Review of One Big Open Sky, by Lesa Cline-Ransome

Children's Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

One Big Open Sky

by Lesa Cline-Ransome

Holiday House, 2024. 300 pages.
Review written February 13, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review
2025 Newbery Honor Book
2025 Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book

This Newbery Honor Book is a pioneer story – about a Black family. And yes, that surprised me – but it turns out it shouldn’t, because from 1879 to 1880, over 20,000 Black people left the South to head West. The author gives details in the back of the book, but it turns out that many people lived out this story – even though there’s not as much written about the Black pioneers.

One Big Open Sky is told in verse (so it doesn’t take long to read), mostly from the perspective of Lettie, a girl who’s leaving Natchez, Louisiana, with her parents and two little brothers, in a covered wagon pulled by their two mules Charly and Titus. We also get the viewpoint of her mother and a single black woman who joins their party, who’s got a position as a teacher in North Platte, Nebraska.

The family joins a group of ten Black families headed for Nebraska. Their original plan was to take a steamboat up the Mississippi River most of the way, but when none of those will stop for a group of Black folks, they decide to walk. I didn’t realize that the wagon was mainly for supplies, and there wasn’t really room enough for everyone to ride, so unless you were sick, you walked alongside.

There are several dangers and setbacks along the way. Lettie’s keeping the accounts for her parents, so she knows they can’t buy all the good things they see at their stop in Independence, Missouri. She adopts the dog of a man who dies along the way, so she has him to turn to when a loss hits even closer to home.

Now at last Black girls can see someone like them in a pioneer story, with all the danger but excitement of leaving home behind and making the long journey to a new place.

lesaclineransome.com

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Review of Pride and Premeditation, by Tirzah Price, read by Morag Sims

Austenalia, Historical, Mystery, Teen Fiction Review 0

Pride and Premeditation

by Tirzah Price
read by Morag Sims

HarperAudio, 2021. 8 hours, 30 minutes.
Review written October 2, 2022, from a library eaudiobook

I always enjoy Jane Austen spin-offs. This book takes all the characters from my favorite Jane Austen book, Pride and Prejudice, and places them in a murder mystery.

They’re in a different social setting than before. Lizzie’s father Mr. Bennet is a barrister, owning the firm Longbourn and Sons, where Lizzie helps out and wants an official position. Instead she must endure it when Mr. Collins, a distant relative who will inherit the firm, takes credit for her work. Her father challenges her to solve a case using logic to prove herself.

And then she hears about the case of the murder of Mr. Hurst. His brother-in-law Mr. Bingley is accused of the murder. Lizzie hopes to insert herself into the case, but they have engaged the services of his friend Mr. Darcy, who works for the much larger legal firm, Pemberley.

What follows is a convoluted and melodramatic case. At first, I didn’t much like this version of Elizabeth Bennet. She didn’t seem nearly as clever, and was mostly jumping to conclusions in her attempts to sleuth. (Of course, I expected her to jump to the wrong conclusion about Mr. Wickham.)

The author does admit in a note at the end that a woman could not have done the things Lizzie does in this book. But beyond that, the solution to the case seemed a bit coincidental and convoluted.

But when I stopped worrying about the logic behind things, I had to admit it was a fun ride. And it’s always fun to watch Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy gradually change their opinions of one another, whatever the setting.

tirzahprice.com

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Review of Trajectory, by Cambria Gordon

Award Winners, Historical, Mathematical, Teen Fiction Review 0

Trajectory

by Cambria Gordon

Scholastic Press, 2024. 285 pages.
Review written January 24, 2025, from my own copy, sent to me by the publisher.
Winner, Mathical Book Prize, High School

My committee just selected this as a Mathical Book Prize Winner, so I’m going to post a review. It’s historical nonfiction about a teenage girl named Eleanor who gets selected to work as a human computer calculating firing tables during World War II.

I’d had no idea such work happened, and that part was super interesting. Later, Eleanor gets selected to go to a desert base and help figure out how to improve the Norden bombsight. And she meets a handsome pilot while she’s there.

The setting is fascinating, based in historical fact that I’d known nothing about, and it’s always lovely to find a book that features a mathematician.

I did have some reservations. Her mathematical “gift” is portrayed as a rather mystical thing that comes and goes, and I didn’t like that portrayal. And I’m skeptical of the details about the Norden bombsight (the kind of development done seems to have mostly happened in the 1930s) and completely failed to suspend disbelief for a climactic scene where they needed a mathematician to save the day.

But – that’s why we choose winners via committee! The vast majority reminded me that this is historical fiction. And mathematics certainly go into bomber technology. And female mathematicians certainly did important work during World War II. And is it so terrible to read about a female mathematician saving the day with her mathematical skills, even if it feels a tiny bit implausible to me?

