Youth Media Awards 2015!

Award Winners 0

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Hooray! I got a front row seat for the Youth Media Awards announcements that happened on Monday!

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As you can see, I had a great view — though I spent most of my time tweeting the winners, rather than taking pictures.

The announcements of all the awards are on the ALA website, so I will just give some general impressions and link to the books I’ve reviewed.

The energy in the room can’t be described! These people who ignored the Super Bowl the night before (Well, I did.) and don’t even turn on the Oscars (Well, I don’t.) were energized and excited to find out who wins the Children’s book awards. We got up early and came through the snow and waited in line to be there, and speculation was high.

I’ll talk about the announcements in the order I remember them happening. It all starts with the Alex Awards — a list of ten adult books with strong appeal for teens. This list contains several I’ve been meaning to read, but none I actually have read.

One of the fun things about the announcements is that all the committees are there. Most committees bring some sort of prop to celebrate their top choice. Here is the Odyssey Award committee celebrating their choice of Horse, by Christopher Myers:

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I didn’t notice if they did, but they could have thrown their props again when The Crossover won the Newbery Medal and a Coretta Scott King Honor.

I’ll go with some general impressions first.

It seemed like a lovely day for the #WeNeedDiverseBooks Campaign. The Wilder Award went to Donald Crews. The Edwards Award went to Sharon Draper. The Arbuthnot Lecture Award went to Pat Mora.

The Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement went to Deborah Taylor, a librarian whom I know from Capitol Choices, and a wonderful choice.

And Graphic Novels! El Deafo, by Cece Bell was a Newbery Honor Book, and, most surprisingly, This One Summer was both a Printz Honor Book and a Caldecott Honor Book.

I was especially happy about El Deafo after hearing Cece Bell speak in the Graphic Novel Author Forum on Friday night. It couldn’t happen to a nicer person! I have read El Deafo and have already written a review, which I’ll post soon.

A Caldecott Committee member whom I happen to know said, “The criteria is for ages up to 14. If they want to change the criteria…” Others have expressed indignation that a book for teens would win a Caldecott Honor, but the criteria indeed say nothing about “picture books” needing to be targeted to younger readers.

Before the awards, people I talked with felt that there would be great indignation if Brown Girl Dreaming did not win the Newbery, though one friend said that the writing in The Crossover is actually better. Yet when it came down to it, no one was indignant. I think that’s because Brown Girl Dreaming did win the Coretta Scott King Author Award, while Crossover won an Honor. In the Newbery, those positions were switched — but the fact that both were represented in both awards shows that those are just two darn good books.

And this completely puts to rest the idea that the Newbery committee might set aside books by African-Americans, thinking the Coretta Scott King Award will take care of them.

The one thing that made me sad was not seeing The Farmer and the Clown up there among the Caldecott Honors. I do love Marla Frazee’s work.

I hadn’t read as many of the contenders as usual this year, but many of those I had read were also my own personal favorites.

My review for The Crossover will be posted soon.

Brown Girl Dreaming, by Jacqueline Woodson, won the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor, and a Sibert Honor (for children’s nonfiction).

The Noisy Paint Box, by Barb Rosenstock, illustrated by Mary GrandPré, won a Caldecott Honor.

Sam and Dave Dig a Hole, by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen (review upcoming), won a Caldecott Honor.

Viva Frida, by Yuyi Morales, won a Caldecott Honor and the Pura Belpré Illustrator Award.

How I Discovered Poetry, by Marilyn Nelson, won a Coretta Scott King Author Honor.

My favorite children’s nonfiction book of the year, A Boy and a Jaguar, by Alan Rabinowitz, illustrated by Cátia Chen, won the Schneider Award for younger readers.

Hidden: A Child’s Story of the Holocaust, by Loic Dauvillier, illustrated by Marc Lizano, color by Greg Salsedo, translated by Alexis Siegel, won a Batchelder Honor.

