incredibly interesting. I wished almost every chapter was longer – but the author has a list of resources in the back, sources of quotations, and where you can look to explore the topic more. So she gives enough to completely suck you in. Also enough to give you conversation at parties! Just last Sunday, I began talking about urban SROs – Single-Room Occupancy dwellings – how common they once were and how cities cracking down on them in the 1970s drove up the price of housing. I learned about it in this book.

This book is hard to resist. Its bright colorful images pull your eyes to the page. This is not a textbook or a replacement for a textbook, but it focuses on history you won’t necessarily learn about in school – things like freeways getting built through land owned by minorities, Sam Colt and his genius marketing abilities (paid product placement with his guns in paintings!), the history of squelching immigration, propaganda and the American Revolution, Mustafa Al-Azemmouri – a Black Muslim explorer of the Americas, the Eugenics movement and forced sterilization, Love Canal and the pollution still all around Niagara Falls – and so much more.

If the topics sound random, they felt a little random, not necessarily related to one another or in any particular order. But each one was so fascinating, I completely forgave the author for that. I came away from this book knowing much more about American history and with my curiosity piqued to find out yet more.

americareduxbook.com
arielabergriger.com
EpicReads.com

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but 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.

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Review of The Merciful Crow, by Margaret Owen

Fantasy, Stand-outs, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Merciful Crow

by Margaret Owen
read by Amy Landon

Macmillan Young Listeners, 2019. 12 hours, 58 minutes.
Review written January 2, 2024, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review
2023 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #7 Teen Speculative Fiction

I’ve become a big fan of Margaret Owen’s work after Little Thieves was my favorite book read in 2022, and the sequel Painted Devils was one of my favorites in 2023. So I was happy to find her debut book available as an eaudiobook on Libby.

As in the other series, The Merciful Crow features a girl who’s a scrappy underdog. In this case, she’s part of the caste of Crows — the very lowest and most despised caste in the kingdom of Sabor. There are twelve castes altogether, all named after birds. Each caste has a certain number of witches with an inherited magic for their caste. The ruling family of Phoenixes, for example, can manipulate fire.

Crows don’t have a specific magic of their own — but if they have teeth from someone of another caste, living or dead, they can manipulate that person’s magic. And fortunately, the Crows have access to teeth, because they are the caste that deals with bodies. Crows are immune to the Sinner’s Plague – so when a village lights a Plague Beacon, Crows go in and give the person with the plague a merciful killing, then remove the bodies from the village and burn them.

Fie is the daughter of a chief of the Crows, and she’s training to use the magic of teeth and become a chief herself. As the book opens, they’ve been called to the palace for the first time in 500 years. Fie’s Pa goes in and brings out the shrouded bodies of Prince Jasimir and his bodyguard Tavin. And then they negotiate for payment.

But after they get out of the royal city, it turns out the prince and his companion aren’t dead. It was a ruse to escape from the Queen, who is trying to kill him. Now he wants to travel with the Crows to get to his allies before he shows up as miraculously recovered from the Plague.

But things begin to go wrong. Due to treachery, after their next stop, Fie ends up traveling with the prince and Tavin on her own, with her whole family held hostage. She has a string of teeth, including Phoenix teeth, she has a charge from her father, and she has determination to look after her own. She’ll help the prince to save her family.

The journey is long and difficult, and there are twists and turns all along the way. As they travel, the prince and Tavin are surprised to learn how badly Crows are treated. Fie doesn’t know if she can ever trust the prince to treat them like people, as he’s promised. On the other hand, the Queen intends to allow vigilantes to attack Crows in broad daylight instead of only at night like they do now.

Using caste in a fantasy world was an interesting way to talk about racism in the real world and treating all people as people of worth. This book held magic, romance, adventure, and the story of a girl learning to be a leader.

Research shows this is the first of a duology (but it does stop at a good stopping place), so the advantage of reading it years after publication is that I can start the next book right away.

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but 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.

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Review of Adia Kelbara and the Circle of Shamans, by Isi Hendrix

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

Adia Kelbara and the Circle of Shamans

by Isi Hendrix

Balzer + Bray, 2023. 338 pages.
Review written October 30, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review

This debut middle grade fantasy novel is a sweet-hearted story of a girl named Adia who knows she has special powers, but needs to learn that doesn’t mark her as cursed.

