Sonderling Sunday – An Arrest?

Der Orden der Seltsamen Sonderlinge, Sonderling Sunday 0

It’s time for Sonderling Sunday, that time of the week when I play with language by looking at silly phrases in the German translations of children’s books.

Tonight I’m back to the book that started it all, Der Orden der Seltsamen Sonderlinge, by James Kennedy, otherwise known as The Order of Odd-Fish.

Last time we looked at this book, we left off on page 363 in the English edition, Seite 460 in the German edition, with the words, Wir sind hier, um eine Verhaftung vorzunehmen! So the beginning words for the new section won’t come as a surprise:

“Everyone saw the policemen.”
= Alle blickten auf die Polizisten

“why rain on her parade now?”
= Warum sollten wir ihr deshalb ihr Fest vermiesen?
(“Why should we for her because of this her party spoil?”)

“growled” = knurrend

“But tonight she will be exposed!”
= Heute Nacht werden wir ihr allerdings die Maske vom Gesicht reißen!
(Google translate: “Tonight, however, we’re going to rip the mask off her face!”)

“What are you talking about?”
= Wovon reden Sie?

“Jo’s stomach dropped.”
= Jo rutschte der Magen in die Kniekehlen.
(“Jo slipped her stomach to the back of her knees [knee-throats].”)

“unmistakably” = unverkennbar

“The room broke into screams.”
= Schreie gellten auf.
(“Screams rang out.”)

“The wound had become much worse.”
= Die Wunde war schlimmer geworden.

“All-Devouring Mother”
= All-Verschlingended Mutter

A handy phrase to know:
“But I’m not bad!”
= Aber ich bin nicht böse!

“lock her up”
= sperrt sie ein

“rumbles, scrapes, and cracks” = Poltern, Kratzen und Knacken

This is good in German:
“echoing all around the cavern”
= durch die Höhle hallte
(“through the cave echoed”)

“rage” = Wut

“heartbeat” = Herzschläge

“staggered” = taumelte

“to restore” = wiederherzustellen (“again-there-to-place”)

“crowd’s roar” = Getöse (“din”)

We’ll end with this sentence on page 366, Seite 464:
“The Silent Sisters were waiting for her.”
= Wo die Stummen Schwestern bereits auf sie warteten.
(“Where the Silent Sisters already on her waited.”)

That’s it for tonight! And now I’m ready to say, if confronted by Polizisten in Germany, Aber ich bin nicht böse!

Bis bald!

Review of How Women Won the Vote, by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, illustrated by Ziyue Chen

Children's Nonfiction Review, History 0

How Women Won the Vote

Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, and Their Big Idea

by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
illustrated by Ziyue Chen

Harper, 2020. 80 pages.
Review written July 13, 2020, from a library book

This nonfiction story of women winning the vote is in large format like a picture book, but packed with facts, so it’s suitable for upper elementary school readers. The story is simplified, focusing on Alice Paul and Lucy Burns and beginning when they met in London in 1909. There’s a timeline in the back that highlights key events in the battle for women’s rights that happened before that last push.

There are pictures on every spread, but in many cases black-and-white photographs from the time are included. There’s a wonderful large photo filling two pages in the middle of the book and showing the women’s march in Washington, DC, the day before Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration.

The parade covers a lot of space in the middle of the book, but we also get coverage of the arrests, imprisonments, hunger strikes, and force feedings the women went through.

The main text of the book ends with the first federal election where women voted, which happened on November 2, 1920. There is an Afterword telling about more work to be done, including a picture of the 2017 Women’s March.

The author and illustrator do an excellent job of boiling the story down to pertinent information. I’ve read several thicker books about women getting the vote, and I think this one presented the most information with the most clarity.

scbartoletti.com
ziyuechen.com
harpercollinschildrens.com

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

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

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*Note* To try to catch up on posting reviews, I’m posting the oldest reviews I’ve written on my blog without making a page on my main website. They’re still good books.

Review of Dragonfruit, by Makiia Lucier

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Version 1.0.0
Dragonfruit

by Makiia Lucier
read by Mapuana Makia

Clarion Books, 2024. 8 hours, 12 minutes.
Review written April 29, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Makiia Lucier is a relatively new fantasy author I’m watching closely. I read her second book when I was on the Newbery committee, but it was for young adults, so I took note but I had to keep quiet about books I was reading at that time. Then later her book Year of the Reaper was a Cybils Finalist, and I was impressed with the way it handled a population traumatized by plague and war. I snapped up this new book, and got something completely different – a fantasy set in a tropical island world.