Finally, my much-loved Waiting Is Not Easy!, by Mo Willems, won a Geisel Honor.

Review of Nuts to You, by Lynne Rae Perkins

Animal Characters, Award Winners, Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy 1

nuts_to_you_largeNuts to You

by Lynne Rae Perkins

Greenwillow Books, 2014. 256 pages.
2014 Cybils Finalist, Speculative Fiction for Elementary/Middle Grade

Nuts to You is a squirrel story. And it’s a friendship story. Supposedly told to the author by a squirrel who enjoyed her peanut butter sandwich, the book has a strong authorial voice that doesn’t get cutesy. With spot illustrations throughout, this is a gentle adventure for young readers, and would make an outstanding family or classroom read-aloud.

Right at the start our hero, the squirrel Jed, gets snatched by a hawk. As he’s flying in the hawk’s talons, he tries to distract the hawk by yelling about mice.

For an instant, the hawk, scanning for mice, eased his grip, ever so slightly.

And in that instant, Jed relaxed his muscles. It was a technique from the ancient squirrel defensive martial art of Hai Tchree, not well known because it doesn’t work most of the time. Because it is so hard to do when your situation is not relaxing.

But Jed concentrated and completely relaxed his muscles — like the great Houdini escaping a straitjacket — and he slipped like water* through the distracted hawk’s talons.

*thick water. Or perhaps like a non-Newtonian fluid. Look it up on YouTube.

However, Jed lands in a realm far from his home. Fortunately for Jed, his best friend, TsTs, is in a treetop, sees the hawk snatch him, and sees him fall, faraway. She sees that he falls near the third giant frozen spider web along the buzzpaths (utility wires). She and another friend, Chai, set out to find Jed.

But where Jed lands, there is a threat to the trees. All the trees near the buzzpaths are getting sawed down with a thunderous roar. Not only do TsTs and Chai need to find Jed, once found, they need to get back home and warn their own colony of squirrels that they need to move. But how can they possibly get squirrels to take a threat seriously?

I can’t get over the idea that this book would be a wonderful first long chapter book to read aloud to a young child who’s ready to listen to a continuing story at bedtimes. There’s adventure and danger, but a happy ending and a need to work together along the way.

LynneRaePerkins.com
harpercollinschildrens.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/nuts_to_you.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 Loudoun County Public Library.

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

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

Review of The Luck Uglies, by Paul Durham

Adventure, Award Winners, Children's Fiction Review, Cybils, Fantasy 0

luck_uglies_largeThe Luck Uglies

by Paul Durham

Harper, 2014. 387 pages.
2014 Cybils Finalist, Speculative Fiction for Elementary/Middle Grade

We never do find out why the Luck Uglies are called the Luck Uglies. But they are not monsters. They are mask-wearing outlaws who have been banned from Village Drowning by the Earl.

Rye and her friends Folly and Quinn live in Village Drowning and begin the story by accidentally stealing a book and running over the rooftops to escape pursuit.

The Earl who oversaw the affairs of Drowning had not only banned women and girls from reading, but went so far as to outlaw certain books altogether. None was more illicit than the book Rye now pressed close to her body, Tam’s Tome of Drowning Mouth Fibs, Volume II — an obscure history textbook that was widely ignored until the Earl described it as a vile collection of scandalous accusations, dangerous untruths, and outright lies. Even an eleven-year-old could figure out that meant there must be some serious truth to it.

There are, in fact, monsters in this book — the terrifying Bog Noblins who live outside Village Drowning in the forest Beyond the Shale. Rye herself has a close encounter with one. But someone rescues her. When she wakes up in her home, she’s worried about the village.

“Mama,” Rye said, pushing her mother’s hand away from her face. “We need to tell the soldiers. Before it, it . . .” Rye shuddered. “Comes back.”