The book is set in an alternate version of Africa. Adia is an orphan and lives in the Swamplands with her aunt and uncle, who seem to hate her. White missionaries came to their land years ago and have suppressed the old ways and inflicted their own control. All adults take Drops before church services, and they’re oddly compliant.

But Adia has made plans behind her aunt and uncle’s backs to spend her Year of Practicality working in the kitchen at the Academy of Shamans. She has a narrow escape before she leaves, and is startled when an earthquake happens when she gets angry.

Once at the Academy, she finds white-skinned students pretending to do spiritual work, but even Adia can sense more than they can.

Told with humor and heart, Adia witnesses one of the Alusi come to earth and learns that the demon that destroyed their land many years ago is now inhabiting the body of the child emperor – and coming to the Academy. One thing leads to another, and we’ve got a kid who’s been told she’s an evil influence discovering her power and using it to fight those who are actually evil.

The result is a delightful romp and an impressive debut. Adia’s the kind of person I enjoyed spending time with, and I look forward to reading more of her adventures as she learns more about her power.

Harpercollinschildrens.com

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Review of The Tower of Life, by Chana Stiefel, illustrated by Susan Gal

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

The Tower of Life

How Yaffa Eliach Rebuilt Her Town in Stories and Photographs

by Chana Stiefel
illustrated by Susan Gal

Scholastic Press, 2022. 40 pages.
Review written January 11, 2023, from a library book
Starred Review
2023 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #5 Children’s Nonfiction

The Tower of Life is a beautiful and bright picture book biography. As the book opens, we’re introduced to the main character as a child:

There once was a girl named Yaffa.
She was a spirited girl who loved her home and her family. She was born in a shtetl, a small Jewish town that pulsed with love, laughter, and light. The name of her shtetl was Eishyshok (Ay-shi-shok).

The acccompanying picture shows a happy chld playing in the bright yellow-green grass above a village with people in groups interacting with one another.

We’re told that Yaffa’s family had lived in Eishyshok for 900 years. We see a picture of a grandmother telling stories as the community gathers around. The following pages show a happy community, enjoying both snow and sunshine. We see a bustling marketplace.

But then we learn that Yaffa’s grandmother had a photography studio. She took photographs of all the people in the village. On Jewish New Year, it was a custom to send photographs to family all over the world, so that’s what people in the community did. We even see a reproduction of a photograph of Yaffa, smiling broadly as she feeds the chickens.

But then hard times came. The Germans came and rounded up the people of Eishyshok. But Yaffa’s family escaped and lived in the forest. The pictures describing that time are darker, but they are accented with bright red paint that keeps a sense of hope. Yaffa brought her family pictures along.

After the war, Yaffa ended up in America, and she became a professor of history. So she was asked by President Jimmy Carter to help make an exhibit for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Thoughts of her own treasured photographs made her think of basing her exhibit on photographs from the rich lives in happier times.

Yaffa decided she would find the survivors and rebuild Eishyshok, not brick by brick, but photograph by photograph, story by story.

And the book concludes with a vertical format spread showing how Yaffa’s exhibit looks in the museum.

Today, if you travel to Washington, DC, you can see Yaffa’s “Tower of Life” in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. More than 1,000 photos of the people of Eishyshok soar three stories high for all the world to see. A world filled with love, laughter, and light — a world that will never be forgotten.

I love the way this picture book makes something beautiful out of a story of the Holocaust, as Yaffa did herself, emphasizing life and light and including beautiful pictures. The book shows the reader that these people were so much more than victims, living beautiful lives.

chanastiefel.com
galgirlstudio.com
scholastic.com

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Review of The Kingdom Over the Sea, by Zohra Nabi

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

The Kingdom Over the Sea

by Zohra Nabi
read by Aysha Kala

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2023. 8 hours, 7 minutes.
Review written October 7, 2023, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This book begins in England after the death of 12-year-old Yara’s mother. Before she’s due to go with the social worker to a foster home, she reads instructions her mother has left for her. She’s told to go to the sea and follow particular instructions to get safe passage to a place called Zehaira. And once there, she’s given directions to find a certain sorceress who will look after her.

