Review of Dangerous Alliance, by Jennieke Cohen

Austenalia, Historical, Romance, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Dangerous Alliance

An Austentacious Romance

by Jennieke Cohen

HarperTeen, 2019. 429 pages.
Review written September 25, 2020, from a library book
Starred Review
2020 Sonderbooks Stand-out:
#8 General Teen Fiction

Here’s another fun variant on Jane Austen! This one is a romance for teens set in England during the time that Jane Austen had published the first four of her books, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, and Emma.

Our heroine, Lady Vicky Aston, has read and loved Jane Austen’s novels and relates her own life to the events in those books. But there’s a dark side in Vicky’s life that we don’t really see in Jane Austen. Vicky’s sister Althea has fled from her husband, Lord Dain, because he is horribly abusive. The same day that she comes back to the family home, Vicky is attacked in the countryside and fortunately rescued by Lord Halworth, a young man she grew up with but who lived for years on the continent and didn’t answer her letters.

Vicky’s father is determined to get Vicky a divorce, but it’s going to be difficult. At the same time, they need to get Parliament to make Vicky his heir instead of Althea, because if Althea is the heir, the estate would be under Lord Dain’s control. However, Vicky can’t be the heir unless she gets married. So her parents give Vicky a mission: to find a husband during her season in London.

Meanwhile, there are some more attacks. There are misunderstandings. There are accidents that don’t seem like accidents. There are odious suitors and a couple of very nice suitors. But who can Vicky trust? And who is behind those attacks?

It’s all in good fun – while at the same time showing us glimpses of the dark side of the Georgian era and how little agency women actually had.

Another delightful excursion for Jane Austen fans.

jenniekecohen.com
epicreads.com

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Review of The Imaginaries, by Emily Winfield Martin

Art, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

The Imaginaries

Little Scraps of Larger Stories

by Emily Winfield Martin

Random House, 2020. 80 pages.
Review written July 11, 2020, from a library book
Starred Review

This book is a worthy addition to the tradition of The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, by Chris Van Allsburg. What you have are a set of fantastical paintings, each with a scrap of text, with the text usually shown as actually written on a scrap of paper.

The caption that goes with the picture that appears on the front cover is “Lily wanted to be a good place to land.”

One of my favorites shows a monkey holding a key and says, “Ask the monkey what he knows.” It’s written on the back of an envelope.

There’s a picture of five children wearing dresses at the edge of a forest, and they have the heads of animals. The caption says, “Their parents never knew the secret.”

A few characters seem to appear in more than one picture.

A note at the front from the author says that she found these scraps of words and pictures over the years, “illustrations for stories that do not exist,” in various places.

I found one in a lighthouse, one in a packet of seeds, one in the trunk of a hollow tree.

There was one tucked in the corner of a forgotten diorama, one hidden like a pearl in an oyster shell . . . one forgotten in a paperback from a used bookstore in Paris.

These pictures will send your imagination circling as you browse them, and may provide seeds for all kinds of stories.

A wonderful offering.

rhcbooks.com

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Source: This review is based on a library book.

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Review of Swashby and the Sea, by Beth Ferry, illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal

Contemporary, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Swashby and the Sea

by Beth Ferry
illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020. 32 pages.
Review written July 7, 2020, from a library book
Starred Review
2020 Sonderbooks Standout:
#8 Fiction Picture Books

Swashby and the Sea is a charming story of an old sea captain who likes living alone, by his friend the sea. His little boat is even called El Recluso. But when neighbors move in, a little girl and her granny, the girl doesn’t respect Swashby’s boundaries. She climbs on his deck and spreads out on the beach near his house.

Swashby knows what to do.

Swashby battened down the hatches,
hid when the doorbell rang, and fed their oatmeal cookies to the gulls.
He didn’t need neighbors.
He didn’t want neighbors.
Neighbors were nosy, a nuisance, annoying.
So, in return, he left a message written clearly in the sand,
NO TRESPASSING
which the sea fiddled with, just a little bit.

“SING,” the girl read.
And did just that.
She sang every song she knew while dancing up and down Swashby’s deck.

There are more messages in the sand, and the sea keeps fiddling with them. Something I like about this book is that I didn’t figure out how the sea would transform the message – but then when I saw it, it was perfect.

There’s maybe a predictable adventure that gets Swashby finally truly committed to friendship, but the whole thing is a charming story of an old crusty sailor and a little Black girl bubbling with joy. I should add that the pictures are consistently wonderful and convey the characters’ personalities and the magic of the sea.

bethferry.com
juanamartinezneal.com
hmhbooks.com

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

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 Edge of Anything, by Nora Shalaway Carpenter

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

The Edge of Anything

by Nora Shalaway Carpenter

Running Press Teens (Hachette), 2020. 362 pages.
Review written December 21, 2020, from a book sent by the publisher
Starred Review
2020 Cybils Finalist
2020 Sonderbooks Stand-out:
#7 General Teen Fiction

The Edge of Anything is a friendship story, and a powerful one. Len has never really had friends, except her sister, and now she’s avoiding calls from her sister after something terrible happened. She’s finding herself extra sensitive to dirt and germs, and kids at school think she’s a freak.