“Darling, quiet now.” Abby eased her back down. Your close call is something best kept to ourselves. Bog Noblin attacks attract attention. The Constable — and the Earl — would be eager to speak with you. That’s not the type of attention we want.”

Rye didn’t understand.

“But what about the rest of the village?” she said.

“Riley,” her mother said. “Listen to me carefully. I’ll make sure the right people know what happened. But at the moment, you need to rest. Your encounter in the bog was not the only trouble that befell you on the Black Moon. You were poisoned.”

Rye and her friends end up in the thick of danger from monsters, in a village with corrupt leadership. They need the Luck Uglies, but can the Luck Uglies outwit the Earl’s army? It turns out they will need Rye’s help.

This book does have monsters, but it comes across as a gentle fantasy adventure in the style of Robin Hood. With girls in the thick of the action.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/luck_uglies.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 Loudoun County Public Library.

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

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

Review of The Castle Behind Thorns, by Merrie Haskell

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

castle_behind_thorns_largeThe Castle Behind Thorns

by Merrie Haskell

Katherine Tegen Books (HarperCollins), 2014. 327 pages.
Starred Review
2014 Cybils Finalist, Speculative Fiction for Elementary & Middle Grades
2014 Sonderbooks Stand-out, #2 Children’s Fiction

I loved this book. It begins with Sand (Alexandre) waking up in a fireplace. He has no memory of how he got there, or even of falling asleep.

In the room beyond, everything was broken.

Every single thing.

The mantel lay in two disjointed pieces on the cracked hearth. Mixed with the mantel’s splinters lay the shattered crest of a great family, their gilded phoenix and silvered swan once entwined, now separated and dismembered.

The enormous wooden tables throughout the room sagged and slumped like beasts fallen to the hunt. Every bench around the tables lay sideways and in pieces. Each cup and bowl was shattered or smashed. All the tablecloths and tapestries puddled in scraps on the floor or hung in tatters, and even the wood and kindling for the fireplace had been reduced to slivers….

Now he knew where he had awakened.

He was inside the Sundered Castle.

Every morning of his life, Sand had stepped out the front door of his house and ignored this broken castle across the valley. Everyone in the village ignored it. It was unreachable. Only the castle’s towers were visible above an enveloping thorny hedge, a raspberry bramble of astonishing proportion that had grown up around the ruin after the abandonment. Of course, no one picked raspberries from the hedge.

Sand explores the castle. Everything in it is broken. Even loaves of bread, books, and items of clothing are ripped in half.

Nothing was whole here, nothing at all. Not a spoon, not a toothpick, not a bed, not a door. No room had been exempted from the destructive force that had overtaken the castle.

Nothing in the castle has rotted, though, and it is oddly free of any signs of life – no animals, birds, or even mold.

Sand goes looking for the treasury, but instead finds the crypt, and a broken tomb.

The body that had once dwelled inside the fragmented tomb must have been ejected by the same force that had rent earth and stone throughout the castle. Scraps of a shroud littered the floor. It was strange, like some great outside force had tried to free the body. But to what end? To just let it lie in a heap on a dirt floor?

The body hunched in a haphazard pile of withered skin. Like one of the apples in the kitchen, Sand thought disjointedly, altogether horrified. His candlelight should have been steady in the still air below the earth, but it trembled with his shaking hand. Even the quivering light showed the details too well.

The corpse had been a girl. Her clothes were, perhaps, the only thing in the entire castle that were not ripped or town; they were fine fabrics, deep saffron velvets and russet silks that had not faded with age.

And the corpse was whole as well, though clearly the body’s bones were broken beneath its powdery, dried-out skin. The neck was tilted at an odd angle, and the arms and legs were bent horribly akimbo….

He shouldn’t leave her like that. He should put something to rights in this broken place, and she deserved it; she had been a person once. . . .