This story features 18-year-old Hanalei, whose father fled with her from the island of Tamarind ten years ago, and 19-year-old Samahtitamahenele, Sam, the prince of Tamarind. But the crown passes only to women, Sam’s grandmother is getting old, and his mother has been in a coma for ten years. So Sam needs to find a wife. But more than that, Sam is searching for Dragonfruit – the eggs of a sea dragon. The eggs of a sea dragon, dragonfruit, are said to have the power to undo a person’s greatest sorrow. But with that hope comes a warning: Every wish demands a price.

Ten years ago, Hanalei had been a page at court, and she had eaten the same poison that still keeps Sam’s mother asleep. When dragonfruit was found, her father stole it and fed it to Hana instead of leaving it for the princess. And then fled the queendom with Hana. Hana did recover, but a few days later, her father died. She’s had a hard life since then, working in the factories that process the valuable body parts of sea dragons until she was fourteen, when her hands got too big. Since that time, Hana has been studying sea dragons, sending information to the academy on the largest island.

But as the book opens, Hana warns a set of dragons so they can escape the dragoners ready to kill them. Two of the dragons escape, but Hanalei doesn’t. However, they all see by the color of the frill that this dragon is pregnant, soon to lay eggs.

Further adventures bring her back to Tamaraind. Now Sam, too, is looking for the Dragonfruit, to at last wake his mother. But so is the ruthless dragoner. And what will the price of the wish be?

The setting of this book is delightful. Some additional magic of their island is many of the teens on the island develop magical tattoos of an animal. That animal can move around on their skin and even materialize off their skin in the real world, a companion who communicates with them and is always close at hand.

There’s a gentle romance in this book – indeed, I expected more drama than I got – and no sex at all, so it feels completely appropriate for younger teens, too. Hana and Sam are almost adults and it is a coming of age book, so older teens are the main audience. The book ended at a good place, but I can’t help hoping more stories are coming about this lovely island world, the sea dragons, and these two characters coming into their own.

makiialucier.com
EpicReads.com

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

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

What did you think of this book?

Review of World of Glass, by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review 0

World of Glass

The Art of Dale Chihuly

by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan

Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2020. 60 pages.
Review written July 13, 2020, from a library book

World of Glass is a biography of artist Dale Chihuly, who works in glass. It’s longer than a picture book biography, but has large square pages that fit large photographs of the artist’s work on almost every page, making the book suitable for upper elementary through middle school.

I was interested in this artist because on the afternoon after the 2019 Newbery committee had made our choice and delivered our press release to the ALA office, but hadn’t announced our choice to the world yet, I was left to my own devices in Seattle. I rode the monorail to the Space Needle, as I could vaguely remember doing as a little girl. But at the grounds of the Space Needle, unlike when I was a little girl, I found the Chihuly Garden and Glass, where the glass sculptures of Dale Chihuly are featured. I spent a couple of hours browsing and was enchanted.

This book filled in details for me of the artist’s work. Even reading it more than a year after I saw the gallery, I now understand better what was being accomplished with the various forms made in glass. The book explains how he got his start and tells about various series of art pieces he has made.

Until I saw that museum, when I thought of an artist, I would never have thought of glass blowing. This book may expand kids’ ideas about art as well.

Dale has said that in order to get better at glassblowing, an aspiring artist must do it over and over again. “You’re making something that’s never been made before. It’s an ancient craft that someone invented two thousand years ago. Can you imagine blowing human breath down a blowpipe and getting a bubble and then heating it up in fire, using a couple of little tools and then making forms you can’t touch? All you have to do is blow glass once and you want to become a glassblower.

JanGreenburgSandraJordan.com
abramsyoungreaders.com

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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 book from Fairfax County Public Library.

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

What did you think of this book?

*Note* To try to catch up on posting reviews, I’m posting the oldest reviews I’ve written on my blog without making a page on my main website. They’re still good books.

Review of The Enigma Girls, by Candace Fleming

Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Starred Review 0

The Enigma Girls

How Ten Teenagers Broke Ciphers, Kept Secrets, and Helped Win World War II

by Candace Fleming

Scholastic Focus, 2024. 371 pages.
Review written April 29, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review

We’ve all heard stories about Alan Turing breaking the Enigma code in World War II, right? But did you know that literally thousands of girls under the age of 21 were also involved in monitoring enemy communications during World War II?

In this book, the title tells us that we’re tracking ten of those teenage girls, but honestly my one quibble with the book was that I couldn’t keep them straight at all. She was still introducing new characters toward the end of the book. But what made the book amazing despite that was the picture it gave of code breaking and intelligence gathering as the war progressed and what a large operation it grew to be, and how important. And taking the perspective of teenage girls who worked in this field brings home how many ordinary people were caught up in the effort.

