Review of Nightbird, by Alice Hoffman

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

nightbird_largeNightbird

by Alice Hoffman

Wendy Lamb Books (Random House), 2015. 197 pages.
Starred Review

I’ve read at least three different books about a teen who sprouts wings, and how they deal with that. This book is different — It’s about the sister of a boy with wings. In fact, the wings are part of a family curse on all the men of the family.

Twig Fowler lives in the small town of Sidwell, Massachusetts, with her mother and a brother that no one knows about. The town has plenty of tradition – including Twig’s mother’s Pink Apple Pie. But one of the traditions — the Sidwell Monster — is not so benign.

James is tired of living in hiding. And Twig is tired of not having friends. When a family moves into the home of the witch who cursed the Fowler family, and they are descended from that witch — Twig and her new friend Julia decide it may be time to break the spell. But how? And James is getting more and more reckless — and falling in love with Julia’s sister Agate.

This is a feel-good story, and if things worked out awfully nicely, I don’t begrudge any of them a happy ending. We’ve got a kid just wanting friends, a small town infused with magic, and Alice Hoffman’s brilliant writing.

alicehoffman.com

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Source: This review is based on an Advance Reader 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.

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Review of Elena Vanishing, by Elena and Clare B. Dunkle

Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

elena_vanishing_largeElena Vanishing

by Elena and Clare B. Dunkle

Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 2015. 293 pages.
Starred Review

Full disclosure: Clare Dunkle is a friend I met when I lived in Germany, and I love everything she writes. But I have good reason! Her writing is wonderful.

Elena Vanishing is a memoir, written from the perspective of Clare’s young adult daughter, Elena, about her years fighting anorexia nervosa. This was released alongside Clare’s book alone, Hope and Other Luxuries, which had the mother’s perspective about everything. I related to that book more, because I’m a mother, too. This book was more painful to read because Elena verbalizes the voice in her head that was saying awful things to her, fueling the anorexia.

I have pages on my site for Children’s Nonfiction and Adult Nonfiction. I should perhaps separate out a page for Young Adult Nonfiction. As it is, I’m going to post this on the Nonfiction page, with the note that it is written for teens, from a teen’s perspective. It may be painful to read, but it does give the reader a better understanding of what it feels like to be in the trap of this life-threatening disease.

Clare says in a note in the front that she thought she knew about anorexia nervosa.

I had believed anorexia nervosa was about dieting to achieve a “supermodel” look. In fact, during Elena’s worst years, she never once looked at herself. Elena dieted because not eating was the only thing that brought her a sense of peace. Anorexia had so altered the pattern of her mind that following her into that inner world was like stepping through a fun-house mirror: everything I took for granted seemed to twist into something else.

Most important, I had believed eating disorders were relatively rare. In fact, around ten percent of the American population will suffer from an eating disorder at some point — the vast majority of them while they’re in their teens or twenties. Now that I know what to look for, I see them everywhere.

But this isn’t the story of anorexia nervosa. It’s the story of a person. It’s the story of Elena Dunkle, a remarkable young woman who fights her demons with grit and determination. It’s the story of her battle to overcome trauma, to overcome prejudice, but most of all, to overcome that powerful destructive force, the inner critic who whispers to us about our greatest fears.

Elena is a fighter, a survivor — but never a victim. This is an inside view of her life-and-death struggle with anorexia nervosa: what she once called “the good girl’s suicide.”

This is a powerful and eye-opening story about a difficult journey.

claredunkle.com
chroniclebooks.com

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Source: This review is based on my own copy, purchased via Amazon.com.

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.

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Review of The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place, by Julie Berry

Audiobooks, Children's Fiction Review, Mystery, Starred Review 0

scandalous_sisterhood_largeThe Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place

by Julie Berry
read by Jayne Entwistle

Listening Library, 2014. 9.5 hours on 8 CDs.
Starred Review
2015 Odyssey Honor Audiobook

The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place are the students at a girls’ Victorian boarding school in Ely, England, St. Etheldreda’s School for Young Ladies.

Right at the start of the book, the girls’ awful headmistress suddenly dies, as does her odious brother. The girls don’t want to be sent home! Smooth Kitty forms a plan. They will carry on as if nothing has happened. Stout Alice is an aspiring actress, so she can impersonate Mrs. Plackett when visitors come to the door. Pocked Louise is a budding scientist, so she can determine if poison was used. Dour Eleanor can be in charge of burying the bodies in the vegetable garden, and Disgraceful Mary Jane can distract any men who come around. Dear Roberta and Dull Martha have parts to play as well.

There’s one problem: What will the murderer do if their plan didn’t work the first time? Will they be convinced Stout Alice is in fact Mrs. Plackett and try again to kill her?

This is a delightful book about girls caught in a difficult situation who come up with questionable ideas for dealing with it.