So anyway, I’m proud of our winner. You might need to suspend disbelief a bit, but there’s a good tale here about using math to win the day. And this year had more high school titles to consider than any other year I’ve served on the Mathical committee, which was a wonderful milestone.

cambrialgordon.com

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Review of Across So Many Seas, by Ruth Behar

Audiobooks, Award Winners, Children's Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

Across So Many Seas

by Ruth Behar
read by Allison Strong, Victoria Villarreal, Sol Madariaga, and Frankie Corso

Listening Library, 2024. 5 hours, 53 minutes.
Review written February 15, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review
2025 Newbery Honor Book
2025 Sidney Taylor Silver Medal
2025 Capitol Choices Selection

Across So Many Seas is an intergenerational family saga for kids – featuring four 12-year-old girls, each of whom crossed a sea.

The book starts in 1492 with the expulsion of Jews from Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella. Their families had been there for centuries, but all Jews were told to leave, convert, or be executed. Benvenida and her family travel by foot to the port, her father carrying the Torah, and then travel across the sea to Constantinople.

Even in Turkey, they remember the language and customs of Spain, but the next girl featured is Reina, 450 years later, 12 years old in 1923, a descendant of Benvenida. After Reina disobeys her father and goes out at night with a boy to a party celebrating revolution in Turkey, she is sent in disgrace to Cuba as a companion to her aunt. In three years when she is 15, she will marry another Sephardic Jew her father has chosen for her and make a home in Cuba.

Next we meet her daughter Alegra, who is 12 years old in 1961, after Castro has come to power in the Cuban revolution. She joins the volunteer team of children who go out to the countryside to teach folks to read, and is proud and happy with her role – but is suddenly pulled back to Havana by her parents. They inform her that her father is not allowed to continue his business of selling shirts and they are being watched by the government. So they are sending Alegra to America, because it’s easier to get children out of the country first. They hope to follow soon.

And then we meet Alegra’s daughter, born in America, now 12 years old in 2003. And things come full circle when she travels on vacation to Spain with her mother and grandmother and they visit a museum in Toledo about the Sephardic Jews who were expelled in 1492.

Throughout the book, certain songs, foods, and customs link the girls together. I loved that the narrators sang the song that all the girls knew, about a girl in a tower in the sea. An interesting and lengthy historical note from the author came after the end of the book – it’s all based on her own family’s history. Even without such a family connection, it made me want to visit the museum in Toledo and think about the hundreds of years of history.

ruthbehar.com

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Review of The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Volume 8, by Beth Brower

Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion

Volume 8

by Beth Brower

Rhysdon Press, 2024. 339 pages.
Review written January 22, 2025, from my own copy, purchased via Amazon.com
Starred Review

Hooray! The next volume of Emma Lion’s journals is out! This is the first volume I had to wait for – having received the first three volumes as a birthday present from my sister after seven volumes had already been published. I did manage to resist reading it until I finished reading for the CYBILS and Mathical Awards, but it was the first book I picked up after that.

And it’s all one story – so go back and read Volume One. And if you have already read Volume One, you will already know if you want to read on, so I won’t say a whole lot about this volume.

This book telling the story of Emma M. Lion, a twenty-one-year-old woman, from May to June 1884. She lives in London, owning her own home after the death of her parents. But she needs to find a way to make more money, and her wealthy aunt is requiring that she be a foil for her beautiful cousin Arabella, as Arabella navigates The Season and finds a man to marry.

This volume is taken up with Emma’s adventures trying to appease her aunt – but more so with the happy month of June, when she gets to spend time in the countryside with the three men she has developed a deep friendship with.

And it’s a truly lovely group friendship! That’s one of the things I love about this book – a lovely and deep friendship with three single men, with each one being unique. In this volume, we learn some deeper secrets about two of them. And I honestly think some seeds are being planted that she may not end up marrying the one that we and now she expect her to end up with. But the friendships between the four of them are rich and each interaction unique, and it’s just a lovely thing to read.

And I’m being vague purposely because, as aforesaid, you need to start at the beginning. And then just watch if you’re not eagerly waiting for the next volume, too.

bethbrower.com

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Review of The Bletchley Riddle, by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin

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

The Bletchley Riddle

by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin

Viking, 2024. 394 pages.
Review written January 2, 2025, from my own copy, sent to me by the publisher.
Starred Review
2024 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #5 More Children’s Fiction

I quickly read this book at the end of 2024, after finishing my reading for the Cybils Awards, because I had a strong suspicion it would end up making my Sonderbooks Stand-outs list, and I didn’t want to wait a year. For one thing, it’s about code-breaking at Bletchley Park during World War II, and for another, two stellar writers collaborated on it. Ruta Sepetys specializes in detailed historical fiction, and Steve Sheinkin writes engaging historical nonfiction. Both have won numerous awards for their work.