Yara is amazed by the magic that brings her over the sea to Zehaira. But once there, she learns that the sorceresses have been thrown out of the city, persecuted, and killed. Her next quest is to find the person her mother sent her to. Once she does, is there a place for Yara among the sorceresses? And she overhears the alchemists plotting further schemes against them. Can Yara help?

This fantasy tale won my heart. Yara’s bravery, setting off alone to a magical kingdom, had me rooting for her, and the characters she meets and the tales she uncovers made me love her and her new community. I was especially fond of the way activist Yara dealt with a jinn she met, and that jinn’s choice to take the form of a goat.

This book is only the beginning. Although they triumph over one major challenge, there is more to come. I will want to travel further with Yara and her community. This delightful fantasy tale will pull middle grade readers over the sea into the kingdom of Zehaira.

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Review of Executing God, by Sharon L. Baker

Christian, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Executing God

Rethinking Everything You’ve Been Taught about Salvation and the Cross

by Sharon L. Baker

Westminster John Knox Press, 2013. 205 pages.
Review written December 28, 2023, from my own copy.
Starred Review
2023 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #2 Christian Nonfiction

After reading Sharon L. Baker’s book Razing Hell that demonstrates the Bible’s teachings about hell aren’t necessarily what we’ve been taught, I was ready to read what she has to say about the cross and the atonement.

This book reminded me of Tony Jones’ book, Did God Kill Jesus?, since both books look at historical theories of the atonement and show us why those that have been commonly taught worship a violent God instead of a loving, restoring God. Sharon L. Baker is a university professor, so her book is a little more academic, but because of that gives us a thorough and detailed case for taking a fresh look at the cross of Christ.

She makes the case right at the beginning that if you believe God orchestrated the violence done to Jesus, you will tend to not have a problem with violence yourself. And beyond that, the story told that way isn’t attractive to unbelievers. If God can only forgive us when paid off by violent death of his innocent Son, how is that even forgiveness?

But don’t weigh her argument from my summary. The author is meticulous in her approach, spending chapters on the historic ways Christians have looked at the atonement. You might be surprised that most of the theories churches teach today were developed hundreds of years after Christ’s death, including the Satisfaction Theory developed in medieval times to appeal to people living under feudal systems. Sharon Baker looks at the meaning of justice, forgiveness, and sacrifice, and how they relate to the cross.

Now, I was easily swayed, since I’ve already read similar books on this topic including Did God Kill Jesus?, by Tony Jones, A More Christlike God, by Bradley Jersak, Nothing But the Blood of Jesus, by J. D. Myers, and Creation and the Cross, by Elizabeth A. Johnson. Where this book shone for me was in the later chapters, where she pulls the ideas together and talks about her view of God’s atonement, forgiveness, and restorative justice. It was especially meaningful to me to finish reading the book on Christmas Day, because her view is that Christ’s atonement is very much wrapped up in the life and incarnation of Jesus.

Here’s a paragraph about the meaning of the Incarnation:

Because of the incarnation, something tangible happens on a cosmic level to change our relationship with God and with each other. In the words of Cyril of Alexandria, “God made human flesh his own.” Or, in other words, regardless of the way we might think of the divinity of Jesus, God descended into the human condition by becoming one of us with a human body and mind. But there’s a bit more to it. In Jesus, two natures were united – human and divine. And since the son has taken on humanness, the two natures are united in Jesus. So he took what belonged to him – the life of God – and gave it to us. And he also took to himself what belonged to us – humanity – and healed it, restored it, and transformed it into what God created us to be. What a sweet gift. Jesus participated in humanity and in the process healed and reconciled it so that humanity could participate in God. In other words, he lifted human nature into the Godhead (Eph. 2:6). We could say that God descended to us in our humanity so we could then ascend to the life of God.