With his duty done, he fled up the stairs into the sunlight. He was ready to leave. He’d seen enough, maybe too much, and he wanted nothing more from this place. Its treasures could stay hidden. Its secrets could remain undiscovered. He had to get out. This place hadn’t suffered from some earthquake. Something else had happened here. Something that cut leather, ripped apples in half, and tore apart cast iron kettles. Something that broke bread and tossed bodies from tombs.

Naturally, Sand tries to get out. But the thorny hedge has a life of its own, and one thorn prick gives him a fever.

All that happens in just the first chapter.

As the book goes on, Sand figures out how to live in the castle. The old food can be salvaged, and he finds a way to get water from the well, even though the bucket is broken. He finds a stuffed falcon with a broken leg, splints the leg and begins carrying the falcon with him, to have a face to talk to.

In the smithy, even the anvil is in two pieces. But Sand is a smith by calling, having learned from his grandfather, and half an anvil is better than no anvil at all. He begins systematically mending things.

But his mending works better than it should. His unskilled efforts perfectly restore things. And then the falcon comes back to life. Readers will not be surprised at what else does.

But there’s still the problem of the curse on the castle. And the thorns have them trapped inside. I like the interaction as the two children slowly figure out how to break the curse. And figure out how to deal with the outside world if they do get out.

It’s also refreshing to have a boy in a book whose father wants to send him to the University – but he wants to be a blacksmith. I’ve heard the opposite story often. Sand is smart enough to go to the University, but his heart is in the craft of blacksmithing.

The author also beautifully works in a message about forgiveness. She’s not preachy, and it’s seamlessly and naturally built into the story, but I loved that part. I also loved that she didn’t present the idea that forgiveness can be achieved in an instant, but that just beginning to forgive has a magic of its own.

This is a fairy-tale-like story, but with nothing so simple as “true love’s kiss” to break the spell. The two main characters are middle-school-aged kids, and they go about the business of surviving and breaking the spell with kid-sized determination. They start out with some bickering, but learn to get along, bridge their differences, and become friends. This story completely charmed me.

merriehaskell.com
harpercollinschildrens.com

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

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

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

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

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

Review of Sidekicked, by John David Anderson

Award Winners, Children's Fiction Review, Science Fiction, Starred Review 0

Sidekicked

by John David Anderson

Walden Pond Press (HarperCollins), 2013. 373 pages.
Starred Review
2013 Cybils Finalist

Reading this book makes me especially glad that I got to be a Cybils Middle Grade Speculative Fiction judge this year, because I probably wouldn’t have picked it up without that motivation. And I’m so glad I did.

This is a superhero book, which I’m not necessarily a fan of, but it has a lot of depth, an exciting plot, and realistic enough details, you can believe it would happen that way.

Andrew Bean is a sidekick, the Sensationalist. The book opens with him hanging over a pool of acid next to his best friend, Jenna, in her sidekick identity as the Silver Fox. Fortunately, Jenna’s Superhero comes and saves them both. Drew’s Super, the Titan, has never shown up when Drew needs him.

I suppose you’ll want to hear about where I come from, and where I got my powers, and what radioactive bug I was bitten by, and all of that junk. You’ll want to know that my father was a researcher for a top-secret government program studying the properties of dark matter or that my mother was really an Amazon princess blessed with godlike powers. But the truth is, my father is an accountant — not a fake accountant masquerading as a costumed vigilante, but a real honest-to-god, dull-as-a-dictionary accountant with a closet full of white shirts and a carefully managed pension. My mother is an aide at Brookview Elementary — an aide because she got pregnant with me while in college and never finished her teaching degree. Neither of them has any superpowers, unless you count my father’s ability to calculate tips instantly or my mother’s uncanny ability to forget I’m not four anymore, sometimes still wiping the corner of my mouth with a napkin damp with her own spit the way she did when I was a toddler.