This is the year for World War II books! I was glad I read this book after reading Candace Fleming’s nonfiction The Enigma Girls, because that gave the nonfiction side of what happened at Bletchley Park, outside of London – a top secret code-breaking operation with many, many different aspects. The Bletchley Riddle fictionalizes that story and gives us a 19-year-old brother Jakob working at Bletchley Park with his 14-year-old sister Lizzie.

The story is engaging – pulling us into real-life spy work. It begins in 1940, before Britain has been pulled into war with Germany, but when they are expecting it. And the book opens with half-American Lizzie giving her chaperone the slip. She leaves him on a ship bound for America, while she escapes her rich American grandmother’s plans and shows up at the address in London where her brother has been receiving mail. Receiving mail, but never answering it.

Their mother had worked for the American embassy, but recently traveled to Poland and was there when the Germans attacked. She did not return, so she’s been presumed dead – but Lizzie doesn’t believe it for a minute. When she’s offered a messenger job at Bletchley Park, where Jakob is working, she hopes that being on the scene she might get leads on what has become of her mother.

Now, after reading The Enigma Girls, it felt a little unrealistic that Jakob would have any idea what was going on in other parts of the estate, but it’s not like they gave away a whole lot. I also had a hard time believing 14-year-old Lizzie would be hired as a messenger, taking messages between buildings – but the authors specifically mention in a historical note that Bletchley Park in fact hired messengers as young as 14.

But the story does put in details about how the team at Bletchley made breakthroughs in decoding German messages – including using a replica enigma machine smuggled out of Poland by three mathematicians. The details of the codebreaking were really fun, and we’ve got an additional mystery of what happened to Jakob and Lizzie’s mother. Oh, and Lizzie also wants to continue to thwart her grandmother’s plans to send her to America, so she has to elude the chaperone more than once. There are actual historical characters sprinkled throughout the story, and I loved a diversion involving Alan Turing, which the Historical Note tells us is completely based in truth.

Now, I did wonder if MI6 really would have been suspicious of folks working at Bletchley Park. There’s a shadowy character surveilling Lizzie and Jakob because of their mother, which almost felt like one thread too many, but I think in a middle grade novel this simply ups the suspense.

I did have a hard time deciding how to rank this book on my Stand-outs against Max in the House of Spies by Adam Gidwitz, and on another day, this one might have come out ahead. They were both about puzzles and spy activities in London. Max has more of a feel of the children’s classic The Great Brain and also addressed anti-Semitism in Britain at the time, but it felt a touch less believable. (I think Max was 12 – would they really let him be a spy?) And this one was simply full of authentic historical details – I just thought the puzzles were a little more fun for the reader in Max. (And remember, Sonderbooks Stand-outs are not chosen based on literary merit, but simply on how much I enjoyed the reading experience.) Bottom line, this is a wonderful spy novel for middle grade readers, full of cool spy problems and firmly rooted in historical fact.

RutaSepetys.com
SteveSheinkin.com

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Review of Spin, by Rebecca Caprara

Fantasy, Historical, Teen Fiction Review 0

Spin

by Rebecca Caprara

Atheneum, 2023. 393 pages.
Review written April 11, 2023, from a library book.

I did it again! I checked out a book from a list of young adult debut novels — but forgot to check the flap copy until I was halfway through the book. It turns out, it is not the author’s first book, only her first young adult book. So it is not, in fact, eligible for the Morris Award. (Those have to be the author’s first traditionally published book, period.) Although I don’t feel like I have time to read books that are not eligible, by that time I was fully invested and wanted to finish the story. So all’s well that ends well. I’m glad I got to read this book.

Spin is a novel in verse about Arachne, the mortal girl who was an expert weaver and got turned into a spider by Athena because she dared to boast that she was a better weaver than Athena — or that’s how the myth goes. In this book, Arachne gives us her real story.

It turns out that after many unanswered prayers, Arachne lost respect for the gods. And her mother told her stories of gods taking advantage of and raping human women. As Arachne practiced and built her skill, she dared to tell those stories in her tapestries.

So these aren’t simply verses about a mythical tale, but also a story of standing up to the patriarchy and daring to challenge those who oppressed the vulnerable. The writing is indeed poetry, weaving pictures with words.

rebeccacaprara.com

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Review of Isla to Island, by Alexis Castellanos

Children's Fiction Review, Graphic Novel, Historical, Starred Review 0

Isla to Island

by Alexis Castellanos

Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2022. 192 pages.
Review written September 20, 2022, from a library book
Starred Review

Isla to Island is a historical graphic novel about a young Cuban girl named Marisol who gets sent to New York City as part of Operation Peter Pan in 1960, an operation to rescue children of Cubans who feared they would be imprisoned under Castro for their political beliefs, and their children with them.