I also loved her discussion of forgiveness and how God has never required payment to forgive. Here’s a bit of that:

If we look at the life and teachings of Jesus we see a vastly different image of God. We see a God of love and peace, who freely forgives sin without first balancing the cosmic accounts. As the fullest revelation of God, Jesus never demands retribution. He never talks about his offended honor. He forgives and heals and saves unconditionally. He is the Prince of Peace who reveals to us the true nature of God and tells us so when he says, “whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

She talks about how the violence of the cross came from humans, not from God:

What would have happened if Jesus, in terrible pain on the cross, had commanded an army of angels to come and wipe out his persecutors? What would have happened if Jesus had bought into the violent response of Peter when the Romans came to arrest him? Violence, bloodshed, death, maybe even war, right? But instead, Jesus responded in the opposite way. He commanded Peter to put away his sword and he spoke words of forgiveness from the cross. In so doing, he broke the cycle of violence and reconciled us to God so that we could spend an eternity celebrating and enjoying our restored relationship with a God who loves us. Which brings God more glory – retribution or restoration? I think the answer is obvious.

And more about restorative justice:

Actually, we might say that sin condemned and punished through retribution is sin condemned without hope for redemption. But sin exposed through righteousness, with the intent to restore the sinner to God, is grounded in the hope of salvation. So instead of saying that God inflicted the pain of the cross on Jesus as a penalty for our sin, we can say that the horrific nature of the cross exposed and condemned the gravity of our sin. After all, human beings are the ones who put Jesus to death, not God.

And remember, Jesus never said anything about coming to receive punishment for sin, but he said quite a bit about forgiving it. The righteousness of God in Jesus transcended the retributive aspects of the law and brought about our forgiveness — think about Jesus’ prayer for our forgiveness from the cross. In this manner, Jesus gave us his life and revealed to us the law of love that restores us to God and to each other. The Bible tells us that no greater love exists than this (John 15:13).

This part resonated when I was reading it at Christmastime:

Reconciliation through forgiveness brings peace between formerly conflicting parties – in this case, God and humanity. The book of Ephesians tells us that Jesus proclaimed peace to those of us who were far from God and to those who were nearer to God (2:15-20). And Jesus proclaimed this peace by something that speaks louder than words – by his actions. Even though he suffered because of our sinful actions in putting him to death, Jesus sought to forgive and to reconcile us to God, bringing peace, love, and restoration not only between God and humans but among those in conflict with each other – Jews, Gentile, male, female, slave, and free. Peace all the way around! But isn’t that what the angels declared at the birth of Jesus – peace on earth, goodwill to all people?

This is a point I’ve often read in George MacDonald’s writings:

Jesus did not die in order to win God’s love for us, but to win us over with God’s love. God’s love went to the limit for us, dove into the depths of the human condition, suffered the consequences of our sin by dying a terrible death as an innocent man. And in the midst of that suffering love, Jesus revealed the greatest love of all – forgiving his enemies and praying to God to do the same. Through the incarnation, God took on human flesh and gave human flesh the life of God.

Here’s how she finishes up the main text of the book (with lots of notes and an index to come – she’s an academic):

It takes one to forgive and two to reconcile. Although God freely forgives all of us without condition, we can choose to enter fully into the equation in order for reconciliation with God to happen. And this reconciliation takes place as we turn back to God. God lifts us up into the life of God and we participate joyfully in the new life we have in Christ. We can interpret the cross of Jesus as at-one-ment that deconstructs notions of a violent God bent on retributive justice. We see that the justice of God is love and that love forgives, transforms, and seeks to create new and harmonious relationships. Through the forgiveness of God, a way is opened up for the transformation of all humanity (all creation, to be exact). Through the cross of Jesus, we are forgiven without condition, accepted as we are. Through repentance we are reconciled with God and transformed into those who live in the power of divine love.

Divine justice, therefore, is the act of loving and forgiving, a bottomless, endless, profoundly absurd forgiveness that reaches out in love to all humankind. Our response-ability is to receive it, to enter into the forgiveness of God, reconciled and restored. If, that is, we have eyes to see and ears to hear:

Yahweh is tender and compassionate,
slow to anger, most loving;
his indignation does not last for ever,
his resentment exists a short time only;
he never treats us, never punishes us,
as our guilt and our sins deserve.
— Ps. 103:8-10 Jerusalem Bible

If, like me, you find that vision of God’s restorative justice beautiful, but if maybe you aren’t sure how to fit that picture with what you’ve been taught about the Bible – in that case, I highly recommend this book.