The truth is, I was born the way I am, without gamma rays, without cosmic intervention, without a flashback episode explaining my secret origins. I was born with a condition — doctors were careful to call it a condition and not a disease — called hypersensatia, which basically just allows me to see and smell and hear things better than most people. And when I say most people, I mean better than six billion other people. In fact, there are apparently fewer than five hundred people who have this condition, and none of them to the same extent as me. That makes me special, I suppose, though I prefer to think of myself as one of a kind.

Drew is part of a program at Highview Middle School for training Sidekicks called H.E.R.O. – Highview Environmental Revitalization Organization. Their job is to keep trash off the streets. (“Sometimes it’s the thing that’s right in front of you that you keep looking over.”)

Now, Drew’s super power of extraordinary senses isn’t the greatest in a fight. He has a utility belt, but that’s only useful if he’s wearing it. A new kid named Gavin has joined the program. He sweats a substance that encases him in protective rock-like armor. Gavin is a member of the football team and seems to be impressing Jenna, while Drew is working on distinguishing the difference between certain smells.

Meanwhile, the Dealer, a supervillain everyone thought the Titan had killed years ago, comes back from the dead (apparently) and breaks his surviving henchmen out of prison — the Jack of Clubs, the Jack of Spades, and the Jack of Diamonds. Drew finds the Titan — in a bar — but he refuses to help. And one by one, the superheroes of the city of Justicia get removed. Only Jenna’s superhero, the Silver Fox, seems able to deal with them.

But then the Jacks go after the sidekicks of H.E.R.O., apparently trying to use them as bait to catch their heroes. Of course with Drew that doesn’t work, but he almost dies along the way. But how did the Jacks know their secret identities? Who leaked that information? Whom can they trust?

It all works out to a thrilling conclusion that will keep the reader turning pages. I liked the realistic touches. Like our protagonist would have a superpower that doesn’t help him much in a fight. And Drew has regular middle school concerns like what is being served in the cafeteria, getting out of gym class, and what to wear on his first date. This book makes fun reading with a whole lot of suspense thrown in.

johndavidanderson.org
harpercollinschildrens.com

Buy from Amazon.com

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

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

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

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

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

Review of Words with Wings, by Nikki Grimes

Award Winners, Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Poetry, Starred Review 0

Words with Wings

by Nikki Grimes

WordSong (Highlights), Honesdale, Pennsylvania, 2013. 84 pages.
Starred Review
2014 Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book

Words with Wings is a novel in verse about a girl who’s a daydreamer.

Here’s the poem that shares its title with the book:

Words with Wings

Some words
sit still on the page
holding a story steady.
Those words
never get me into trouble.
But other words have wings
that wake my daydreams.
They fly in,
silent as sunrise,
tickle my imagination,
and carry my thoughts away.
I can’t help
but buckle up
for the ride!

Some of the poems tell about Gabby’s life. Others tell about her daydreams. The daydream poems, imaginative and fun, usually start with the word that sets off the daydream. For example:

Waterfall

Say “waterfall,”
and the dreary winter rain
outside my classroom window
turns to liquid thunder,
pounding into a clear pool
miles below,
and I can’t wait
to dive in.

At the start of the book, Gabby’s parents split up and she has to move with her mother across town, and attend a new school. Once again, she’s known as the daydreamer. She has to deal with the other students teasing her and a new teacher trying to get her to pay attention and trying not to disappoint her mother. She has some nice victories in the book, and I love how she learns to value her own imagination.

nikkigrimes.com
wordsongpoetry.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/words_with_wings.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 an Advance Reading Copy signed by the author, which I was given at an author lunch hosted by Highlights, at ALA Annual Conference.

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

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

Review of The Nazi Hunters, by Neal Bascomb

Award Winners, Children's Nonfiction Review, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, Suspense, True Stories 0

The Nazi Hunters

How a Team of Spies and Survivors Captured the World’s Most Notorious Nazi

by Neal Bascomb

Arthur A. Levine Books (Scholastic), 2013. 242 pages.
Starred Review
2014 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award Winner

Here’s a work of nonfiction that reads like a thriller. I didn’t realize until I read the note about the author at the back that this book was based on the author’s book for adults, Hunting Eichmann. It doesn’t read like an abridgement.