The graphic novel story is mostly done with pictures, and it’s beautifully done. Scenes of Marisol in Cuba with her family are bright and colorful. The only text (and there’s not a lot) is in Spanish, including a rooster that crows, “Qui qui ri qui.” Already in Cuba, we see that Marisol loves flowers and books.

When she says a sad good-by to her parents, she lands in a New York City that is cold and gray and in the middle of winter. Her caretakers there are kind, but the colors are gone. At school, people laugh at her, and she doesn’t understand what the teacher is saying and gets failing grades.

But then she discovers the library. Books are the first things that are full of color, so much so that streams of color waft from them. And through the books she chooses, her caretakers discover her love of flowers and bring her to the greenhouse in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where she sees familiar flowers from Cuba.

The graphic novel is great at visually representing Marisol’s dawning hope. An Author’s Note at the back explains about Operation Peter Pan and the author’s family connections to Marisol’s story.

This is a quick read with so much presented visually, so a short time spent gives you a lovely and uplifting story.

alexiscastellanos.com
simonandschuster.com/kids

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Review of The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Volume 7, by Beth Brower

Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion

Volume 7

by Beth Brower

Rhydon Press, 2023. 302 pages.
Review written August 27, 2024, from my own copy, purchased via amazon.com
Starred Review

Alas! I’ve read all the volumes of Emma M. Lion’s Unselected Journals currently available, so now I will have to wait for Beth Brower to write more. On her website, she says she’s treating this series like a television series with successive seasons (a year’s worth of journals), and there are a few more seasons to go. You’ll notice the volumes are getting longer. When I picked up the first one, it was a quick read, so I thought nothing of quickly consuming the first few volumes. Now there are more pages, which I’m glad of, because I’m well and truly hooked, and I like spending more time in Emma’s world.

For those I haven’t yet convinced to give these books a try, yes, you should read them, and also yes, you should start at the beginning. I’ll just give tidbits from this volume to let you know I continue to be enthralled with Emma, her friends, and the other quirky characters she encounters.

I’ve mentioned that I appreciate the friendship portrayed between Emma and three very different single gentlemen. By this volume, Emma and one of them are considering whether they should dare pursue a relationship. But at the same time, something accidentally happens to potentially cause a scandal involving Emma and another of them. One must consider appearances in 1884 London!

Emma is also still trying to make her Aunt Eugenia believe she has a strict chaperone, and she prepares to help Aunt Eugenia’s daughter, the beautiful Arabella, find the most suitable partner of Aunt Eugenia’s choosing during the upcoming Season. All while Emma is trying to ward off the man whom Aunt Eugenia will then allow to marry Emma.

It’s all told with lots of humor and wit, a big dose of mysterious secrets, and with the gossips of St. Crispian’s beginning to take note. Emma came of age in the last volume, but can she indeed keep her independence? The back of the book promises the next volume “soon,” and it had just better be true!

[Update: Volume 8 is promised in December 2024! Hooray!]

bethbrower.com

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Review of The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Volume 6, by Beth Brower

Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion

Volume 6

by Beth Brower

Rhydon Press, 2022. 235 pages.
Review written August 21, 2024, from my own copy, purchased via Amazon.com
Starred Review

I am so hooked on these books! I had made plans to try to pace myself, but when I finished this book, which ended on a dramatic note, I picked up the next book immediately to see how that situation resolved – only to learn they didn’t discuss it the very next day, as planned. I am going to go into withdrawal when I finish the seventh volume – the last one currently published. But then I’ll be able to binge as each new volume comes out.

So – because this is an ongoing series and you really should start at the beginning, I’ll try to tell what’s so much fun about this volume without giving away spoilers. Our heroine, Emma M. Lion comes of age (21) in Volume 6, so she now officially owns Lapis Lazuli House. But because of her nefarious cousin spending her money, she needs to find work. She tries a personal secretary position in this volume (January through February 1884) – with hilariously disastrous results, such as could only happen to Emma Lion.

She does continue the inspiring, enlightening, and cordial friendship with three very different gentlemen – and at last we get rumblings of romance where I had most expected it. Will this change things? That’s why I’m reading on. All three men are men of mystery, with fascinating revelations about each one slowly coming to light.

Meanwhile, her friend Pierce is expected to contribute more to the St. Crispian’s neighborhood, her friendship with Islington wins her some social points, Young Hawkes continues to materialize where he is most needed, her friend Mary is showing signs of falling in love, and she has interesting conversations with the artist Saffronia and even with Mrs. Penury, who never says a word. It’s all quirky and fun and I am definitely hooked.

bethbrower.com

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