I enjoyed the atmosphere of Ely with the cathedral looming, as I have been there and that’s what I remember.

Naturally enough, it reminded me of Summer of the Gypsy Moths in that both books begin with girls burying a body and trying to convince others that nothing has happened. The Sisters of Prickwillow Place have the advantage of there being seven of them. Can they work together to be able to stay together?

This is a murder mystery with a Victorian atmosphere. I listened to the book, and the narrator is wonderful, using a distinct voice for each character, and all with an English accent which of course makes for delightful listening.

The trailer is wonderful and gives you the flavor of the book.

julieberrybooks.com
listeninglibrary.com

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Source: This review is based on a library audiobook 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.

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Review of Billy’s Booger, by William Joyce

Historical, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

billys_booger_largeBilly’s Booger

A Memoir (Sorta)

by William Joyce and his younger self

Moonbot Books, Atheneum Books for Young Readers (Simon & Schuster), New York, 2015. 54 pages.
Starred Review

In this book, William Joyce explains for kids how he got his start writing picture books. He was in fourth grade, and he wrote a book for a school contest.

He worked hard on it. He exercised his imagination. The book he wrote and drew the pictures for is included in the center of this book.

What I love about it is that it reminds me of the stories my sons wrote when they were in about fourth grade. The smaller book is called Billy’s Booger and explains how Billy and his booger got bonked by a meteorite and gained super powers. The booger became a mathematical genius, and Billy could call on it at all times. The President of the United States asked advice from Billy and his Super-Booger!

Billy is tremendously disappointed when he doesn’t win any prize at all, not even honorable mention.

But the librarian puts all the kids’ books in the library — and Billy’s Booger gets checked out more than any other book.

And so began the adventures of a picture book author.

KIDS.SimonandSchuster.com

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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.

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Review of Wearing God, by Lauren F. Winner

Christian, Musings, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

wearing_god_largeWearing God

Clothing, Laughter, Fire, and Other Overlooked Ways of Meeting God

by Lauren F. Winner

HarperOne, 2015. 284 pages.
Starred Review

This is a lovely book that challenged my thinking and opened my mind. I read it a little bit at a time, then finished the last few chapters during the 2015 48-Hour Book Challenge. In a way it was a shame to finish off the end quickly, since I liked the daily dose of thinking about God in new ways.

In this book, Lauren Winner looks at metaphors found in the Bible about God — but which the church doesn’t talk a lot about. Or at least the modern church. She did find writings from years past about each of the figures of speech.

She looks at God as clothing, God as scent, God as bread and vine, God as a laboring woman, God as one who laughs, and God as flame. All of these metaphors are found in Scripture, and all have something to offer us today.

I’ve been a church-goer all my life, and I enjoyed hearing things I hadn’t heard before. I enjoyed having a different light cast on my thinking about God.

Here are some of the author’s words in the introductory chapter:

The Bible has a great deal to say about this. Your church might primarily describe God as king, or light of the world, or ruler of all. In my church, we tend to call God Father, or speak of God as shepherd or great physician. When we are really going out on a limb, we pick up Matthew and Luke’s avian image and pray to God the mother hen tending her brood. Most churches do this — hew closely to two or three favored images of God, turning to them in prayer and song and sermons. Through repetition and association, these few images can become ever richer: there was once a time when I didn’t have many thoughts or feelings about God as great physician, but now I have prayed to that God with Carolanne, whose husband is pinned down by Parkinson’s, and Belle, who so much wants to keep this pregnancy, and Albert, who is dogged by depression, and because of those prayers, and the fears and hopes and miracles and disappointments they carry, God-as-physician seems a richer image than I first understood.

Yet the repetition of familiar images can have the opposite effect. The words become placeholders, and I can speak them so inattentively that I let them obscure the reality whose place they hold. I repeat them, I restrict my prayer to that small cupful of images, and I wind up insensible to them.

Unlike my church, with its four favored metaphors, the Bible offers hundreds of images of God — images the church has paid a great deal of attention to in earlier centuries, although many are largely overlooked now. Drunkard. Beekeeper. Homeless man. Tree. “Shepherd” and “light” are perfectly wonderful images, but in fixing on them — in fixing on any three or four primary metaphors for God — we have truncated our relationship with the divine, and we have cut ourselves off from the more voluble and variable witness of scriptures, which depict God as clothing. As fire. As comedian. Sleeper. Water. Dog.

