Middle School

Book Review: Ten Miles Past Normal by Frances O’Roark Dowell

| Tasha

10miles

Ten Miles Past Normal by Frances O’Roark Dowell

All Janie wants is to be normal, but she can’t shake her stinky reputation that comes from her family’s goat farm.  The lump of something strange in her hair one day didn’t help and neither did the clump of goat poo on her shoe that stunk up the bus.  To make it worse, her group of friends from middle school don’t have the same lunch as she does, so she has taken to wolfing down her lunch at her locker and then spending the lunch period in the library.  She keeps hoping that someone normal will enter the library and befriend her, but there are only weird kids around.  No friend material, and no boyfriend material either.  The real trouble is that Janie herself is not normal: she makes her own clothes, is sassy, smart and vibrant.  Now the question is when she’s going to figure that out.

Dowell’s writing is funny, intelligent and spot on.  She writes dialogue that is snappy and a pleasure to read.  Janie’s journey from hoping for normal to embracing her own uniqueness is written with great pacing, lots of truth, and a joyousness that is infectious.  There are many places in the book that clichés could have been used, but Dowell never turns to them.  Instead, she uses those moments to make the book ever more special.

A large part of the success of the novel is the character of Janie.  She has a voice that is clear and consistent, filled with humor.  The novel really traces her growth as a teen, finding her own way that is certainly not normal.  Yet despite being a unique path, it is clear that the person she grows into is the one she was meant to be from the beginning.

A book that celebrates being exactly who you really are, even if you aren’t sure who that is yet, this is a treat of a read.  Appropriate for ages 13-15.

Reviewed from copy received from Atheneum Books for Young Readers.

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Book Review: The Summer Before Boys by Nora Raleigh Baskin

| Tasha

summerbeforeboys

The Summer Before Boys by Nora Raleigh Baskin

Julia is spending the summer with Eliza, who is her age but is also her niece.  Julia’s mother has been sent overseas with the National Guard and her father can’t watch Julia and work.  So the two girls spend their summer together, often heading up to the hotel where Eliza’s father works.  The friends spend a lot of time playing pretend, imagining that they are back in time when girls wore long dresses.  But Julia is worried about her mother and the war.  She has also discovered a boy named Michael who seems interested in her too.  But pursuing Michael may mean leaving Eliza behind.

This is a book about changing from being a child to being a teen.  Baskin perfectly captures that transition, that tension that is achingly real here.  Her writing explores the changes, the new-sounding laughter of flirtation, the running both from and to boys at the same time, the loss of imagination, the setting aside of old priorities for new ones.  She allows us to see the friendship of the two girls first as it always has been with a comfort, a shorthand, a natural ease.  And then we watch it change before our eyes as one girl grows up faster than the other, and tensions begin to create cracks and shifts.

Julia is a beautifully crafted heroine who is honest, confused, and filled with a depth of feeling and awareness that makes the book so special.  I enjoyed seeing the world change through Julia’s eyes rather than having it be Eliza, the one being left behind, who was the first person voice.  And the ending, the ending!  It is exactly what the book needed, what all of us who have left childhood behind need to remember.  Lovely.

Highly recommended, this book is a stellar piece of tween fiction that captures that age with depth and beauty.  Appropriate for ages 11-13.

Reviewed from copy received from Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.

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Book Review: Slog’s Dad by David Almond

| Tasha

slogsdad

Slog’s Dad by David Almond, illustrated by Dave McKean

Originally a short story, this small book is eerie, haunting and achingly sad.  Slog’s father is dead and he knows it.  But when he sees the scruffy man outside the butcher shop, he knows that it is his father who has returned to see him.  But Davie, his best friend, is just as convinced that this man is a fake.  The story explores the way that Slog’s father died, slowly and by tangible steps.  It is a story of grief but also one of hope that asks unanswerable questions and allows readers to stay in the in-between world where hope thrives but so does doubt.

Almond and McKean paired up for The Savage, an amazing work of fiction.  This story is gentler and hopeful.  It quietly explores grief, allowing the poignant moments to live, hover and hope.  It is a story of dreams and beauty, of the unexpected and the amazing.  Almond’s writing is at times so blunt that it is traumatic and unblinking.  At other times, it is eerie and bizarre.  And at still others it is haunting, hopeful and trembling.

McKean’s illustrations help bring the story to a new level.  From the almost photographic detail of some of them, where the warped faces are the only clue that you are not looking at a photograph to the line drawings that soar with greens and blues hovering above heads.  These are illustrations that explore the emotions of the book.  They are not concerned with a unified look and feel, but with the look and feel that is right for that moment in the story. 

A gorgeous work of writing and art, this book is a testament to grief, hope and wonder.  Appropriate for ages 9-12.

Reviewed from library copy.