But when Sage’s life turns upside-down, Len is the person who sees what she’s going through. Sage faints after a volleyball game, and thinks it was low blood sugar. But it turns out to be something that can keep her from playing sports ever again. Volleyball was her passion and her whole life.

It turns out that Len is dealing with something that’s also huge, but the reader and Sage don’t find out what that is until well into the book. But we do come to understand why Len is better at understanding what Sage is going through than her other friends.

That’s the skeleton of what happens in this book, but the beauty is in the carrying it out as Len and Sage become friends and figure out how to be good friends to each other, when neither one wants to face what’s going on.

This book gives a good look at mental illness as an illness, not something you can shake by being strong.

noracarpenterwrites.com
runningpress.com/rpkids

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Review of Sounds All Around, by Dr. James Chapman

Children's Nonfiction Review, Science, Starred Review 0

Sounds All Around

A Guide to Onomatopoeias Around the World

by Dr. James Chapman

Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2020. 165 pages.
Review written November 13, 2020, from a book sent by the publisher
Starred Review
2020 Sonderbooks Stand-out:
#3 General Children’s Nonfiction

Here’s what it says on the page at the front of this book:

Let’s Make Some Noise

Learning the sounds animals make is an essential part of language learning. Spending hours and hours pretending you’re a chicken or a dog is not only great fun, it’s educational, too. If you grew up speaking English, you probably already know your woofs and meows from your clucks and quacks – but how does the rest of the world describe sounds?

[This next part has cartoon animals.]
In Japanese, cats don’t go MEOW. “NYAN!”
In German, pigs don’t go OINK. “GRUNZ!”
In Hindi, frogs don’t go RIBBIT. “TARR!”

There’s a whole world of words for all the sounds you know and love! (And even some words for sounds that don’t show up in English.)

The words that imitate sounds are known as “onomatopoeia.” These words are a wonderfully strange and interesting part of language. After all, we hear the same sounds, but we interpret and write them differently in different languages.

If you sing “Old McDonald Had a Farm” in French, your farmyard ducks go “coin coin” instead of “quack quack,” and in Russian they go “krya krya.” From the sound of a speeding car, to the sound a dog makes, to the sound of rain, there are almost as many words for these sounds as there are languages!

The format of this book is chapters of types of sounds with spreads looking at one certain type of sound in multiple languages. It’s in graphic novel format, so we see the sounds in speech bubbles coming from cartoon animals or characters or things. The chapters are “Animal Noises,” “On the Farm,” “In the Zoo,” “Loud Noises,” “Natural Noises,” “Noisy Machines,” “Sounds of the Human Body,” and “Sounds of Emotion.”

We learn fascinating things, such as “Kusukusu” being the Japanese word for “Ha Ha” and “Tagaktak” being the Filipino word for “Splat” and “Vzheeh” being how Russians say “Zoom.” It’s all mind-expanding to think about the many different languages, but also mind-expanding to realize how many different words we have in our own language for sounds.

This isn’t a book that fits neatly into a curriculum anywhere. You couldn’t use it to learn a language. But it’s super fun to read and to think about. This is a book that could easily capture a child’s imagination. I know it captured mine.

The one little thing that I wish it had is a pronunciation guide, since I know in some languages, English letters don’t make the same sounds. Though perhaps they left that out because once they started, it would have gotten tricky with so many languages used. This keeps it light and fun, but still informative.

andrewsmcmeel.com

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Review of Before the Ever After, by Jacqueline Woodson, read by Guy Lockard

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

Before the Ever After

by Jacqueline Woodson
read by Guy Lockard

Listening Library, 2020. 2 hours, 15 minutes on eaudio
Review written January 4, 2021, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review
2021 Capitol Choices selection
2021 Coretta Scott King Author Award Winner
2020 Sonderbooks Stand-out:
#8 Children’s Fiction

This is a novel in verse written from the perspective of twelve-year-old ZJ, talking about his Dad, a professional football player.

His Dad is a star, with a Super Bowl ring. Or at least he was – before. When ZJ goes through his memories, we learn that his Dad was also a wonderful, active, loving father. He did lots of things with ZJ and ZJ’s friends.

But then one day, he didn’t play a game they expected him to play. He started getting awful headaches, forgetting their names, and acting strangely. And they didn’t know what was going on. Different doctors had different ideas, but nothing was working.

The way the book covers “Before,” your heart breaks with ZJ when his Daddy starts to change.