Here is her invitation to the reader:

In this book, we will explore several overlooked biblical idioms for God. We will look at what the Bible itself suggests about these idioms, and what our daily lives have to say about them, and what various preachers and pray-ers and writers from earlier eras made of them. Your guide in this exploration is a bookworm who can happily get lost for a few days on a research trail, and I sometimes bring the words of anthropologists or historians or literary critics to bear on our ruminations. (Since the library of insights from those who have gone before us, and from contemporary scholars and preachers, is so rich, I have set additional gems at the bottoms of many pages. These quotations are there for stimulation and contemplation. Feel free to stop and linger over them, or skip them, or add your own musings.) Because I hope the book will help you sit down with God in a place the two of you have never visited before, each chapter concludes with a prayer. The final aim of this book is not to persuade you to stop thinking about God as your shepherd and start thinking about God as a cardigan sweater or One who weeps. The aim, rather, is to provoke your curiosity, and to inspire your imagination, and to invite you farther into your friendship with God.

If that invitation sounds even a tiny bit enticing, I highly recommend that you spend some time with this book.

laurenwinner.net
HarperCollins.com

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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.

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Review of I, Fly, by Bridget Heos, illustrated by Jennifer Plecas

Children's Nonfiction Review, Science, Starred Review 0

i_fly_largeI, Fly

The Buzz About Flies and How Awesome They Are

by Bridget Heos
illustrated by Jennifer Plecas

Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2015. 44 pages.
Starred Review

This nonfiction for early elementary age kids hits just the right note.

A fly buzzes into a classroom and finds the kids studying — as usual — butterflies.

Well, guess who else metamorphoses, can fly, and is beautiful (at least according to my mother).

The fly goes on to explain:

Here’s how the story goes: My 500 brothers and sisters and I started out as eggs. Our mom tucked us into a warm, smelly bed of dog doo. When we hatched, we looked like short, greasy white worms. In other words, much cuter than caterpillars. Scientists called us larvae. Humans called us maggots. Our parents called us adorable.

He tells the kids all about the lifecycle of a fly and cool (or disgusting, depending on your viewpoint) facts about them as well.

My favorite bit is where a kid asks, “I heard that flies throw up on everything before they eat it. Is that true?”

No. We don’t throw up on everything. Only solid foods.

See, we don’t have any teeth, so we can’t chew. I had to throw up on this apple core to turn it into a liquid. That way I could sop it up with my spongy mouth.

But if something’s already a liquid, like the soup you’re having for lunch, I don’t throw up on it. I’ll slurp that right out of the bowl.

Of course, when the kids decide the fly is right and he should be studied, he finds he doesn’t actually want to be kept in a cage in the classroom. Then he tells them the facts about diseases flies carry so they’ll let him go.

Fortunately, readers of this book can learn all the facts the friendly fly has to tell them without making contact with its germs.

This one’s a natural for booktalking in the schools. Children will learn fly facts without even trying.

authorbridgetheos.com
jenniferplecas.com
mackids.com

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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.

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Review of Uprooted, by Naomi Novik

Fantasy, Fiction Review, Starred Review 1

uprooted_largeUprooted

by Naomi Novik

Del Rey, New York, 2015. 438 pages.
Starred Review

Naomi Novik is the author of the brilliant books about Temeraire, a dragon who fought in the Napoleonic Wars in alternate-history England. This new book begins with a very different sort of dragon.

Our Dragon doesn’t eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travelers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human sacrifice, and he were a real dragon. Of course that’s not true: he may be a wizard and immortal, but he’s still a man, and our fathers would band together and kill him if he wanted to eat one of us every ten years. He protects us against the Wood, and we’re grateful, but not that grateful.

Agnieszka is born in the year of the girls who will be 17 the next time a girl is chosen to go serve the Dragon for ten years. But she’s not worried for herself. Everyone is sure that her best friend, beautiful Kasia, is going to be the one chosen.

But the Dragon looks at Agnieszka and makes a quick decision that no one expects. He suddenly takes her back to his tower without even a chance to say good-by. It turns out that Agnieszka has magic.

But not long after she’s been serving the Dragon, and having learned just a little bit — messengers come to the tower when the wizard is gone, saying that the Wood has taken Kasia.

The great Wood is sinister and evil. No one has ever escaped it. But Agnieszka will not and cannot stand by. And she sets in motion a series of confrontation with dark forces inhabiting the Wood and stretching all the way to the king’s court.

This is a wonderfully absorbing story and I read it all avidly with only a few breaks for air. I should mention that with Agnieszka being seventeen years old, the only reason I can see for this not to be a young adult novel is that there is one quite explicit sex scene as well as many gruesome deaths. (I mentioned that the Wood is evil?)

I enjoyed the way the magic is described and how Agnieszka’s magic is different from that of the Dragon, more in the tradition of Baba Jaga.

This is a wonderful story of a peasant girl discovering power and using it to defend the helpless and make things right.

naominovik.com
delreybooks.com

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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.

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Review of Hope and Other Luxuries, by Clare B. Dunkle

Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

hope_and_other_luxuries_largeHope and Other Luxuries

A Mother’s Life with a Daughter’s Anorexia

by Clare B. Dunkle

Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 2015. 557 pages.
Starred Review

I met Clare Dunkle after I gave her first book a glowing review and then discovered she also lived in Germany. She’s one of those people I can talk with for hours, and I think of her as a friend.