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Book Review: Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai

| Tasha

insideoutbackagain

Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai

Debut author Lai has created a verse novel of fleeing Saigon for the United States.  The narrator is ten-year-old Ha, who speaks of the beauty of Vietnam, its culture and their lives there.  Her father was captured years ago in the war, so she lives with her mother and three older brothers.  Her mother has a good job, but when the prices begin to rise because of the war, the family can barely survive.  They are given a chance to flee Saigon by ship though when they do, they almost starve because their rescue by the Americans is delayed.  Ha describes her culture shock when they do arrive in Alabama as a sponsored family.   All is different from the taste of the food to the quiet of the neighborhood to the language.   Many of her classmates are cruel to her, but she does meet nice Americans who help her learn the language and who are willing to learn about Vietnamese culture as well.

Lai’s verse is precision, written tightly and beautifully, it changes mood from one poem to the next.  Some are sliver thin and crack like a whip.  Others are sinewy and strong, ropes that bind and connect.  Still others are emotions that unite us all, tying us closely to the story.  Lai herself also immigrated from Vietnam at the end of the war to Alabama.  Her book speaks to the personal journey that she had in its depth of feeling.

Ha is a character whom readers will immediately connect with and understand.  She is written in a universal way, even as she describes her homeland and evokes scenes that many readers will not have seen or experienced.  In the descriptions of Ha’s family, Lai creates characters who are vivid and profound.  One of my favorite passages is early in the novel where the family is deciding to leave Saigon.  Ha’s mother is described on page 54:

Who can go against

a mother

who has become gaunt like bark

from raising four children alone.

This a book that is so beautifully written.  It captures the journey both physically and emotionally of refugees to our country.  It is breathtaking and strong.  Appropriate for ages 9-12.

Reviewed from library copy.

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Book Review: Kat Incorrigible by Stephanie Burgis

| Tasha

katincorrigible

Kat Incorrigible by Stephanie Burgis

Mix a Regency setting with plenty of magic and one smart, sassy heroine and you have this winning novel for children.  Kat never knew her mother, since she died when Kat was born.  She does have a stepmother who is far more interested in the wealth her stepdaughters will bring with strategic marriages than with their future happiness.  Kat is the youngest of the three sisters and she discovers early in the novel that she has inherited her mother’s magical talents.  One of her older sisters, Angeline, has also gotten magical talents of a different sort.  As the eldest sister, Elissa, is about to be betrothed to a grim fiancé, the younger two get deeper into trouble as they explore their magical gifts.  All too soon, Kat will be called upon to use her magic to save those she loves, while trying to act graceful and polite in society.

I’m a huge fan of mixing historical settings with fantasy, and this novel does it very well.  Readers never lose the fact that they are reading a Regency novel, thanks to the elements of society that are woven successfully throughout the novel.  At the same time, the fantasy elements are tantalizingly and beautifully done as well.

The characterization is superb, especially Kat, who is a Regency girl that modern children will relate to happily.  She is intelligent, irreverent and irresistible.  From the first glimpse readers get of Kat with her short-cut hair and her desire to save her family, Kat is an intriguing character.  Happily, Burgis has incorporated plenty of humor into the novel as well.  There are scenes that are filled with genteel sarcasm and bites but sometimes the story merrily heads closer to farce with delightful results.

Highly recommended, this is a book that children will adore with just the right mix of humor, fantasy and style.  Sounds like ideal summer reading to me!  Appropriate for ages 9-12.

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Reviewed from copy received from Atheneum Books.

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Book Review: The Absolute Value of Mike by Kathryn Erskine

| Tasha

absolutevaluemike

The Absolute Value of Mike by Kathryn Erskine

Released June 9, 2011.

Mike takes care of his father, who is a rather absent-minded mathematical genius.  But Mike is definitely not mathematical, despite his father’s hopes.  When Mike’s father decides to send him to spend the summer with distant relatives in rural Pennsylvania to work on an engineering project, Mike sees it as a way to finally prove himself to his father.  Mike discovers far more than an engineering project when he arrives.  In fact, there is no engineering project at all.  There is his wild-driving nearly-blind aunt, his uncle who is so deep in mourning over the death of his adult son that he can’t move, a homeless man who has good business sense and is willing to give the shirt off his back, literally, and a tattooed and pierced girl who needs a family.  He finds a town that is working on a project to adopt a boy from Romania, a boy that Mike realizes is very connected to him in a personal way.  Mike has a lot to learn this summer, just not about engineering.

Erskine is a chameleon of an author, changing her tone, her writing style to match this lighter novel that has a strong, meaningful core.  The humor here ranges from subtle to laugh-out-loud funny observations and asides.  At its heart, this is a book about a boy who doesn’t know his own strengths or his own worth, because it can’t be measured mathematically.  It’s a book that is steeped in math down to its chapter titles, but at the same time speaks to the knowledge that humans and their abilities sometimes don’t add up logically.

This is also a book about loss and grief.  It’s a book about handling what the world has given you either by giving up altogether or by continuing on.  It’s a book about connections, building them, creating them.  And about how the hardest connections to create can be the closest ones.