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but 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.

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Review of Chinese Menu, by Grace Lin

Children's Nonfiction Review, Folk Tales, History, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

Chinese Menu

The History, Myths, and Legends Behind Your Favorite Foods

by Grace Lin

Little, Brown and Company, 2023. 288 pages.
Review written January 3, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review
2023 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #2 Children’s Nonfiction

This book is amazing. I read it slowly, story by story, and then made sure to finish up on New Year’s Eve so that I could make it one of my top Sonderbooks Stand-outs for 2023.

Grace Lin has won all the Honors: Newbery Honor, Caldecott Honor, Geisel Honor, National Book Award for Young People’s Literature Finalist, Mathical Book Prize Honor, and Children’s Literature Legacy Award Winner. Now I find myself hoping she’ll add Sibert Honor (or Medal) to that list, the award for Children’s Nonfiction.

This book itself is exquisite, decorated throughout with Grace Lin’s beautiful art. It’s a large, almost square format, and would work nicely as a coffee table book when you’re not poring through it.

What Grace Lin has done here is tell you stories behind food that appears on the menu of American Chinese restaurants. Here’s how she introduces it:

Have you ever eaten at a Chinese restaurant? Yes, I know, the food was so good! Yum! I get hungry just thinking about it.

But have you ever been curious about the names of the dishes you ordered there? For example, General Tso’s Chicken — have you wondered who General Tso was? Or Buddha Jumps Over the Wall — why would Buddha do something like that?

Well, I can tell you! Because those names are all clues to the tales behind the food. Almost all dishes on a Chinese menu have a story behind them. In a way, the menu at your Chinese restaurant is the table of contents for a feast of stories.

And this book is that feast.

That tells you what this book is — mostly a book of tales about how various dishes (so many of them!) were developed, most of them hundreds of years ago, with a timeline at the front of the book of Chinese dynasties and how the various dishes fit into them.

The tales are wonderful — Grace Lin is a delightful (Newbery-Honor-winning!) storyteller. But there’s even more than that in this book. Before she tells each story, she talks a bit about the dish itself and often her experience with it and what you might experience with it. The art all throughout the book (from a Caldecott Honor Winner!) is also amazing and detailed and beautiful.

I was entertained by these stories, but along the way I also learned all kinds of things about Chinese and American history and about food. Her research was amazing – there are 33 pages of back matter, including a detailed Bibliography. Yes, there’s lots of invented dialogue and modifications in the stories. This isn’t an academic work, and she’s a storyteller. But she’s transparent about the modifications she made and the reasoning behind them. Here’s how she explains that in the Introduction (with further explanations with individual stories):

Yes. These stories are real. They are real legends, real myths, and real histories. I did not make any of them up from my own imagination. They have all been researched (you can check the bibliography!) and there are a few stories that are not only real folklore but factually true, too!

That said, even though I did not fabricate any of these stories, I did, however, embellish some of them. Many of these stories are my own adapted retellings, combining various versions of legends together with imagined details and dialogue. But even when I did so, I tried hard to stay true to the spirit of the original tales and keep as many details as possible. For example, important female characters in the legends were sometimes nameless, so I gave these women names, with ones that would be appropriate for that time and place. But when the stories did name characters, I kept true to the tale — if the characters had no last name in the legend (such as Kun in the chopstick story), I left them with a single name. And, speaking of names, in Chinese tradition, the last name is said first and written before the given name. So, General Ding Baozhen — a real historical person — has the last name of Ding. The general’s first name is Baozhen. You can read Baozhen’s story while learning about Kung Pao Chicken!

I definitely need to visit a Chinese restaurant after reading this book!

gracelin.com

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but 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.