Because of the nature of the material, this is a book for teens and preteens, rather than children. But anyone who enjoys a good spy novel will enjoy this true-life tale.

The book sets the stage with what happened in World War II. It looks at the particular, focusing on the story of a young man, Zeev Sapir, in Hungary. Zeev later testified at Eichmann’s trial. The book explains the four phases of Eichmann’s plan: Isolate the Jews, secure Jewish wealth, move the Jews to ghettos, and finally, transport them to camps. His job was to get them to the camps, and he didn’t claim responsibility for what happened to them there.

The first chapter briefly explains Eichmann’s rise to power and his escape from Germany at the end of the war. The rest of the book focuses on how he was discovered in Argentina by Israeli Secret Service, and the elaborate plan they needed to be able to abduct him, bring him to Israel, and put him on trial.

I was struck by the sheer number of those involved who had lost family members in the Holocaust. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but the details as mentioned in this book brought it home to me.

I like the way the book explains the importance of the trial of Adolf Eichmann:

The Eichmann trial was almost more important in the field of education than in that of justice. David Ben-Gurion achieved his ambition: The trial educated the Israeli public, particularly the young, about the true nature of the Holocaust. And, after sixteen years of silence, it allowed survivors to openly share their experiences.

In the rest of the world, the intense media coverage and the wave of Eichmann biographies and fantastic accounts of his capture rooted the Holocaust in the collective cultural consciousness. The Shoah, as it was also known, was not to be forgotten, and an outpouring of survivor memoirs, scholarly works, plays, novels, documentaries, paintings, museum exhibits, and films followed in the wake of the trial and still continues today. This consciousness, in Israel and throughout the world, is the enduring legacy of the operation to capture Adolf Eichmann.

The book is full of photographs all along the way, including pictures of important documents, such as the captain’s logbook for the El Al flight out of Argentina and Eichmann’s Red Cross passport. This reminds the reader, all the way through, that these exciting events actually took place.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/nazi_hunters.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 an advance review copy I got at an ALA conference.

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

Review of The Year of Billy Miller, by Kevin Henkes

Award Winners, Beginning Chapter Books, Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary 0

The Year of Billy Miller

by Kevin Henkes

Greenwillow Books, 2013. 229 pages.
2014 Newbery Honor Book

Kevin Henkes gets kids. He knows what they think about, what they worry about, and how they act. And he’s able to express that on the page.

Billy Miller is about to start second grade. His teacher says it’s the Year of the Rabbit. But Papa says, “It’s the Year of Billy Miller.”

He has some setbacks right from the start. He’s afraid his new teacher will think he doesn’t like her. So he comes up with a plan to make things right. But plans don’t always go smoothly.

Other scenarios Billy deals with include making a diorama, dealing with his little sister, trying to stay up all night, and writing and reciting a poem. They’re child-size episodes and everything Billy does rings true.

This book reminds me of the Clementine books, looking at life from a child’s perspective. Billy’s a little more worried about things than Clementine, but he also can’t hold still. He will win just as firm a place in children’s hearts.

kevinhenkes.com
harpercollinschildrens.com

Buy from Amazon.com

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

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

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

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

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

Review of Locomotive, by Brian Floca

Award Winners, Children's Nonfiction Review, Historical, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Locomotive

by Brian Floca

Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2013. 64 pages.
Starred Review
2014 Caldecott Medal
2014 Sibert Honor Book

Our library is shelving this with nonfiction, and I think I’m going to list it there. Technically, this is a fictional story, but the book is more about facts than the story of the travelers featured. The story merely provides a frame for telling about steam travel across the country as it would have been in 1869, when the transcontinental railroad went all the way through.