This is a funny, light book that reads quickly and will stun readers by being far deeper and more meaningful than they would have ever expected.  Appropriate for ages 11-14.

Reviewed from ARC received from the author.

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Book Review: Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor

| Tasha

akatawitch

Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor

Sunny is a 12-year-old who lives in Nigeria.  She was born in the United States, but that isn’t what makes her so different from her classmates.  Her albino skin and hair does that.  Sunny is also a great athlete, but she can’t play because her sun reacts so strongly to the sun.  She only gets to play when her brothers agree to play with her in the evening.  Sunny isn’t sure she will ever fit in, but after meeting Orlu and ChiChi, the three of them figure out why Sunny is so special.  She’s a free agent, a member of the Leopard People, allowing her to do juju or magic.  Happily, Orlu and ChiChi are also Leopard People, though not free agents.  Suddenly Sunny is immersed in a new dual life.  Her old life of school and family and her new life learning about juju.  But there is also darkness in her life, as a serial killer preys upon children in Nigeria: a killer who has a special connection to Sunny.

This book is incredible.  Okorafor has created a completely unique and entirely formed world within a world.  She brings modern Nigeria to life and then within it creates an entire society that makes sense, wields magic, and continually surprises and delights.  The construct of the magical society doesn’t linger on the how, rather it is presented as a fully-formed world complete with its own laws, own priorities, and a matter-of-fact relationship to death.

The characters of the four young people in the book are well written and play nicely off of one another.  I particularly enjoyed when they would depart from roles that could have been stereotypical and instead revealed themselves to be very well-rounded characters.  Sunny serves as an ideal person for the readers to learn about the magical world alongside.  She is interested, questioning and frank.  She is a very strong female protagonist who can play soccer better than the boys. 

If you have teens or tweens looking for magical reads that break into a whole new territory, this book is for them.   It celebrates Nigeria, magic and learning.  Appropriate for ages 11-14.

Reviewed from copy received from Viking Publishing.

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Book Review: Hurricane Dancers by Margarita Engle

| Tasha

HurricaneDancers

Hurricane Dancers by Margarita Engle

Engle’s latest historical novel in verse explores piracy in the Caribbean Sea in the 1500s.  It is the story of Quebrado, a fictionalized character, who is a slave aboard a pirate ship.  Also on the ship is Alonso de Ojeda who has been captured.  That ship, owned by real historical figure Bernardino de Talavera, becomes shipwrecked.  The story is populated by people from history, but told primarily through the voice of Quebrado.  It is a pirate story that removes the swashbuckling glamour and tells the bitter truth about what piracy was.

Engle captures such emotion in her verse, creating moments of pain, wonder and even delight in this brutal story.  The book is immensely engaging, thanks to its brisk pace and lively subject matter.  There is adventure and even a touch of romance in this story, giving light in the darkness of slavery and piracy. 

Engle pays close attention to the native people of the islands, allowing glimpses into their lives and their beliefs.  They make a great foil to the lying, manipulations of the pirates.  It is a story that is elegantly crafted and vividly written.

A great choice for late elementary and middle school students who are interested in history and pirates.  This is a book that is fast, fascinating and fabulous.  Appropriate for ages 11-14.

Reviewed from library copy.

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Book Review: Small Acts of Amazing Courage by Gloria Whelan

| Tasha

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Small Acts of Amazing Courage by Gloria Whelan

Rosalind is not a normal British child living in India in 1918.  The other girls her age are shipped back to England for boarding school or spend their days at the club flirting covertly with young English soldiers and swimming in the pool.  Rosalind has never been to England, her mother refused to send her to boarding school because her older brother died in England while at school.  Rosalind doesn’t identify with the other English girls.  Instead her best friend is the daughter of one of the Indian servants and together they make illicit visits to the bazaar.  When Rosalind’s father returns from World War I, he brings with him stricter rules than Rosalind has been living under.  He disapproves of her friendships, forbids her going to the bazaar, and objects to her interest in Gandhi and his politics.  Rosalind’s world changes just as India begins to seek its independence from the British in this fascinating historical novel.

Rosalind is a great protagonist.  She is at odds with her English world, yet it is never pushed so far that her reactions and attitude loses touch with the historical setting.  She is strong, vibrant and a great lens to see India through because she is a bridge between modern readers and World War I.

Whelan creates her world with tiny touches, drawing India for readers in the details.  Her imagery is lovely, emphasizing the impermanence, the beauty, and the restlessness of the story. Yet the story does not drag at all.  This is historical fiction that is relevant, vital and interesting.  The pacing is beautifully done, offering the languid pace of an India heat wave, the time it took to travel at that time, and the desperation of a people.

I am hopeful that we will read more of Rosalind’s story in an upcoming book.  I look forward to seeing where Whelan will take readers next.  Perfect for middle school readers who will enjoy the engaging heroine and the touch of romance.  Appropriate for readers age 10-13.

Reviewed from copy received from Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.

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