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Review of 102 Days of Lying About Lauren, by Maura Jortner

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

102 Days of Lying About Lauren

by Maura Jortner

Holiday House, 2023. 215 pages.
Starred Review
2023 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #9 More Children’s Fiction

102 Days of Lying About Lauren is a debut novel that I read as part of my reading for the 2024 William C. Morris Award for best Young Adult Debut book. Now, although this book is technically eligible, the main character is twelve years old, so it wouldn’t really have the wide appeal to teens that the Morris Award looks for. (Wide appeal to middle school students? Absolutely!) Normally, when I figured this out about a book, I stopped right there. But in the case of this book, it only took a few pages to completely hook me, and I indulged myself and finished the whole book. Such a delight!

Before the story even begins we see two lists from a girl who calls herself Mouse. The two lists are “Rules to Live By” and “Lies Told.” The first rule is “Don’t tell anyone where you live.” The last lie is “I told Cat that Lauren Suszek was dead. She isn’t. Lauren Suszek is me.”

When we start the story, we learn that Lauren is living in an attic of the Haunted House attraction at an amusement park in Florida. She looks old for her age, so during the day, she pretends to be sixteen years old and an employee of the amusement park. She had stolen a uniform shirt and found a broom and dust pan, and she’s got a routine. She’s been living at the park for 102 days.

This might seem like an unlikely premise, but I love the way this author gradually reveals to us what happened to Mouse and how she cleverly figured out how to cope. She even made a friend with another worker and found a way to get food.

But all her efforts and planning begin to get stymied on the 102nd day, when first her friend Tanner talks about saying good-by, then someone named Cat calls Mouse “Lauren,” and then a hurricane is coming and they all need to seek shelter, but Tanner goes the wrong way.

Okay, the summary isn’t as good as the book itself. I was completely charmed by Mouse, with all her Rules for staying safe and her cleverness in staying hidden. Not to give anything away, but I loved the way the ending hinted at the long road of healing and that Lauren would be able to travel it.

I did learn from this book the sad fact that amusement parks are a place where sometimes kids get abandoned. Here’s how Mouse puts it when she sees a distraught kid in the park on the start of that fateful day:

“Mommy!” It was a little boy dressed in a fancy shirt that looked so neat Mama would have called it pressed. In other words, he looked like someone had taken care to make sure he appeared presentable today. Not a good sign. There was only one reason to make sure your kid looked that good when heading off to America’s most famous amusement park: you were going to leave him there. Parents ditched their kids here sometimes. Maybe because they wanted to get in one last hurrah before it all fell apart. Or maybe because parents needed the last memory of their kid to be a good one. Who knows? But it happened. Kids were left behind, and this kid, he looked the part. Dressed nicely, eyes wild – searching, scanning – scared out of his mind.

I think part of the reason I loved this book is that when I was a kid, I had a fantasy about stopping time and then enjoying all the rides at Disneyland. (Never mind how I would have gotten the rides to work.) But mostly it was that Mouse is a sweet and delightful person who went through something no kid should ever have to go through and then figured out an amazingly effective way to deal with it. The whole thing was maybe not completely realistic, but I needed the happy ending so much, I didn’t mind a bit, and enjoyed every minute of this book. I hope we’ll see much more from this author!

maurajortner.com

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Review of Counting the Cost, by Jill Duggar

Audiobooks, Christian, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Counting the Cost

by Jill Duggar
with Derick Dillard
and Craig Borlase
read by Jill Duggar

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2023. 7 hours, 7 minutes.
Review written December 15, 2023, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I have never watched one episode of the shows about the Duggar family. I am the third child from a family of thirteen children, and I knew it would be painful to me to watch a big family’s lifestyle glorified like that. I knew that what cameras saw would not be the same as what day-to-day life is really like.

But when I heard about Amazon Prime’s “Shiny Happy People” documentary series, I dropped everything and watched the series. It took me five blog posts on my Sonderjourneys blog in my “Shiny Happy Childhood” series to process what I saw in that series.

Based on what I saw in the documentaries (which included interviews with Jill), I put this audiobook on hold as soon as I heard about it. This is the story of Jill Duggar, growing up in her filming family and highly involved in the cult that IBLP ended up being. IBLP stands for Institute in Basic Life Principles, and was founded by Bill Gothard, who began by going around the country doing seminars — seminars I attended as a child several times.

This book is Jill’s personal story. I admire the woman she’s grown to be, learning to set boundaries, make her own decisions, protect her own privacy, and stand up for herself in healthy ways.