When I saw she had another book out, I preordered it. When it came, I meant to read a little bit each night, but ended up reading a lot each night for quite awhile.

This is an honest — and painful — story about a mother dealing with her daughter’s anorexia. Even though my family does not have that particular issue, Clare’s writing pulled me in and made me feel like I knew what that would be like.

I especially related when she talked about how the voice that hurt the most was her own voice from the past, the voice of the extraordinary mother.

Good girls have good mothers. Extraordinary girls have extraordinary mothers. But deeply troubled girls? Oh, the old me knew all about them.

That’s how I used to be about marriages. Because I had an extraordinary and wonderful marriage. So whose fault must it have been when it all fell apart?

As I said, I had totally different circumstances from Clare, but she is open and honest about her journey, and I saw myself in her.

Clare also writes about her journey as an author. She describes her process — and honestly? Makes me feel like Not a Writer At All. I thought I had an imagination! But nothing like hers — distracted by her own imaginings. (At least when it’s going well.)

However, that didn’t surprise me. I already knew I love Clare’s books. And even in this nonfiction memoir, Clare writes words that pull me in and make me experience them. Hearing more about her process shone a light on her gift — even while the words she uses communicate so well, so pull you along and make you unable to stop reading.

Besides all that, I now feel I understand better the awful illness of anorexia. And I’m so glad that Clare and her daughter Elena have come so far with Hope intact. May this book supply Hope to many other families going through that. As someone who’s “only” been through divorce, I can say that I find this story of her journey honest, helpful, uplifting — and hope-bringing.

Thank you, Clare, for putting your heart in these pages.

claredunkle.com
chroniclebooks.com

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Source: This review is based on my own copy, preordered from Amazon.com.

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.

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Review of Maeve’s Times, by Maeve Binchy

Musings, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

maeves_times_largeMaeve’s Times

In Her Own Words

Selected Writings from The Irish Times

Edited by Róisín Ingle
with an Introduction by Gordon Snell

Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2014. 383 pages.
Starred Review

This is a book for the many people who love Maeve Binchy’s writing and are so sorry she’s gone.

The book consists of articles she wrote for The Irish Times, beginning in 1964 (the year I was born).

Some of the articles might not seem relevant today — but you can hear Maeve’s voice in all of them. She was always curious, always with a sparkle of humor, always insightful. She saw the people around her, with all their foibles and quirks.

The most dated things here are the articles about royal weddings, but those are particularly fun. Maeve was a people-watcher from the beginning. She sometimes comments on her tendency to ask questions that end up being awkward rather than leaving well enough alone. She was always curious about people and their motives.

And oh my yes, she could write. Reading these, it’s no marvel how wonderful her novels were. She was constantly sharpening her skills of observation and insight and, simply, writing.

The articles are short. I was taking my time over this book, only reading an essay or two per day. Then I finished up in a splurge during the 2015 48-Hour Book Challenge.

This is a cozy, friendly book for those who, through her writing, had come to think of Maeve Binchy as a friend we’ll miss.

maevebinchy.com
aaknopf.com

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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.

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Review of Jinx’s Fire, by Sage Blackwood

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

jinxs_fire_largeJinx’s Fire

by Sage Blackwood

Katherine Tegen Books (HarperCollins), 2015. 388 pages.
Starred Review

Jinx’s Fire completes the story about Jinx, growing up in the Urwald, told in Jinx and Jinx’s Magic. Yes, you’ll want to read the other books first.

This book does bring things to a nice conclusion and reads like a complete story. I like the character things that happen as Jinx figures out his own magic and his connection to the Urwald.

In this book, three different kings are invading the Urwald, intending to destroy it, maybe “generously” giving them a small “preserve.” At the same time, the Bonemaster is growing in strength, causing Jinx not to be able to access the forest’s lifeforce. And Simon is still missing, and Elfwyn dangerously near the Bonemaster. Jinx also needs to get the people and creatures and wizards and witches of the Urwald to help against the invaders.

Basically, there’s much for Jinx to accomplish in this volume of the trilogy, and the author pulls it off in a satisfying way. There are many different kinds of magic in these books, but her descriptions of the magic don’t come across as vague and unclear as so many fantasy novels do. In fact, being able to describe multiple kinds of magic is one way Sage Blackwood stands out.

And it’s impossible not to love Jinx. He’s no saint. He gets impatient and can be overbearing. He sometimes has trouble figuring things out. But his gift of seeing the color and shape of people’s thoughts and his ability to listen to the trees makes him a distinctive character I will never forget.

A satisfying conclusion to a wonderful trilogy.

sageblackwood.com
harpercollinschildrens.com

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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.

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