The book progresses chronologically. It sounds like early on, they’d figured out how Enigma worked. Every day the settings changed, so every day they’d work on breaking the code. Once the code was broken, the cryptographers moved on to something else, and they had machines where girls would type in the messages with the new settings, and decoded messages would come out.

Then later in the war, they used giant computers that were programmed by connecting and disconnecting actual wires. In another department they’d figure out the settings, then they had the girls set up and run the machine. Another department translated messages from German and Italian. Another department indexed the messages on 3×5 cards to be able to understand the messages better. Other girls were hired to check radio frequencies and listen for messages and transcribe what they heard. According to a chart, by the end of the war, 2,237 men and 6,758 women worked at Bletchley Park, and most of those women were under 21 years old.

This book makes all of that fascinating. I liked the short chapters with lots of photographs. Yes, it was hard to keep track of so many characters, but it did give the idea that many young women were working there, doing many different jobs. And they worked in total secrecy, unable to tell their family and friends what important war work they were doing. I was impressed that the Germans never knew that their codes had been broken, and the valuable intelligence gathered definitely helped win the war. I now very much want to visit the Bletchley Park Museum some day.

This book is written for kids ages 8 through 12, and I think older kids (and adults like me) will be intrigued by this story of ordinary young women using their talents to win a war.

candacefleming.com
scholastic.com/ScholasticFocus

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

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

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Review of In the Woods, by David Elliott, illustrated by Rob Dunlavey

Children's Nonfiction Review, Poetry 0

In the Woods

by David Elliott
illustrated by Rob Dunlavey

Candlewick Press, 2020. 36 pages.
Review written July 7, 2020, from a library book

In the Woods is a book of poems about fifteen creatures that live in the woods, accompanied by large, beautiful paintings.

My favorites are the short and snappy ones. Such as:

The SKUNK

Give the skunk
a lot of
room, unless
you care for
strong perfume.

The PORCUPINE

Does not hurry.
Never scampers.
Will not scurry.

Beware this surface nonchalance;
when rushed, she gives
a barbed response.

The longer poems are nice, too, and none of them are terribly long. These poems nicely celebrate the woodland world.

In the back there are two pages of “Notes about the Animals” with a little more information. So this is a beginning science book as well as a beginning poetry book.

candlewick.com

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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 book from Fairfax County Public Library.

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

What did you think of this book?

*Note* To try to catch up on posting reviews, I’m posting the oldest reviews I’ve written on my blog without making a page on my main website. They’re still good books.

Review of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride

Audiobooks, Fiction Review, Historical 0

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

by James McBride
read by Dominic Hoffman

Books on Tape, 2023. 12 hours, 22 minutes.
Review written April 13, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store is a sweeping historical novel about the 1930s Chicken Hill neighborhood of Pottstown, outside Philadelphia, where immigrant Jews from all over Europe and African Americans from the South were trying to live a good life — despite the annual parade where prominent white members of the town council marched in their KKK regalia.

The main focus of the book is Chona Ludlow, who lives above the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store with her husband Moshe, who runs a theater, and found business got better when he brought in Black performers. Chona grew up in Pottstown, with a limp from polio, and Moshe fell for her when he began working in her father’s store.

There are lots more characters, and each one is introduced with a rambling tale of their back story and how they relate to the other characters we’ve met. I didn’t approach this literary novel the right way — taking an unplanned break from it for three days when I went with a group of friends to see the total solar eclipse. It was already hard to keep the various characters straight, and that about did me in.

But as I was thinking about quitting in the middle, I read the audiobook description and was reminded that the book began with a dead body found forty years later in an old well. And it sounded like things were heating up about the deaf Black boy that Chona was helping keep hidden from the authorities, who wanted to put him in an institution.

So I was glad I finished. The various plot lines and various characters all came together at the end of the book, forming a kind of heist novel — trying to rescue the deaf Black boy.

Read or listen to this when you’re in the mood for a literary novel, and don’t pause for three days in the middle — and I’m sure you’ll find it’s well-crafted. I did listen to the beginning all over again when I was done to more fully appreciate how the author brought things full circle and explained everything they’d found with the body in the well.

jamesmcbride.com

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

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

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Review of Stand Up, Yumi Chung! by Jessica Kim, narrated by Greta Jung

Audiobooks, Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary 0

Stand Up, Yumi Chung!

by Jessica Kim
narrated by Greta Jung

Penguin Random House Audio, 2020. 6 hours, 57 minutes.
Review written July 4, 2020, from a library eaudiobook

Yumi Chung hoped to spend her summer working on her comedy routines, studying her favorite YouTube star, Jasmine Jasper’s directions. Instead, her parents’ Korean Barbecue restaurant is struggling, and they want Yumi to win a scholarship to stay at her private school, even though Yumi isn’t happy there. So they sign Yumi up for an intensive study class and tell her to go straight to the library after class.