My reaction to this book will be more about me than it is about her. It’s not often – not often at all – that I get to read a “mirror” book, a book I see myself in. Jill was the fourth child in a big family, taking care of younger siblings from a young age. I was the third child in my big family, and yes, I was changing diapers and tending babies from eight years old on. She was in a conservative Christian family, heavily influenced by Bill Gothard’s teachings. I was in a conservative Christian family, heavily influenced by Bill Gothard’s teachings, but before he got quite so extreme.

First, after listening to this book, I’m so thankful that my parents didn’t ever get to the “Advanced Training Institute” level of following Bill Gothard. Girls were allowed to wear pants in my house, we listened to Christian rock music, attended a private Christian school, and went to a Christian university. I think there was some hope I’d find a nice Christian guy to marry at that Christian college, like my mother had done, and my older sister did, too, and — oh, wait a second, I did meet my ex-husband at that Christian college, though I was much slower than they were, and we didn’t get married until after I finished grad school, which it sounds like wouldn’t have met Bill Gothard’s approval.

My parents did homeschool for a number of years — but they started after I was already in college. I liked the idea of homeschooling in theory — but in practice, I knew that school had been my lifeline. Making friends and learning how “normal people” lived was vital to my growing up years. And when I had kids of my own, we sent them to public school.

I heard of Bill Gothard’s “umbrella of authority” and probably believed it was true, but it wasn’t hammered into me the way it was for Jill. I wasn’t afraid I was opening myself up to Satanic destruction if I displeased my father. (And I was a rule-follower anyway, so how would I have displeased him?) But one part of the teaching as she related it surprised me. I was taught that a girl goes from under her father’s authority to under her husband’s authority. Marriage is all about “Leave and Cleave,” or so I was taught. I thought it was part of Bill Gothard’s teaching, but Jill reported that she was told she was under her father’s authority as long as he lives, and her husband is under his authority, too. So she had an especially difficult time establishing her own home as an adult, with boundaries from television cameras, making decisions against her father’s wishes.

It was interesting to me, though, that my areas of pain from my upbringing were completely different from hers. Now, it sounds like doing the show gave their family more resources to meet the needs of that many children. However, for me, besides having to do without some physical things at times, I felt starved for attention, easily invisible, not really known by my parents. The focus and attention in our family always went most to the newest baby, and the older kids got easily overlooked. I didn’t get the impression Jill felt a lack there.

I do agree with the Duggars that children are a blessing. But I also believe they are people who need to be nurtured. And if you have so many children you don’t have the physical or emotional resources to nurture them all, I think you’re being irresponsible with precious lives.

Now this is a discussion every couple should have on their own. I try not to judge big families, because children are indeed a blessing, after all. But neither should they judge me for having two kids, six and a half years apart, so I had the joy of showering individual attention on each child. Bill Gothard claims to know what’s best for every family — and I believe that’s presumptuous and wrong.

But the topic that hit the hardest when I watched the “Shiny Happy People” documentary (pun intended) was spanking. One whole blog post in my processing was about it. As an adult, I am very much opposed to using violence to control your children. Jill didn’t even mention spanking as an issue, though I know it’s a big part of Bill Gothard’s teaching, and I think there was a clip of her mother describing “blanket training” in the documentary. (Shudder.)

So Jill didn’t include the things I think of as issues from this background. But a lot of her issues sprang from having her growing-up years always on camera. And then being manipulated as an adult to continue to let the filming control her life, without getting paid for it.

I appreciated that Jill finished her book with the things she loves and admires about her parents. She points out that loving someone does not mean you have to be blind to their faults.

I wish Jill and Dereck continued success as they grow and heal and establish boundaries and nurture their own family, following Jesus in the ways he leads them, rather than in the strict set of rules someone else makes up for them. This book made my heart go out to a sister.

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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.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but 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.

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Review of Divine Rivals, by Rebecca Ross

Audiobooks, Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Divine Rivals

by Rebecca Ross
read by Rebecca Norfolk and Alex Wingfield

Macmillan Young Listeners, 2023. 10 hours, 50 minutes.
Review written December 28, 2023, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2023 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #1 Teen Speculative Fiction
2023 CYBILS Award Finalist, Young Adult Speculative Fiction

Okay, before I start talking about this awesome book, I need to digress because I was reminded of how much I love stories where a couple falls in love via letters.