Normally, I think I enjoy novels in verse more by seeing the poetry with my own eyes. It’s easier to catch what the author’s doing. In this case, I did enjoy listening to the warm voice of the narrator, and I did figure out it was a novel in verse before I looked at the book.

This is a heartbreaking tribute from a kid to his dad.

jacquelinewoodson.com
penguin.com/middle-grade

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Review of Cemetery Boys, by Aiden Thomas

Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Cemetery Boys

by Aiden Thomas

Swoon Reads (Feiwel and Friends, Macmillan), 2020. 344 pages.
Review written December 18, 2020, from a library book
Starred Review
2020 National Book Award Finalist
2020 Cybils Finalist
2020 Sonderbooks Stand-out:
#8 Teen Speculative Fiction

I’ll confess right up front that I was predisposed to like this book because it features a transgender main character in a paranormal fantasy. But as I read, it’s also a well-written paranormal fantasy even if that weren’t true.

Yadriel has grown up in a Latinx culture in East Los Angeles where his family trains to become brujos and brujas. But when he got to be fifteen years old and refused to become a bruja, his family wasn’t ready to take him through the ceremony to make him become a brujo.

So the book begins with Yadriel and his friend Maritza going through the ceremony on their own. Lady Death indeed blesses him and bonds him to his portaje, the ritual dagger of a brujo.

As soon as the ceremony finishes, though, all the brujx sense the sudden death of one of their own, Yadriel’s cousin Miguel. But no one can find his body. So, to prove himself, Yadriel summons Miguel’s spirit – and ends up summoning someone else entirely – a kid from his school named Julian. Still trying to prove himself, Yadriel unsuccessfully tries to help Julian pass on to the other side, but Yadriel’s portaje won’t cut Julian’s tether to an object he cares about.

Still Julian agrees to go nicely if Yadriel will first help him check on his friends. It looks like there might be a connection between Miguel and Yadriel, because both their bodies are missing. But there’s a deadline – Dia de Muerte is coming, and Yadriel wants to prove himself by then and join with the other brujos.

Most of the book is the complications of hanging out with an irrepressible spirit and trying to solve the mystery of what happened. And of course trying to keep the spirit hidden from the other brujos who won’t like that Yadriel summoned him on his own. It’s all told in a compelling way, and the reader cares more and more about Yadriel and Maritza and Julian – and more sorry that Julian’s dead.

This is an own voices book, coming from a queer trans Latinx author who shows us both the beauty and frustrations of being part of this culture. They don’t tell us how much of the magical part is based on truth.

aiden-thomas.com
swoonreads.com

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Review of The Boy Who Dreamed of Infinity, by Amy Alznauer, illustrated by Daniel Miyares

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

The Boy Who Dreamed of Infinity

A Tale of the Genius Ramanujan

by Amy Alznauer
illustrated by Daniel Miyares

Candlewick Press, 2020. 48 pages.
Review written July 11, 2020, from a library book
Starred Review
2020 Sonderbooks Stand-out:
#3 Nonfiction Picture Books

The Boy Who Dreamed of Infinity is a longer-than-usual picture book biography of the mathematical genius, Srinivasa Ramanujan. The book focuses on his growing-up years with his constant thinking about mathematical ideas and passion for it that couldn’t be contained.

Here’s how the author talks about the young Ramanujan’s thoughts:

What else is small? Ramanujan wondered. He remembered the legend of the single egg that cracked open to reveal the entire universe. He thought about a mango.

A mango is like an egg. It is just one thing. But if I chop it in two, then chop the half in two, and keep on chopping, I get ore and more bits, on and on, endlessly, to an infinity I could never reach. Yet when I put them back together, I still have just one mango.

He loved this idea, small and big, each inside the other. If he could crack the number 1 open and find infinity, what secrets would he discover inside other numbers? It felt like he was setting out on a grand chase.

Numbers were everywhere. In the squares of light pricking his thatched roof. In the gods dancing on the temple tower. In the clouds that formed and re-formed in the sky. Every day he wrote numbers in the sand, on his slate, on slips of paper, his slender fingers flying, each number a new catch.

The book tells about Ramanujan’s life in India before he finally got an answer from the mathematician G. H. Hardy and was invited to England. It captures his obsession with numbers and his difficulty in doing other things. His parents tried him in a new school every year, because he didn’t fit into the molds they wanted. Eventually he failed college because all he would think about was math.

I love that the author is also a mathematician, and I think she does a great job expressing Ramanujan’s genius, overflowing ideas, and desire to be heard. The artist paints wonderful illustrations to go with the text, showing us an imaginative boy dreaming about numbers and living in a land with lots of sunshine.