But a new comedy club has opened up across the library parking lot. When Yumi peeks inside, she sees Jasmine Jasper herself! And she’s leading a summer camp to train kid comedians – and thinks that Yumi is the missing Kay Nakamura who didn’t show up the first day.

What’s a girl to do? If Yumi goes along with it, she gets to learn about comedy in person with her hero. She also makes new friends at the camp. But are they really friends if you don’t tell them your real name?

Yes, things do fall apart for Yumi before the end of the book. A strength of the book was how she dealt with it and her relationships. I thought the original coincidence – that Yumi’s YouTube hero would show up in person and be running a camp – was way too big for my personal suspension of disbelief. But I did like the characters and that Yumi’s parents, while being overly pushy immigrant parents, did show more depth when Yumi took the time to talk with them.

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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 eaudiobook from Fairfax County Public Library.

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

What did you think of this book?

*Note* To try to catch up on posting reviews, I’m posting the oldest reviews I’ve written on my blog without making a page on my main website. They’re still good books.

Review of Lucky Duck, by Greg Pizzoli

Animal Characters, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Lucky Duck

by Greg Pizzoli

Alfred A. Knopf, 2024. 40 pages.
Review written April 30, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review

Lucky Duck has the feel of a classic picture with elements from the beginning that are important in the end. And it shows that luck is all in your perspective.

As the book opens, Susan Duck is complaining about her bad luck because the skates she ordered are two sizes too big.

But then a wolf comes to her door in a tuxedo proclaiming that it’s her lucky day! She’s won a big, shiny, new soup pot!

This gets Susan feeling lucky for a few hours – until her kitchen light bulb burns out. But then the wolf comes by and says she’s won lots of onions – perfect for making soup!

And so it continues. Susan Duck has a set of banal little things go wrong, making her feel unlucky. But after each one, the wolf comes by with another “prize” – which happen to be ingredients for soup.

The astute reader will figure out where this is going. But when the wolf declares himself ready for duck soup – suddenly each one of the things that went wrong works together to thwart the wolf in silly but effective ways.

And Susan Duck ends the day feeling lucky indeed.

This is the sort of picture book that makes me miss doing preschool storytimes. I can just hear the kids shouting warnings as I read it. Any kid who has this read to them is lucky indeed.

gregpizzoli.com
rhcbooks.com

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

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

What did you think of this book?

Review of Dissenter on the Bench, by Victoria Ortiz

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review 0

Dissenter on the Bench

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Life and Work

by Victoria Ortiz

Clarion Books (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), 2019. 199 pages.
Review written June 3, 2020, from a library book
2020 Sidney Taylor Book Award Young Adult Honor

This book is a biography of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg written for kids approximately ages 10 to 14.

Each chapter begins with an important case that Justice Ginsburg ruled on, either with the majority, or writing the dissent. I like the way this book was presented for kids by using cases that affected kids at the start of the book.

The first story told in the first chapter is about Savana Lee Redding, who was subjected to a strip search for drugs at her school when she was thirteen years old. When her case went before the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the only woman on the bench. The chapter ends by talking about Savana winning her case.

We can safely assume that when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg strongly urged her male colleagues to step out of their shoes and into Savana’s she tapped in to both her own experiences as a young girl and her long-held beliefs about justice and fairness. About her fellow justices, she said straightforwardly: “They have never been a thirteen-year-old girl. I don’t think my colleagues, some of them, quite understand.” Fortunately for Savana and for all schoolchildren from then on, Justice Ginsburg had persuaded all but one of the other justices to decide the case in Savana’s favor.

In the middle of the chapter, the book tells about Ruth Bader as a small child. And that’s how the book continues, telling about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s life, but framed by cases she later heard. We do see from that a very clear trend that there should be equity for all. She worked for the ACLU for many years, and took cases of gender discrimination not only for women but also for men who weren’t treated fairly (such as a man not getting social security benefits after his wife died that she would have gotten if it had been the other way around).

At times, that did make the timeline of her life a little bit confusing, since they were skipping ahead in her life with the cases. There was a little bit of repetition in all that skipping, too. But overall it’s a nice solid portrayal of an important figure who has spent her life speaking out against unfairness. And the kid-friendly cases presented will catch kids’ interest and get them thinking about what rights they do have in America under the Constitution.

hmhbooks.com

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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 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?

*Note* To try to catch up on posting reviews, I’m posting the oldest reviews I’ve written on my blog without making a page on my main website. They’re still good books.