The example most people know about is the movie “You’ve Got Mail,” but one of my favorite Young Adult Fantasy novels, Crown Duel, has a similar set-up in a fantasy kingdom. I like this kind of romance so much, I have an unfinished novel fragment where I attempted to retell “You’ve Got Mail”/Pride and Prejudice with the letters happening in a fantasy kingdom by way of a magical diary.

Well, Rebecca Ross pulls off this plot much more effectively, expertly connecting our main characters through letters typed on magical typewriters. Like the other books, we start with an enemies-to-lovers trope. Like the others, the guy knows before the girl whom he’s corresponding with and tries to change that “enemy” perspective, because he’s figured out he’s falling in love with the friend he’s writing to.

And yes, the slow-burn romance is exquisite! I’m convinced that a part of why I love this scenario is that as an INFJ, I dislike small talk, love the written word, and love how with letters you can really get to know people. Iris, our main character in Divine Rivals, mentions that we all clothe ourselves in armor, but with letters, we can take off small pieces of that armor and share our hearts.

Iris has been working in a newspaper office, competing with her rival, Roman Kitt, to win the position of columnist and be able to put away the obituaries for good. But when her mother dies, she misses a deadline and loses the columnist job. Iris decides there’s nothing more for her in the city, and she signs up to become a war correspondent – hoping to find her brother Forrest, who went off to fight for the goddess Enva and promised to write, but never did. Iris had begun her magical correspondence with Roman by typing letters to Forrest and putting them in her wardrobe.

This fantasy world is expertly drawn. Without a slog of back story, we listen to the two characters writing to each other about the god and goddess who woke up after hundreds of years and plunged the human world into war. The war is carried out with the technology of World War I from our world — think trenches and poison gas. Refreshingly, some social factors are not like our world, with Iris encountering two women married to each other and soldiers who are women, and she finds that unremarkable.

A lot of the action takes place at the front. It reads like a historical novel of World War I with our heroes falling in love during wartime.

And, oh, the romance! There’s a meeting of minds before the meeting of hearts and bodies, and that always wins me over. In fact, I’ve had to come to terms with realizing that’s my own private fantasy – to some day fall in love via letters (possibly in electronic form). I’m sure it was being influenced by this book that motivated me the day after I’d finished it to *not* shut down a stranger who slid into my direct messages on Twitter, asking me three times in two days how I was doing. Well, I very quickly saw that was a major mistake. But the fact remains that I have many dear friends in my life, both men and women, whom I have gotten close to through the written word, from letter-writing to my friend who moved away as a kid to emailing now. In this book’s case, it was lovely to enjoy an example where the close friendship built in letters went hand-in-hand with romantic compatibility. I’m well aware that doesn’t always happen, but so much fun to read a story where it does.

Now, a word of caution. The only thing I didn’t like about this book was the cliffhanger ending. But there’s where I lucked out! And if you haven’t read this book yet, you too can luck out! You see, the sequel, Ruthless Vows was published two days after I finished reading the book. (And it’s said to be a duology, so the sequel should not have a cliffhanger ending.) Even better, I order books for our public library system. The audio version of the sequel had 49 Notify Me tags in Libby (the ebook had 81), and so of course I ordered it. But my big score was as soon as it got ordered, I went to my own Libby account and checked out a copy! I don’t often take advantage of this insider knowledge, but this time it made me very happy.

And yes, the audiobook version is wonderful, so I’m happy to get to listen to the next book, too. They have British accents and are a delight to the ear. I’m not sure if I will get the sequel finished before 2023 ends, but either way I have no doubt it will be a Sonderbooks Stand-out — either for 2023 or 2024.

I picked up this book because every week since it’s been published, we needed more ecopies at the library because of all the holds. Once I finished reading for the Morris awards, I decided to find out what the fuss was all about. I’m so glad I did!

rebeccarossauthor.com

Buy from Amazon.com

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

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but 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.

What did you think of this book?