The book ends as Ramanujan travels to England:

As he rocked on the steamer and gazed up at the great night sky, so full of stars that it looked like a glittering infinity, he never could have guessed that someday scientists would use his ideas to help explore that sky and that his work would change the course of mathematics forever. One hundred years later, people would still search his notebooks in wonderment, trying to discover what he was thinking.

candlewick.com

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

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 Earth in Her Hands, by Jennifer Jewell

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

The Earth in Her Hands

75 Extraordinary Women Working in the World of Plants

by Jennifer Jewell

Timber Press, Portland, Oregon, 2020. 324 pages.
Review written September 22, 2020, from a library book
Starred Review
2020 Sonderbooks Stand-out:
#5 General Nonfiction

This amazing and beautiful book features seventy-five plantswomen who work in a multiplicity of jobs, mostly jobs I didn’t even know existed before reading this book, and serve plants and the earth in some way.

The format is consistent for all the featured women. On their opening spread in this generously-sized book, one page is filled with a picture of them among their plants. There’s a quote from the subject next to the picture. The text of the feature begins with “Her Work,” telling what she does. Then either “Her Plant” or “Her Landscape” featuring a plant or landscape that’s special to her. The bulk of the feature is the next part, “Her Plant Journey,” which goes into the next spread, giving an outline of her life story and how she came to her current work and the things that excite her about what she does. The second spread has another, smaller picture. The features finish off with “Other Inspiring Women,” a list of women whose work has inspired the featured woman. And yes, some of those are featured, too.

The women are listed alphabetically rather than by type of work, but there’s such a wide variety of work, that approach probably wouldn’t have worked anyway. Some jobs are a little more traditional – nursery owners and farmers, photographers, artists, and writers. There are many horticulturists, gardeners, botanists, and landscape architects. But then we’ve got the owner of a houseplant shop in New York City, seed savers, and collectors, floral designers, garden directors, educators, advocates, herbalists, a soil scientist, a plant pathologist, and a horticultural therapist. And that doesn’t express the many aspects of these jobs that I learned about in these pages, each woman bringing love and passion to what she does.

Also amazing are how these women are located all over the world. Yes, the majority live in the U.S. or the U.K., but there are also women featured from India, Japan, Canada, and Australia.

This is a beautiful book. The photos of the women on the large, glossy pages usually highlight flowers, or maybe some lovely landscape or setting. I read the book usually one feature per day (I confess I had this book out from the library while we were closed for the pandemic so I had extra time.), and it made me want to get out there and do something with plants – at the very least got me noticing plants more on my daily walks by my lake and taking more close-ups of flowers.

This is in the adult section of the library, but I think putting this book into the right teen’s hands might set someone on the path of working with the earth, because it opens your eyes to all the possibilities.

For me, I found that sitting and spending a couple minutes reading one of these features was guaranteed to put me in a peaceful mental state, like taking a deep breath.

timberpress.com

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

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 Even If We Break, by Marieke Nijkamp

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

Even If We Break

by Marieke Nijkamp

Sourcebooks Fire, 2020. 306 pages.
Review written December 9, 2020, from a library book
Starred Review
2020 Sonderbooks Stand-out:
#3 General Teen Fiction

Even If We Break is a Then There Were None-style thriller for teens. As the book begins, five teens are making their way to a high-tech mountain cabin owned by one of them. There was a storm the day before that blocked the path for the car and boulders on the path still make it difficult for the two who have mobility issues.

We get the perspective of different teens in each chapter. Finn and Ever are transgender, with Ever using they/them pronouns. Finn uses crutches and Maddy, who is autistic, has been in an accident recently that changed her from a star lacrosse athlete to someone whose knee hurts when she walks, especially over boulders. Liva is the one whose parents own the cabin, and Carter works for her father’s company.

They are all high school students, but Liva, Carter, and Finn have graduated and will be going off to college at the end of the summer. So their three years of playing a role-playing game together will come to an end. They’re going to have one last immersive game experience in the mountain cabin first. Even though Finn hadn’t been joining them as often lately, and even though Liva’s ex-boyfriend Zac had stopped altogether.

There are stories that the mountain is haunted, and Ever, the gamemaster, weaves that into their adventure. Every adventure started with a murder, as the group are Inquisitors from the land of Gonfalon, and the Council hires them to use magic and skills to solve crimes. For this adventure, a councilor herself (represented by a pile of blankets) is dead.

But as the adventure begins, things begin to become all too real. The power goes out. They hear a music box, just like the story of the haunted mountain. Then bloody handprints. And yes, there’s murder. And that high-tech cabin? It’s hard to get out when it locks.

Never mind solving the murder – the teens who are left want to escape with their lives.

The author pulls the story off well. I’m tempted to say more, but won’t for fear it will give you clues. I did love the central role of the transgender teens and enjoyed that all the characters had emotional depth.

And I was very glad I had a chance to finish it in one sitting! This is not a book you want to set aside.

mariekenijkamp.com
FIREreads.com

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