May 2015 – Page 3 – Sonderbooks

May 4, 2015

Review of Leontyne Price: Voice of a Century

Leontyne Price

Voice of a Century

by Carole Boston Weatherford
illustrated by Raul Colón

Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2014. 36 pages.
Starred Review

Several years ago, I read When Marian Sang, by Pam Munoz Ryan, and The Voice that Challenged a Nation, by Russell Freedman, and so felt I knew about how Marian Anderson showed that the beauty of a voice does not depend on skin color.

Leontyne Price: Voice of a Century tells a later chapter in the story, about a girl inspired by Marian Anderson. This picture book biography imaginatively conveys the beauty of her voice with swirling colors of art.

The text tells a simple story of a girl who dared to dream.

1927. Laurel, Mississippi.
The line between black and white
was as wide as the Mississippi River was long.
All a black girl from the Cotton Belt could expect
was a heap of hard work – as a maid, mill worker, or sharecropper.
Her song, most surely the blues….

Wasn’t long before Leontyne was finding her voice.
Singing along to her daddy James’s records and listening
to the Metropolitan Opera’s Saturday-afternoon radio broadcasts.
She soaked up the sopranos, if not the foreign words.
Art songs and arias, shaping a brown girl’s dreams.

The text tells about Leontyne playing the piano, singing in the choir, and being inspired by the voice of Marian Anderson. The accompanying illustrations show the swirling beauty of song.

Leontyne went to college in Ohio to study to be a teacher, but after the college president heard her sing, she went on to study voice instead and went on to Juilliard.

The illustrations of Leontyne’s international career in opera, and as the first black opera singer to perform on television in America, are particularly lovely.

Leontyne was never more majestic than as Aida,
playing the part she was born to sing. As the Ethiopian princess,
with her skin as her costume, she expressed her whole self.
Standing on Marian’s shoulders, Leontyne gave the crowd goose bumps.
The song of her soul soared on the breath of her ancestors.

The book finishes up with the line:

Her song sure wasn’t the blues.

An Author’s Note at the end fills in details for adults.

This is a lovely and inspiring story for anyone to read – about a person with a beautiful voice who transcended the obstacles in her path.

CBWeatherford.com
randomhousekids.com

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

What did you think of this book?

May 3, 2015

Review of Lost Animals, by Errol Fuller

Nonfiction Review, Science 0

Lost Animals

Extinction and the Photographic Record

by Errol Fuller

Princeton University Press, 2013. 256 pages.

This is a fascinating book. The idea is simple: The author has compiled actual photographs of animals whose species are now extinct. There is information about each animal and details about when each one presumably died out.

In many ways, it’s a tragic book. Especially painful are pictures such as the one of a dead Yangtze River Dolphin taken with the hunter who shot it.

Mostly, the pictures are fascinating in themselves. As the author says in the Introduction:

It seems that a photograph of something lost or gone has a power all of its own, even though it may be tantalizingly inadequate.

nathist.press.princeton.edu

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/lost_animals.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.

What did you think of this book?

May 2, 2015

Review of Very Good, Jeeves, by P. G. Wodehouse

Audiobooks, Fiction Review, Humorous, Starred Review 0

Very Good, Jeeves

by P. G. Wodehouse

*and*

Jeeves and the Old School Chum
and Other Stories

by P. G. Wodehouse
Performed by Alexander Spencer

The Overlook Press. First published in 1930. 297 pages.
Recorded Books, 1985. 3 compact discs.
Starred Review

The reason I’m still reviewing P. G. Wodehouse books is simply to keep track of which books I’ve read. I can’t possibly tell by reading the books! In fact, I listened to the audiobook first, Jeeves and the Old School Chum, which said it was “selected” stories from Very Good, Jeeves, but I can’t tell you for sure which stories I heard on CD first.

You might think this is a criticism? It is not at all! Yes, the stories are similar, so hard to keep straight. But I enjoy them every single time. I may have a general sense that I know how Jeeves is going to solve a particular imbroglio — but that only fills me with delighted anticipation.