The charm of this book lies in the magnificent artwork. The book is a large square shape, with lots of room for details. Small train lovers as well as big train lovers will be delighted to pore over each page.

The basic text tells a fairly simple story of a family traveling to meet their father and husband in California, addressing the reader, telling you what it would have been like.

Now comes the locomotive!
The iron horse, the great machine!
Fifty feet and forty tons,
wheels spinning, rods swinging,
motion within motion, running down the track!
She’s bright in her paint and her polish —
the pride of her company and crew.
She pulls her tender and train behind her,
she rolls up close to where you wait,
all heat and smoke and noise:

Hear the clear, hard call of her bell:
Clang-clang! Clang-clang! Clang-clang!

Hear the Hisssssssss and the Spit of the steam!

Hear the engine breathe like a beast:
Huff Huff Huff!

Brian Floca uses font, size, and position on the page to make the words themselves part of the story, especially the sound effects. On this page, the words come closer and push the family back, as they gaze at the giant locomotive.

The journey goes all the way across the country, and so many details are given. Pictures of landmarks decorate the pages, and we see the different kinds of terrain, what the passengers are doing, and what the train workers are doing, from the boy who sells newspapers to the engineer.

The extra large pages give the reader both panoramic vistas and extreme close-ups to things like the engine and the mighty wheels. The inside front cover tells about building the Transcontinental Railroad and the inside back cover tells about how steam power works in the locomotive. No space is wasted.

This book is a train-loving kid’s dream come true. And it may create some train lovers as well.

brianfloca.com
KIDS.SimonandSchuster.com

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Review of Flora and Ulysses, by Kate DiCamillo

Award Winners, Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

Flora and Ulysses

The Illuminated Adventures

by Kate DiCamillo
illustrated by K. G. Campbell

Candlewick Press, 2013. 231 pages.
Starred Review
2014 Newbery Medal Winner

Flora is a girl who loves comic books. Her mother, a romance writer, wants Flora to “work to turn her face away from the idiotic high jinks of comics and toward the bright light of true literature.”

But because of Flora’s knowledge of comic books, she knows exactly what to do when she meets a superhero squirrel.

You see, their neighbor, Mrs. Tickham, was given a new Ulysses Super-Suction, Multi-Terrain 2000X vacuum cleaner for her birthday. When she tries it out, it accidentally sucks up everything in sight, including her book of poetry, and a squirrel.

Flora sees it happen from her bedroom window. She rushes down and shakes the squirrel out of the vacuum.

He didn’t look that great. He was missing a lot of fur. Vacuumed off, Flora assumed. His eyelids fluttered. His chest rose and fell and rose again. And then it stopped moving altogether.

Flora knelt. She put a finger on the squirrel’s chest.

At the back of each issue of The Illuminated Adventures of the Amazing Incandesto! there was a series of bonus comics. One of Flora’s very favorite bonus comics was entitled TERRIBLE THINGS CAN HAPPEN TO YOU! As a cynic, Flora found it wise to be prepared. Who knew what horrible, unpredictable thing would happen next?

Thanks to her reading, Flora is able to give the squirrel CPR and revive him. She names him Ulysses, after the vacuum cleaner.

His encounter with the vacuum cleaner has given him amazing superpowers. He is super strong. He can type. He can write poetry. And he can fly.

But all good superheroes have an arch-nemesis. In Ulysses case, that arch-nemesis is none other than Flora’s mother, who believes squirrels are filthy beasts and wants Flora to have nothing to do with him.

Can Flora and Ulysses overcome evil and save the day?

Various parts of this book, particularly the parts with Ulysses’ superpowers, are shown in comic panel form, which is appropriate to the story. All the characters they encounter are bizarre in at least one way or another, which is also appropriate to a story of a superhero squirrel. It all adds up to a fun and quirky story with a lot of heart.

candlewick.com

Buy from Amazon.com

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

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

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

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

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