This is a book of short stories, as opposed to one of the books where one big complicated entanglement fills the pages from start to finish. There are 11 chapters, 11 short situations where Bertie needs Jeeves’ help to get out of a situation or to help out a friend.

These stories are also represented in the BBC video series “Jeeves and Wooster,” which makes them all the more familiar.

As always, we’ve got Bertie’s amusing use of language and general cluelessness, along with Jeeves’ brilliant insight into the psychology of the individual. It is completely apparent that I will never get tired of hearing these stories.

Buy from Amazon.com

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

What did you think of this book?

May 2, 2015

Review of Blizzard, by John Rocco

Historical, Picture Book Review 0

Blizzard

by John Rocco

Disney Hyperion, Los Angeles, 2014. 40 pages.

I’m reading this book just a few days too late for our snow season, but I do think that kids will enjoy this book at any time.

The best part about the story in Blizzard, by a Caldecott Honoree, is that the story it tells is true.

When John Rocco was ten years old, his town in Rhode Island had a record-breaking blizzard, where it snowed for two days and forty inches of snow fell. The snow plows didn’t make it to their street until the end of the week – so the family was running out of food and milk for hot cocoa.

On day five, I realized it was up to me to take action. I was the only one who had memorized the survival guide. [He’s reading a book called Arctic Survival.]

I was the only one who knew what equipment was required. [He’s tying tennis rackets to the bottoms of his boots.]

I was the only one light enough to walk on top of the snow.

After he sets out, a fold-out map shows his route. I love the natural 10-year-old detours: to help build a snowman, to climb a lookout tree, to make a snow angel, to explore an igloo, and to join a snowball fight.

He successfully gets groceries for his own family and for the neighbors – and has quite a tale to tell.

Now in the first place, this book makes our recent snowfall seem not so bad at all. In the second place, it can’t help but communicate the playful side of a big snow. And a kid gets to be the hero, and it ends with the snow plows making it through.

A cozy story for a winter day or a nice cooling story for a hot summer day, but especially a playful adventure story with a kid in the starring role.

DisneyBooks.com

Buy from Amazon.com

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

What did you think of this book?

May 1, 2015

Review of Black Dove, White Raven, by Elizabeth Wein

Historical, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Black Dove, White Raven

by Elizabeth Wein

Hyperion, Los Angeles, 2015. 357 pages.
Starred Review

Wow. Once again Elizabeth Wein illuminates a historical situation I knew nothing about. In some ways, this combines themes from her two different series. We’re back in Aksum of Ethiopia – but this is not ancient Aksum. Instead, Aksum is combined with female pilots of World War II – okay, just before World War II, when Italy invaded Ethiopia. (Did you know about that? I sure didn’t.)

At the start of the book, Black Dove and White Raven are the airshow names for the mothers of Emilia Menotti and Teodros Dupré. Black Dove is Teo’s mother, Delia Dupré; and White Raven is Em’s Momma, Rhoda Menotti. They travel around doing airshows together in 1930s America, doing aerobatics and wing-walking. They met in France after World War I. They dream of moving to Ethiopia, where Teo’s father was from, where people won’t be shocked by a black woman and a white woman living and working together.

But then there’s an accident, and Delia is killed. However, the family still makes it to Ethiopia, and Teo and Em work on becoming the new Black Dove and White Raven.

Teo and Em grow up in Ethiopia, and Momma teaches them to fly – just in time to come of age when Italy invades Ethiopia in 1936.

This book is filled with historical details I knew nothing about, but mostly it’s the compelling story of two children with strong family ties, living in another culture, learning to find their place in the world and deal with all manner of people – and coming of age in wartime — wartime that involved mustard gas against spearmen, and the need to protect ancient treasures, including the Ark of the Covenant.

As always, Elizabeth Wein’s writing is powerful and evocative. I’ll admit that this is slower, atmospheric reading most of the way through, but these are distinctive characters you will remember long afterward.

elizabethwein.com
hyperionteens.com

Buy from Amazon.com

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

What did you think of this book?